What I Wish I Knew About Writing Before Starting My Author’s Journey: The Fast Track to Finding Your Voice
“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” – Robert Cormier
If you’re a new writer hoping to find your authentic voice without writing half a dozen books first, this article is for you.
It’s funny how a simple question in a writers’ forum can trigger the most profound realizations. There I was, scrolling through Facebook, when a fellow writer asked: “What is something you wish you’d known before starting your journey?”
This question transported me back to my first fiction manuscript—a complete mess of a few thousand words, most of it italicized. The editor kindly recommended I research manuscript format. That humbling moment began my journey of discovery that I’ll share with you today.
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” – Anne Lamott
Finding Time: The Writer’s First Challenge
Because every day is a full plate, and free time is what it is, I find it’s easiest to write or conduct research uninterrupted for 15-45 minutes if I wake up early, wait until everyone in the house is asleep, or schedule writing trips away from work and home.
This isn’t perfect, and may not work for you, but it’s what works for me as a writer best.
The Journey from Novice to Voice
I’ve easily spent $100K or more learning the writing craft, and I write for different audiences in multiple genres. The journey from novice writer to international award-winning, bestselling author and coach has been an uber crazy adventure filled with incredible highs and lows.
I owe my writing success to wonderful mentors such as Derek Murphy, Margie Lawson, Suzanne Purvis, and Wally Lane, each of whom taught me different aspects of writing and provided encouragement. Their guidance accelerated my development in ways that would have taken years of trial and error to discover on my own.
Of course, I’ve also encountered my share of timewasters—those happy to take your time and money but fail to deliver viable results.
Interacting with them feels like having your teeth pulled with an ancient rusty extractor by a questionable dentist (unless, of course, the dentist is Steven Martin from Little Shop of Horrors, because that was a fantastic, hilarious scene).
The Mythical Seventh Book
You may have heard that authors typically need to write five to seven books before finding their true voice. It’s one of those writing maxims that gets passed around like folklore – something you acknowledge with a nod but don’t truly believe applies to you.
Until it does.
After completing my sixth picture book for children ages four to eight, I discovered this to be absolutely true. Six books in, something clicked. The struggle wasn’t imaginary after all.
“Find your voice, shout it from the rooftops, and keep doing it until the people that are looking for you find you.” – Dan Harmon
The Format Labyrinth
Looking back, I wish I’d had formatted genre templates to reference from the start.
As a Wall Street Journal bestselling author who has written or co-authored fifteen books (including ten picture books for children ages four to eight), it wasn’t until my sixth picture book that my editor stopped correcting the manuscript’s format.
Until then, they constantly pointed out how to properly format the Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Illustrator Notes, and where Spread Numbers and Page Numbers should appear in each scene.
“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” – Mark Twain
It’s the literary equivalent of learning to drive in a foreign country where all the road signs are in a language you don’t speak. Sure, you can figure it out eventually, but wouldn’t a guidebook have been nice?
The Courage to Cut: Trusting Your Editor
When I wrote my first fiction novel, I trusted my editor who cut over 42,000+ words from the manuscript. Like most folks who like to be in control, it was the hardest thing in the world to do, to give up control and trust another person.
However, by trusting the editor with all of their recommendations—what content to keep, revise, expand upon, or eliminate—I helped make everything sparkle and shine.
This lesson in surrender might be one of the most valuable in my journey. Your words are not sacred, and sometimes the most beautiful writing happens in the spaces between what you keep and what you let go.
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”- Stephen King
The Breakthrough
Once I understood the optimal formatting, my writing process accelerated dramatically, and my editor made far fewer revision recommendations.
This pattern held true across both my fiction and non-fiction work – understanding the format and flow of a specific genre made writing future stories both easier and faster.
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” – Terry Pratchett
Expedition Tips for Fellow Explorers
For those navigating their own writing wilderness, here are three survival tools I wish I’d packed from the beginning:
- Read like a cartographer. Examine at least 25 bestselling books in your preferred genre to familiarize yourself with what works in terms of readability, language, format, and flow. These are your maps to success.
- Physically retype or rewrite portions of these stories. This creates a tangible connection to the genre’s style that will positively influence your own writing. It’s like practicing scales before composing your symphony.
- Review and edit other writers’ work in your genre to develop your critical eye. Sometimes seeing the path more clearly means first helping others find theirs.
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. The second draft is when you fix it up to share with other people.” – Meg Cabot
The Unquantifiable Journey
Most importantly, there’s an invaluable benefit to writing a complete book that cannot be fully explained or expressed in words.
The physical act of crafting an entire story from beginning to end – working through every challenge, solving every plot problem, and reaching that final page – is absolutely priceless.
This complete journey builds writing muscles and intuition that simply can’t be developed any other way. Each finished manuscript represents not just a creative achievement, but a transformative milestone in your development as a writer.
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anaïs Nin
The Secret No One Tells You
Perhaps the most valuable lesson is this: no one can prepare you for your specific writing journey. The path to finding your voice is as unique as your fingerprint.
The templates, the formats, the rules – they’re all just scaffolding. The real work happens in those quiet moments when you’re alone with your words, discovering not just how to write, but how *you* write.
While conventional wisdom suggests it takes five to seven books to find your voice, the expedition tools I’ve shared can significantly accelerate this process.
By studying your genre’s formatting, retyping successful works, and editing others’ writing, you’re essentially compressing those five to seven books’ worth of experience into focused, deliberate practice. Having great mentors, like I did, can further accelerate this journey.
This approach doesn’t just save time. It transforms what could be years of trial and error into a structured path of discovery.
Once you’ve found your unique voice and writing style, you’ll create the kind of content your readers and fans clamor for most.
And best of all, you’ll write better quality content and material faster that both you and your readers will love.
I remember the exact moment I recognized my voice had emerged – when reading the final draft of my sixth picture book, I realized the cadence, humor, and emotional beats felt effortlessly mine, no longer an imitation of my influences but something distinctly me.
That recognition is worth every struggle along the way. And while no book is guaranteed to be a best-seller, these tools position your work for maximum success by helping you discover and refine your authentic voice sooner rather than later.
This is everything I wish I knew before starting my author’s journey, which I’m now sharing with you.
I hope you found this information helpful. Here’s to your writing success and I hope you write books readers crave and clamor for—or something better.
What writing advice do you wish you’d received at the beginning of your journey? Share your insights in the comments below.
About the Author
J. W. Zarek is a Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author who has written or co-authored seventeen books, with nine published including seven #1 bestsellers. His picture books for children ages 4-8 feature Slavic mythology and focus on his “I am enough” mission.
With over 40 years of combined military and federal service, Zarek brings systematic analysis to complex problems. He’s developing the Authors for America nonprofit concept to connect schools that want author visits with qualified authors who want to visit schools, and fully fund those visits.
After retirement, he plans to do author visits full-time and pursue an MA in Folklore Studies at George Mason University with a concentration in Slavic mythology.
Learn more: www.jwzarek.com
© 2026 J.W. Zarek. All rights reserved.
