What does it mean to “be yourself”?

From the time we are kids, our parents and teachers told us to be ourselves. That is great advice to be sure. It is especially important in your writing, where it is critical to develop your own unique voice.

It can be confusing when you are trying to build your writing career, because you must fit into a category. We don’t just write for ourselves. We also write for an audience. Readers expect our writing to fit into certain pre-existing categories. They also expect that a book will fit certain conventions as far as page count, length, and divisions into chapters.

So how do you balance between these two things—your unique voice and the expectations of your readers?

We can learn a lot from other creative fields. Musicians have distinct voices and write unique songs, but they also fit into an overall genre, whether it is pop, rock, country, jazz, or something else. They also use the same twelve notes that all Western music has used for a very long time.

Actors face the same situation. They need to speak the lines in the script, but their delivery, body language, and interpretation are their own.

The expectations of readers are not a limitation; they are a sandbox where you can develop endless variations on your voice and the themes you write about.

The author Rita Mae Brown said, “The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.” It’s important not just to like yourself, but love yourself—your voice, your uniqueness, and your one-of-a-kind contribution to the world.

But when you can accept the limits of the literary sandbox and give your readers something new and fresh, while also meeting and exceeding their expectations … they will love you as well.