Hm, I guess it’s a toss up between George Orwell and your mom. Orwell writes with a lot of conviction, but can be wordy. Your mom was really concise last night. And she was energetic. Orwell can be rather energetic in his political convictions.

As for what style exercises are for, I can’t say it any better than Stevie did, so I’m republishing it here:

I often hear people say things like, “I’m not good at writing.” Quite simply, the point of style exercises is to remind yourself that that is ridiculous.

When you say something like that, you are often comparing yourself to this writer or that writer whose style is mysteriously able to move your or inform you or make you laugh. A style exercise takes the mystery out of good writing. Well, it takes the mystery out of any writing. You learn through imitating different writing styles, first ridiculous and then more subtle, that you can choose to use longer sentences to make your writing sound more grandiose or choose simple words to make it playful. You can also choose not to do these things. When you see patterns in other people’s word choice, sentence structure punctuation, and point of view, you get to know very well what makes a piece sound epic or silly or biting or intense. You also get to know that all writing has rhythm.

It’s all about control. Once you can play dress-up in someone else’s style, you can learn to control your own. Then, you decide what kind of a writer you want to be and how you want to make your readers feel.