Okay, this feels like a crazy question that has an obvious answer. My problem is that I can’t decide whether the obvious answer is yes or no. Can a writer’s voice and style change in a matter of a few months, almost a year?

Maybe it’s not that the voice has changed, but that I’ve finally found it. I reread something that I wrote in June or July. It’s been sitting in its folder ever since. I just haven’t had the chance or the energy to write. But I pulled it out, and I felt almost compelled to grab a pen and mark out huge sections—sections that felt like a fake attempt at sounding like I knew what I was doing. It read to me like a sort of unnatural pasting together of varying sources.

I read it, and I suddenly knew that that wasn’t my voice. My voice is different now. Much more straightforward, stronger. It feels very odd, and odder still that I don’t know whether my voice changed—or maybe I had it all along and I just never heard it. Whatever the answer, maybe now I can get that manuscript written.