To acquire a powerful writing style, acquire a powerful soul. Llewelyn Powys tells how:
If I were to be asked by any young person the best way to acquire a style I would tell him to live intensely. The style of a man is the direct result of his passion for life. Learning and scholarship are of small value here. Style is the affirmation of a man’s heightened awareness of existence and always grows up from within, from out of the marrow of his bones. . . . Powerful and original characters write in a powerful and original way, shallow and commonplace characters write in a shallow and commonplace way. Style has to do with the grace, health, and vigour of a man’s soul. It is a secret thing dependent upon a natural depth of feeling and no amount of playing the sedulous ape can pass off as authentic what is in truth counterfeit. (Quoted from “Letter to Warner Taylor,” Types and Times in the Essay, by Warner Taylor. London: Harper & Brothers, 1932.)
For a brief biography of Llewelyn Powys, click here.
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