The Guinea Pig Report: Uses For Scribblins, #3 of a series
Becoming A Writer, Chapter Seven, concl’d.
Brande reveals in this chapter the real reason she asked us to write immediately upon waking up–before reading the newspaper, before reading the side of your breakfast cereal box, before listening to whatever’s on your clock radio when it wakes you up in the morning:
- Become acquainted with your own natural style and voice.
We all have one, even if we’re not writers. We use when we speak, when we tell stories to our friends, even when we think. But it’s easy for us to overlook, to become convinced that style and voice are things only genuine Real Writers (i.e. not us) possess. Part of the problem is….
We all live so surrounded biy words that it is difficult for us to discover, without long experience, what our own rhythms are, and what subjects really do appeal to us. Those who are sensitive enough to want ardently to become writers are usually a little too suggestible for their own good.
—p. 83
Even when we’re not consciously imitating our favorite authors, we’re unconsciously imitating the conversations from our favorite sit-coms and movies, the patter of talk show hosts and DJs, the lyrics and rhythms of the songs that get stuck in our heads. So Brande suggests we get some writing practice in while our brains are still fresh blank slates influenced by nothing but the fading memories of our dreams. And now, reading over the work we produced by doing so, we find out what comes out of our heads when we’re not imitating anything at all.
Get to it. What kind of writer are you, really? Find out.