{"id":859,"date":"2012-01-30T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=859"},"modified":"2012-01-30T06:00:13","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T12:00:13","slug":"i-apprentice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=859","title":{"rendered":"I, Apprentice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.\u201d ~ Ernest Hemingway<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve often read about writers, especially young writers, who write like the writers they are reading.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have that issue.\u00a0 In fact, I wish I did.\u00a0 How easy would it be if I could instantly write like a successful writer.<\/p>\n

However, I have learned some great things from some amazing writers.\u00a0 From Bradbury and Gardner, I learned you don\u2019t have to write poetry to write lyrically.\u00a0 From Hemingway, I learned that the simplest sentence can be powerful.\u00a0 From Faulkner and Twain, I learned you don\u2019t have to stray far from home to find intriguing settings.\u00a0 From Steinbeck and Joyce, I learned a fulfilling story isn\u2019t about living happily ever after.<\/p>\n

We can learn so much from the supposed masters of our craft.\u00a0 But, I believe you can learn something from any writer or any reader.\u00a0 Look at the contributors to the Confabulator Caf\u00e9.\u00a0 We all have our own styles, strengths, and weaknesses.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We all have our literary loves.\u00a0 We have varied backgrounds as readers.\u00a0 We each have different things we think about when writing, and different focuses when we re-write.\u00a0 Because of that, when we trade manuscripts, we each find things the other didn\u2019t necessarily know they were missing.<\/p>\n

That is the beauty of writing.\u00a0 I could live to be a thousand years old, writing hours upon hours every day, but I would never master writing.\u00a0 My writing would never stop evolving.\u00a0 It will always change to encompass the person I am, beyond the writer I become.<\/p>\n

The world doesn\u2019t stop turning, lives are lived and lessons learned.\u00a0 As such, art is always in motion, simultaneously pulling and pushing the artist along with it.<\/p>\n

I may never be able to tell a story that entertains the way King has managed, or understand the psychology of my reader\u2019s fears like Poe.\u00a0 I may never be able to disturb like Palahniuk or key on the insecurities of the every man like Hornby.\u00a0 That won\u2019t stop me from learning my lessons from their strengths, hoping that at the end of the book, I am a better writer because of it.<\/p>\n

I might never figure out that Science Fiction plot that eludes me despite my love of Clarke, Aismov, Heinlein, Card, and countless others.\u00a0 But, some literary truths are universal, and perhaps some part of them lives in my writing, regardless of whether my fiction ever leaves rural America, much less the surface of the Earth.<\/p>\n

I may not write like my favorite authors, but I haven\u2019t forgotten them either.\u00a0 As I continue to develop my voice, parts of it will be from parts of them, no matter how much distance I try to place between us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.\u201d ~ Ernest Hemingway I\u2019ve often read about writers, especially young writers, who write like the writers they are reading.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have that issue.\u00a0 In fact, I wish I did.\u00a0 How easy would it be if I could instantly write like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[124,392,395,506,1053],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influence","tag-bradbury","tag-faulkner","tag-favorite-author","tag-hemingway","tag-steinbeck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}