"You're very technical, aren't you?"

I get this question a lot, at least in the Workshop. The answer is yes, I am. Quite technical, at least professionally. Somewhat so in my personal life, if "technical" means that I break things down into their component parts, examine them, alter things that aren't working, and put them back together. I use this method to approach life problems, everything from how to brush my teeth every night to managing our household budget.

I suppose this shows in my writing, which often (though not always) methodically goes from function to function, each step supporting the next, and supported by the last. For me, a story is a series of events lashed together with an overarching theme, hopefully with some sort of payoff at the end. Characters are the mechanisms that move the story from one scene to the next; those that take the steps; those that experience the payoff on behalf of the reader.

The feedback I'm getting in the Workshop, at least some of it, indicates that my writing is received as 'flat'; that my descriptions of my characters' motivations lack a brightness, like an entree that needs a squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of capers to offset its salty, fatty nature. I try to find resources, books that I can read that let me savor well-balanced spoonfuls of award-winning delicacies. A decade ago, Abraham Verghesse won critical acclaim for his novel "Cutting for Stone". I've read the first two pages, and found myself exhausted by the descriptions. I start to wonder if I have some defect that disallows me to consume literary greatness.

Elsewhere, I have the honor to be among a small group of people proofreading a serialized novel by Daniel Keys Moran. Our little group gets a chapter a few hours before it hits Patreon, and we comb through it for issues. It's good for the author, and it's good for our group. In a small way, we get to participate in his worldbuilding and novel writing. And I'm learning about writing there as well as here.

One thing I've learned is that my writing is similar to that of Moran in many ways. This is no surprise to me, as I started reading his novels thirty years ago, and his work has informed mine in a number of ways. I have learned at his knee, as it were, even if I don't consciously care to mimic him. Oh, there are a great number of things about Dan as a person that I aspire to or envy, but he is he and I am I, and that's that. But style is something we learn from the world around us, and adapt it to fit ourselves. It seems as though I've adapted somewhat more from his style than I previously realized.

This is not to say that I believe Dan's work has the same imbalance that people find in mine. Or maybe it does, I don't know. What I can say is that I find more similitude between my work and the work of some categories of authors than others. In short, I think I write like a science fiction author rather than a literary one. And maybe that's OK.

I don't say all this as an excuse to stop taking feedback or to stop improving my writing. I want desperately to improve, and if that means injecting some unfamiliar phraseology or passages, or using techniques that feel entirely alien to me, then so be it. I will, however, keep an eye on my own style, however I acquired it, and grow it rather than replace it.