The filter

I think your frustration is misguided....

English Composition class is meant for more formal, not creative writing. Some examples are business and admnistrative writing (to help you craft such things as grant proposals, formal, written communication, and so forth). You'd need a class in grant writing to do it, but the grammar rules learned in composition classes are highly pertinent.

Creative Writing taught what you wanted to learn.

English Literature teaches the great authors of different countries/regions of the world.

Those English teachers did their jobs, and forced you to stay within the boundaries of what the class intended to cover. For me, I am stronger with composition than I am creative writing. Part of the reason I got into novel writing was to improve myself.

Toto Too said:

So my work has no voice.

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So write like you talk. That might not be the actual "voice" you settle on for a given piece of narrative, but, as a starter, it might get you away from the subliminal obsession with academic formality.

And read. A lot. Widely, in different genres. That will help you, by a kind of osmosis, to get a feel in your writer's bone marrow how other writers' voices work.

caw

If I may be so free: your post certainly has a voice. Can't you write your book with the same attitude? Best of luck!

I think not reading while you write is a huuuuge mistake. I say that as someone that has done similar at times in the past. All my best lessons have been given in the pages of well written books. Read widely and it's just not possible to end up imitating a voice (if it was ever possible at all) if that is what worries you.

Most of us aren't going to be prodigies, we'll need to work at it for a while, it takes hard graft. When I read my earliest attempts at writing they don't even make sense to me. It's unrecognisable to what I write now. I'm so happy I wasn't put off, that I kept going, and I like to think I will continue to learn and grow. Writing can always be improved, another draft can always be done, another ten if that's what it's going to take.

Write something first person, and personal. I sympathise with having to shake the academic influence, particularly in the overuse of (unnecessary) quantifiers <--see wut I did thar ;-)

For flow, nothing beats poetry. It has a beautiful rhythm that propels you from line to line. I can't stress enough the importance of reading poetry for writing; in addition to rhythm it teaches you cadence, conciseness, imagery and description, and so much more. If you don't like poetry, music with lyrics does pretty well as a substitute.

I would also second that you should absolutely be reading while you write. On average, I read one novel per written chapter of my MS. Some need more, some less, but everyone needs to read something.

Just write it. Write it as you, if that's comfortable.

You can revise prose later; work on the story and characters first.

Not at all. Everything can be edited, absolutely everything.

I probably changed 98% of MS1, it's literally be rewritten from scratch a fewtimes over. And a good part of that was the narrative changing as I found my voice and my feet with it.

Maybe try some shorts? Great way to knock a few out and you get a buzz from finishing them (or I do anyway) similar to finishing a MS, without SUCH a long slog

Whenever I panic writing my first drafts which are literally just putting all the words on the page and I can see it's bad, I just remember the words for good old Hemingway "the first draft of anything is shit."

Just write and then worry about the editing and making it great later. And others already mentioned: read, read, read.

Writers can't always be trusted to evaluate their styles objectively. Lovecraft complained in letters to his friends how his style is a mix of this influence and that influence, but when am I going to sound like myself, etc.

Whereas to us his is one of the most distinctive styles ever. He just didn't see it.

Likewise, some writers claim their styles are 'transparent' and celebrate the whole 'transparent writing' thing, but have a very specific style, of which they are apparently unaware.

Other writers still go around explaining how they didn't bend to fashion, and instead of succumbing to pressure from agents and editors and writing endless serials with the same central protagonists, they write standalones, each of which is super different from each other. But in reality they are all so similar that they could very well have been parts of a serial

And lastly, the writers who misconstrue what it is in their writing that makes them popular, and force themselves to write more and more like X, without realizing that people like reading them because of Y, and when after years of self torture these writers finally succeed in breaking their natures and writing totally in X mode, supressing Y mode, their readers leave them. (Happens with musicians and film directors too, of course)

So sometimes creative folk can't really be trusted to see what they produce objectively.

Ours is not to reason why, ours but to write and fly

Toto Too said:

@Elle - thanks! At least I have one thing in common with Hemingway, so that's a plus!

@Lakey - thank you first-timer And yeah I'm beating myself up right now, but sometimes it helps once I'm done doing it. I think the frustration really comes from the fact that I know exactly what I want this book to be. I can already read it in my head. I can feel it. I can taste it. But I just can't get it on the page. You know what I mean... If I know what I want to write, why can't I just... write it???? It's an amazing thing, that 18 months ago I couldn't have even fathomed.

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I've always approached this problem by grinding at it. Sometimes I'll go a week or two without writing, doing other things that need to get done while I roll a sentence around in my head. Other times, like tonight, I might get only a couple hundred words done in an hour or two, because it's a critical conversation and so emotionally draining that I can't push out any more. And maybe in a year I'll look back at what I'm writing now and realize it's weak, delete it, and repeat the process until I've got something better.

All I can suggest is that you keep writing. Things that I thought were smooth and clever ten years ago I now see were shaky and prolix, and after some editing I can bring out the thing I wanted to say in the first place.

English teachers are there to teach kids how to write correct, legible, English. If someone can't even write a basic letter of complaint, they don't have the skills to cope with life. Teachers have to be strict about grammar, etc, because if you can't get that stuff right, you're not going to be able to communicate effectively in writing in any circumstances. I agree that the better English teachers can do this while also encouraging creativity and expression. But creativity and expression in written English can't happen if you're not literate to begin with.

I started creative writing at home when I was twelve. At the very beginning, I followed all of what my teachers said, but then, upon reading what I'd written (full of "interesting" adverbs and said bookisms) I realised it sounded dreadful and that "said" sounded a whole lot better. And that you didn't need to put the "said"s in at all. I concluded that the way to write well was to not follow what English teachers said.

I'd written three novel length things by the time I was thirteen. None of them had paragraphs (one of them filled seven exercise books - all as one, very very very long paragraph). I didn't do paragraphs probably until I was about fifteen or sixteen. I think I was in my 20s before I started doing chapters. I typed up a second draft of one of the things I wrote when I was thirteen. The second draft had proper paragraphs. I finished that draft when I was about seventeen. I've still got the second draft and I'm kind of a bit proud of it. Not because it's good - it's not. Not even close. I'm proud of it because if anyone was insane enough to attempt to make it into a film, it'd have an 18 certificate and I wrote the first draft when I was thirteen. I blame Shakespeare. I was trying to out-do him in terms of violent deaths and suicides. Only mine also had drugs and organised crime.

Thing is, I had the freedom to write whatever the hell I wanted, however the hell I wanted to write it, with no-one to tell me I was doing it wrong, no pressure to "get published" or even have anyone else on the entire planet like it. I wrote it all for me, for fun, because I had these characters in my head who had stories I wanted to tell (I basically never grew out of having imaginary friends).

From reading this forum, I think a lot of beginner writers put way, way, way too much pressure on themselves to get everything right first time, with no leeway to just practice - play, even - and develop their skills. I think there's a lot to be said for taking the pressure of yourself and just writing whatever you want just for the fun of it, without any thought of letting other people read it. Play with the words. Write what's inside you and wants to get out. You might find that what you come up with is something that with extensive pummelling and hacking could be made into something publishable, or you might come out with ideas that could springboard you into writing something publishable. But it doesn't matter one tiny little bit if it doesn't, because it's about writing without any pressure at all and just enjoying it. And you'll carry that experience into whatever you write later on.

I agree with the advice about reading. You can't learn to write without reading. I also recommend critiquing other writers and, when you're ready (no hurry) getting your own writing critiqued (after you've perfected and polished it... and be prepared for people to find loads of things wrong with it, but you learn so much and then go back and apply it to your writing and realise how much it's improved.) But before you put pressure on yourself to get your stuff critiqued, just play. No pressure.

Toto Too said:

So what the actual hell?

As I take a break from endless, endless revisions of my first and only WIP, I've been dabbling in other people's fiction and some poetry (I'm paranoid about reading other work while I'm writing/revising my own) and I'm just amazed at what I'm reading. Amazed at how people can actually express themselves in their writing. I *still* don't know how to do that. I am working so hard (too hard) at rearranging sentences, substituting one word for another, questioning show vs. tell, and on and on and on.

Why can't I just write?

I figured out a while ago that the greatest effort that goes into writing is to make the writing appear effortless.

But it's more than just that.

Until I wrote this book, the entirety of my writing experience had been confined to elementary school and high school. And quite frankly, my teachers, as I now realize, were not particularly good. All of them were the type that insisted that quality writing followed all the rules, and must be formal and stuffy and boring. Creative expression was not welcome - what mattered was proper grammar, repetitive, droning syntax, and a regurgitation of the messages and themes the teachers themselves drilled into our heads. Any coloring outside the lines would be met with disapproval.

Many (many) years later, I still have not cleansed myself of that. Lots of ideas come to my imagination, but when I sit down to write, I sit up straight, clear my throat, and filter all those ideas into the kind of stilted, proper prose that would have impressed my 8th grade English teacher.

So my work has no voice. And the thing is - I actually do have a voice. Every once in a while I come across a passage in my book that escaped the filter, and those are my favorite parts. But no matter how aware I am of this problem, I still cannot. get. past. that. filter.

Oh the frustration...

And a curse on you all, you cold, rotten, boring, pearl-clutching English Lit teachers from decades past.

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I just wanted to say that based on the above, you certainly can write and very well, too. It flows well, it's expressive and articulate, it's a pleasure to read, and it does show a natural voice. Now just apply that to your fiction. I think maybe you're suffering from a form of performance anxiety when you sit down to write fiction. I had (occasionally still do have) that issue myself, and once I realized what was going on, it became easier and easier to shed it and just write.

I write like I talk, much to my editor's dismay.

Chiming in with agreement with pretty much everything that's been said so far.

The writing is in the rewriting. Find a way to turn off that setting in your brain that says "OMG WRITING NOW. MUST BE IN PROSE VOICE TO TELL PERFECT STORY PERFECTLY!"

Not everyone is blessed with a close to finished first draft (as much as I'd wish it to be true for me *sob*).

Also Scythian is correct. You are not a good judge of what is good with your manuscript, especially when it is so fresh. Stop with the endless revisions. You'll edit your voice out of it until you end a wet, soppy cardboard mess. Start work on another project and let this one marinate for a bit before you tackle more revisions. I fear you may be too close to it and end up doing more damage than good.

I had the same thing going on, so what I did was fire up the voice recorder on my phone and just tell a story to an imaginary person. Then I played it back to myself to see how my "voice" sounded (not actually sounded , but how I phrased things and the like. You know what I mean.) Then I sat down and wrote it. Then I compared the two. It took a while to stop making it sound stilted and formal, and I still catch myself doing it now and then.
This writing gig is a skill, and like any skill, practice is key. So try writing some shorts. Hey, try some FanFic. Experiment. Set that magnum opus aside and get comfortable in your writer's skin. Relax. Have fun with this.

I'm echoing what others have said: read more and write more-- your voice will naturally develop.

Just my meager two cents!