Writing Book Rebel

I am starting to seriously think I'm not cut out for working through writing books. I finally started Les Edgerton's book, "Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing".>

Chapter One (thus far, I haven't finished it yet) is talking about all the things that help stifle our natural voice, pretty much all of which I agree with. A big one is the basic rules of writing we are taught in grammar school and the assumption so many people make, some of them English teachers, that the rules are inflexible. His favorite one to make fun of is "Write in Complete Sentences." Fair enough. A lot of the time people don't speak in complete sentences and naturalistic modern writing should reflect this.

Mr. Edgerton takes it too far. Or his editor did. There are waaaay too many incomplete sentences. A number of them seem to be incomplete solely for the sake of saying, "Look! It's ok to write in incomplete sentences, I do it ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME". It isn't a matter of an assumed subject or for emphasis, it has hit the point where it's just coming across as lazy.

I really want to read this book because finding my own voice is something I struggle with, but his (lack of) sentence structure is driving me crazy. I don't know if I'm going to make it to Chapter 2!