My bread comes out almost exactly the same every time. Even when I take photos of my bread loaves fresh from the oven, they look the same as they did 6 or 8 years ago.
It got me thinking about creative voice. Is my bread consistent because I have a creative “baker’s voice” in my head? No, it’s consistent because I know how my recipe works, and how to repeat it consistently, even as my ingredients change (new brand of flour or different type of milk, e.g.).
I think it’s just the same with creative voice. If my artistic works share a sound, a musical DNA…a “creative voice,” it’s because I have found a recipe that works for me as I create. If I used a different recipe, or started with radically different ingredients, the outcome would be different. (My focaccia doesn’t closely resemble my sandwich bread!)
One of the things I’m trying to do with my Patreon writing project is to force myself to try new creative recipes. I love the recipes in regular rotation, but I also wonder, what else is out there to make that I haven’t tried that would be creatively fulfilling?
I’d love to develop a whole recipe box full of different “creative voices” that I can use depending on what I want to create.