"I Stand Here Ironing," #3

Some thoughts on voice.

I Stand Here Ironing” reminds me how futile it is to try to comprehensively account for the way a story this good does its magic.  So, I thought that, for the next few Sundays, I might just focus on a few general features of the story, so that we can use these to talk fiction writing in general, and especially about decisions we have to make about our own work.

This week, I’d like to talk about voice. To do so, I want to use the Olsen story as a springboard to talk about a few stories of mine and, more generally, about how we go about choosing a voice for a story.