Of Writing Style
What is 'style' in the context of writing? What is style in the contexts of fashion, architecture... living? My writing style has a background, and a foreground, and here I give you intimations of them.
Of writing style... find yourself.Since I was encumbered by my body, with its littleness, weakness and frailty of self-assurance, I had wanted to 'have my own books'. I eventually realized that to 'have my own books' I would have to create them - write.
Not far off, I started to 'write'. The first visitor that plagued me with mockery and the likes of them undesirable attentions was 'puzzle'. Yes, I was puzzled why my 'writings' weren't readable to me. Ah, the problem was not that of readability. I could 'read' them. I had great handwriting, in terms of pen on paper.
The problem was that I could not understand anything from what I wrote. They didn't convey, nor deliver, any meaning, be it of fun or data, simple or complex, to my mind.
"What's the matter with me?" I asked myself once. I was about 16.
If you feel a 16 years old should be able to write words that communicate meanings, please, don't ask me.
I had read and continued to read all manners of words, then as now, still. I knew things, and I could speak them to clear understanding!
The amazing thing was whenever I speak some of the simple things (to me) I knew to others, older folks, they shew destress and shock. Whether their distress and shock were in pretensions or seriousness, I could not be categorical.
To cut the long umbilicus of the terribly long story, I decided there must be a reason for my inability to communicate to myself in writing.
But, "how could I have passed my English Language and Literature in English examinations if I couldn't write to my own comprehension? How did my teachers understood to give me excellent grades?" I puzzled.
One not-so-fine day, I grabbed a book - a little novel - and grabbed one of my own scribblings. I spread them beneath my harsh and critical nose of examinations. I tore at the words as thoroughly as I could expend mental energies over the veil of shame. I had to wade through my shame. It was huge and foggy and enveloping.
I found one major 'simpletonic' errors I was making. And I found another not-so-'simpletonic', and another.
As I discovered my weaknesses from the words of another, as I compare them to mine, a surging feeling aroused from my core and crawled ever so energetically to the surface of my consciousness: confidence!
I knew I could write. I knew I would write.
But, something was missing, something huge, primal, vital.
I had to find myself, first.
A few years after the discovery that I could, and would write, post self-discovery, I experienced some dramatic changes to my life. Well, I was the creator and effect of the happening. I had to relocate to another abode, a much, much humble abode than the one I was leaving.
In the new and humble abode I lived. Silence and darkness seized me, often, for companion, without consent or desire.
I was never afraid of silence, darkness and their siblings, so, I slackened all resistances and potential cries. I looked, instead. I looked with eyes shut in the darkness. I listened, too. I waited for the emergence of beings of the dark and silence to my awareness, if not life reality.
I emerged from the silence. I materialized from the darkness. I found out that I was, as I am, a creator. I had created, in the past, wonders. I started to create, wondrous wonders, in the silence and darkness of my mind and physical abode.
I found me.
I could write, anything.
But what's my style? What style would serve to express me, my life, my beingness, my love, my reality to the world...to me?
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