I recently got a chance to review my first book on the Write Practice. The cool thing about reviewing a book is you get it for free before anyone else. The bad thing about reviewing a book, is that you have to read it, good or not.

Fortunately, 31 Days to Finding Your Blogging Mojo is awesome. Bryan Allain makes learning about blogging a laugh-out-loud experience. Seriously, I'm not just saying that because I got a free book. If you write a blog and you like to laugh, you probably should go buy this book (it's like $5, no big deal).

Even if you don't blog, this book is valuable because it focuses on three issues every writer has to deal with:

Your audience. Your perspective. Your content.

Your Brand Is Your Voice

In this post, I'm going to talk about what Bryan says about perspective. Here's an excerpt from the book:

Get used to the word “brand”. Say it over and over again. Revel in it. Print it out on 1000 pieces of paper and swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck. Get it tattooed on your calf. Heck, get it branded on your calf.

Embrace the word “brand” because you have one. (and if you don’t, you should).

Every writer has a brand. Do you know what your brand is?

Your brand is your voice.

When Bryan first started blogging about ten years ago, he had no idea what he was doing. To be fair, no one with a blog knew what they were doing ten years ago. Bryan wrote and wrote and wrote and somewhere in the middle of millions of words he found out he was pretty funny. He started molding his voice around humor writing.

Two things pop out to me:

1. Consistency over time

He wrote every day for ten years. As you write, you naturally find your voice. However, it's going to take years.

2. Feedback

Blogging is good writing practice because you can get feedback on your writing instantly. Actually, sometimes it's a little annoying. I can't tell you how many people have emailed or tweeted me about my misuse of your and you're. How embarrassing, writer with grammar errors.

Blogging is good, but a critique group where you meet in person is better (or you can just practice and get feedback at the Write Practice). Either way, the key is feedback. You need to figure out what you're really good at so you can hone in on it.

Speaking of feedback…

PRACTICE

I'm going to steal an exercise out of Blogging Mojo about finding your unique brand.

If you blog, go back and look at your last ten posts. If you don't blog but write in another mode, go back and look at a few of your last pieces. If you don't write at all, what the heck are you doing reading this blog—go read Perez Hilton or something.

As you read, ask yourself some questions:

• What did I do really well?
• What makes my writing style unique?
• What perspective am I writing from? Some examples of perspective: A wannabe writer trying to learn how to write (the Write Practice); a mom talking about cooking (thepioneerwoman.com); business person trying to get the most out of life (lifehacker.com).

So question for you. Do you have a writing brand? What is it?