STYLE

This blog was stimulated by a reader review on one of my books. A three star review, which is like damning with faint praise. Most of the reviews on this book are five star, with a few fours thrown in. People like it.

Reader reviews are an interesting part of being a writer. You can learn a lot from them. You also have to remember that it's impossible to make everyone happy, no matter what you do. This particular reader dinged me because she didn't like and/or understand my style of writing.

Style is a subjective thing. You like Picasso or you don't You like ZZ Top or you don't (I like both). The reader seemed to think I didn't understand how to use commas (I do) and said most of my sentences were 5 or 6 words long (they aren't) and that Robert Ludlum could write twice as many pages to tell the same story (he could). Ludlum is also dead.

My style is consciously direct, clipped, fast moving. I could write sentences that went on and on if I wanted to, with plenty of commas. My English background is unusual. I know what I'm doing, even though I do make mistakes. I break rules on purpose. I don't follow the Chicago Manual of Style. My style would make most editors completely crazy, but it is correct.

Think of  writers who break the rules: Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Steinbeck, Lee Child. Raymond Chandler comes to mind. William Shakespeare. In fact, pretty much every good writer you ever heard of.

This reader was disturbed because the sentences were too short for her liking. She probably wouldn't like Lee Child either. He sometimes writes sentences of two or three words. What do you think I should take away from a review like this? Should I be worried that my sentences are too short? Should I feel upset and inadequate, a failure when held up against Robert Ludlum?

Right, mate, no way.

Some reviewers love to make unflattering comparisons to other authors. I have reviews that compare me favorably to James Rollins. I have a review that says Rollins is a much better writer. I don't copy Rollins or anyone else. My style is mine and not anyone else's. I don't think I'm as good or better or worse than James Rollins and other successful writers. I try and learn from them. I am what I am, as Popeye said.

I had one reviewer give me 2 stars without reading the book. That's a lousy review. She said she read the description, though, and didn't like it. I mean, SHE DIDN'T READ THE BOOK! All of which means you need to take reviews with several grains of salt. Believe in yourself: that's what counts.

Alex Lukeman

Author of WHITE JADE, THE LANCE, THE SEVENTH PILLAR, BLACK HARVEST. THE TESLA SECRET

Being Odd

 

I sent a birthday card to my granddaughter.  The envelope said that extra postage was required in the U.S.  Since it was not an odd shape or large, I couldn't understand why extra postage would be needed.  I put on one first class stamp.  It came back to me saying more postage was needed.  So, I asked the postman why.  He didn't know why, but thought that the fact that the envelope had told me from the beginning that extra postage was needed was explanation enough.  I re-sent it in another envelope that was larger, but not too large.  However, the "why" of it kept bothering me.  What I finally decided was that the envelope required more money because it was neither too large, nor too odd-shaped, but was smaller than standard.

Life, in general, emphasizes that what is standard rules.  Go outside of standard at your own risk.  And yet that is what I have done many times in my own life.  What is not standard became more or less my standard.  At a time when it was odd, I got married in my senior year of college instead of after graduation.  I was moved by the logic of Zero Population Growth and my experience as a social worker with foster children to choose adoption over creating a baby.  In the short-lived experiment in the 1970s of allowing white parents to adopt black foster children, we became a mixed-racial family.  A decade later, Meryl Streep as Mrs. Cramer in the groundbreaking movie, "Cramer vs. Cramer," and I were among the very small minority of  American women who divorced and left their children with their fathers.

I certainly didn't match the average world traveler that wandered the planet for almost two decades.  I was solidly middle-aged and rather poor with a pack on my back when I made my own challenges and learned how to face them within a variety of cultures, especially in Asia.  I wasn't an explorer who discovered places for the first time (although I was the first foreigner that some Chinese villagers had ever seen), but neither was I  following well-trodden paths.  I learned that I could avoid crowds by not following the crowd.  In my own style, I thrived even in cultures where following the standard way was considered the only, the most important, the best way to live.

Now I live in a retirement community.  I buck the tide by not making medical care my major concern.  I don't take the standard medications and standard tests that the majority of seniors take.  And I get my 8 hours of sleep at a very non-standard time.

Yes, there are risks.  And there are losses that accompany not adhering to the standard.  I don't have enough money to be considered eccentric.  And I'm not quite strange enough to be considered crazy.  I am, well, odd.

I feel a certain kinship to people like Izhar Gafni of Israel who has invented a 95% cardboard and 100% recyclable bicycle.  People told him it couldn't be done.  It is cheap.  It is light.  It is practical.  It is odd.  But it works well.
Suellen Zima
NLAPW

Visit http://www.zimatravels.com and Follow the Senior Hummingbird as she wanders, wonders, and writes.


 




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