Writing Like Gertrude Stein

When I was a kid, I read constantly.  I wrote constantly.  I talked constantly.  Well, I had to (about the talking).  I was a girl, you know.

What happened though was that the reading influenced the writing.  I loved Shakespeare, still do.  My writing would take on the ‘what hast thou done,’ quality of Shakespeare until I read someone else.

Gertrude Stein’s writing stuck on me like glue.

Well, let me tell you, I could write an entire page and just have one sentence out of the whole thing.  I impressed myself with my ability to take on everyone else’s writing style.  I wasn’t thinking about how their style was unique just to themselves.  Unique.  That was what I was missing.

Trying to find my own voice and my own style is taking a lifetime.  And it changes over time.  I am still influenced by others.  Sometimes I sit back and ask myself, ‘Where did that come from?”  And sometimes I look back on works I wrote 20 years ago and wonder how I did it.  Where did that magnificent voice come from and how the heck can I get it back?  It’s almost like looking at an old photo and not believing you used to look like that.  I mean, where are the wrinkles and the sagging jaw line? 

I don’t mind growing older because I think I keep learning things as I go along through life.  I also don’t mind being influenced by other writers because I think I can pick up things that work with my thoughts and my style.  I don’t know that I would like a constant style though my work over the years.  How boring it would be to read something I wrote at 17 and for someone to still be able to identify my writing at 30 or 40 because the style never changed (or improved!) over all those years.

What I would like, I think, is for the stories to still be interesting.  Not exactly like the Ellery Queen stories or Doyle stories, but something that would keep grabbing people and bringing them back even if my writing style changed.  I am still interested in the same types of crimes and the same inner workings of the human spirit.  Still interested in good and evil.  Still interested in salvation of the human soul.  If I can continue to find a way to evolve my writing style and hold on to the basic workings of my mind when it comes to mysteries, I will have solved my own lifetime mystery.