What if this hypothesis about voice is correct? One thing follows
from it that's more important than anything else: everyone, how-
ever inexperienced or unskilled, has real voice available; everyone
can write with power. Even though it may take some people a long
time before they can write well about certain complicated topics or
write in certain formal styles, and even though it will take some
people a long time before they can write without mistakes in spell-
ing and usage, nevertheless, nothing stops anyone from writing
words that will make readers listen and be affected. Nothing stops
you from writing right now, today, words that people will want to
read and even want to publish. Nothing stops you, that is, but
your fear or unwillingness or lack of familiarity with what I am
calling your real voice.

But this clarion call -- for that's what I intend it to be despite my
careful qualifiers -- immediately raises a simple question: Why
doesn't everyone use power if it is sitting there available and why
does most writing lack power? There are lots of good reasons. In
this section I will give advice about how to get real voice into your
writing, but I will present it in terms of an analysis of why people
so seldom use that power.

People often lack any voice at all in their writing, even fake voice,
because they stop so often in the act of writing a sentence and
worry and change their minds about which words to use. They
have none of the natural breath in their writing that they have in

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