We all sound like ourselves, but our selves change everyday, every minute even. I'd say most of us have a few states, a few related personalities we slip easily into because we know how, and a whole forest of other, less well defined or developed personalities, such as a particular mood we inhabit under a thunderstorm, or a slightly macho attitude we take on when critting poetry, as a random example
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I think people who write in many voices have realised on some level that as humans, our claim to having consistent and definable 'characters' is a bit of a fib we tell ourselves to make us feel secure and establish a social identity for ourselves. I think those many-voiced writers know that they can, with a little effort, create (or observe) a new personality for themselves and inhabit it for the purposes of writing; most artist do this to an extent, even confessional writers - perhaps the reason people get so annoyed with bad confessional writing is not that it is too personal, but rather that the author has fabricated a fictional, usually victim status character to vindicate him or herself, and it smacks of dishonesty.
For my part, I often muck around with stitching parts of my pals to each other and writing through my new Frankenstein's monster friend's eyes. I feel I also have a core voice, perhaps the closest to my soulvoice, if you don't mind me getting a bit kooky. I don't/can't always write in that one, though poems I do write this way tend to be more consistently successful with readers; other voices I use are my own personal constructed (contrived?) voices, (see above) and mangled bits of people I clone and nourish into new characters. Sometimes I make characters from scratch, but I tend to get more stylised representations this way (which often go down well, I think because the reader can find them in the poem, while real people often aren't easily captured on paper - I mean, look how hard it is with photographs, let alone words). A lot of my voices tend to be female, and I mainly read books and poetry by women, as well as listening most often to female singers: I think writing can be a good way to voice parts of yourself you can't always express in a semi-conformist society (not that I am much of a conformist within it, but everyone is to some extent... 'Is there individuality, or just varying shades of non-conformity?' went Natalie Merchant's lyrics).
Roger Slater, excellent post.
I like this thread, it's the best I've noticed for ages.
[This message has been edited by Alexander Grace (edited July 18, 2005).]