The writer's journey

On Monday I took a short trip to my hometown, about an hour's drive from where I live now, and it got me thinking. There were so many things that had changed in the past seven years since I've lived there. More buildings had been added downtown, and some others had been updated with more modern exteriors. Roads had been expanded. New parking lots had been put in. But for everything that had changed, there were things that stayed the same. The historic landmarks remain unchanged. The bakery where we used to get our bread on Sunday mornings still sits at the end of Main Street, unchanged in the midst of all the new growth. The harbor looks exactly as it did seven years ago, when I used to sit out on my porch with the kids so they could watch the boats coming and going across the street. So though the town has been modernizing, the foundation of it remains the same. As writers, we go through a similar process. At the start of our writing, we discover the core foundation of our unique talents--our voice. As the years pass, we learn and grow. We read articles, we find critique partners, we take advise from rejection letters, and go to meetings and conferences. We take a little bit from each of these things and apply them to our writing, so our writing grows consistently smoother and tighter, and gets better and better. But even with the new growth, the foundation remains the same. The writer's voice is still there, even through all the tweaking and honing. The essence of your uniqueness doesn't change. This journey is an endless one. There will always be new ways to learn and grow, but don't grow so much that you lose your voice. Use them to make your voice stronger.