What Kind of Writer Do I Want to Be?

Preparing my book for publication has been quite the experience. Throughout the editing and proofreading process I have been forced to examine the work in more detail than I thought possible. I have discovered that it is one thing to write something, it is entirely another to examine what you have written honestly. Over the past two months I have probably read back through the thing a half dozen times and each time I find something else I don’t like. I still love the story and still feel fondness for the characters, but close and painstaking examination of my work has revealed a few writer ticks I didn’t even know I had. There are expressions I use too often, unnecessary phrases that pop up here and there that add nothing except annoyance. There are numbers I use too often—how many times can anything last “30 minutes”? 

But the big question that I have been forced to address is this—what kind of writer do I want to be? Back in the day there was that great rivalry and debate between Faulkner and Hemingway, Faulkner with his big fancy words and flowery descriptions, and Hemingway with his short, tight sentences and unadorned style. I preferred Hemingway then and now. Today both styles are on display in just about everything written by Cormac McCarthy. While I will freely admit that Mr. McCarthy is ten times the writer I will ever be, do I really want to use 500 words to describe the proper technique for scalping a head? I challenge any of you to read Blood Meridian and come out the other side a better person. I think I have a firm enough grasp on the extent of human depravity without needing one of Cormac’s 200,000 word novels to remind me of the depths to which we are capable of falling.

As a writer I don’t feel angry. I am not depressed or apocalyptic in outlook. I don’t feel oppressed or very much like an oppressor. I believe that human beings are capable of both creating beauty and destroying it. We are as equally adept at grand ideas and noble thoughts as we are treachery and deceit. I think that the best stories are the ones where characters display both extremes of our nature, grapple with them, then stumble upon a way forward. I want to tell stories that at least attempt to suggest that the better angels of our character have a fighting chance, that it is possible to overcome darkness, especially the darkness that lives inside the human heart. 

I love all types of writing. A good crime novel is great fun. Historical fiction is amazing. An occasional escapist romp is fun to read at the beach. So far, the novels I have written center around the relational conflict between friends, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, the old and the young. I write stories about how delicate a thing friendship is, how fragile love can be and how easily it can be destroyed. But I also examine whether it is possible for broken relationships to be restored. I suppose my underlying conviction as a writer is that if the restoration of broken relationships isn’t possible, then we are all doomed. And if the redemption of the human heart is possible, most likely it will be miraculous.