Four years ago, I found myself doing some serious divesting —in anticipation of a move from a five-story Philadelphia antique row house to a New York City apartment. An important part of the exercise was going through the boxes of undergraduate and graduate school papers and academic publications I had elected to save through years of moves. Of course, I succumbed to the temptation of reading through some of these essays that covered a period of roughly fifteen years of my life.
The signature of my voice struck me. I was prone to metaphor—Flowered petticoats beneath a rough- hewn skirt: a study of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author— was the title of one such paper. I was also prone to lengthy sentences. I saved very little of it.
The next series of boxes contained my portfolio of print ads, concept boards, and pitch books from years in pharmaceutical advertising. The sentences in these were short, punchy, and to the point, but they were still highly metaphorical and a tad academic in their diction. I had unlearned some things from my academic years, but that voice signature was—amazingly—still there.
These boxes were, for the most part, much easier to part with. Ten years or so post-advertising, I am still grappling with the control of that voice as I write fiction. I am somewhere on the legendary learning curve to mastering the tools of the craft, which means freeing the characters, nuancing the narrators, and yet, keeping enough of my signature to be a consistent author.
