Yesterday, while cleaning up an old homepage of mine, I found some old papers written while I was in graduate school. Overcome by curiosity–and rather recklessly, if I may say so–I converted the old Postscript format to PDF, and took a closer look.
The first is titled ‘No Cognition Without Representation’; its abstract reads:
A critical look at the emulation theory of representation [due to Rick Grush] and its claims to have shown a) the dynamical thesis of cognition to be incomplete and b) to have provided a necessary condition on cognition.
The second is titled ‘Quantum Mechanical Explanation, Nonseperability and Causality’; its abstract reads:
Does using non-separable processes (as quantum mechanical processes might be understood) in scientific explanations violate some crucial methodological principle? I argue that the answer is no.
The third is titled ‘Folk Psychology, Connectionism and Constraints on Believers’; its abstract reads:
An examination of the argument that connectionism leads to eliminativist conclusions about the mind; I argue further that often, constraints placed on believers by proponents of folk psychology seem to be arbitrary.
The fourth is titled ‘Contextualism, Skepticism and Kinds of Possibilities’; its abstract reads:
A sympathetic examination of contextualist claims to have solved the skeptical puzzle.
As might be expected, as I looked through these papers (written between 1994-1999), I experienced some mixed feelings. One of them–the first above–was presented at a conference and featured in its proceedings; I submitted it later to Philosophical Psychology and was asked to revise and resubmit, but never got around to it; a publication opportunity missed. I was advised to rework my conclusion to the third paper into a longer piece and submit to a journal; again, I was overcome by lassitude. Clearly, I didn’t seem to have been overly eager to add lines to my CV, a rather self-indulgent attitude.
Far more interesting, I think, was my reaction on reading my writing and its so-called ‘style’: I write very much like a generic Anglo-American analytic philosopher. There is a forensic quality to my analysis; I pick arguments apart with some care and precision, deploying the tools of the trade that I had learned, not just by reading journal articles but also by observing verbal disputation at philosophy colloquia (a paper I wrote on Michael Slote‘s From Morality to Virtue was found particularly devastating by my professor; he suggested I had ‘really gone to town on Slote’); I use standard turns of phrase; like all good ‘analytic types’ I sprinkle abbreviations and faux mathematical symbols throughout; my writing has little ornamentation or flourish; it is also not distinctive in any interesting way.
By that stage in my education–as I worked through the large amount of coursework required in my program–it is apparent I had started to learn some of the tricks of the trade: writing in a knowing voice, subconsciously taking on the verbal mannerisms and tics of the writing that I had been exposed to. I was seeking to blend in, to become part of this new group I was seeking admission to; emulation seemed like the best way to do so. There is little doubt in my mind that had I continued to travel in roughly the same philosophical neighborhoods as above–philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and epistemology–I would have settled into a writing groove, perhaps churning out papers on what I saw as the latest trends and topics in philosophy. (Each of the four topics above was in ‘vogue’ in the 1990s.)
Success–such as it is–in academic writing can very often be a matter of writing in a way that does not induce too much dissonance or discomfort in your referees, your peers; these were, very often, trained just like you were. They regulate membership and admission; to be heard you often must sound like them.
Samir Chopra 
Interesting to go back and look. It’s the same with fiction writers, who often unconsciously imitate writers they have read and admire. It’s hard to shake. Somewhere along the way though, a review of style such as you have done (and continued writing) leads to the development of a personal, and probably a more natural, style.