Evolution of style

[athousandsorrows]

I've come to accept the fact that I prefer to write strictly verse. Not that I'm opposed to writing novels or stories. Its just my heart lies with poetry.

I've been writing verse for two decades or so. I find it interesting to compare my early work with my work of late. Seeing how and why I've grown in my writing.

For me, my poems are expressions of ideas and/or emotions structured in free verse or rhyme. To put it simply. Sometimes though it feels like I've lost some of the heart of my earlier writings. Like my newer poems are missing something my earlier writings had more of. Other times I look at my more recent stuff and think that they are just as good, if not better, and that I'm just growing as a poet.

I'm curious to hear someone else's thoughts on the progress of their writing (verse or prose) and how you've grown as a writer.

 

[Mr Mononoke]

Seeing how and why I've grown in my writing.

Hello @athousandsorrows, I really enjoyed reading this statement from you. It is something I do often and there is a simple joy in comparing what you were to where you are now.

I write short stories as a way to learn my 'trade' but every time I edit, I save it under a new copy so if the new one doesn't quite work, I can fall back onto the version before.

What I have found is that my earlier works were raw; in style and emotion, and later versions after, are smoother but sometimes the roughness of the earlier versions before connects more. Strange.

But writing is tough. Trying to keep that emotion and balancing it with a smooth read, to create immersion where words pull a reader in, is not so easy. I feel a writer's style constantly evolves as they write and learn more, and also the writing changes because the views of the writer changes through experiences. And that I didn't come to expect.

It is why I have come to really appreciate early words from a writing friend who told me that writing is a journey. As the years pass, I understand this message more.

 

[athousandsorrows]

Thanks for the reply. Would you say that your newer stories are better or just different?

Hello @athousandsorrows, I

But writing is tough. Trying to keep that emotion and balancing it with a smooth read, to create immersion where words pull a reader in, is not so easy. I feel a writer's style constantly evolves as they write and learn more, and also the writing changes because the views of the writer changes through experiences. And that I didn't come to expect.

Makes a lot of sense. What I was getting at. I still can't help but feel like I'm leaving a part of myself behind as I grow in writing. I've never been good at letting go. To speak generally.

My earlier work was heavily influenced by Edgar Allen Poe. All my poems had rhyme schemes then.. I eventually branched out to free verse. Though never fully leaving traditional verse behind. I can't quite explain the feeling I'm trying to convey. Writing for sure is a journey. I probably need to just embrace the changes in style as a natural progression. I hate to think a part of me that made the earlier poems has passed away. Id like to think that, just as what's been said, hasn't died just grown.

I'm reminded of this verse from the Bible.

John 12:24-26 ESV
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

 

[Mr Mononoke]

That's a lovely verse.

I don't think the past is ever written into dust. I tend to think that the past makes us who we are and is reflected in how we act, who we are and how we write.

This line really resonated with me:

I still can't help but feel like I'm leaving a part of myself behind as I grow in writing. I've never been good at letting go.

My stories revolve around letting go. There was a lesson I learnt, many years ago now (and I'm sure many will know this too) where a teacher places a glass of water onto the outstretched hand of a student, and just left him.

The glass didn't weigh, wasn't heavy, but overtime, his hand began to ache till the student couldn't keep his hand up. The teacher taught the importance of letting go because you don't know that it weighs on you, but it does, until you have no strength and everything collapses.

This and many lessons shape our thinking and naturally how we write, because once you put the glass down, it is still there, but you can move and do other things.

 

[Louanne Learning]

It's a very thoughtful question you have asked. I think I started to develop my own style once I did not try so hard, if that makes sense. Once I learned to concentrate on telling the story. Use the words that come naturally to me.

 

[Homer Potvin]

I think I started to develop my own style once I did not try so hard, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that. Once I stopped trying to produce a desired effect and just wrote what felt natural, it became a lot easier. And not taking it too seriously. They're just stories, not social experiments or disaster relief missions.

I'd add, too, that figuring out how tone works helped me a lot. And how different tones interact with each other to produce different narrative effects. Particularly how you can invert tones by using a serious voice to write light-hearted things or a light-hearted voice to write about serious things. The latter can very effective. Get the reader looking one way then smack 'em upside their blindside.

 

[Louanne Learning]

just wrote what felt natural,

Yeah, this is it. Learning how to just let it flow. the more you write, the easier it becomes.

figuring out how tone works helped me a lot.

The more experience I had writing, the more this came to me. I call it "writer's ear." You become attuned to the rhythm of the writing, what sounds natural and what doesn't, what flows and what doesn't. What carries the reader along.

 

[Mr Mononoke]

Do you think that your style continues to evolve or that you will (or have) reached a point where you think "Yes, this is me. I can adapt this voice to different genres and will tell a story in this tone, this style and this voice.'

 

[Louanne Learning]

"Yes, this is me. I can adapt this voice to different genres and will tell a story in this tone, this style and this voice.'

I can't ever imagine saying that to myself. I know I have found a way of putting words together that works for me, and for sure it can be used with different genres. But I would never say never - that my style has reached its summit and will not change in the future. Who knows what the future holds? Who knows what new things my "writer's ear" will hear?

Hmm ... for some reason I am now motivated to write in a different style!

 

[Mr Mononoke]

I can't ever imagine saying that to myself. I know I have found a way of putting words together that works for me, and for sure it can be used with different genres. But I would never say never - that my style has reached its summit and will not change in the future. Who knows what the future holds? Who knows what new things my "writer's ear" will hear?

Hmm ... for some reason I am now motivated to write in a different style!

I write this because I was a big Coldplay fan. And one of the things that was labelled at them was that their music barely changed. And when they did, and sales dipped below their previous albums, critics (many years after if I may add) said that they were ahead of their time!

Another artist (he is Taiwanese) is famed because he created a unique style of blending Eastern instruments with a Western style. He is hugely popular but critics say that his music has not evolved and that songs from his latest album could be plucked from his earlier albums, and even some of his mega fans say that his first album (which was before his fusion of styles) is his most acclaimed.

Even my favourite author, Haruki Murakami's latest book has received mixed reviews because his stories, the protagonist, his style of writing has not changed. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing.

 

[athousandsorrows]

I suppose writing, just as any craft, changes with experience, as well as intentional changes. If someone's a naturally stubborn person, for example, then the changes that come naturally from progress can be taken on or not. It would seem, basically, that a writer would be aware of any changes in style and can accept or reject.

That the growth of a writer is not only tied with natural progression but an acceptance of said progression.

 

[Mr Mononoke]

That the growth of a writer is not only tied with natural progression but an acceptance of said progression.

A dear writing friend once told me a story about Walt Whitman.

He said that Walt had altered one story a number of times over his lifetime, revising the story slightly that altered the meaning and became different from the original. Reflecting on this thread, maybe that was his way of seeing how his writing has evolved over the years, how life and the experiences that shaped him, shaped his views on writing and his writing.

 

[athousandsorrows]

A dear writing friend once told me a story about Walt Whitman.

He said that Walt had altered one story a number of times over his lifetime, revising the story slightly that altered the meaning and became different from the original. Reflecting on this thread, maybe that was his way of seeing how his writing has evolved over the years, how life and the experiences that shaped him, shaped his views on writing and his writing.

Sounds to me that he welcomed progression to a high degree.

 

[Night Herald]

I began dabbling in writing at a young age and my early stuff was very poor, but still a necessary part of the evolution. I was just having fun daydreaming about space and fantasy lands and stuff, no real effort at producing coherent stories. I drew a lot as a kid, so sometimes I'd write little stories about the stuff I'd drawn, or the other way around.

It seems I've always been bouncing back and forth between novels and short stories. Started with shorts (they were school assignments) then started tinkering with a novel when I was, oh, in my early teens somewhere. I spent a ton of time in that world, building it up, but it was more of a super elaborate long-term daydream and not such a lot made it onto the page. Early onset Worldbuilder's Disease, you could say. This first effort at a novel was... inelegant, but some of those ideas have stayed with me and been repurposed in later works.

By mid to late teens I was back to short stories. Warhammer 40K fanfiction, mainly. This was the first work I actually took some pride in. This phase lasted a good few years and included plans for a novel that never really got started.

In my early twenties I was back to that novel I'd abandoned years earlier, and it gradually morphed into a completely different story. Hadn't really found my feet as a writer yet and I was still sanding down the rough edges of my English (some of my early stuff was in Norwegian). Things didn't flow naturally, my prose was stilted, and I kept obsessively rewriting paragraph. Not a lot of progress made that way. Ultimately nothing came of that novel (yet, I still hope to pull it off someday) but I evolved plenty from working on it. New ways of thinking about story emerged.

Then I did barely any writing for maybe half a decade. Kinda imagined my flirtation with that form of creative expression was over. Did lots of drawing and painting in this period.

Cue late twenties. I started writing this short story, which I'd brainstorm on a piece of paper during lulls in my office job. And something loosened. My imagination was on fire and the ideas just poured out. I wrote without that old fear, without the compulsion to make each line perfect before moving onto the next. That story had flaws and plenty of them (it has since been rewritten several times, and now forms the basis of a novel series) but by gosh, it was effortless and inspired stuff. Maybe the first time in my life I felt like a real writer. And for the next several years I churned out many short stories, left a mountain range of unfinished WIPs in my wake, exploring different genres and styles and voices and character types. Possibly the biggest period of growth.

Now in my mid-thirties I'm once again doing novels pretty much full time. I'm at my most confident and creative ever. I still have much to learn, and calling a sense of mastery is perhaps too strong, but I feel competent, certainly. Much of the time things just flow beautifully and I don't get snagged on needing things to be perfect right away. I've gotten better in every respect, but the most important bit of growth is that I've learned not just to enjoy the process, but love it, to write from a place of passion rather than goal-oriented tension and compulsive attention to detail. My work feels so much more alive and juicy than ever before. Also, I've learned that I really enjoy writing relatively lighthearted and rather silly comedy stories. Found my voice, you could say, though I've other voices I like breaking out on occasion.

 

[athousandsorrows]

I began dabbling in writing at a young age and my early stuff was very poor, but still a necessary part of the evolution. I was just having fun daydreaming about space and fantasy lands and stuff, no real effort at producing coherent stories. I drew a lot as a kid, so sometimes I'd write little stories about the stuff I'd drawn, or the other way around.

It seems I've always been bouncing back and forth between novels and short stories. Started with shorts (they were school assignments) then started tinkering with a novel when I was, oh, in my early teens somewhere. I spent a ton of time in that world, building it up, but it was more of a super elaborate long-term daydream and not such a lot made it onto the page. Early onset Worldbuilder's Disease, you could say. This first effort at a novel was... inelegant, but some of those ideas have stayed with me and been repurposed in later works.

By mid to late teens I was back to short stories. Warhammer 40K fanfiction, mainly. This was the first work I actually took some pride in. This phase lasted a good few years and included plans for a novel that never really got started.

In my early twenties I was back to that novel I'd abandoned years earlier, and it gradually morphed into a completely different story. Hadn't really found my feet as a writer yet and I was still sanding down the rough edges of my English (some of my early stuff was in Norwegian). Things didn't flow naturally, my prose was stilted, and I kept obsessively rewriting paragraph. Not a lot of progress made that way. Ultimately nothing came of that novel (yet, I still hope to pull it off someday) but I evolved plenty from working on it. New ways of thinking about story emerged.

Then I did barely any writing for maybe half a decade. Kinda imagined my flirtation with that form of creative expression was over. Did lots of drawing and painting in this period.

Cue late twenties. I started writing this short story, which I'd brainstorm on a piece of paper during lulls in my office job. And something loosened. My imagination was on fire and the ideas just poured out. I wrote without that old fear, without the compulsion to make each line perfect before moving onto the next. That story had flaws and plenty of them (it has since been rewritten several times, and now forms the basis of a novel series) but by gosh, it was effortless and inspired stuff. Maybe the first time in my life I felt like a real writer. And for the next several years I churned out many short stories, left a mountain range of unfinished WIPs in my wake, exploring different genres and styles and voices and character types. Possibly the biggest period of growth.

Now in my mid-thirties I'm once again doing novels pretty much full time. I'm at my most confident and creative ever. I still have much to learn, and calling a sense of mastery is perhaps too strong, but I feel competent, certainly. Much of the time things just flow beautifully and I don't get snagged on needing things to be perfect right away. I've gotten better in every respect, but the most important bit of growth is that I've learned not just to enjoy the process, but love it, to write from a place of passion rather than goal-oriented tension and compulsive attention to detail. My work feels so much more alive and juicy than ever before. Also, I've learned that I really enjoy writing relatively lighthearted and rather silly comedy stories. Found my voice, you could say, though I've other voices I like breaking out on occasion.

Interesting read. Always happy to hear when someone finds there footing. Do you still draw?

 

[Night Herald]

Interesting read. Always happy to hear when someone finds there footing. Do you still draw?

Eh, it's been a while. What skills I had are pretty much rusted away, and I don't seem to find much enjoyment in it anymore.

 

[athousandsorrows]

Eh, it's been a while. What skills I had are pretty much rusted away, and I don't seem to find much enjoyment in it anymore.

My dad was a painter. He worked in the oil field for years but back when he did painting. Painted some pretty remarkable stuff in my opinion. I used to draw when I was smaller. Id get coloring books and just draw the pictures. Late teens I dabbled some in drawing but my passions always been writing.

I actually have this really good idea for a book but I'm at a loss with where to go with it. Aside from my current WIP.

 

[Night Herald]

My dad was a painter. He worked in the oil field for years but back when he did painting. Painted some pretty remarkable stuff in my opinion. I used to draw when I was smaller. Id get coloring books and just draw the pictures. Late teens I dabbled some in drawing but my passions always been writing.

I actually have this really good idea for a book but I'm at a loss with where to go with it. Aside from my current WIP.

I still do the occasional painting, one or two a year if I'm lucky. Just pretty abstract stuff that doesn't require much thinking or planning ahead.

If you have a good book idea you should by all means write it But yeah, knowing where to start can be really hard. I have a ton of book ideas I think are rather neat, beside the two large series I'm actively working on. Hope I find time to do them all.

 

[athousandsorrows]

I still do the occasional painting, one or two a year if I'm lucky. Just pretty abstract stuff that doesn't require much thinking or planning ahead.

If you have a good book idea you should by all means write it But yeah, knowing where to start can be really hard. I have a ton of book ideas I think are rather neat, beside the two large series I'm actively working on. Hope I find time to do them all.

Well the thing about it is that's it's a highly abstract and experimental idea.. Have you ever played high light drifter? The video game.

 

[Night Herald]

Well the thing about it is that's it's a highly abstract and experimental idea.. Have you ever played high light drifter? The video game.

But those are the best ideas! Well, they're my favorite, anyway. Hyper Light Drifter, do you mean? No, but I know of it, vaguely.