My Writing Wishlist: Voices I Wish were Mine!

"Make a wishlist of writer's voices that you envy."  My creative writing tutor set my class this task as homework, and it's got me thinking.  

There are several writers of whom I am intensely jealous.  If only I had that 'thing' that they have.  This homework exercise has prompted me to consider more deeply what it is that I love about my favourite writers.  

This is my wishlist - writer voices that I wish were mine!

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald is my first true love in terms of voice.  I was floored by his writing long before I could articulate any of my feelings for his work in the technical terms I now know from a year of university.  

The atmosphere and very essence of his era is conveyed in his effortless prose.  His flow is fluid and elegant.  His writing sparkles with sensory experiences - each scene is inhaled and tasted as well as viewed.  

Fitzgerald is on my wishlist of writer voices because it is my ultimate aspiration to have even a fraction of his natural flair for elegance, grandeur, and luxuriant bedazzlement.  I aspire to write with a focus on the senses and I've never seen this done better than in Fitzgerald's work.  

Jonathan Safran Foer

Safran Foer's writing is special is so many ways, as lovers of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close already know.  The visual experience of his experimental work is exhilarating.  

In reference to his voice as a writer, he seems to float through his stories with a heady sense of wonderment for the world and the humans that habituate it.  He articulates so many intimate and authentic observations of the world through sumptuously visual metaphors.  I love his way of constantly questioning the possibilities.  

Safran Foer is on my wishlist of writers voices because I am in awe of his childlike way of experiencing the world with wonderment, from the biggest things like death and love, to the smallest, most intimately unnoticeable things.  I aspire to be a writer who presents wonderment.  

Ian McEwan

McEwan's voice is crystalline, pristine and perfect.  Each word seems fastidiously handpicked so that every image and scene is composed with fragility and delicacy, as though from glass. 

The atmosphere and sensory experience of his writing is sumptuous and heady.  I adore the feeling of entering his worlds, which on arrival, are already perfectly fashioned and refined down to the last detail.  There is a sense of an ingenious omnipotent mind weaving this universe from a thousand threads so that every image is important in the grand scheme.  

McEwan is on my wishlist of writers voices because I aspire to build my characters and story worlds to his level of atmosphere and refinement.  

So, having seen my wishlist, what do you think?  As an aspiring writer, this homework prompt has really assisted me in articulating some of my goals.