Why the Hell Does Everyone Sound the Same?

Self-indulgence alert.  You’ve been warned.  I’ll probably regret this post, or perhaps it is better reserved for a LiveJournal sort of thing, but:  why the hell do contemporary writers sound so much alike, whether they trade in fiction or nonfiction?

To prove my point I’ll excerpt a writer’s LiveJournal post:

Don’t just read because it will make you a better writer – although it will. Read because you love to read, you love stories of all shapes and sizes, you love the flow and rhythms and innovations of language, you love to learn stuff about people, you love to learn stuff about the world, you love to form relationships with individuals who don’t exist. Read because you love to write. Read because you love fiction and nonfiction and their pirate chests of treasures.

Does anyone know what this style of repetition is?   “Read because…” and “you love…” this and that.  Because it’s everywhere.  If you read a lot, as the above-quoted writer recommends, you might just be further immersing yourself in this style of writing.  It’ll just make it more difficult to reverse the damage later on.

“Stories of all shapes and sizes.”  Really?  Have any octagonal stories come down your pipeline lately?  Or stories shaped like a fatty?  What the hell does this even mean?  Everything I come across lately sounds like some sort of New Agey, Sunday School Obama speech.  (I guess that explains why it’s so widely used:  the public eats it up.)  At least she didn’t use the whole cliché:  ”all shapes, sizes, and colors.”

I’m sorry if this sounds like little more than an attack.  I know I’m leaving myself wide open (i.e., to charges of unrestrained snark, also irritatingly ubiquitous, according to some.)

Also, two words I want people to stop overusing:  ”rich” and “nourish.”  Just stop.