Let’s Write in Style

What we ask of a writer in the first place is a unique voice. We ask for the rest later, and we may even pretend that it is only the later things we required -- no personal, individual, induplicable quality, just pure art.”

― Jacques Barzun, A Company of Readers

Writing is an intellectual exercise. It does not only express ideas, though, felling, and experiences but is also required to convey them well. We have to deliver our idea in the right way so that our writing is readable. As Jacques Barzun said, we have to give a unique voice.

As we know, we often find bad writing in any platform media. As a result, readers feel difficult to understand that writing. Thus, when we would like to write something, the first thing that has you to know is to understand how to deliver. Secondly, we must throw truism away, unless we use it as a literary device to achieve some effect.

Writing is linguistic activity. We need verbal ability as oral conversation. But, writing is different from oral conversation, the ability to writing more difficult than oral conversation. Because ability oral conversation has been practiced every day. Meanwhile, not everyone does writing as well. Because did not practice every day. So, we have to learn intensively if we would like to write well.

Maybe someone believes in talent for writing. But, someone more believes in hard work. How lucky if you have the talent for writing, but if you have not, you must hard work to learn writing. Besides that, understanding how to learn is also important to practicing writing skills.

Besides that, you have made friends with the writers, so that get an environment that supports you. The meaning made friends is by reading his writing.

It was common for 18th-century children to learn to write, at the behest of their teachers or parents, by copying the works of the maestros. Really copying. They copied as many works as they could, as a method of learning to write. There are many writers who learn writing by copying maestro working.

By reading and copying maestro working, we can learn how they write; we know their style, knowing how to use an effective sentences, punctuation, direct and indirect sentence, metaphor, rhyme, and soon.

After knowing the styles, we can practice slowly like maestro styles. According to me, to master one style, you have to practice continue and repeat.

There are many advantages you reading and copying maestro writing; improving your writing style, improving your word choice and syntax, and improving your paragraphing skills.

I like Bruce Lee said: "I'm not afraid of people who practice 10,000 kicks once, but I'm afraid of people who practice only one kick 10,000 times."

I think writing every day gives us many advantages. At least, writing every day will make your fingers skilled, and make your mind work faster to produce words and create sentences. Writing every day also keeps you connected to the world of writing. Keeping connected is one way to maintain a passion for writing.

We all know that great athletes or musicians have a tight schedule for practicing every day. They always explore themselves to develop their abilities. In fact, according to Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers", to become an expert, a person needs to do the activities he is engaged in for 10 thousand hours.

So, if we want to become experts in a certain field (cooking, writing, teaching, crafting, guitar, programming, and whatever), then we need to hone ourselves with 10 thousand hours of exposure to study and work.

Thus, practice continuously. If you stop too many times, your skills will be difficult to improve and your path will stagnate.

So, let we start practicing. (*)