My last post about voices (last, as in I won't write about it again).

I have so many thoughtful comments to my last post about writers' voices that I've come back to it - I've obviously stuck a chord.

I hadn't realised that the concept of 'voice' is used across the arts - so sculptors, photographers, knitters, are all encouraged to think about what makes them distinctive - to look at the way their work reflects them and what they are trying to say. (Thank you, Mark - I never knew that.) I'd not thought of it in terms of 'voice' but I can recognise a Henry Moore or a Barbara Hepworth, a Modigliani or an Ansell Adams, and will go out of my way to see them. They have a distinctive way of expressing themselves that speaks to me - and I'm not sure I can put that into words except to say that they make me feel good; they are satisfying on a deep level (if that makes any sense).

But in writing - does this familiarity extend to writing? I take Carol's point about Dickens (thank you, Carol) - his work is instantly recognisable. But modern writers - Bring Up the Bodies and Wolf Hall could only have been written by Hilary Mantel. But Beyond Black - that's a completely different book, written in a different style and with a different use of language, with no hint of drowning in wonderful historical detail, and also written by Hilary Mantel. Crime writers have their pet detectives - but they, too, spread their writing wings from time to time. I've not read Kate Atkinson's Life after Life but understand that the contrast with her crime novels couldn't be stronger.

I'm probably thinking round in circles - I'm not sure I'm any closer to a definition than I was three weeks ago, when I decided 'voice' is something to do with the dialogue between what we are trying to say and the medium (whether that is words or paint or plaster) we use to tell it.

And then I wonder - and this might be a heretical idea so please, those of you who know better, do shout me down - maybe the concept of 'voice' is an academic construct, used to promote discussion among students and give them headaches when they have essays to write, but of limited use to anyone with a blank screen in front of them, or paintbrush in hand. What do you think?

(It's hard work, all this thinking - I think it's time to go and burn soup!)

On hearing voices on the page.

I'm following on, from sockpuppets, to talking to myself (my last two posts), to ... writing. And the thorny topic of 'voice.' There is a logic, I think - something about being heard.

I never offer writing advice - there are many far more qualified than I to do that. (And many unqualified who also put in their five-pennyworth, but let's not talk about that.) I'm in the learning game, and can only talk about what seems to work for me. So this is definitely not about 'finding one's writing voice'. Instead it is a tentative exploration of how I think of it.

Writing, for me, is not the same as talking to myself on paper. For a start, in my mutterings while stirring the soup I rarely use complete sentences; I might throw in a little blasphemy, call myself a prat for burning it again (yes, I burn soup; and occasionally indulge in a little gratuitous swearing).

If I'm writing, incomplete sentences are deliberate. Words with no main verb just for emphasis. A passing swear word is deliberate, used sparingly and with thought for the reader. I hear the rhythm of a sentence - playing with word order until there is a music to it. Even when I write dialogue, I try to keep myself quiet and let the character express him/herself.

And then I read it aloud. Clunky bits are obvious when you read them to the plants (plants are a great audience. They can't answer back, nor run away). Tedious bits are obvious - because you race through them, skip over useless words. It is in the reading aloud that I 'hear' my own writing voice - and begin to explore the conversation between what I think I'm trying to say and the words I'm using to say it.

So that, for me, is what I mean by a 'writer's voice' - the rhythm of the words and their relation to meaning. But, as I said, that's my understanding of the term. What's yours?