To achieve style, begin by affecting none. . . . A careful and honest writer does not need to worry about style.
—E. B. White, The Elements of Style, chapter 5
To the disappointment of many people—my mother, my professor, my best friends, and most of all myself—I ignored E. B. White’s wisdom. Writing a newsletter is a daunting undertaking. And every half-serious writer wants to set her work apart from the horde of, to employ another Whitism, “uninhibited prose” cluttering the Internet. The necessity for individualism depressed me, to say nothing of worry.
I am now aware that I am bad at style. Whatever I’ve “affected” feels poorly done and immature. Or perhaps my personal style has not yet emerged—a butterfly still in its larval stage. “What did you discover about yourself as a writer this semester?” my professor asked me. I’ve discovered I use enough em dashes to make Emily Dickinson swoon. Aside from this, I’ve discovered my writing requires tremendous improvement.
My problem is, I approach prose the same way I approach poetry: as a cautious optimist, preoccupied with observation, looking for something beyond the surface-level meanings of things. I’ve found this is often a poor way to approach nonfiction. Sometimes words just mean what they mean.
As much as I despise verbosity and lofty language in poetry, I include both—to my horror—in my prose. My usual poetic conventions also take root: imagery, diction, syntax, repetition, circling back to a central theme. This creative experiment points where I suspected it would: writers are really only great at one thing, and my “thing” is not creative nonfiction.
But I will not shun prose altogether. To my delight, I discovered I enjoy recounting sporting events. The day I published my sports article, my mother (an editor) emailed me and said, “Such drama! I love postseason baseball, and your post captures why it’s so electric.” Then she corrected an obvious spelling error in my subtitle.
So perhaps my future lies in writing poems about sports. I will outsource the copyediting. Here is an attempt:
What a rather robust group of fellows, Little more than brain cells in their Petri dish stadium, Eating each other. What a tiny phenomenon, seen through the Microscope lens of television—this legal assault and battery. Which color are we cheering for? (The blue.) But, both teams are wearing blue. (The lighter blue.) But, I like the darker blue better. And in the end, Does it matter? Is there chronic reward in this temporary Scuffle? or only chronic pain? Even now a method actor stumbles To his knees and performs a dramatic monologue on the turf. Injury! Sweet soldier, I would not hesitate to die in your place, If it would save your kneecaps.
Professional-grade stuff. I’d have never known the joy of sports poetry if I’d never written sports prose.
Similarly—and with only half the sarcasm—my first attempt at a film review delighted me, even if the film itself did not. True to a poet’s nature, my review focused almost entirely on aesthetics and ambivalence. But this was evidently satisfactory to my father, who said that “the movie analysis was fantastic. You could write professional reviews for magazines.”
Best to get started right away, I’ve decided. I recently subscribed to The New Yorker to survey my competition. (My odds are looking bleak. Good thing I believe in miracles.)
Though I will always be a poet first, I am thankful for the obligation I had to post weekly on this corner of the Internet. I intend to keep it up; nonfiction isn’t rid of me yet. Maybe in a future post my personal style will finally show up. Do this fervent Strunkian a favor, and let her know when it does.