It's possible to go on forever
afflicting yourself trying to define a writing style appropriate to your taste.
When you are new to a place, you are at best, a pawn of guesswork. And there's
that old cliché . . . what cliché isn't? If seven hundred monkeys
spent seven hundred years bashing away at seven hundred typewriters . . . What
this boils down to is you are placed on the raw edge of panic thinking you
could choke on the dirt of your own decision.
Stop! Before you work your passion to
death and probably give it all up as a lost cause. You got
leverage, 'cause you can tell yourself "this is who I want to be" and
then identify people who have achieved similar things at high levels (Steven Barnes) and map your course on their example.
A big chunk of the weight is thrown off your shoulders which saves you a whole
lot of energy. And that's a LOT of energy!
Everyday you should expose yourself to the work and lives of those
role models whose path you would like to emulate. Steven Barnes.
That's E-V-E-R-Y-D-A-Y. It would do you
a whole world of good and buy you time to take in the sweeter details of life
besides sitting in a corner worrying and scowling at your problems.
Here's a rule you will need
to remember. This is serious; it's what you must do before picking a role model(s).
Define your goals.
A map is nothing but a piece of trash
if you can't name your street. You can be in the neck of the woods and still be
at sea with an atlas in your back pocket. And it's all role models are meant to
be. Maps not a destination. A pointer to where you want to be.
Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots
and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw
and paint by copying the masters. Michael
Moorcock.
Why do you suppose your role models
look like you a few years from here? 'Cause they have (still are) gone through
what you will go through. It is an inexorable truth. You would get there a lot
sooner if you trained your heart to listen for footfalls of legends on the same wave length with you. Going after it with wit and
care of a person crossing a stream on a bridge of scattered rocks.
Someday, you might make a visit to the
halls of memory and finding the points of change crack open the husk of Picasso's legend: Bad
artists copy. Good artists steal. In copying Picasso
implies plagiarism in which the author is not credited. And in stealing
. . . Well, that's our game plan. It's exactly what we're working
with. Some of my role models are, Stephen King, Maya Angelou and Steven Barnes. I'm not
going to lie and claim I got here all by myself because I did not.
And there you are working yourself into worsted
yarn when you have been issued a license to steal. An educated
paparazzo never got anybody jailed.
Let your pen keep bleeding!
Eneh
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