On Voice

Plots are for dead people, but voice—oh, voice is how you know you’re alive.

I recently finished painting this view of the Shawangunk Mountains a little ways past New Paltz. Oil on wood. Back in mid-December, I would drive each morning to Jason Sarubbi’s studio which had been booked by PenguinRandomHouse Audio because I was recording my new novel, My Beloved Life. There had been unseasonal rains and the regular road that I would have taken was closed due to flooding; the alternate route that Jason texted me, longer and also unfamiliar, took me on to Butterville Road that offered me the above view. I was glad. (This whole thing totally had the 17th century Mizuta Masahide haiku vibe to it: “Barn’s burnt down / now / I can see the moon.”) I was recovering from a cough but my recording directors, Simone Barros and Beth Hicks, both of whom I have worked with before on other projects, were supportive. (Simone had sent me her voice exercises and I had been practicing; also, crucial advice, I drank a lot of water to keep the vocal chords lubricated and sucked on slices of green apple to keep my mouth from going dry.) I like reading my own work, sometimes because what I have written is in what I think of as my own voice, but at other times simply because I would find intolerable if all the Indian names would be mangled by other readers. I’d like you to give my reading a listen: a free sample is available on my publisher’s book page—just scroll down and click on it. What do I mean by voice? I don’t simply mean the sound coming out of my throat. I’m talking more about what is on the page, the predominant mood, the inflections of style, even the writer’s history. I’d love for you to read this essay I wrote on voice, starting with the words “Plots are for dead people, but voice—oh, voice is how you know you’re alive.”