What’s YOUR Writing Style
By Bear
French Poet and essayist Charles Peguy said “A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”
This describes the difference in how Jason and I approach writing so accurately, that if the man hadn’t died in 1914 I would swear that Mr. Peguy has been peeking in our window at night.
Of the two of us, Jason would the be overcoat-er. (is that a word? If it wasn’t before, it is now). He is one of the cleverest people I have ever met and he is a fantastic lyricist, so the fact that he can write fiction comes as no surprise. It’s the ease with which he does it that both fascinates and frustrates me.
Let me take you back a couple of years. A group of us were at the Thai restaurant celebrating the release of Angela’s first book and the subject of NaNoWriMo came up. Jason listened with great interest as Shayne, Morgan and I discussed whether or not we planned to participate.
“50,000 words in a month?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Does anybody actually accomplish that?”
I assured him that lots of people do it every year.
Without missing a beat he declared “I’m in.”
And the rest, as they say, is history. He came home the next day with pages of notes for his story (which as far as I know wasn’t even a glimmer in the back of his brain until he decided to NaNo it up) and come the first of November the words just seemed to POUR from his pen onto the paper. Same for all his subsequent projects.
Me, not so much. Every word I write is like having teeth pulled. I still struggle with letting go of the need for perfection. (See my previous Leo post LOL)
The stories are there, begging to be told.
The characters are hammering at my brain screaming “IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT’S HOLY LET US OUT!!!”
They really aren’t all that interested in what kind of key I use to open the cage, they just want to be free to live and to love, to frolic and do all the things they are meant to do. Sadly for them I am in charge of their prison, and I can’t make my self pick the lock with a bobby-pin. They have to wait for me to unearth the ornate key to the cage, and open the door ever so slightly, teasing them with a glimpse of freedom. A few words, a sentence, a paragraph before the key is lost again, and back to their prison they go.
Poor characters.
Maybe I should give them Jason’s phone number.
Most of my characters don’t wait for me to unlock the cage. They pick the lock themselves and then I find them running rampant in my brain. Writing out their stories is the only way to get them back in the cage. Though, when I decided to take a writing sabbatical, most of them were very well-behaved about it. Of course, now that I’m writing again, it’s a mess in there. There may soon be brawls over whose story gets written first.
Love it Bear!!!!