Writing...Just because!

I've just finished leading a writing retreat in beautiful Phuket Thailand and am buzzing from the high that hanging out with fellow authors always leaves. On day one we talked about the start of the journey towards finding your author voice. As we opened with an exercise where participants interviewed and introduced each other, one writer introduced another by saying, "Her inner artist is very protective of her own blank canvass." It was the beginning of the shedding of egos, the recognition that to be a writer you have to say 'I'm a writer!' very loud and very clear and... then just get down to the business of writing, which is the only way to actually discover the author voice that is inside you. You hear so many literary critics, book reviewers and lecturers say that every author has a unique ‘voice’ but what exactly does that mean? The more you read, and start to pay attention to the different nuances of different writers, the clearer this become...