In the style of... My father-in-law sent me an excellent article on Richard Russo that was printed in the Boston Globe a few days ago (sorry for the general link, but the Globe doesn't play nice with its archives). For those not in the know, Rick (or Prof. Russo, as I've always thought of him) is the author of Nobody's Fool (which was made into a movie with Paul Newman) and Empire Falls (for which he won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize). He was also a college professor at Colby who taught me in one Creative Writing class. I tried to keep a friendly face and said hello whenever I saw him, but I'm really doubtful that I was a particularly extraordinary student and worthy of remembering. In fact, I'm better remembered by Jenny Boylan, who never taught me in a class but was a good friend. Again, this is all assumption--I haven't spoken to Prof. Russo since college, though I did recently drop Prof. Boylan a line.

My writing style could be called chameleon-like; when reading a certain author, I tend to think in their cadences, sentence structure, etc. I'm reading Robert McKee's Story right now, and his declarative, straightforward manner is inside me like I'm John Hurt in Alien. This trait of mine makes it difficult to find a style of my own. The semester I took Prof. Russo's class was no exception, and the author I was reading at the time was... Rick Russo.

Most professors, confronted with their own style, would probably not recognize it. But Prof. Russo probably did, since he gave me a B minus in the course. Personally, I think I was hamstrung in my final story by some very bad revision choices. But I also, at the time, wasn't particularly interested in writing prose. I thought myself a playwright, and the plays I was writing were much better than the stories. Regardless, I never made it to the next, selective level of creative writing classes. To this day, I don't know whether it was because my stories weren't good enough, or because I submitted my story the day before the auditor's husband died of cancer.

Coincidentally, my friend Mike also wrote about Prof. Russo just the other day, but I'd like to point out that I got the article before Mike mentioned him. Competition is a powerful motivator in more ways than one...