On My Writing

The hardest part, was when I was a bit younger, I had absolutely terrible prose. It’s still not the best—so people say, but I have a PA Dutch roll where I poetically inflect things, and use generative syntax.

But, just developing a style people would read.

The Love of Another, took me 10 years to finish. My first drafts were word salad, but I edited that work about 100 times. I just kept editing it, and editing it, learning.

So, I had a short story about the World War IV in my collection. And my other novel was consistently being edited as I worked. And my dad had a hand in editing it, too, but he got Then and Than completely mixed up. But, he did a pretty good job.

But I could see the difference in my short story. It was just rough. A lot of verbosity that didn’t need to be in there, a lot of function words… I edited it about 7 years after I wrote the thing. That one my uncle read, and said it was terrible. And it was… it was poorly written, but I had to come into my style.

Well, I had an English Teacher as a friend, and we argued consistently about my style. Well, to prove her wrong, I wrote a story called The Riddle in the Sea, where I used no Helper Verbs, Adverbs, Pronouns or Conjunctions. In the Dialogue I did. And… lo and behold, that act of rebellion improved my writing style immediately. It made my style more concrete.

So, I’d say finding my voice was the hardest hurdle, as I had the ideas. I was very structured—the English Teacher friend said my structure was perfect—and I had the ideas. I just needed to clean up my language.

I’d say also an 051 English Course, that just went over all the basics of syntax and punctuation, helped a lot, too. It just taught me to use commas, and semicolons, and colons, and em dashes… So I just got better progressively.

And I’d say Hail Britannica helped too. I wrote a first draft, and went over the entire thing, replacing Latin and French words with German and Old English words. Which helped crisp my language a lot. Which, that work I actually dreamt before writing it. So it is the proper Epic Poem, like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

Which, funny story about that Epic Poem, I had a vision or something, of a friend who was going to give me a Dream Machine. This shows up in my writing. And I had a conversation about the book before it was ever written. And in the vision, it was a chalice of blood that I had to drink, that I don’t remember drinking (The Cup of the LORD’s Wrath). But, in real life, I walked back through my hallway, and prayed not to receive it. And my friend disappeared. So, I still have this dream spirit attacking me—I think it was a curse—but like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, it is also prophetic.

Which, the Lord says in Isaiah:

21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine:

22 Thus saith thy Lord the Lord, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again:

23 But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.