Yesterday's post was about Branding, and I was ecstatic with the wonderful and thought-provoking comments my readers left for me. Now you know why I call my Followers "Super Cool People" because they truly are. :-)

We've talked about Voice being elusive or hard to define. It's like being told to draw a picture without using outlines. Doable? Yes. Hard? Extremely.

We've established that VOICE = BRAND. That's it. No gimmicks. Who you ARE is what your Voice looks like, if we must pin this down. Who you are--your personality, your quirks, your perceptions, how you interpret your environment, your experiences, your childhood, the influences you've come across or have given, your pain, sorrows, griefs, your happiness--all of these wonderful (and even the not-so-wonderful) things trickle into your writing, your thoughts, your interactions with other people whether you are conscious of this or not. It is, in essence, your VOICE.

Let's be visual. Take a look at this picture:

Source: Wikimedia Commons

I don't think I even need to tell you who drew this; you already know the answer. And then if you were to see this next piece of art, you'd immediately think that the artist who drew the first picture made this one too:

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Do you SEE now? Do you see how Voice inherently exists, that it is INDEED inside of us, and if we were all painters, we would reproduce works of art that are uniquely our own as Van Gogh did?

The bottom line is this: BE YOURSELF. Be true to who you are, for that is your Voice, my friend. We don't need to pretend to write like J.K Rowling in the hopes that we'll have her successful career. We don't need to be everything to everyone, just to please them. Trust me, it'll burn you out quickly.

Don't fret on trying to have a quantifiable voice. Let your voice come from within.

Any thoughts on this? I'd like to hear what you've got to say.

I've come across this word recently among writers. Branding. What does it mean for us? We're not, after all, a can of tuna needing a brand on grocery store shelves.

If you were to read a book without a cover and a title, or the author's name, would you know who wrote it? If you were to come across a single page of words, would you know where it came from?

Branding is unavoidably linked to Voice. Yikes, you say. Here we go again, talking about the undefinable, elusive, water-in-a-colander VOICE. Because it's true--if you read other writers' blogs, you're bound to find a post or two on Voice. You can find a good article on this subject here by Joyce Alton. Also here. And if that's not enough to whet or kill your appetite, here's one more.

So, you ask, are we really discussing Branding or Voice?

From The Write Angle's post asserted that Voice is no longer limited to the manuscript. The query letter has to have voice. And it's true--I've seen a few queries that are impeccably clean and follow the 3-paragraph rule, but are sadly lacking voice and therefore, become sterile. Flat. Unappealing. Then you have those jaw-dropping rule-breakers who get away with it because their BRAND, their VOICE showed through and caught the agent's attention.

I'd like to add to this and ask: Since our mss and query letters have to have Voice, does this mean our synopses should too? I'll let you mull on that one.

Back to our BRAND....

With all kinds of social media at our fingertips, getting our brand out there is easier than ever. The question is: What is YOUR brand? How do you portray yourself? How do you deliver your tuna goodness to the masses? If they see a page of your writing, will they recognize it as yours?

Think about it the next time you're shopping your ms.

From Creative Tools