Writing: Fighting In Someone Else's Armor

It's funny how, when you've moved into the world of writing, things you previously took for granted can take on a new meaning. Recently I was thumbing through my Bible looking for a particular quotation, and I stopped at the passage where King Saul reluctantly accepts David's offer to fight the giant, Goliath. Saul tries to fit David with his own armor, but the boy declines. In the margin, I'd written something gleaned from a prior Sunday School lesson: "You can't fight in someone else's armor." And that reminded me that, as a writer, I can't write using someone else's words.

Let me explain. Early in my writing journey, I attended a mentoring class at an excellent writer's conference. Like others in the class, I submitted the opening scene of my work-in-progress for comments by other class members and by the instructor, a well-known writer. After the class, he and I sat in the lounge and he proceeded to rewrite the scene. He improved it, but the end result was a scene in his "voice," not mine. What I then had to do was put those changes into action using my own words. Otherwise, I'd be trying to fight the battle for publication clad in his armor.

Writers can struggle for years to find their unique "voice." This means the way they string words together, the attitude of their characters, the balance they achieve between dialogue and description. No one can do it for us, and the harder we try to imitate the work of other writers, the more stilted and contrived will be our own writing. So we have to remember: We can't fight in someone else's armor.

Writers, has this been a hard lesson for you to learn? Readers, can you tell when a writer is trying to imitate another? Let me know.