A review of Elmore Leonard’s “10 Rules of Writing” says the following: “Good writing is not about the writer (and the way he sounds or the size of her vocabulary), but about the story. The writer must remain invisible.” I’m not sure if the “invisible” part is a quote from Leonard or a statement by the review, but either way, bunk.

This is a viewpoint I run into a lot in how-to-write articles and books: (which I still read, though less than I used to): To be good, writing must be simple and plain, devoid of any words or phrasing that make the reader conscious that a writer is involved. Just pure story, straight into the brain.

I don’t consider this to be a rule of good writing, it’s simply a stylistic choice. Even before I started writing (which makes me much more aware of other writers’ technique), I liked writers who could play with words: Raymond Chandler’s elegant yet hardboiled prose; Lord Dunsany’s poetic short stories (”The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man.”); P.G. Wodehouse’s goofy, giddy fiction; or H.P. Lovecraft’s horror fiction, wildly overwritten by normal standards, but HPL made work.

I’m not that sort of stylist myself, but I enjoy many such writers who are. So to Mr. Leonard or the reviewer, I’d say, keep your hands off those who like to play with words.

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