I write like...
Thanks to chemgal18, I've been having a lot of fun with I Write Like. It's another one of those "analyze your blog!" sites. I get different results for different posts (one of last week's missives was determined to be "like Margaret Atwood", be still my beating heart); however, the most frequent result seems to be, "David Foster Wallace." My prose also commonly emulates that of Stephen King (huh? The horrors of GSC, or what?) and James Joyce (I'm flattered, but really? The convoluted sentence structure, perhaps?).
Here's the thing, which I'm a little embarrassed to admit. I've never really read any of these guys. I did read and reflect upon King's On Writing; it's a nice rumination on craft but I assume completely different from his other work. I also read A Portrait of the Artist... when I was in high school, but I'm quite sure that I got very little out of it and didn't really understand what I was reading.
David Foster Wallace? Nope. I remember reading articles about his suicide (this is making me think of "Mark Rothko Song" now) and the title "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" rings a bell or two. Reading his Wikipedia entry, it sounds like we might very well come from similar places. I'll read some, and report back on whether I hear my own voice.
If you asked me, I'd tell you that I consciously try to imitate Margaret Atwood as often as possible, with more than a slight influence of British chick-lit that's as instinctive as it is intentional. I aspire to the lyricism of Marilynne Robinson, but doubt I'll ever achieve it; sometimes I achieve biting wit of Ellen Emerson White (usually while making a pop-culture reference to an era not my own), but I can't be trusted to do these things on command. Apparently anyone who writes in lists is a ringer for Chuck Palahniuk (according to the web site, anyway)...and we'll pretend that the Dan Brown analysis never happened, okay?
I don't really have any faith in a Macedonian website, but it's fun to imagine that my prose is close to some of my favorite writers (Margaret Atwood! I wrote... a post that I thought was dumb...just like Margaret Atwood!). Who do you write like? I need to know.
Here's the thing, which I'm a little embarrassed to admit. I've never really read any of these guys. I did read and reflect upon King's On Writing; it's a nice rumination on craft but I assume completely different from his other work. I also read A Portrait of the Artist... when I was in high school, but I'm quite sure that I got very little out of it and didn't really understand what I was reading.
David Foster Wallace? Nope. I remember reading articles about his suicide (this is making me think of "Mark Rothko Song" now) and the title "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" rings a bell or two. Reading his Wikipedia entry, it sounds like we might very well come from similar places. I'll read some, and report back on whether I hear my own voice.
If you asked me, I'd tell you that I consciously try to imitate Margaret Atwood as often as possible, with more than a slight influence of British chick-lit that's as instinctive as it is intentional. I aspire to the lyricism of Marilynne Robinson, but doubt I'll ever achieve it; sometimes I achieve biting wit of Ellen Emerson White (usually while making a pop-culture reference to an era not my own), but I can't be trusted to do these things on command. Apparently anyone who writes in lists is a ringer for Chuck Palahniuk (according to the web site, anyway)...and we'll pretend that the Dan Brown analysis never happened, okay?
I don't really have any faith in a Macedonian website, but it's fun to imagine that my prose is close to some of my favorite writers (Margaret Atwood! I wrote... a post that I thought was dumb...just like Margaret Atwood!). Who do you write like? I need to know.