I can string words together well. I can make good sentences, I have a large enough vocabulary to make said sentences sound reasonably interesting, and I can even use apostrophes in the right place. All of this, however, is not enough to make me a good writer, or at least not a good novelist.

Has my writing got style?

With my novel rewrite, I’ve been trying to focus (among other things) on making the writing sound “beautiful”. I don’t have a good definition for what I mean by this, but I want it to sound like it could be written by nobody else but me, and it should flow and have rhythm and, well, beauty.

But what I get just sounds like one boring sentence after another. Okay, it’s not dead boring, but when I read my novel again (and again, and again), there doesn’t seem to be any special “zing” to the words. Is this because they are my words, so I can never really read them in a way that makes them sound special? Is that only possible when you’re reading something for the first time, something written by someone else in a style that’s different to yours?

Do I even have a style? Do I have something I “do” – short sentences, or long sentences, or something rhythmic within the sentence? How come pretty much every other novel I open up sounds different, and mine just sounds bland?

Convincing myself that I do have a style

Obviously, feedback from others is one way of figuring out if I my writing has a style of its own or not. I just looked up the feedback I received from the Writing Show’s first chapter makeover contest. I submitted the then-current version of the first chapter of this novel that I’m editing, and the judgment came back that (in my words) it wasn’t bad enough to need a makeover. In fact, part of the feedback included the phrase, “The writer has great style”. Hmm. Nice to hear, but I’m not yet convinced. Even feedback on my recent cry for help with my novel’s opening seemed to suggest that I have a style. But I think I’m still working on it.

Have you got style?

Fellow writers out there: Do you have the same problem? Does your writing seem “bland” to you, while everything else you read is beautiful? What do you do about it? All suggestions welcome.