Writing Style

While I may never discover what I want to be when I grow up, as I feel at times, inside, I may never indeed outgrow my own Peter Pan phase, I hope someday to solidify a writing style that is uniquely my own.

Whenever I attempt to write fiction, I find my writing always appears trite or overly styled after another author.  Thus, in part, the title of this blog.  If I were to want to emulate an author, or at least, with my writing to evince the sort of response that another author does, J.D. Salinger would be my ideal.  But he is not my only ideal.  For romance, there would be Jane Austen.  For realism that inevitably turns romantic, there would be Charlotte Brontë.  For modernity and feminism, Elizabeth Buchan.  For wit, Terry Pratchett.  For organization, Jim Butcher.  For poetry, curse it all, Robert Frost.  (I'm STILL mad that I like his poetry best.)  For daring plots, William Shakespeare.  For imagination, Neil Gaiman.  For accessibility, Carole Matthews.  And for whimsy, Douglas Adams.

Yet for all that I admire the lot of them more than any other authors, none of them is me.  When I try to write short stories, even well before having read his work, they all come out like O. Henry.  I can't seem to help it.  I want to write a 19th Century romantic novel that parodies real life yet possesses a supernatural overtone and is written in a modernly feminist yet whimsical sort of accessible, poetic prose, in which the depth of thought and planning is enhanced despite a continued insistence on referring to a strange man's feet as seeming old and valued friends of mine.  For some reason, I can't figure out why this isn't working for me so far.

At this moment, I am reminded of a scene in the film version of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's most famous novel, in which Laurie accuses Amy's artistry of being "mediocre copies of another man's genius."  I do not aspire to be mediocre, nor do I wish to copy anyone else's genius.  And yet...I aspire to write truth and beauty and happy endings and somehow make them all mesh with one another.  Surely someone else has done such a thing; surely my attempts to do so would be mere copies.

Am I too happy in my life to write well?  Or is it really a problem, as I keep telling myself, of not knowing what subject on which I should best write.  Typically speaking, I'm a lazy writer.  I lose interest quickly and loathe editing.  Oh, sure, I'll edit someone else's work and critique it no end.  But my own?  I become defensive, then doubtful, and then self-deprecating and eventually surrender and commit my writing to a drawer, unfinished.

Prolific authors exist.  Yet how?  I cannot even manage to write a solitary novel.  I even failed at writing a meta-novel!  Though I can't say that was surprising....  And then if I wish to be published...what likelihood is there that someone would want to read my writing?  As it is, I pick up spoken accents so readily that I sound like my conversation-mates within a few minutes time.  And here I am, having just watched Becoming Jane, and I can't seem to get a 19th Century British diction out of my head.  If I were to write again tomorrow on the same subject, after reading Gregory Maguire, what would change?  Could I be consistent enough a writer to manage a novel?  According to my parenting blog (Shameless Plug) and my husband/most honest critic, the answer is no, certainly not.

So what next?  Do I piss and moan my whole life about being an incapable writer of fiction?  I don't wish to write just for the amusement of others.  I could not be content unless the end result also pleased me, if it were something I would select to read.  Do I hide behind my family, blaming their dependence on me for my lack of time spent practicing the art of writing?  Do I own up to my short attention span for projects?  Or is it something more?

At times, I feel a desperate need to write, but I fear that what I want to write most is from personal experience.  Things that may scrape so close to the bone as to be painful to those I know and love and have no desire to wound.  (And YES, I know that last sentence was a fragment, brain.  Stop being a ninny pinny.)  (Oh, for goodness' sake, now I'm looking up ninny pinny.  I give up on me.)

I have to wonder...how many would-be authors are out there who would write but that their subject of choice is in some way forbidden.  Be it by law, kindness, family, or whatever, I imagine there are many of us who hide behind the notion of being incapable of writing our hearts.  Honesty forces me to acknowledge that even this meta-statement is a difficult one.  It's as though I am admitting guilt to a crime that no one knows has been committed or that I am professing a desire to commit one and allowing the reader to guess which.

Oh, do not fear, reader.  It is not so repellent as you may think...or perhaps it is.  I am unsure.  And I do not wish to tease.  Forgive me, dear reader, my trespasses.  One of which was to write that last sentence.  Another was to make these two statements fragments.

"I am gone, though I am here." ~Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Adieu.

[Exeunt]

The Worst Critic

I'm sure there are artists of every kind out there who feel like nothing they ever do is quite good enough.

What's funny is that so often we find the most things to criticize of the things we do ourselves.  But when it's someone else's work that we really enjoy and respect, the same criticism isn't there.

I've had a lot of people praise my writing, yet most of the things I write, later on I start to poke at them with a mental stick and say, "Hmm, this is so trite." or "Why didn't I write a cheerful story?" or "When am I going to stop (if ever) feeling like everything is a compilation of copies of things other people have already done?"

I read webcomics.  I really enjoy many of them and try to keep up with them regularly, as I have for 10 or 12 years now.  The main distinction with webcomics is that they are typically posted by the artist, who often leaves commentary regarding the comic.  And the self-critic in the artist often finds a way to express itself.  Cartoonists will complain about a line being too thick or thin, the shading not being quite right, the dialog never meeting the high standards the cartoonist would like, etc.

And today, I saw this one:



Tatsuya Ishida is a phenomenally talented comic artist.  I've been reading Sinfest, from which the above comic was culled, for 10 years now.  Is every comic equally marvelous to one another?  No.  But the vast majority are funny, lighthearted, perceptive, and humorously critical of all walks of life.

I have no intention in writing this other than to say what I did above, so before I ruin it...I publish now.