In this Write Big session, Jennie explores one of the most essential—and elusive—elements of writing: voice.

In a world full of sameness (and increasingly, AI-generated language), what makes writing stand out is simple but not easy: sounding like yourself.

This episode is sparked by a moment on an evening walk, when the call of an owl cut through noise-canceling headphones—clear, distinct, impossible to ignore. A reminder that true voice doesn’t blend in. It breaks through.

If you want your writing to connect, resonate, and rise above the noise, this episode is a reminder: your voice is the thing that makes it possible.

#AmWriting is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Transcript

Hi, I’m Jennie Nash and you’re listening to the hashtag am Writing podcast, the place where we help writers of all kinds play big in your writing life, love the process, and stick with it long enough to finish what matters most. This is a right big session where I’m bringing you short episodes about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters.

Today I am talking about the power of tapping into your own voice. A lot of these sessions end up being about voice. The concept of voice in writing is so elusive, but I think it’s just so central to what we’re trying to do When we write big, we’re trying to sound like ourselves and we’re trying to cut through the noise of sameness, of sounding like everybody else, or lately of sounding like ai, which is of course, based on everybody else.

It’s critically important to hear your voice and to work on [00:01:00] raising your voice and to understanding how powerful that can be. Something happened to me the other day that I wanna share with you because it was such a perfect description of why voice matters and what voice really means. So almost every afternoon I go on a walk in my neighborhood.

And I especially love to go at dusk as the sun is setting and in the winter the lights really pink and in the summer it lingers for such a long time and reflects off of the mountains that I can see as I walk. I live in Santa Barbara, California, so we have these coastal mountains and I live quite close to those.

And then the beach is a couple miles on the other side. So we’re in this little strip of land and there’s a rich diversity of plants and trees that grow in this space, especially along the creek beds. And I live right near a creek bed, so there are these really tall sycamore trees and also really tall eucalyptus and pine trees.

In some cases, even some redwood trees. And then there’s all [00:02:00] kinds of scrubby chaparral like you get in Mediterranean climates. And the reason I like to walk at dusk is that the birds and animals are super active. So in the sky you’re gonna see hawks flying to their perches and rabbits running around to get away from them, and just all kinds of life and activity.

But my favorite thing of all is listening for the owls. These are great horned owls. They have that very classic owl hooting sound that goes in a series like who, who, who. And what’s really cool is that the owls talk to each other. You can hear one call out and then a few seconds later, oftentimes from quite far away, another call out, but other times they’re really close.

This one time I was walking and I heard the hoot, and then I heard immediately the other hoot. It’s a little bit like tracking thunder, like you can hear how close they are. I looked up and the two owls were sitting together in the top of this big tree. And the thing about the [00:03:00] owls also is that at that time of night, they swoop from high up on the trees into another tree.

Sometimes they go into the middle of the tree to kind of hide or, uh, the opposite. They go from the middle of a tree, like a big spreading oak tree up to the top of a bigger tree so they can have their perch and check it all out. I just love it so much trying to find the owls and listening for the owls.

You don’t hear them every night on every walk. It’s just such a joy when you do hear them. So I’m always listening for them. But what happened on the day that I wanna tell you about is they got some new noise canceling headphones. There are new in-ear noise canceling headphone from beats designed for working out so that they don’t fall out of your ears.

And I got them because I actually lost one of my Apple ones on a walk in the rain. I had a hood on and it fell out. I searched and searched in the rain. I did actually find it and rescue it, but it stressed me out. So I got the kind that are meant to be more secure in your ear. And [00:04:00] so I’m wearing these new headphones and they’re really noise counseling.

I didn’t realize quite how much I like to listen to podcasts when I walk. I also like to talk to friends or family, so I’m often on the phone, but also listening to everything that’s going on around me. It’s both things are going on. So I have these new headphones and I didn’t realize that I couldn’t actually hear anything.

They are so good that all I could hear was this podcast that I was listening to. I couldn’t hear footsteps if a friend or neighbor walked up behind me and I couldn’t hear the creek running. I couldn’t hear planes flying overhead. I couldn’t hear anything. And so I’m walking along listening to the podcast, just focusing on that.

And of course, the beauty of the light and the trees and everything else. But then I heard the owl cutting through this podcast and this incredible noise cancellation technology. It was like the owl’s voice was so distinctive and [00:05:00] on such a distinctive frequency, and it just cut through everything. And I stopped in my tracks and I took the headphones out and I just stood there and listened to it for like three minutes, maybe just.

Doing, its hooting. And then there was a owl quite far in the distance hooting back, and I was just marveling that their voice, this particular way that they express themselves in the world, could cut through this incredible technology design to stop all noise. The owl’s voice is that particular, and that distinctive and just that powerful.

And maybe I wanted to hear it that much. And while I was standing there, I thought. This is it. This is what writers want. Writers wanna speak in such a way that is so precise and clear and them that their ideal reader cannot help but stop and listen. I thought if every writer could be like these [00:06:00] owls cutting through the noise to their ideal reader, what an incredible thing that would be for the writers and for the readers.

The owl is not trying to sound like a hawk and it’s not trying to sound like a hummingbird. We have a lot of hummingbirds near us too, and they have this very distinctive sort of buzzing sound that they make when they fly. And an owl is not trying to sound like that. They’re just sounding like their own selves and they’re owning that way that they sound.

And in that moment I just felt it and I felt how powerful it was and I thought it was so awesome and, and I just wanted to share that with you. I thought it might be inspiring. I’m obviously going to have to choose between listening to podcasts and listening for the owls. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing either.

Until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Write Big 16: How to Sound Like Yourself in a Noisy World