It looks like confidence, but it's not.

[mrissa]

misia was posting about fiction and having things to say, and I commented with something that I've often said: I don't want to write like anybody else. I never have. We already have them, and they write like them, and I write like me. This is like wanting to look like someone else: lots of people do, and I just never got it.

I think from the outside it's easy to interpret this as confidence or even arrogance. I don't think it is. It's just that...look, we already have people who aren't me, all right? And some of them have written books that are really excellent, and some of them have written books that are better than anything I will ever do. Do I want to write gorgeous books with stunning insights and gripping plotcharacters and images that haunt the reader for days? Yes, of course. But if they're not mine, why bother? If it's just like someone else's, why not just read that someone else's in the first place? So I don't want to write like someone else. I want to write the best books I can write -- the best books I can write, and if they're no good, they will at least be no good on their own reconnaissance. There will almost certainly be things about them that make me cringe later, or things I wish could have been different (because some flaws are inherent to the story at hand; some flaws are not just unfixed but unfixable). But it wouldn't work to be someone else anyway. It would come out funny, so I'm just better off being me instead.

If I pretend I can tan, I get an extremely painful sunburn and then go back to being a very white white girl. So I put on my sunblock, and I write my own books.

(Writing in someone else's world or writing a pastiche or parody does not count as not writing one's own book. Dumas could not have written The Phoenix Guards, and no two shared-world stories are interchangable.)

I also said: When I have something to say on a conscious level, it's almost always a very specific personal message. I wrote two novels (and have two more outlined) just to say, "I'm right here" to someone. I wrote a novelette to say, "Cut it out!" to someone else. And a short story to say, "I'm glad you're still around" to yet another person.

When I'm thinking about theme, it's usually "what do I want to poke and crumple and squish and maul" or "I don't know what I think about this; I'd better write a book, or, better, a series."

I think this may be about me writing from character relationships rather than from theme or even character or plot.

Unfortunately, "I'd better write a book" is something of a panacea in Mrissaland....

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When I want to have greater range, I want me to have greater range.

And I do actually like to read my stuff, eventually.

I like Yoonly stuff, too, though.

I thought of you when my birthday box from my folks arrived today and had a Luria neuropsych book in it. I thought, "Oh, Yoon will be jealous!" And I'm not even sure why I thought that, but it seemed a Yoonly thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Using techniques seems like a much smaller subset, but maybe that is what some people mean when they say "write like."

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I don't want to write like anyone else, either. But I sometimes wish I could write "as ______ as" someone else does.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I can understand wanting to write like someone else. (I don't think I would want to write indistinguishably from someone else--but then, I would hope a single person wouldn't write indistinguishable books). But I think I can understand it because I'm *not* a writer: I don't have personal expression to put out through writing, so the idea of borrowing someone else's talent for a bit seems sensible, not self-defeating.

However, I'm very glad that Mrissas write like Mrissas, and not like anybody else.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't think I want to write exactly like anyone else. Everyone else (everyone else I find worth reading) has things that I like and things that I don't like. And if I could adopt-and-adapt the things that I like without picking up the things that I don't like, that would be swell. But I'd hate to lose the things that _I_ do and like in the process.

So I wouldn't seriously want to be another writer. But I do sometimes very seriously wish I had written a particular story. I'm not sure if that's the same thing or not.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

(Or, wish that I had been able to write a particular story. Which may or may not mean I wish I'd written it precisely that way.)

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I've tried to mimic other writers. It didn't work. I've tried to change my natural style to suit a particular story, and I kept slpping back into my natural style. (I ended up getting it mostly different in revision.)

I write the way I write and I've accepted that, but I wish that included more lush prose or better metaphors or a nice concise style, or.... :)

I don't write in a style that fits the styles I enjoy reading. I'm not sure what that means.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Everyone writes like everyone else, and yet like no one else. Do we consider My Fair Lady to be the same play as Pygmalion because it has the same basic characters and plot? West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet? Should the second in each example not have been written because the first had?

Writing seems to be like a verbal expression of the writer's strength of character, with the plot, characters and language that each author finds interesting, each a part of that author's character. It has to be internally consistent, and if so, you shouldn't have to write like Steven King. And Steven King shouldn't be criticised for not writing like Edith Wharton, who shouldn't be criticised for not writing like Mark Twain, and so on.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

I mean the second, chronologically, in each example.

they will at least be no good on their own reconnaissance

Do you mean "on their own recognizance"?

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I don't particularly want to write fiction, but I do crafty things, and I nearly always want to make the things I make, not anyone else's stuff. I also notice the tendency for most people to want to do what someone else does, and I also don't quite get it. Learn a technique or trick, sure, but the kind of stuff other people make (that I like) is so infused with them, and of course I can't infuse anything I do with them as easily as I can infuse it with me.

I can't explain where this difference in attitude comes from. I do know that my parents always encouraged all of us to be creative, and commented favourably on the "us" aspects of our creativity. A lot of other people seem to grow up with a model of creativity as being something that those other, talented people over there, do. Maybe that's it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've done rather few crafts, but on the rare occasions when I have, a subset of people seem to be concerned with doing it Right. The One True Way to Applique, I guess.

I blame total orderings for a lot.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I blame total orderings for a lot.

I think I want that T-shirt.