Musing on style

Dave and I recently had a brief email and phone conversation about prose style. I've been pondering the topic further.

I once worried a great deal about my writing style. I had goals for it. Concerns about it often dominated my thinking about the piece of fiction on which I was working.

I now try not to focus on it. Instead, I care most about telling a good story. I want to write books and stories that I would enjoy reading. To do that, I use all sorts of prose techniques, and I think a great deal about the right style for the right scene, sentence pacing, and on and on--but it's all in service to the story.

Story first.

Everything else second.

I believe this is appropriate, but it's had an interesting effect: I've found myself striving more and more to make my prose clean and clear and not the center of attention. You could argue that this means I'm aiming to have no prose style, and I suppose there's a case to be made for that notion. I contend, however, that this approach is a style; it's just not one that's yelling for attention.

I also believe I have a huge amount to learn and a long way to go before I'll write as well in any area of fiction as I'd like. At one level, I find that belief depressing, because it means I'm not doing my job well enough. At another, however, I consider it natural: when you stop striving to improve, a bit of you dies.

Back to Slanted Jack. I'm ready to finish this one and send it to Toni!