Noah Berlatsky has a hard nugget of truth for aspiring writers: “If you want to get paid … finding your own voice can be a distraction – even a hindrance”:
The bulk of writing opportunities that will actually provide you with a living wage are work-for-hire – writing textbook entries, or exam questions, or website content boilerplate. And when you’re doing work-for-hire, no one cares about your voice. Or rather, they do care, in that they actively don’t want anything to do with it. The point of work-for-hire is to make your voice disappear into the house style. Mostly that style is flat and factual. (“The enormous growth of world population in the last hundred years has been sparked by advances in medicine and disease prevention, by increases in life expectancy, and by agricultural improvements.”) …
Perhaps there’s someone out there so famous or so obscure that they can say whatever they will in public in a unique voice untouched by editors or market considerations. But for the vast majority of working scribblers, writing is less about finding your own voice than about figuring out how to say something someone, somewhere will pay you for, or at least listen to. If there’s a voice, it’s always an adjusted and negotiated voice, rather than a pure effusion of individuality.
The Dish 