If only my high school and college teachers had given advice like this. Instead, we were forced to follow the Edwardian rules of Strunk & White and teachers generally looked down upon any non-standard form of literature, including the science fiction I was reading at the time -- books by Wolfe, Delany, LeGuin and Gibson (this was in the late '80s).
As for the suggestion in the article to follow the voice in your head, I learned to do this by writing extensive travel journals in the 1990s and further developed it through blogging.
I also wonder how the introduction of email has impacted writing. I believe email helped develop my own voice and editing skills -- when I first started using it in the mid-90s, it probably increased my monthly written output as much as 10x (I had written letters in longhand before then). It also exposed me to the written "voices" of friends, colleagues and strangers.
As for the suggestion in the article to follow the voice in your head, I learned to do this by writing extensive travel journals in the 1990s and further developed it through blogging.
I also wonder how the introduction of email has impacted writing. I believe email helped develop my own voice and editing skills -- when I first started using it in the mid-90s, it probably increased my monthly written output as much as 10x (I had written letters in longhand before then). It also exposed me to the written "voices" of friends, colleagues and strangers.