A Matter of Style

My latest book is "50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know", which is rather interesting. Yesterday I came to the section on "Style", which suddenly crystallised something I had been aware of but hadn't been able to really grasp.

The relevant sentence reads, "The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time." (That is itself a quote from Raymond Chandler.)

As I mentioned once before, some years ago my grandfather wrote his life story. Once he had completed it he sent it out to the various branches of the family, at which point I spent some hours reading through it, and what surprised me about the work was that while the events of the story were of interest for themselves, and while the story was written in good, functional English, it was all surprisingly underwhelming. Given grandad's education, his career, and the fact that he was extremely well read, it was somewhat surprising that the whole thing wasn't, well, better.

Chandler, of course, neatly explains all that in a single sentence. The issue is that style isn't something that you either have or don't have; it's something that a writer develops and builds with practice. As such, it does indeed require an investment in time. (And, since writing the story of a long life is a significant undertaking, it has the same constraint as 'quality' in a software system - it's not something that you can add later. It needs to have become second nature, so that it's built in. Which means it really needs that investment of time.)

Grandad, for all that he was very well read, and for all that he was an educated man, had spent his life as an educator, not as a writer. He simply hadn't made that investment in time required to move beyond "good, functional English" to something more stylish.

And that's why his life story, while interesting to the family for the events that it recounts, felt somewhat underwhelming.

(Lest I be thought uncharitable, I should also note that at the time he wrote his life story, grandad was already into his eighties and in fairly poor health. So, really, the fact that he was able to produce it at all was rather remarkable. I just thought it was worth noting the revelatory moment I enjoyed yesterday evening when so much became clear.)