'Use your own voice and don't overwrite'

 

“I'mnot aware of a cadence when writing, but I hear it after. I write in longhand,and that helps. You're closer to it, and you have to cross things out. You puta line through it, but it's still there. You might need it. When you erase aline on a computer, it's gone forever.” – Elmore Leonard

Born on Oct. 11, 1925, Leonard established himself as one of America’s greatest writersof “realism” during his lifetime.  A novelist,short story writer, and screenwriter, his earliest novels, published in the1950s, were Westerns, but he went on to specialize in crime fiction andsuspense thrillers, many of which were adapted into movies and TV shows(Count me as a big fan of his Justified booksand TV series). To call Leonard’s writing “gritty,”might be an understatement,             but regardless of how you classify it, it’sexcellent.  He shares a segment ofAmerica’s culture and dialogue that few other writers have been able tomatch.  To get a sense of how hedeveloped his works, look at his essay (widely available on the Internet)“Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.” In that, the most telling one might be: “If it sounds like writing . . . rewrite it.”
“Everyone has his own sound. I'm notgoing to presume how to tell anybody how to write,” he said in an interviewshortly before his death in 2013.  “Ithink the best advice I give is to try not to write. Try not to overwrite, trynot to make it sound too good. Just use your own voice. Use your own style ofputting it down.”