Seasoned Advice ~ Bruce Meyer
A mention on Facebook drew me to a full-length discussion1 with poet, writer, and all-round Canadian man of letters Bruce Meyer sharing his experience and insights from a long career rolling with the ups and downs most writers face. Below is a sample of his authorial reminders, both for those starting out, as well as the rest of us farther along the literary path.
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Never write like anyone else. Write like yourself. Pay the price, and await the outcome. Copying other people is not art. It is manufacturing. I don’t write like other people. I never have and never will. I write like Bruce Meyer, even if Bruce Meyer is the only person who gets it.
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The worst advice I ever received was from a Canadian poet/children’s writer who said I should write like a certain writer he admired. That’s horrible advice. I scold my students if they try to write like me. They have to write like themselves. The challenge is finding a voice.
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How does one find a voice? Well, read everything you can lay your hands on. Then read more. Go in search of books. Study them. Then, after an accumulation of literary experience, toss it all out, unlearn everything you’ve learned, and refuse to write like any of them. Write what you felt you wanted to read when you went reading and couldn’t find exactly what you wanted to see.
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Writing is not about what. Anyone can fill a shopping bag with what. Writing is about how. That’s where the art resides….
….A good mentor will ask his or her students to dig deep within themselves, plug their ears, and to write what they are aware hasn’t been written. And the proviso on the question of how is that learning how doesn’t mean imitation. It means exploration, the need to extend or reinvent what has already been invented, but to never forget that on the other end of the words there is a reader. Never forget the reader. It is a writer’s obligation to include them in what is said. Too much contemporary writing excludes the reader and at that point the writer becomes a solipsist.
Beyond these excerpts, the entire interview offers enlightening and entertaining reading. You can find it online at https://southshorereview.ca/interviews/an-interview-with-bruce-meyer/
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1. “Just Write the Next One”—“An Interview with Bruce Meyer” by Dave Gregory, The South Shore Review.