The Potter's Unsteady Hand: On the Discipline of Embracing Wobble
There’s a piece of writing advice so ubiquitous it has become gospel: find your voice. It’s presented as the ultimate destination, a writer’s El Dorado. We’re told to hunt for it, hone it, and protect it from outside influence. The underlying promise is that once discovered, this singular, authentic voice will become our most reliable instrument, the clear channel through which all our stories must flow. I’d like to propose a different, perhaps more unsettling, idea. What if the quest for a fixed voice is not the path to authenticity, but a cage that prevents it?
Think of a potter at a wheel. The received wisdom tells us a master’s hands are perfectly steady, applying uniform pressure to raise a symmetrical vessel. Any wobble, any deviation from the perfect circle, is a flaw to be corrected. This is the ‘found voice’ model—consistent, controlled, predictable. But watch a real potter. Their hands are in constant, subtle motion, responding to the minute inconsistencies in the clay, the speed of the wheel, the moisture in the air. The wobble isn’t a mistake to be eliminated; it’s a conversation. The final piece isn’t a perfect circle, but it is uniquely, authentically itself, shaped by that dynamic interplay.
Our writing voice is not a static, pre-formed object to be uncovered. It is that very conversation. It’s the wobble. It changes with every project, every new idea, every book we read that shakes our foundations. The voice you used for a sombre personal essay is not the one that will serve a satirical short story. The voice that captivated readers in your first novel might feel stale and performative in your third. Clinging to a ‘found’ voice from a previous work is like forcing new, different clay into an old, rigid mold. The shape might be recognizable, but the life has been squeezed out of it.
This doesn’t advocate for a chaotic, directionless style. The discipline lies not in maintaining a single tone, but in developing the sensitivity to listen to what each piece demands. It’s the discipline of malleability. It requires paying deep attention to the subject matter and asking: does this require a whisper or a shout? A lyrical flow or a staccato rhythm? The gravitas of long, complex sentences or the punch of a short, sharp truth? The authentic voice isn’t the one you used before; it’s the one that emerges, honestly and vulnerably, in the struggle to give *this specific idea* its best form.
Embrace the wobble. Stop the exhausting excavation for a buried artifact called your voice. Instead, sit at the wheel every day with a willingness to be shaped by the work itself. Let your voice be a verb, not a noun—an active, responsive process of discovery. The truest sound you can make isn’t a polished, consistent note, but the honest, unsteady, and beautifully human sound of a writer deeply engaged in the messy act of creation.
Notes & further reading
A few pages I came back to while writing this: