Getting the chance to write in any professional capacity is an amazing opportunity for any aspiring writer. For me, this began when I got to write for Odyssey. I was thrilled at the idea that I would be writing and getting published every single week. Finally, I would be getting my name out there. It was that first big step I had been waiting for.

I didn’t realize the downside until I was a few months in. I started reading back my articles and comparing them to my earlier work and I made the upsetting discovery: I was starting to lose my voice as an author. It wasn’t that my articles were all that bad; they still got the same number of shares and likes on social media. It was just that they had become tangibly devoid of any real personality. I found myself choosing topics every week because they were easy and I could get them done quickly. I also found that my articles were melting into a blend of the voices of other authors. Every news article or story I read online made me think about my own writing. I realized that I was just using what I read as a basis for my own work without stopping to consider if that was an improvement.

It was not until I was reading an article by another Odyssey contributor that I finally figured out that it did not have to be this way. The article—How The University Of New Hampshire Chose To Waste An Alum's $4m Gift—not only had a voice. It had passion. It had background research. It took time to create. I realized that it wasn’t the fact that I was writing an article a week that was causing me to lose my voice. I was just getting lazy. That article let me relearn why I had decided to apply to become a contributor for Odyssey in the first place. I have a message and I want the world to hear it. I have a voice that I want everyone to be familiar with. I want people to relate and connect to what I am writing, because that is the point of writing. To make a connection. To show people that there is someone else out there who agrees with them. Or even to point out ideas to people that they didn’t know they agreed with until they found my article. I started writing to share my thoughts. I continue writing to improve them.