Which kind of writer do you aspire to be?

[AG31]

1 - One whose words are a delight.

2 - One whose words disappear in service of the story.

Either aspiration can fail, and we have words that get in the way of the story. I find that style #1 can fail for me even when the writer is lauded with Booker nominations, etc., etc. But I do have some favorite #1 style authors, Elizabeth George, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James. For myself, I spend a lot of time and energy looking for the right word, but I don't particularly want the reader to notice the word. So I aspire to #2.

 

[nice90sguy]

I aspire to #2

ditto.

 

[SimonDoom]

Hmmm. I'm not convinced one has to choose. When I think about the authors that I like best, my view is that they do both.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Reducing a complex topic to a binary again, are we?

I want to be Tamsyn Miur.

 

[crookedletter]

Hmmm. I'm not convinced one has to choose. When I think about the authors that I like best, my view is that they do both.

I agree. The best writers wow me with their words, but it's really only as a writer, I think, that I think of it in those terms. I go back and read the best passages again because I'm amazed that they were able to distill something complex, maybe, into something elegant and true. It's in part because their words disappear -- #2 -- and something more essential comes through that I'm delighted by them -- #1.

I'm in a quoting mood today, I guess, but I'm reminded of Dylan lyrics, in Tangled Up in Blue:

And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul
From me to you

Which is itself pretty delightful.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Ex.

Former.

Past tense.


Oh ... wait.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

The Ursula K. Le Guin of smutty romances. Very lofty I know. But shoot for the moon as they say. Even if you miss you’ll perish screaming in the cold, eternal void. land among the stars.

 

[iwatchus]

If this is pure dreaming, can I be a cross between Anais Nin and Mark Twain?

 

[SimonDoom]

I'll offer some specific examples of what I mean. Mark Twain is one of my favorite American authors. He had a great way with words, and I take pleasure in the way he used words. But he was a great story-teller, too, and as a reader I don't ever feel like his use of words diverts me from the story. I would say something similar about authors like Larry McMurtry, John Updike, John Steinbeck, Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, Joan Didion, Martin Amis, E.B. White. AG31 mentioned Elizabeth George, and I would agree she's an excellent wordsmith, but it never feels like the words are getting in the way of the story. I see the two elements in her work as perfectly integrated.

Vladimir Nabokov is an example of an author whose prowess with words is dazzling, but whose writing perhaps overemphasizes that prowess at the expense of the story. I don't aspire to write like that. I don't think I could, however, even if I tried. James Joyce and Cormac McCarthy are two other authors that I think of the same way.

 

[SimonDoom]

In the immortal words of Steve Martin:

"Some people have a way with words. Others . . . not have way."

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

I find this question hard like I always found it hard to pick someone I looked up to when they did that project in school. I don't aspire to anything other than to be a writer who finishes a story. That's....really it. What type of writer am I? ... I have no idea.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

If I notice a stupendous bit of writing, I want to notice it because I noticed it and not because the writer wanted me to notice it. So I guess I'd like to be the kind of writer I like to read.

Otherwise, my ideal? I wake up and I notice that I must have slept-written during the night because a complete first draft of my idea is sitting on my desk and all I have to do is the bit I actually enjoy: the rewriting and tinkering and editing.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Kind of writer? Kind?

Short answer is a pulp writer, simple. Long answer is why? Because I don't care about artistry, I don't care about eroticism, I don't care about pretty proses, no. I'm a pornographer, and I'm here to make raw sexploitation without care for obscenity. I learned from the transgressives. I put my philosophy in it too. Nevertheless, all I care about is the action; sex and violence. "Kiss kiss, bang bang," not poetry.

I aspire to be what would happen if Chuck Palahniuk and William Gibson hatefucked and produced this transgender girl who spent time in prison for prostitution and arms dealing. A Philip K. with a stiffer Dick for neon lights, blood, and fear. raised by grandpa Raymond Chandler, who also gave her Marquis de Sade and Georges Bataille as textbooks for university, where she invited Henry Miller for a drink once or twice.

 

[AG31]

Kind of writer? Kind?

Short answer is a pulp writer, simple. Long answer is why? Because I don't care about artistry, I don't care about eroticism, I don't care about pretty proses, no. I'm a pornographer, and I'm here to make raw sexploitation without care for obscenity. I learned from the transgressives. I put my philosophy in it too. Nevertheless, all I care about is the action; sex and violence. "Kiss kiss, bang bang," not poetry.

I aspire to be what would happen if Chuck Palahniuk and William Gibson hatefucked and produced this transgender girl who spent time in prison for prostitution and arms dealing. A Philip K. with a stiffer Dick for neon lights, blood, and fear. raised by grandpa Raymond Chandler, who also gave her Marquis de Sade and Georges Bataille as textbooks for university, where she invited Henry Miller for a drink once or twice.

Got an answer for the details in the OP?

 

[iwatchus]

I find this question hard like I always found it hard to pick someone I looked up to when they did that project in school. I don't aspire to anything other than to be a writer who finishes a story. That's....really it. What type of writer am I? ... I have no idea.

Of course you don't know what kind of writer you are yet, let alone what you want to be. three stories and a poem is a good output for less than three months on here. But way too little to understand who you are as a writer. I think I made my first real reflection on myself as a writer after 30 stories. I had the advantage of being absurdly prolific as a writer early on, so that happened quickly.

Give it time. Write what feels right to you. Your voice will come and you will see where you want to improve it. When I feel dry, reading stories, either here or in mainstream literature helps. For me, I realized I wanted to write evocative scenes like @StillStunned, characters that are as deep and believable as @MelissaBaby and prose that floats by like @onehitwanda. I will never achieve those lofty heights, but I read more of their stories and I have written another 100K words or so and understand what they do a little better.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Got an answer for the details in the OP?

If the rant wasn't clear, I obviosly picked whatever it was that wasn't option 1.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

This question is a tad more complex for me than for most of you. I see you all focusing on American or English writers, with barely a few mentioning someone of a different nationality.
It's kind of difficult to measure wordiness when you're reading translated work, right?

 

[TheLobster]

"Some people have a way with words. Others . . . not have way."

Others have had their way with words, and what they left is thoroughly fucked.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

This question is a tad more complex for me than for most of you. I see you all focusing on American or English writers, with barely a few mentioning someone of a different nationality.
It's kind of difficult to measure wordiness when you're reading translated work, right?

There is only ONE author of my own country that I consider an example to follow, other than my mentor. I'm not saying this to say that all authors of my country suck, because that's not true. I'm saying that they are all different from what I do.

Their work, regardless of quality, is more of literary prestige rather than the cheap stuff you can get. One particular author that's considered the best of my country has everything littered with purple prose. I always insist that he has the greatest ideas for novels, and his novels are brilliant, but many of them benefit from a different change of pacing because the stories are better with a faster pace. How can you make a story filled with adventure, witchcraft, superstition, and a lot of family and town drama extremely boring? Drown it by spending an entire page describing a roof. He does stuff like this so often it's a feature of his writing, not a bug.

Also, Bataille's works in Spanish are good, but the original French is always better. Never read them in English though.

 

[Statius]

If I could actually write I'd want to be somewhere between Steinbeck when he wrote East of Eden, and Rushdie when he wrote The Moors Last Sigh.

 

[SimonDoom]

This question is a tad more complex for me than for most of you. I see you all focusing on American or English writers, with barely a few mentioning someone of a different nationality.
It's kind of difficult to measure wordiness when you're reading translated work, right?

Sure. I can appreciate Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as great writers, but since I don't understand Russian I'll never know just how great. I read for the story, not the prose. I think the OP's question only makes sense with respect to authors whose language one understands well.

 

[Bramblethorn]

More #2 but sometimes #1. By and large I think technique works best when it's invisible, but that doesn't preclude a cute turn of phrase now and then. I remember "I've danced with the fuckup fairy" as one from mine that a reader enjoyed.

 

[Statius]

More #2 but sometimes #1. By and large I think technique works best when it's invisible, but that doesn't preclude a cute turn of phrase now and then. I remember "I've danced with the fuckup fairy" as one from mine that a reader enjoyed.

That's a great line. Like it.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Sure. I can appreciate Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as great writers, but since I don't understand Russian I'll never know just how great. I read for the story, not the prose. I think the OP's question only makes sense with respect to authors whose language one understands well.

Indeed. I've read most of the great classics translated, years ago, although I did obtain Poe's work in English when I became confident of being able to read in English almost as well.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

How can you make a story filled with adventure, witchcraft, superstition, and a lot of family and town drama extremely boring? Drown it by spending an entire page describing a roof. He does stuff like this so often it's a feature of his writing, not a bug.

This reminds me so much of Balzac.