voices

[marycatelli]

I've worked at style.  I've got a style that follows pretty spontaneously from my pen, leaving me free to consider such important notions like plot, character, and setting.

Sometimes, however, I get a notion that needs to be expressed in a rather different voice.  Always a short-short (at least now, the Muse may have different notions for the future).  So I try it out.  Always nice to have more than one string to your bow, and be able to express things differently.

It's not too difficult to write them, usually.  The inspiration is still hot. 

It's when I am a good little writer and put away the story for a week or a month to cool off so I can revise it in cold blood.  It is so very, very, very easy to glide into smoothing out its quirks into my more usual style.  Sometimes of course it's removing fantastical twists that merely make the prose rougher; there's a reason why stories should be revised in cold blood.  But other times it's removing the voice that the story really needs. . . .

sigh

Comments

[john-j-enright.livejournal.com]

It's interesting, the urge to "iron out" the new wrinkles, isn't it? Maybe it's when we get comfortable with the old stuff, we resist strange new stuff that doesn't feel comfortable yet.

[marycatelli]

One gets into the habit.

Like writing in the past tense. After some tens of thousands of writing stories exclusively in the past tense, one doesn't have to worry about slipping into the present.