My Style...Or Not

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading and trying to define the kind of writing I want to do, in the long term. I have always wanted to be a clever, cheeky writer who was capable of infusing gritty, compelling, human stories into a lighter, more comical format. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one such example of a writer who writes in a sort of casual comical fashion but his novels and stories are gritty and challenging. And even if I couldn't, at the very least, pull off the comical style, the light hearted, sarcastic, cynicism that seems to inform my normal life, I had always hoped to be funny. But I'm not a comic writer, not on purpose anyways. I have a heard time keeping things on focus and on track--you may have noticed.

I would love to write, simply about beer. A blog cum website, www.howtodrinkbeer.net, is a light, personal approach to the finer aspects of a pint of suds without the inherent pretension that surrounds food and beverage critics. I love beer and can wax poetic for abnormally long periods of time on the finer points of the brews I enjoy and lay out a diverse list of popular and rare beers to try as time allows. But I struggle when it comes time to articulate my love of beer in writing. I have the same problem with coffee and biking and soccer and fishing...I expect to convey the deep emotional ties I've built and the end result falls flat in a corny cliche. Bike Snob NYC (www.bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com) writes, daily, about the world of cycling as he sees it in New York. He is a fantastic, candid, cheeky writer who hammers out blog postings every day. But I am not destined to be like these writers.

It is my style to lay down the personal struggles I face. Whether in fiction or non-fiction. As I start to write, the stories take shape in a personal way and soon the prose is laced with a darker side of language. I read writers from all walks of life and have found comfort and truth in all styles of writing. So the process of defining how I write has been long in coming...maybe not long in coming but to articulate and label has taken some time. Even now, it is vague in my mind.

I don't know that style has to be so defined but it does help.