Write Like Your Life Depends On It (Because It Does)

There’s a particular flavour of writing advice that makes me want to throw my laptop out the window. You know the type: “Find your unique voice!” they chirp, as if your voice is a set of car keys you’ve misplaced somewhere between the sofa cushions. “Be authentic!” they insist, usually followed by a seven-step framework that guarantees you’ll sound exactly like every other poor sod who bought the same course.

Here’s what they don’t tell you: your voice isn’t something you find. It’s something you already have. The problem is you’ve spent years learning to hide it.

The Great Sanitisation

We’ve all done it. We’ve all written things that sound like they were approved by a committee of risk-averse middle managers. Safe. Inoffensive. Utterly bloody forgettable.

I used to write like I was always one sentence away from a disciplinary hearing. Every bold statement hedged. Every opinion qualified. Every bit of personality sanded down until my words had all the texture of a corporate email about updated parking procedures.

The turning point wasn’t some grand epiphany. It was exhaustion. I got tired of reading my own work and feeling nothing. Tired of the gap between who I was in conversation and who I was on the page. Tired of writing things that technically said something whilst somehow saying absolutely nothing at all.

What “Authentic” Actually Means

Let’s clear something up: writing authentically doesn’t mean vomiting your unfiltered consciousness onto the page and calling it art. It doesn’t mean oversharing for the sake of it, or making your reader an unwilling therapist.

Authenticity in writing means this: when someone reads your work, they should get a sense of an actual human being on the other end. Someone with opinions, contradictions, fears, and the occasional inappropriate joke. Someone who exists in three dimensions, not just as a disembodied fountain of information.

It means writing about your experiences not because they’re extraordinary, but because they’re yours. And in that specificity, in that particularity of detail and feeling, other people find themselves.

I’ve written about panic attacks in Sainsbury’s, about the peculiar shame of ambition, about my relationship with my father and why I can’t throw anything away. Not because I think my life is fascinating. But because when I write about the specific texture of my experience…the fluorescent lights and the tinned tomatoes and the sudden certainty that I was dying in aisle seven…other people write back and say: “Oh god, me too.”

The Things We’re Not Supposed to Say

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. Writing with authenticity means writing the things that make you nervous to publish. The thoughts you have that don’t fit neatly into inspirational quote graphics. The bits of yourself that aren’t particularly flattering.

I’m not talking about being deliberately provocative or edgy for the sake of it. I’m talking about honesty. Real honesty, the kind that makes your finger hover over the publish button for an extra few seconds.

The best piece I ever wrote…the one that generated the most responses, the most “thank you for saying this,” the most genuine connection…was about feeling like a fraud. About the gap between how I appear and how I feel. About success, making me more anxious, not less.

It was terrifying to publish. What if people realised I was making it all up as I went along? What if they stopped taking me seriously?

Turns out, everyone’s making it up as they go along. And saying so out loud breaks a spell.

Your Experiences Are Not Universal (That’s the Point)

There’s this insidious idea that to write anything worthwhile, your experiences need to be extraordinary. You need to have climbed Everest or overcome immense tragedy or built a billion-pound business before you’ve earned the right to tell your story.

Bollocks to that.

The power of writing from experience isn’t in the grandeur of the events. It’s in the specificity of the observation. It’s in your unique vantage point, your particular neuroses, your weird family, your inexplicable habits.

I’ve never done anything particularly remarkable. I’ve written about walking the same route every day, about being unable to phone the dentist, about my complicated relationship with productivity culture and why I rearrange my bookshelves when I’m avoiding real work.

These aren’t impressive stories. But they’re mine. And in writing them with enough detail, enough honesty, enough texture, they become something other people can hold up to their own lives and recognise something true.

The Technical Bit (But Not Really)

People want practical advice, so here’s mine: write like you talk to your most perceptive friend. The one who sees through your bullshit and loves you anyway. The one you can be dark with, funny with, vulnerable with.

Not literally…transcribed speech is usually terrible writing. But that register. That tone. The one where you’re still yourself, just the most articulate version.

When I edit, I read everything aloud. If I stumble, if it sounds like I’m reading from a script rather than talking, it gets rewritten. I’m looking for the sentence structures I’d actually use. The rhythm of how I naturally speak. The digressions that feel true to how my mind actually works.

I also cut anything that sounds like I’m trying to impress anyone. Big words used for the sake of it. Convoluted sentences designed to sound clever. Anything that feels like performance rather than communication.

Here’s the test: if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t write it. And if you would say it to someone’s face, but it makes you slightly uncomfortable, definitely write it.

What You’re Actually Afraid Of

Let’s be honest about what stops us from writing authentically: it’s not ability. It’s fear.

Fear that we’re not interesting enough. That our lives are too ordinary. That our opinions are wrong or our feelings are silly, or our experiences don’t count.

Fear that if we show who we really are, people won’t like us. Or worse, won’t care.

Fear that authenticity is somehow self-indulgent. That writing about yourself is narcissistic, the world doesn’t need another person banging on about their feelings.

I understand these fears intimately. I have them every single time I write anything personal. The voice that says: “Who do you think you are? Why would anyone care about this?”

But here’s what I’ve learned: that voice is wrong. Not because I’m special, but because none of us are. And in that shared ordinariness, that common struggle with being human, there’s a connection.

The most narcissistic thing you can do as a writer is assume you’re so different from everyone else that your specific truth won’t resonate. The most generous thing you can do is trust that your honest experience might be a mirror for someone else’s.

Writing from the Heart Without Being Mawkish

There’s a fine line between emotional honesty and sentimentality. Between vulnerability and melodrama. Between writing from the heart and writing something that makes readers reach for a sick bucket.

The difference, I think, is in the details. Specificity saves you from sentimentality. When you write about actual moments…real conversations, specific objects, particular feelings…you ground the emotion in something concrete.

I can write: “I miss my dad.” That’s true, but it’s also vague. It could mean anything. It invites the reader to project their own feelings about their own fathers, which might create a connection, but it’s not really my story.

Or I can write: “I miss the way my dad used to fall asleep in front of the cricket, tea going cold on the side table, then wake up and insist he’d been following every ball.”

That’s still about missing him. But now you can see him. You can see the specific shape of my loss. And somehow, that makes it both more mine and more universal.

The Permission You’re Waiting For

You don’t need anyone’s permission to write about your life. You don’t need to have achieved something impressive or overcome something dramatic. You don’t need perfect grammar or a degree in English literature.

You just need to be willing to tell the truth as you see it. To write with the same honesty you’d use with a trusted friend. To trust that your particular experience, told with enough detail and care, will find the people who need to read it.

This isn’t easy. It requires courage to write authentically because it requires being seen. Really seen, not just as a curated online persona, but as the complicated, contradictory, occasionally ridiculous human you actually are.

But here’s what I’ve found: writing authentically, writing from experience, writing with your actual voice…it’s not just better for your readers. It’s better for you.

It’s a way of making sense of your life. Of understanding your experiences by articulating them. Of connecting with other humans in an increasingly disconnected world.

And on the good days, when someone writes back to say “thank you, I thought I was the only one”…it’s proof that your weird, specific, utterly ordinary life might just be extraordinary enough after all.

So Write

Write about the things that scare you. Write about the moments that stay with you for no obvious reason. Write about your failures and your fears, and the time you completely misread a social situation and still cringe thinking about it.

Write in sentences that sound like you. Use the words you’d actually use. Let your digressions stay in…they’re probably more interesting than your main point anyway.

Write like someone you care about will read it and understand you better afterwards. Write like your future self might need to remember this. Write like your life depends on it.

Because in a way, it does. Not in some dramatic, life-or-death sense. But in the sense that your experiences, your observations, your particular way of seeing the world…they matter. They’re worth recording. They’re worth sharing.

Not because they’re better than anyone else’s. But because they’re yours.

And that, in the end, is the only thing that could possibly make them authentic.

Until Next |Time