Finding Your Voice

Writing is such a beautiful tool that allows people to share fragments of their life and describe it to others. I think one of the most difficult parts of writing personal stories is finding and establishing your writer's voice. Over the past two weeks, we have been tasked with finding a particular event in our lives and exploring the effect that it has had on our personal growth. For most people, thinking of a cathartic event is not too difficult. However, sculpting your story to make it exemplify your character is where things start to get difficult. 

For me personally, I have always had a hard time incorporating my genuine voice in my writing. Just like many others, I will shift my voice to align with AP Standards or to match the piece I might be writing about. The beauty- or in my case the problem- of the personal statement essay, is that you have complete writing freedom. Admission officers want to see a piece of your character in this essay but how exactly do you narrow down 17 years of life into 650 words?

On my adventure to find and express my genuine writer's voice, I found a quote by Austin Kleon. He stated that "The only way to find your voice is to use it". And that's exactly what I did. This past summer, I started writing short stories. Hence the blog title: Storytime with Sejal. My short stories weren't necessarily about my life rather topics or ideas that were of interest to me. It was through these short stories that I started to discover my voice. I realized that I love to write about my family and I love describing the philosophy of everyday things- two concepts that I included in my personal statement.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't overthink it. The only way to be comfortable with your writing and your voice is to simply use it. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed Storytime with Sejal!