Who is Your Favorite Stylist?

[mmarotta]

For myself, it is really Strunk & White, but after that, Ayn Rand and William Gibson.

 

I had written a couple of small books and a couple of user manuals when a friend brought over Neuromancer because he had just read a review of it in Rolling Stone magazine. Gibson inspired me to go back and re-read Ayn Rand. Understanding how she constructed her fiction made a big difference in my non-fiction. After that, Gibson was an inspiration. I wrote cyberpunk user manuals for Digital Equipment, Verizon, and many others.

 

Most of my non-fiction production writing rests on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I think that much of her power comes from being a native Russian. The grammar of the Russian language -- as with Latin, Greek, etc., -- forces a clarity of thought that we do not have in English. Rand's work sometimes seems stilted because of that. It does not always "flow" -- but, then, neither does a diamond.

 

The strength of English lies in its huge vocabulary of loan words. Just consider the "Indian" words: bungalow, moccasin, tomahawk, catamarran, mulligatawny, chipmunk, skunk, curry,...

 

With Microsoft Word, the Tools/Grammar option keeps me honest. About 1990, I worked a project where the client wanted me to prove that the manual could be read by someone with a ninth grade education. So, I wrote a program in Fortran to parse the manual and apply reading metrics to it. Since then, Microsoft placed these benchmarks in to Word. Magazine editors are pretty happy with my offerings, since anyone can understand them, but what I write seldom thrills me.

 

Last month, for a challenge and a change of pace, I wrote a horror story.

[jlueke]

None is my answer. I don't write enough to be inspired. Much of what I read is non fiction and that area lacks a lot inspiring prose. Translations of all sorts are also often dry.

 

James Joyce I do not understand. I know its by his design but I;m not taking a course just so I can understand a single book. Some works in fiction do stand out: Updike, Salinger, Pirsig. Bob Dylan's lyrics from his prime are insipirational.

 

At the top of the list would be books that make me think and that fuel an optimisitic view of mankind. Things like Emerson or Thoreau's "On Civil Disobedience".

 

But, in the end, I write to convey ideas in the small sense. I have no great literary illusion of being a fantastic writer. The few articles I have written, I target for clarity and accuracy.

[Guest Stujoe]

Isaac Asimov inspired me to write my one and only, submitted (and promptly rejected), never to be repeated again, work of fiction.

 

I certainly have no illusion of being a fantastic writer. If anyone, QDB probably inspires what (little) writing I do on my website. I enjoy his rather easy and somewhat conversational approach to presenting information. If I just had that base of knowledge to work with.

[Ætheling]

I have many favourites, one of which is on that list. Charles Dickens, i love his subtle twists of droll humour mixed with a realisation of the depression of suffering and poverty. He can take characters from the happiest to their lowest on a turn of the page and back again before the chapter is out, and still make it believable.

 

My favourite author by a long way though is Terry Pratchett, the guy is a genius. He writes much like i do (hence why i find him so easily to relate to), he writes in a very sarcastic style and comes at things from a viewpoint that no one ever thought of or one that looks totally improbably and by the end of the chapter he has you believing it could be true. Plus he parodies everything in his discworld novels and if there's one thing i like it's a good parody.

 

He charaters are as rich as Dickens but unlike Dickens his characters have two sides, they all have a good side and a bad side and are not monotone. Humans depicted in abstract is how i'd describe it.