Individual style.

American writer Katherine Porter claims, ‘You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being’, therefore style is the voice which a writer develops; it’s the integral essence of their writing that sets them apart. Scott Donaldson claims in John Cheever: A Biography (iUniverse 2002), ‘What distinguishes Cheever from minor writers is that throughout the assimilative process he kept his own distinct and idiosyncratic voice’, therefore although many have argued Cheever embraced the New Yorker witty, wry, sardonic style in many ways, I would argue, he was so successful because of his ability to develop his own unique style; a style that very much encompassed his own voice and being.  

Donaldson states ‘You can pick up a Cheever story or novel anywhere and know within a paragraph or two who is speaking’, I would argue the same when discussing great writers such as Kafka, Hemingway and Emily Dickinson. Therefore I believe developing my style is a vital part in my process of becoming a writer and although I don’t believe I’ve completed this process as yet, I feel university has definitely aided me in evolving my own unique voice. This is important, as ultimately it’s the great writer’s unmistakable style that sets them apart from the crowd, because, at the end of the day, every aspiring author’s crucial aim to get themselves noticed.

William Carlos Williams definitely achieved with:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold