'Just use your own voice'

 

“I'm not aware of a cadence when writing, but I hear it after. I write in longhand, and that helps. You're closer to it, and you have to cross things out. You put a line through it, but it's still there. You might need it. When you erase a line on a computer, it's gone forever.” – Elmore Leonard

I’ve written about Leonard in the past, but on this date of his birth (in Louisiana in 1925) I couldn’t resist reminiscing again about one of America’s greatest writers of “Realism” in the past century. 

 

A novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter, Leonard’s earliest works were Westerns (3:10 to Yuma and Hombre, for example), but he went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers.  Many of his books have been adapted into movies and TV shows; movies like Out of Sight and The Gold Coast, and mega-hit TV series like Justified and Get Shorty (also made into a movie).

 

To call Leonard’s writing “gritty,” might be an understatement, but regardless of how you classify it he shares a segment of America’s culture and dialogue that few other writers have been able to match.  To get a sense of how he developed his works, look at “Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing” (widely available on the Internet).   Perhaps his most telling rule: “If it sounds like writing . . . rewrite it.”

  

“Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write,” he said shortly before his death in 2013.  “I think the best advice I give is to try not to write. Try not to overwrite, try not to make it sound too good. Just use your own voice. Use your own style of putting it down.”