"I have a style?"
Category: Books & Writing... Navel Gazing...
Posted Thursday, December 20, 2007 at 06:30 AM [GMT-6]

Charles Hill writes over at dustbury.com of his fondness for the work of H. Allen Smith (former resident of Alpine, Texas, and one of MLB's favorites authors, as well), to the point where Charles chose to model his writing style after Smith's. (Not being a Smith aficionado I cannot assess Charles's success in emulating that style, although if Smith was half as good as Charles, then he did pretty well for himself.)

That got me to thinking about my own writing style. If I wanted to be strictly accurate (not a blogger's best strategy, by the way), I'd have to say that if you took the worst of George Will (long sentences without the benefit of pithy insight) and married it (o, unholy union!) with the ugliest of Hunter S. Thompson (skewed reality without the gonzo sensibility), then you'd be pretty much in the ballpark.

To be honest, my H. Allen Smith was actually Dave Barry, who I thought was pretty much the funniest human being on the face of the planet. I'm sure that there are countless numbers of hacks like me who have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate Barry's style, because he makes it seem so doggone easy.

Of course, unless you're Dave Barry – and, really, who is? – it's not.

In the end, the title of this post* says it all: one must be a writer to have a writing style, and I'm not there. Someday? Perhaps. But I feel truly sorry for the poor desperate soul that decides to emulate my "style."

*For bonus points, identify the source of the title. There may be several right answers; you'll have to guess which one I'm expecting.