I really wish I could write like that: Can I perfect my own writing style?
Regular readers will be glad to hear that the much-anticipated writing buddy system is finally bearing fruit, so to speak. We’re both about a week behind our timetable but a few days ago I sent the next chapter of my novel over to Katrina and have started work on the following one.
Writing this novel is certainly more relaxed this way than under the pressure of NaNoWriMo, the way I wrote the first one. But something’s been bothering me as I write. Last year when I was writing under major time pressure, with the NaNoWriMo goal of simply getting 50,000 words down without worrying too much about how nice these words were, things were easier. But this time round, I’m conscious that I have more time to play with to write beautiful words rather than just bashing out the storyline.
What made me realise this problem a little more clearly was the first half of a guest post at Men With Pens this morning called How to Feel Consistently Confident About Your Writing. The post mentioned that typical experience I have when reading someone else’s work and I love their style, and think to myself “I wish I could write like that”. I often feel like my fiction writing doesn’t have a special style of its own, and doesn’t sound beautiful. Very occasionally I string a sentence or two together that I could class as “beautiful”, but it’s rare.
I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that I’m still not that great at re-working my drafts. I can get the gist down but then revising and making my writing really “sing”, as they say, is something I need more practice at. The second reason is, I suspect, that it’s just really hard to read your own writing as a stranger would. Even if I leave it for months at a time and read it again, it’s still clearly something I wrote and I can’t seem to detach enough from it to figure out if it actually sounds good or not. I’m not sure how to fix this, but I’m hoping that practice helps. Anyone got some good tips for me?
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If it’s any consolation, even Harry and I sigh when we see good work and say, “I wish we could write like that…”
Have you read Steven King’s On Writing, btw? Seriously, get it. You may have a revelation or three.