About My Style
In College Writing 101 my first assignment was to create a rough draft, then meet with the instructor to receive input to be applied to subsequent drafts. Bear in mind, it had been a long, long while since I engaged in any appreciable written composition. And so I wrote my ‘draft’ with a degree of perfectionism combined with cognitive rambling guiding the way.
The day of our meet the instructor stared at me somewhat blankly for a long moment. He then began to speak — “You can just hand this in as your final draft!” Pause, staring at my paper. He then discussed with me how his input often calls for a re-write or at the least, a substantial overhaul. I know I sound arrogant thus far, but that was not the result of the conversation. It was the point at which I realized I am a one-draft writer. A rather mechanistic realization.
Writing (as well as reading) is difficult — I am truly amazed that it is possible with its infinite subtleties. Letters composed of squiggly lines stacked next to another strange shape, over and over. Thousands… MILLIONS of them! And that’s on the micro-scale. In addition, we are to derive accurate meaning from the collective, and that my friends, is wholly miraculous.
Due to great fortune beyond my control, I have an intrinsic ability to turn my thoughts into written form, mostly grammatically-intact, in one swing. So that is how I write. Stream of consciousness, I suppose. Certainly more raw than if I conducted a heavy audit, for better or worse.
I may not ever write a novel, as these streams of thought are intense but short-lived. I do ask the reader, however, to consider all my writings part of a greater work that represents the same fragmentation from which it was derived. It’s a book, albeit shotgunned across the existential plane, free of physical constraints, the encapsulated universe that is a good book.
I wander.
