Writing Style Meme

Becca started a ter­rific meme at Write on Wednes­day: The Writ­ing Style Meme. In honor of the begin­ning of the school year and, for those of us no longer in school, mem­o­ries of “shiny new note­books and pens,” she invited read­ers to “take out a fresh sheet of paper” and answer a series of ques­tions about their writ­ing style.

It looked like so much fun, I decided to par­tic­i­pate and encour­age all of you to do the same. As Becca explained, “com­pleted assign­ments may be posted on your blog, or in the com­ments below.” If you do post your response on your own site, please be sure to leave the link in a com­ment so that we can all read your responses and com­pare them to our own.

1.  Do you write fic­tion or non-fiction? Or both?

Strictly non-fiction.

2.  Do you keep a jour­nal or a writ­ing notebook?

No.  I main­tained a jour­nal in high school, but destroyed it a few years later. I wrote a fairly exten­sive preg­nancy jour­nal for my first son and his baby book is pretty much com­plete.  Unfor­tu­nately, my sec­ond child’s preg­nancy jour­nal has few entries and, aside from not­ing some of his most impor­tant mile­stones (first tooth, first step, first hair­cut, etc.), his baby book remains largely unfinished.

“Sec­ond child baby book syn­drome” is a real phe­nom­e­non.  I gave my mother a lot of grief when she gave me my baby book — vir­tu­ally blank with a large pile of greet­ing and note cards, along with a few snap­shots, secured on top of it with a rub­ber band.  In con­trast, my sister’s was filled with remem­brances and pho­tos.  But we moved from South Dakota to Cal­i­for­nia when I was only six months old and within a year or so of arriv­ing here, they designed, over­saw the con­struc­tion of, and per­formed all of the fin­ish­ing work (paint­ing, var­nish­ing, etc.) on their own home (in which I now live).  There sim­ply wasn’t time to com­plete a baby book, as I dis­cov­ered when I gave birth to my sec­ond child halfway through law school.

Blog­ging is as close to jour­nal­ing as I get these days.

3.  If you write fic­tion, do you know your char­ac­ters’ goals, moti­va­tions, and con­flicts before you start writ­ing or is that some­thing else you dis­cover only after you start writ­ing? Do you find books on plot­ting use­ful or harmful?

N/A.

4.  Are you a pro­cras­ti­na­tor or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?

I am a pro­cras­ti­na­tor with regard to actu­ally typ­ing the words.  But I think exten­sively about what I am going to write — and often cre­ate and edit sev­eral drafts in my head — before I sit down at the key­board.  So once I finally put my fin­gers on the keys, the words come quickly and not much time elapses before the work is complete.

5.  Do you write in short bursts of cre­ative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?

It depends on what kind of writ­ing I am doing.  Pro­fes­sion­ally, I have writ­ten for days on end in order to com­plete sig­nif­i­cant projects such as dis­pos­i­tive motions or appel­late briefs.  The kind of writ­ing I do online is far dif­fer­ent and tends to be com­pleted quickly once I decide on the topic, tone, and direc­tion the piece will take.

6.  Are you a morn­ing or after­noon writer?

When my boys were young, I used to set my alarm clock and get up at 3:00 — 4:00 a.m. to com­plete motions and briefs while they slept because it is often impos­si­ble to write with­out inter­rup­tion in the office.  Big­Bob would be at work and I would work furi­ously to fin­ish writ­ing before get­ting them up and off to school, email­ing the fin­ished prod­uct to my sec­re­tary to for­mat, final­ize, and file with the court when she arrived at work in the morn­ing.  In recent years, I’ve com­pleted some major writ­ing projects by telecom­mut­ing — work­ing at home rather than in the office and reverted to my true nature:  I’m a crea­ture of the night.  I fre­quently hit “pub­lish” just as The Late, Late Show with Craig Fer­gu­son is end­ing at 1:00 a.m.

7.  Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other pub­lic set­ting, or do you need com­plete silence to concentrate?

When I am in the office, there is music play­ing all day.  Usu­ally smooth jazz or clas­si­cal.  Here at home, I have my par­ents’ 25″ RCA XL-100 tele­vi­sion that they pur­chased in 1977 to keep me com­pany.  And the first thing I do when I check into a hotel is turn on the tele­vi­sion and it usu­ally remains on for the dura­tion of my stay just for back­ground noise.

8.  Com­puter or long­hand? (or typewriter?)

Always a computer.

9.  Do you know the end­ing before you type Chap­ter One? Or do you let the story evolve as you write?

N/A.

10.  Does what’s sell­ing in the mar­ket influ­ence how and what you write?

Only if that is what I’m writ­ing about, as in when I wrote a two-part arti­cle about O.J. Simpson’s ghostwriter.

11.  Editing/Revision — love it or hate it?

Love it.  Most of the time, I have drafted and edited in my head before actu­ally typ­ing the words. But I am always eager to improve my writ­ten prod­uct and, in fact, some­times go back and edit pieces I wrote sev­eral years earlier.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Col­lo­quium on Writing

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