Secret Letters: On Style 💅
I used to think of “style” in writing as a joke. Now I see it as inevitable.
Welcome to Secret Letters, a paid subscriber perk of Letters from the Homestead. These monthly letters are exactly what you think: secret dispatches that feel a little too vulnerable to put in a free newsletter.
Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting my work.
I used to think “style” in writing was kind of a joke. I was, like, wrong.
When I first started teaching writing to college students, I would tell them, Don’t even think about ‘style’ or ‘voice.’ Your only priority is clarity. Style begins and ends with clarity.
This is important— you lose your reader if you aren’t generous enough with your clarity. And if your intention is to confuse your reader, then you probably want clarity to break through eventually. Confusion can be fun, but a reader ultimately wants to be in on the secret, not an outsider.
Once you get a handle on clarity as a technical skill, there’s room for all the different ways to be clear. There is no single way to practice clarity. You can be clear in your writing and still maintain your sense of subtext, magic, humor, enthusiasm, etc. This is where style emerges, I think. You get over the hill of wrangling your clarity (i.e., Do people even understand what you’re saying?), and suddenly there’s space for your interests to emerge in all their particularities.
I’m dividing this Secret Letter into two sections. The first is my big picture thoughts about what actually equals style. (Listen, there is no right answer for this— these are just my ideas.) The second section is more about the circumstances in my life that made me start noticing style, things like living alone after divorce, decorating my own space, spending more time in silence, and discerning what I actually like.