"We always worry that we are copying someone else, that we don't have our own style. Don't worry. Writing is a communal act. Contrary to popular belief, a writer is not Prometheus alone on a hill full of fire. We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind. We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us. We live in the present with all the history, ideas, and soda pop of this time. It all gets mixed up in our writing." - Natalie Goldberg
I've been thinking about the nature of style a lot lately. What it
is exactly. How we develop it. What elements constitute our "style" of writing.
J. A. Spender said, "If you are getting the worst of it in an argument with a literary man, always attack his style. That'll touch him if nothing else will."
I think style is, perhaps, the quirk or habit or preoccupation in our writing that sets us apart. I fear it may be that thing that others desire to drive out of us, stop us from doing. The question for me is always: Is this (questionable thing) just a part of
my style or is it a problem in my writing? One might think that's an easy question to answer. I don't find it so.
Consider Hemingway's comments on his style:
"In stating as fully as I could how things really were, it was often very difficult and I wrote awkwardly and the awkwardness is what they called my style. All mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they called it style."
I don't want to embrace a mistake and foolishly cling to a habit I think defines "my style." Conversely, I don't want to strip away that which sets me apart, leaving my writing generic and bland.
Montesquieu said, "A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well."
Am I a hodgepodge of writers I have read? Is what makes me unique part of my "awkwardness" in writing? Can my "speaking badly" help me "speak well"?
