How can I develop a stronger voice as a novelist and stop sounding derivative?

Voice isn't something you find in a workshop or by studying technique—though technique matters. Voice emerges from the specificity of what you actually notice and care about. It's the texture of your attention. Murasaki Shikibu's voice is unmistakable because she was genuinely interested in particular things: the play of light on fabric, the unspoken resentment between rivals, the way a woman's life could be constricted by circumstances even as her interior world remained vast and complex. When you read her, you hear someone observing with real particularity, not someone trying to sound literary. So here's the practice: Stop asking what a novelist *should* sound like. Instead, notice what you actually see that others might miss. What details pull your attention? What contradictions intrigue you? What human behaviors are you genuinely puzzled by? Write toward those obsessions directly. Read widely, yes—but read to understand *how* writers you admire notice things, not to copy their sentence structures. Then return to your own material and ask: What am I trying to understand that only I can understand this way? That question is where your voice lives. It's not an ornament you add; it's the natural shape of your attention applied to language. Trust that your particular way of seeing is enough. It's actually everything.