Is it ethical to imitate someone's writing style if I don't have a writing style of my own?

is it ethical to imitate someone's writing style if I don't have a writing style of my own?

Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.

No, but does it matter?

>if I don't have a writing style of my own?
But you do. It's theirs but worse/with your own twist on it

>ethical

Most young writers do this, even if it's unintentional.

For one, you're never going have success doing it, so don't worry about it being ethical. The only person who can use that voice is the original author, and if anyone wants to read them, they'll just read them, they don't want your half-assed version.

But feel free to do it anyways, like I said most young writers do it, but the hope is you'll grow out of it eventually and create your own style.

Most young writers need an initial framework to practice within.

Well said

Well to be fair, Picasso is the one who said it.

You can't exactly copy someone's style. You own personal touch will be added no matter what.

no one finishes the quote
at least it's not as harmful as the
>poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
without the
>recollected in tranquility
at the end

Good arti-

This

How about you explain what that means, and why it's true, aside from just blindly posting a quote that sounds good.

Good artists imitate better artists and get half-assed copies of their work, not showing their own voice or producing something original with such material or technique. Great ones will take from any source available and make it completely theirs at the same time (hence 'steal')

Wew lad that was hard to interpret wasn't it.

Most young writers copy as a means of polishing and developing technical skills. This is a common thing in almost every artform (painters copy master paintings all the time: Rembrandt's work to improve on their rendering of light, Morandi's for control, etc.) but it's somehow looked down upon in literature. Translating is also an extremely good exercise for learning an author's voice.

So long as its done in order to develop your own voice.

Not an ethical concern, but no one will publish you if you sound like Hemingway, for example.

>Wew lad that was hard to interpret wasn't it.

Yeah, because it still doesn't make any sense.

So what great artist stole, and what?

All great artists steal. They steal the techniques of all artists they come in contact with.

Are you clinically retarded?

I love frauds, I adore frauds, I have a deep affection for frauds.

If you are able to imitate another writer's writing style without getting caught, then you have earned the right to not only imitate it, but claim it your own.

Subject matter, technique, form. Think about:
Joyce's Ulysses
Van Gogh, who was a huge fan of japanese prints
Gaugin, who took post-impressionism and native art of the people of Polinesia and made something whose impact is still very much alive today.

IDK, read a book nigger.

You can't not have a writing style. It's not something people usually do with intent.

we are all pulling in influences from somewhere, just try not to get caught with one specific authors style. then youll get called out on it and look like a goober

actually, if it is done well, you might be hailed as a genius

Who was the first author in the history of humanity? He must've been one original fella.

Fred Gwen. He was actually kind of an idiot, just wrote about jacking off.

It was God Almighty.

Typical patriarchy asswipe.

the first author was a WOMAN. Look it up and weep cismale.

>ethics
Nothing but a spook.