Writing Style
Everybody’s got one.
Good morning, my posse!
My posse, of course, consists of peeps and buds.
Peeps are casual friends, followers on Medium or Twitter, and other places.
My buds are a closer group of subscribers at Medium, Substack, or anywhere that is not dependent on the platform itself to let us communicate.
For instance, Facebook can decide to make a change in its algorithms, and POOF! You may no longer exist. So an email platform is much more practical and valuable to both of us.
I don’t like to miss something I am waiting for.
Anyway, here’s where we are right now in my journalistic architecture.
My daily mutterings section will likely be posted daily. POSTED. To this area, or blog, whatever you wish to call it. It won’t be emailed to your crowded mailbox except on Fridays.
So even on Thursday, if you had the notion, you could click on over to the site and read Monday’s post in its entirety.
On Friday’s edition that will be emailed to you, there will be links for your convenience, to Mondays, Tuesdays, etc posts to read if you have not already done so.
A short dissertation on Writing Style.
Please remember I am a writer, a member of a rough crowd. We are usually subject to no discipline and void of recognizable order. We are the New Fugitives, a society of creators and critics, the cowboys your mama didn’t want you to grow up to be.
Our writing style, I must admit, is more like that of your child’s wind-up toy car, that speeds off in any old direction it wants until it bumps into the couch.
This weekend I read an article by someone who said that she subscribed to the newsletter of a certain writer, not because of the information there, but because she liked the way this writer presented it. Her style, her writing voice.
What, then, is my writing style?
Often referred to as the “shiny object style,” it usually is unstructured and unimpeded by adherence to outlines, more free-form, like the toy car, moving, more or less, in the direction it was originally pointed, until it hits the couch, or the owner of the car sees a different shiny object requiring his attention.
This concept as a writing style is probably more conducive to fiction writing than it would be to more serious non-fiction articles.
As Mark Twain put it in his older days, even when his memory had become capricious, his vivid imagination was more than happy to fill in the details.
How does this apply to you?
More than likely some of you reading this would halfway love to be writers.
You will discover many how-to articles that tell you your priorities should be… 1. find a pencil and 2. find your writing voice… etc
I contend that these well-meaning advisors are not exactly correct.
Don’t put your writing voice on your grocery list to be procured on Saturday. Your writing voice will find you.
To those of you who look to me as an example, or as a mentor, I must extend my condolences as well as my apologies. I do wish you the best!
Thanks for reading,
don, changing what I can change, laughing at what I can’t.
Originally published at https://donmartinstoryteller.substack.com.
P.S. If you enjoyed this, you should look at what’s on my Substack!
Don’s a keen observer and prolific reporter of truth, common sense, humor, & life. He’s a WRITER and humorist, sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek. He lives in Nashville, TN. He publishes every weekday morning. If you like his stuff, tell him HERE!