Some Thoughts on Imitation

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Last week, I went to a writers club in downtown Raleigh. I’ve been wanting to make connections with local writers, and this seemed like a place to start.

The club met in the corner of a small, independent bookstore. The main reason for our gathering was to write together, but there were three parts to our meeting. First, we introduced ourselves and what we were working on; then we wrote together for an hour; and then we had a final discussion.

During the introductions, I learned quite a bit about the other writers. Most were twenty-something or still in their teens. Most were working on fantasy projects derived either from one of the dystopian, post-apocalyptic movie franchises of the last twenty years, or from a genre I understand as a combination of horror and fantasy. One writer was finishing a collection of poetry.

I wondered how many of the writers working on novels would finish their work. How many of these writers, with some revision, might discover the real essence of a powerful idea that was latent in their first drafts? I wished this for all of them.

And then this week, after thinking about it, I decided not to return to the meeting. Normally, I prefer to write alone. I don’t need the company of others. And that was the main point of the gathering. Many people today do need to do that, to meet in coffee places for writing dates. Writing, or at least the physical act of it, usually happens in isolation. I was okay with writing in company this one time if it meant meeting people, but then last week four people to my left didn’t start writing when the time came for it but kept talking with each other and joking.

And then the music kept playing over the intercom.

I can’t write to music. I concentrate on it too much. I think about its form and chord progressions and then the lyrics. I need silence when I write. The only artist I’ve ever been able to write to with any success is Pat Metheny.

So I probably won’t be back. I’ll continue to look for connections, of course.

However, listening to the projects they were working on got me thinking about imitation, the sort of practice that most beginning writers do. The trick with this is to choose the models that demonstrate things that are done well and then learn from those examples.

In my own aspirations, I certainly started out as an imitator. When I was 18, I was told to study the writing of Ernest Hemingway. So I did. Though I’ve heard from many people over the years who didn’t think that imitating Hemingway or even reading him was a good idea, I did learn some things.

On the positive side, reading Hemingway closely, especially his use of dialogue, taught me something about observing people and listening to how they talk. I became aware of and began to avoid cliches and overstatement. On the negative side, I learned to also avoid happy endings and sentimentality. I should add that I did not imitate the writer’s heavy drinking.

In high school, I’d read a lot of fantasy and science fiction. But reading Hemingway, I became practiced at setting up situations in which something unstated was bothering the character, but they would never mention it and carry on as though nothing was wrong.

After a while, I reached a point of diminishing returns. I realized I was becoming practiced in the art of the avoidance of things, and I began to wonder if that was what Hemingway had done. In creating a scene, in introducing characters who were avoiding being honest with each other, avoiding deeper concerns in order to sound civil, I was engaging in something as dishonest as sentimentality. And then, after a certain point, I realized that I was not only practicing avoidance; I had reached a point where I couldn’t write emotion at all. I had overcorrected. In trying to avoid sentimentality, I had become incapable of expressing sentiment.

My sense of invention was also becoming limited. I found that I was actually writing what could easily be scenes in a Hemingway novel, and I started to find this flattening. Many of his ideas and situations dealing with war or with individuals in situations of conflict that lead to someone dying came from his own experiences and character. His stoic idea of grace under pressure is certainly inspiring, but I hadn’t really ever seen much of it.

My correction was to read other writers, and I did this, starting with Jane Austin and Flannery O’Connor. I began to be interested in how a character’s obsessions could be a spiritual way of approaching character in new situations.

I also read other writers.

And I was relieved to find that I was not alone in the imitation trap I’d made for myself. Hemingway also went through this with his beginning phase.

Early on, he read the stories of Ring Lardner. I read these stories also, and they have some charm and influence. His stories are told in the first person narrative voices of the street wise of roughly 1910, with slang and clipped phrases thrown in. Here’s an example:

Well, Jim would set there a w'ile without opening his mouth only to spit, and then finally he'd say to me, "Whitey,"--my right name, that is, my right first name, is Dick, but everybody round here calls me Whitey--Jim would say, "Whitey, your nose looks like a rosebud tonight. You must of been drinkin' some of your aw de cologne." (Lardner)

This passage, from a popular story called “Haircut,” shows the colloquialism Lardner practiced, probably something he got from reading Mark Twain. Hemingway wrote early stories never published but later collected that sounded just like this. Taken to the extreme, we might call characters who always talk like this cads—or posers.

Later, Hemingway met Sherwood Anderson and then went on to Paris, where he met people like James Joyce and Ezra Pound. He continued to write in ways that are close to human speech, but he developed a better style that was simple and expressive and not so mannered as his imitations of Ring Lardner had sounded.

I currently view imitation as important and inevitable. It is limited, or it can become limiting, but it also might be our gateway into our own ideas. Long traditions of imitation exist in all of the arts. Every composer I’ve ever listened to has shown this. Beethoven’s first two symphonies follow without variation or divergence the classical sonata form that Haydn Symphonies assumed, though there is something more original lurking and moving in some of the orchestration. Early Mozart piano pieces come directly from one of Bach’s sons.

Those writers I met at the writing club a week ago are following the dream. They might keep working on their fantasies, and the only suggestion I would make would be that they also challenge themselves with new approaches. They might go to new writers outside of the genres they love. They might read authors who offer new combinations or ways of thinking about the problems they are working on. I’d recommend they read some of George Saunders’ stories. He’s writing about our current suburbs with a vision they might learn from. They might look for new teachers who help them to find new approaches.

Most of us follow what we love. Dropping fantasy, for some, is a deal breaker. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a contradiction here worth considering. We might try keeping our heart for what we love but also exploring new avenues with the purpose of doing what we love more successfully. It’s all in the commitment.

I hope you have a great month. Be safe and pay attention.

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Works Cited

Lardner, Ring. “Haircut.” Classic Short Stories. 11 June 2026. https://www.classic shorts.com/ stories/haircut.html

Painting by Danielle Kirchman

Yellow

I thought you were the yellow monarch

and you caught up to me walking.

And then you went ahead, but I later caught up

and then again you went ahead, as if to say,

Who is slow now? But how you knew

where I was going, never having come along ‘

before, when I’d leave the house for an hour

and how you could finally join me walking

with wings freeing you from your heart and legs

leads me wading toward mystery with no legs

though I think I always saw your wings hidden

in your eyes, and now I’m going somewhere

I don’t know and maybe not going at all,

following this walk a butterfly has outlined.