A friend asked me this. He said I seemed to be a by the rules writer, that my work has excellent grammar and punctuation but seems more like a submission for a class than having a distinctive voice. I have to confess that even my journal has those qualities, that I spend much energy trying to be clear, to sort out my feelings about issues, and I do write in complete sentences and pay attention to punctuation. Whether it is habit, training or personality, I can't say, but I think it is a combination. I am a lousy typist: when I type I have to deal with errors, so my journal is usually hand written and more or less error free, at least in that respect. So what I assume he finds stilted or overly academic in my writing is, in fact, my authentic voice, at least my authentic written voice. Another thing is, as a painter, I am supremely conscious of the visual, which leads to a heavy interest in description, which I have to curtail in my prose for possible publication. So I cannot yield to my tendency to describe what I see and expect that would improve my work. I would like to improve my writing (I have said this before), but I am not sure whether my friend's obversation about my work is anything I can use.
