FINDING THE VOICE TO TELL YOUR STORY

When I read Raven Leilani’s Luster, when I read Lola Olufemi’s Experiments In Imagining Otherwise, when I re-read James Baldwin’s Another Country, my first thought was… wow, just wow. That’s how it’s done. My second thought was, how on earth do I sound like them? It’s such a natural impulse, as a writer, to read something earth shattering by a peer, a hero, a contemporary and think, that’s how I want to sound.

ONLY BE YOURSELF

The thing is, you have to sound like yourself, and yourself only. Otherwise, what’s the point? Sure, we borrow from the greats, from peers, heroes and contemporaries. Sure, we’re influenced by them, moved by them, our worlds changed and rearranged by them. But trying to sound like them isn’t good writing. If anything, it’s bad mimicry. I say this from painful experience. Just taking