On voice

A few weeks ago, we were talking about voice in one of my classes.  And my professor said, if this were a writing class, at this point in the semester I would be able to tell who wrote what without any names on your assignments.

And I thought, wow, magic.

And then I thought, oh wait, I can do that.

It's just that everyone's writing is so distinctive.  Their adjective uses are distinctive.  Their paragraph lengths are distinctive.  Their headlines are distinctive, their chronic errors are distinctive--even their photo captions are distinctive.

I compare authors' writing voices all the time.  Natalie Standiford is a little John Green-esque.  Tanjua Desai Hidier has some things in common with Michael Chabon.  E. Lockhart is a standalone genius of prose and plot.

Since I've been blogging for more than three years and writing articles for almost as long, I'm starting to get really well acquainted with my writing voice.  It's the reason I struggle with updating this blog every once in a while--because everything I write sounds like everything else I've ever written.

But consistency is nothing to despair over.  I avidly read pieces written by my favorite authors just for their voice all the time, regardless of their content (case in point: John Green's second zombie novella.  So bad. But also, good?).

A few years ago, someone said, Elika, you write how you talk.  I don't.  Or at least, I don't anymore.  But I write how I think.  And I use the phrase 'I feel like' and the words 'increasingly' and 'just' with overwhelming consistency, and sometimes I feel like I'm so unoriginal that if I left a shopping list sitting around someone would be able to identify it as mine.

But then again, I can pick out who's headlines are who's within seconds most of the time.  So maybe we're all distinct shopping lists.