Since I'm currently teaching two classes for young adult writers I'm inundated with teen energy and I'm blown away by how much these kids know that I didn't learn for decades. One thing they seem to have a great grasp of is the "voice" of a piece of fiction. Now why should that come easier for these young writers than for my older students? I'm wondering--and I'm serious about this--if it's because their world, though they know so much and are so sophisticated in many ways, is still a narrower, shallower place than the one a middle-aged woman like me lives in.
For example: As I finish this trilogy, I'm also going over the copyedits for Book II (AIRS AND GRACES)and I'm fussing with the voice. I have to work to get the voice even throughout these fantasies, and it's a very different voice than I use for sf, or for sf short stories. I have too many voices to choose between!
I wonder, also, if writers who spend their entire working lives writing in one world realize how lucky they are? It's like those opera singers who sing five or six roles over and over, all over the world, and make exponentially more money than a comprimario singer like myself, who typically has to learn a new role every few months in order to keep working. Oh, to repeat a role! To delve into the nuances and mine the possibilities!
But then, I'm never bored.
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