This is something I have been anxious about: (1) Are there readers of this blog—and readers generally—who are put off by the careful grammar of my writing? (2) Are there readers who read this blog because of the careful grammar? (3) If I stop writing the way I do, and adopt a style that's more relaxed, grammar- wise, than it is at present, will I increase my readership or decrease it?
Even as I wrote that paragraph, I realized that to change the way I write, I have to make an additional effort. That would take away from the satisfaction I get in writing; it's a little more work to write as someone else; it's acting, really. It's not a lot more work; I have to do it all the time, when I'm writing dialog. Rather than write "A said this, and B said that," I much prefer to write the two statements in such a way that the reader can infer exactly who is speaking from the context, and the voice. I have written about Voice before; I ought to try and give you an example ...
Well ... this is embarrassing—I looked carefully through several stories, and I seem to editorialize during dialog so much (not good!) that there are hardly any examples of dialog to illustrate the point I'm trying to make: that voice and context alone are enough to make clear exactly who is saying something.
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