Musings On Touch

Andrés Cerpa, The Vault

Idk if u write, but what would u recommend to a young writer who’s not yet found her own ‘tone’ / voice or character in writing. What I mean is, I love writing… every time I read a certain author I then adopt their pen’s character, I write like them. If I read Plath I’ll go write like her bc I’m inspired. If I read Dostoevsky I’ll go write like him. Idk if it’s necessarily bad bc I think it’s pretty cool to achieve such voices (if they r achieved indeed) or should I just try to find mine? & How?

Hi anon, yes I write but only for myself. It's a sort of therapy for me, I'm definitely not a good writer. So maybe I'm not the right person to answer this question. Anyway, in your message you mentioned Plath and Dostoevsky, I think it's pretty normal to mistake the big impact that this artists can have on you and on your soul with your conviction that you are "copying" them. You already have your voice, it's the way you see the world, the way you perceive things, the way you talk in your head ― the language you speak to yourself everyday.

Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

she called herself "unimaginative". She tormented herself with this thoughts. It's just impossible to believe for us, but she was just like you, just like us.

Don't give up🤍

White Rhododendron

David Hamilton - Nina Ricci “Farouche” Perfume Ad (Cosmopolitan 1976)

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

[text ID: I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy."]

Vivienne Westwood Corsets

— Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

[text ID: My writing was all about you; all I did there, after all, was to bemoan what I could not bemoan upon your breast.]

“I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.”

— Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)