Sure, I think it's harder than one could imagine
I have been influenced by so many authors, that I find myself trying to imitate, to copy, to write like !
And it, naturally, won't work, and will lead you to disppointment !
Maybe you have to pass through this before you forge your own style, freed from this tendancy of mimesis !
I would like to know your opinion about it !
Jonathan
You should have bad days at the office more often ;)
I think what you said is extremely true : one should just simply write, and what should come with it will come (style or anything eles) because trying to arrange his writing style in an artificial way will make it sound bad : forced, overrated, inauthentic.
I want to add this quote from Proust (a writer whose we can say he had a "voice")
" one way we know we are reading a major new writer is that his writing immediately strikes us as ugly. Only minor writers write beautifully, for there are merely imitating their betters."
To medidate )
Jonathon, you are right. Style and Voice are the same thing.
People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style - Matthew Arnold
I often wonder about this style thing, because it's inextricably linked with 'voice'. In fact it probably is voice, it's just that someone simply has to think up a pretentious sounding label to make something simple appear complicated.
You write how you write, and that changes over time as you learn more, edit more; recognise more of your common failings and strive to improve on them. In that respect style/voice is unconscious. I'm not certain you can affect it in any meaningful way by deliberately concentrating on that aspect of your writing. And even if you could, whether it's desirable to.
Because your style is yours, and whether others like the way you write is more pot-luck than judgement. Sure, you could write to a formula, which is what most ghost-writers do. But then writing becomes just a job, not something that takes us over and makes us want to carry on even when we think we can't.
I obviously had a bad day at the office ;)