Authenticity of voice can only come from authentic work. And authentic work doesn’t come from the head; it’s an outgrowth of authentic feeling.
In a post for the Ploughshares blog, Annie Weatherwax considers how writing an artistic statement can help artists and writers find their voice. She writes: “As an artist, the artistic statement requires me to step back from my entire body of work and ask, what themes am I examining? What is my work about? What is the aesthetic that I am exploring?”