They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but I think they are wrong. Too often this sentiment leads to people trying to be someone they are not. In writing, it means imitating their writing style or voice to tragic ends. We’ve all seen it—copycat novels and writers trying to be the newest (insert famous author here).
I understand the temptation: We all want to succeed. But trying to write like someone else is a flawed approach to building a career.
Writing requires authenticity to succeed. Voice demands consistency and sincerity. Imitations always fall flat. It’s why the best writers are those who have a distinct voice or cadence or way of telling a story. They are unique, which is why they succeeded.
Some writers think they can avoid the pitfalls of failure by following the masters. It’s not an uncommon, or irrational, approach. Most painters begin by copying the masters to learn their style. The problem is that doesn’t work as well for writers. Voice is personal. It can’t be successfully hijacked from someone else.
You need to find your own voice, your own narrator. You need to write like you.
The second pitfall writers tend to fall into is getting intimidated by great authors. They read a masterpiece and then psych themselves out thinking they can never do that and they are right. They cannot, or should not, write like someone else. But nor should they feel inconsolable or reduced because of someone else’s talent. Another’s success takes nothing from the reader or other writers. It’s a gift.
Instead of falling prey to self-doubt and insecurity, try celebrating those with talent. Relish their words. Admire their phrasing, vocabulary, description, setting, characterization. Drink it in. Your subconscious will absorb the work and help your inner editor when you’re working on your writing. Reading good authors will lift your efforts.
Wallow in good writing. Let it feed you. Let it motivate you. Accept that a successful writer’s skill takes nothing from you.
Even so, don’t compare your work to theirs. What you are reading is their finished work, after editing and editors, while your work is likely in rough draft form. Of course, it doesn’t match up. Of course their novel is better than yours right now. Maybe they will always be better at some aspect of the writing than you are, but that’s okay too.
Play to your strengths. Write in your voice and cadence. If reading someone’s voice affects your writing, stop reading them for a while. I have to do that with one of my favorite authors because she writes so Southern my accent comes back and reverts my writing voice to Southern, which is not my norm. I read her novels between projects only. Otherwise, I drink in good writing and hope it improves my work. Or I read books with a neutral voice or quality that won’t change my work. Either way, I keep reading. No matter what.
Writers need to words to be inspired. You never know when reading someone else’s work will help you make a new connection or skill that is essential to your own craft. I know I have had many moments of clarity reading someone else—those moments when you finally understand a tenet of good writing, be it “show don’t tell” or deep POV. Reading is a master class and reading the best helps.
The trick is to not get intimidated by others’ skill, but to admire it. Use it to improve your own. Study what makes a particular writer successful. Then use that knowledge to improve your own efforts.
For a bit of inspiration, I am including some great lines from some authors I celebrate:
“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarter-backs, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus…”
Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama
“It’s easy to sound good. All you do is leave in the parts where you act tough and forget the parts where you get shoved around.”
Robert Crais, The Monkey’s Raincoat
“People used to say obvious things ironically or as a form of understatement, but in the last few decades they seem to say it with a sense of discovery, and it worries me.”
Kevin Hearne, Clan Rathskeller
“My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.”
Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift…”
Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus