Ru Writes What Ru Reads

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I also find myself adopting a French accent when speaking with someone who comes by theirs honestly. It’s embarrassing, but I swear I do it unconsciously. Even when trying to be conscious about it, Inspector Clouseau slips into my speech and the crimson to my cheeks comes shortly thereafter.

The same applies to what I am reading. That may be why I have three shorts and the novel all in progress. I am influenced by the genre on my bedside table. Two of the shorts are urban fantasy, one is historical urban fantasy and the latter is fantasy, period. I guess they could all be sheltered beneath the fantasy umbrella, but my style also tends to reflect the style of the author I’m reading at any given time. Favourites and recent examples:

GRRM? Describe everything.

Rob Thurman? Pick up the pace and fear no ugly.

Anne Rice? Go sensual or go home.

E. E. Knight? World building is hard.

Erin Morgenstern? Wrap a vivid dream in shimmering gauze.

Kate Atkinson? Use parentheses (am I as guilty of this?) until the continual asides are annoying.

Nicole Myers? It doesn’t have to rhyme!

I’m reading Blackbirds right now. Good story, erratic narrative. Then I remembered that Chuck Wendig is a screenwriter, so that’s why it feels like I’m reading a script. He uses dialogue to move the plot along, and his descriptions are blunt, choppy, the bare essentials. Character is better revealed through conversation; Miriam is a twenty-three year old punk but thinks like a middle-aged man.

No one is perfect, least of all me. Remember, Treason got 2 of 5.

Reading has taught me how to write—and how not to write. Quality is in the eye of the beholder, I know, and I think my standards are a tad higher than most because I honestly can’t understand how some of the things I’ve read ever made it past a copy editor, let alone a “real” editor. I also know that art is subjective. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Pure and simple.

I read what I like, therefore I write what I like, therefore I write what I read. I still don’t know how to define my style, but I definitely have one. It evolved from bits of everyone listed and more, and while I may emulate a particular writer by osmosis, in the end, I know what works for me. I recently tried something outside my comfort zone and the experiment bombed. Happily, and despite some argument to the contrary, I do not write porn.

Read on, MacDuff.