I envy those people whose voice comes across so strongly in non-fiction writing.

I recently re-read Holly Lisle’s “Mugging the Muse—Writing Fiction for Love and Money“. This is a woman who packs valuable advice about writing into a package that also puts across, among other things, her angst at a failed marriage and her determination to succeed.

Read Lisle’s writing diary. It, too, is strong, powerful writing.

Kathy Sierra, one of the writers over at “Creating Passionate Users“, is another one who writes non-fiction with passion and personality.

Calder has a stronger personal writing voice than I do.  The funny thing is, when I edit her work I tone down the voice. I don’t know if this is poor editing on my behalf, or just so many years of technical writing training me to take out unnecessary extras.

Not that technical writing has to be boring, mind you, as the Passionate Users people show, but a strong voice in writing is often very personal, and few businesses like personal in their content.  They may also have multiple writers, and it’s hard for one person to write in the personal style of another.

In a way, I suppose, ‘corporate impersonal’ is just another voice, and I have trained myself to write in this voice for the last 15 years.

Does the voice you write with in non-fiction carry across to your fiction?  Can someone who has read your non-fiction pick up a novel and recognise that you wrote it?

For Holly Lisle I would say, definitely yes. Read Sympathy For The Devil. I think the same voice that came out so strongly in Mugging the Muse comes out here as well.

Even though I can’t see it, Calder says a recognisable voice comes out in our writing too.