Yeah, thinking about these questions is weird. I know there are a couple things I always, always do, but I'm not sure that anyone but a student of my writing would ever notice them. Aside from that, I really do feel like I do quite a gamut of very different stuff. Thanks for what you say about my writing, btw. I think my default used to contain over-generous prose, but seriously some of the things I wrote last year were downright sparse. I've taken to writing long long paragraphs of introspection, deleting them completely, and replacing them with one line that (ostensibly) has nothing to do with the full-blown introspection. The thing I've been really proud of recently is that these single lines still manage to contain the mood of the introspective bits without being direct. It's neat and fun and sometimes really surprising.
I do think your writing is rather distinct. I wouldn't say necessarily that out of a hundred anonymous things, I would know who was you, but I would be able to narrow it down to two or three. What I mean is I've read a couple other stories that remind me of your voice, and they weren't written by you, but they still really popped and felt different than many things I read. One of the biggest is vocabulary--you use words that are fun a lot of the time, and then everyone once in a while you will pop something quite sesquipedalian in, but it doesn't usually feel abstruse or pretentious. It does, however, sometimes send me toddling to the dictionary.
The "fun" tone is something that's true for not just the vocab, but the prose. It always feels light and easy to read, but not in the light and easy to read way of the LJ house style--which is an absolutely fascinating concept, btw. Anyway, it's not quite as sparse as that and makes itself much more known, but there's something about it that is usually a little ironic, a little delighted, and a little detached. I really like it; it's brilliant.
Re: lj house style, I started noticing that more and more over the past year. Some people are quite good at it and have really mastered it, but it also explains why even some really really good things . . . well, start to sound like other things. Also, I wonder if this is what has made me so impatient with prose that is . . . lingering, recently. As you have pointed out, I am guilty of prolonged prose, and have therefore always been partial to it, but more and more in the past years I find myself growing a bit impatient--or needing a break in between books that are really long-winded.
(Which begs the question of whether styles we prefer are a result of the force of habit. Perhaps the answer is obvious.)
Anywho, thanks for answering these. You always have such interesting things to say!
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I do think your writing is rather distinct. I wouldn't say necessarily that out of a hundred anonymous things, I would know who was you, but I would be able to narrow it down to two or three. What I mean is I've read a couple other stories that remind me of your voice, and they weren't written by you, but they still really popped and felt different than many things I read. One of the biggest is vocabulary--you use words that are fun a lot of the time, and then everyone once in a while you will pop something quite sesquipedalian in, but it doesn't usually feel abstruse or pretentious. It does, however, sometimes send me toddling to the dictionary.
The "fun" tone is something that's true for not just the vocab, but the prose. It always feels light and easy to read, but not in the light and easy to read way of the LJ house style--which is an absolutely fascinating concept, btw. Anyway, it's not quite as sparse as that and makes itself much more known, but there's something about it that is usually a little ironic, a little delighted, and a little detached. I really like it; it's brilliant.
Re: lj house style, I started noticing that more and more over the past year. Some people are quite good at it and have really mastered it, but it also explains why even some really really good things . . . well, start to sound like other things. Also, I wonder if this is what has made me so impatient with prose that is . . . lingering, recently. As you have pointed out, I am guilty of prolonged prose, and have therefore always been partial to it, but more and more in the past years I find myself growing a bit impatient--or needing a break in between books that are really long-winded.
(Which begs the question of whether styles we prefer are a result of the force of habit. Perhaps the answer is obvious.)
Anywho, thanks for answering these. You always have such interesting things to say!