Briefly

OK, I get it.

“Fix Your Writing” is a writing blog.  Clean, clear writing traditionally is short and snappy.  Forget the adjectives.  No 50-cent words, please.

That can, and will be done.

But November’s entries comprise a philosophical statement.  Writing is a mindset.  November’s blog is my mindset – the way I look at writing.  The way I approach the craft.

At the very core of that philosophy is a contention that “writing is easy.”  Research is tough.  Rewriting, editing, proofreading: Tough, tough, tough.  Fluency – tougher still.  Eloquence … dang nigh impossible.  The works of the masters, from Aristotle to Wouk?  Veritable missives from the gods – to be wondered at, but emulated only by the fewest of the brave.

“Fix Your Writing” is a How To for amateurs and, perhaps, for a few pros who need to get a life.  How to …

Consider this: “How to …” anything is a tough challenge. 

“How do I get to the Metzger place?”

“Well, I reckon you can take this road a half mile or so, turn left, then south at the big oak.  Follow that road til you get to where the big purple barn used to be, and turn right again.  Follow that road a piece.  You can’t miss it.”

At that point, my next question usually is: “What’s the first thing I’ll see after I miss it?”

How to … JUGGLE!  Set me face-to-face with a marginally coordinated schmuck and I can have him pitching three balls perpetually on the fly in a half hour or so.  But write out the instructions?  Wouldn’t know where to start.

As a young father, many moons ago, it was patiently explained to me that the programming required to make a robot take a step or two across a room would likely fill a book.  A big book. 

Yet in the first three years of life, a baby’s brain masters the process of one-foot-after-another, of spoon-to-the-mouth, of please-sir-I-want-some-more and hundreds of thousands more … a compilation of complex synaptical-firing sequences that would boggle the world’s greatest supercomputer.

But it’ll take that child 18 years of Dr. Seuss, book reports, essays and term papers to accumulate enough skill to get a passing grade in Freshman English.

Juggling.  Riding a bicycle.  Jai alai.  Square dancing.  Those are easy.

Still wanna be a Writer?

Next: Word Choice

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

For Example (Part 4)

First, to those of you in the U.S., and to Americans abroad, Happy Thanksgiving!  I extend special thanks and prayers to servicemen and women around the globe who have left behind the company of family and friends in order to help make all our lives safer and happier…  

Yesterday, The Fixer compared alternative drafts of a letter of resignation, noting first that the original draft was “perfectly adequate … better than most.” 

But it’s instructive to mention a few simple changes that might have been made to the original draft, without going to the extreme of producing a major revision: 

• Note that the word “I” is less-emphasized in the revision.  Starting paragraphs, sentences or phrases with the word “I” can make the reader feel that the writer is concerned only with himself (* or “herself … see note below).  Both versions use “I” four times, by the way.  Often sentences can be reconfigured to transform “I” into “my” – a word that doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb in a block of text.

• “2 week notice” should be “two-week notice” – hyphenated because it’s a compound adjective, with the numeral spelled out (as numbers 1-10 should be).

• Does it make much practical difference if a person is “very” grateful, and not just “grateful?”  This mundane adverb can be deleted in almost every instance; it usually contributes little, with the possible exception of pacing – making a sentence “sound” right to the ear.  (The late writing guru, William Safire, once wrote that he was instructed, as a young reporter, to insert the word “damn” whenever tempted to use “very” so that editors would automatically delete the profanity, at the same time improving the copy.

• About “the past four and a half years” … first, delete the redundant word “past,” since it’s obvious the “next” four and a half years are not what’s being discussed.

• Further, refer to either “four” or “five” years.  A child can say he’s 4-1/2 years old, but adults don’t refer to themselves as 32-1/2 years old.

• And, since most word-processing software butchers the task of printing fractions, either use the “1-1/2” format, or simply round to the nearest full year (alternatively, 18 months might be appropriate).

• Finally, I failed to draw attention yesterday to a MAJOR oversight in the original draft that was corrected in the revision: The author redundantly referred to the burden of “my LPN position” and “my commitment to Municipal Hospital” when trying to allude to a job vs. personal-life conflict.  How often do we think we know what we’ve written, then find out later (often too much later) that what we’ve written is just totally wrong?  Lesson for today: Read important copy, re-read it later with a fresh eye, and then have a friend or associate review it once more.  This won’t eliminate errors … just 99.44% of the most embarrassing ones.

Is this an exercise in nit-picking?  Well, perhaps.  But consider whether this seven-minute “mini-revision” isn’t a marked improvement:

This letter is a two-week notice of resignation.  I will miss the nurses and other staff here at Municipal Hospital, but the challenges of being an LPN, student and wife have grown too great.  Thank you for the incredible opportunities, knowledge and experience you have provided in my four years here. 

* Political correctness aside, when talking about "he" and "she" in the abstract, use the masculine form – a child talks about himself, or a writer thinks about himself unless the child/writer is identified specifically as a female.

 
Next: Briefly

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

For Example (Part 3)

Most writing challenges in writing are less literary than those we’ve considered thus far.  Take the example of a simple letter of resignation that came across my desk recently.  The (soon-to-be-ex-) employee drafted it like this:

This letter is to give you my 2 week notice.  I am no longer able to keep up with my LPN position, school and my commitment to Municipal Hospital.  I have had many incredible opportunities and will miss the nurses and other staff.  I am very grateful for the knowledge I have gained in the past four and a half years. 

Truthfully, this letter of resignation could be submitted “as is.”  It is perfectly adequate – probably better than most.  But it can, like most writing samples, be improved.  To wit, consider this revision:

With regret, I am resigning as a Municipal Hospital LPN, effective December 9, 2009. 

I will greatly miss everyone – my fellow nurses and managers, as well as the incredible support staff.  But I simply no longer can balance a full-time job with my college studies and home life. 

Thank you for the practical experience, knowledge and training you have offered in these four amazing years.  If I can ever be of assistance to you or the hospital in the future, please feel free to ask. 

Structurally, the revision is 20% longer, less direct, less simple.  But a letter of resignation is a document in which some degree of formality is expected and appropriate.  It states purpose, timing, rationale and gratitude.  The tone is complimentary.  Its final sentence offers the employer the option to continue the relationship in some less-formal manner (never burn bridges, never close doors behind you).  Finally, it is broken into three paragraphs, which will appear more “accessible” to the reader when physically formatted onto a page (studies show readers are more likely to read short one- or two-sentence paragraphs).

Philosophically, the revision attempts to strike a balance between friendliness and professionalism; it appears the working relationship was entirely pleasant, yet it needs to be recognized that the relationship was, at its core, a professional exchange of services for payment.

The letter should, of course, be properly addressed to the appropriate manager or personnel officer, dated (in part to document the two-week notice being proffered), and closed with a simple “Sincerely,” and a name/signature. 

Next: For Example (Part 4)

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

For Example (Part 2)

Shades of meaning.  A child quibbles over responsibility for a spilt glass of Kool-Aid, twisting reality around his fear of punishment.  An artist alters the mood of a painting by subtly brushing the canvas with delicate refinements of color and shadow detail. 

A writer has the ability to shift reality, to set a mood: Word choice, adjectives and adverbs, tense, action and passivity, punctuation – even rhyme, pace and onomatopoeia.  These are the tools a writer uses to express shades of meaning. 

When I write, and when I edit others’ copy, I prefer to offer “options” because right and wrong answers don’t exist in writing – apt solutions and inept solutions, yes … but no right or wrong.  But an “option” serves the purpose of identifying the exact point where a life preserver needs to be thrown into an ocean of words, phrases, exposition and analogies. 

Consider this paragraph:

At the age of 22, I was hired at the Trinidad Chronicle-News – and later at the Colorado Springs Sun and Vail Daily – as a reporter.  This was the pre-Watergate era.  This was before egos of journalists grew so large as to crave the superstardom of Woodward and Bernstein.  This was before journalism soured in the wake of supply and demand – too many young reporters willing to work for too little money, placing far to few demands on their talent.  Salaries plummeted.  Many of the best and brightest writers fled into public relations, advertising and marketing where growing corporations were still willing to pay top dollar for talent.  In college (these were the days of flower-powered hippies living in geodesic domes), students pursuing a PR/Advertising track were “selling out to The Man.”  A decade later, it got hard to make a living – and harder still to bear the inflated egos – and I, too, swallowed my pride and became a PR flak.  I found, however, those PR flacks I’d snubbed all those years did more than write the occasional news release.  They worked hard – damnably hard.  The reality from the other side of the mirror was a wake-up call … the first of many significant challenges that would follow, in the 1980s and 1990s, to the blindered assumptions of my youth.  Still, much of the hard work focused on networking, building relationships, image awareness and “spin.”  I found myself spending less and less time doing what I truly loved … writing.  But it would be a quarter century – a new millennium and then some – before I would return to that mistress of my youth.

Alternatively, one might write:

Out of college, I became a daily newspaper reporter.  When journalism started to sour, I became a PR flak.  I discovered a great deal more flesh and substance in the world of media relations than I might have imagined from the outside looking in.  Still, I wasn’t doing anywhere near the amount of writing I’d imagined, in the days of my youth, that I would.  Today, 25 years later, I have decided to return to those roots.

Two paragraphs.  Largely the same take-away: Boy meets career, Boy loses career, Boy realizes what he has lost, Boy returns to his true love.  Yet the length, depth and tone of the two paragraphs could hardly be more different. 

Two paragraphs, neither right, neither wrong.  Just different.  But they do share common bonds: Good grammar, good spelling, interesting syntax and pacing along a path from Point A to Point B.  Consider whether one passage affects you differently, carries a different impact, or leads you to a different conclusion about the writer and his professions.  Each passage follows most of the rules; each violates a few others.  But it’s apparent that the writer knew what the rule was, before breaking it.  It’s bad grammar?  That word doesn’t really exist?  The writer knows that, but had a long discussion with himself and decided that writing the phrase the “wrong” way was better than getting it “right.”

These are the sorts of discussions good writers carry on inside them every day.  Have some.  They’re fun.

Next: For Example (Part 3)

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

For Example (Part 1)

So … Writing and editing are easy – especially if you pay close attention to “writing for the ear”  … and if you write what you know …  and if you make the effort to know a lot.

I made those overly simplistic assertion to illustrate a point (well, several).  We all know that great writing is tough – damnably tough, else more of us would do it. 

But good writing is easy, and “good” is “good enough” for most of us, most of the time.  So then, it follows logically to ask: What makes for good writing?

Justice Potter Stewart famously said about pornography, “I know it when I see it.”  Similarly, my ear knows good writing when it “sounds” right coming off the page.

See whether this sounds right:

          There was a fight.

Perfectly fine English.  States a fact.  Doesn’t break any rules that I know of.

But neither does it break any ground.

My first formal step on the road to becoming a Writer (taken as a sophomore in Eileen Ghering’s senior English class, shortly after cracking Strunk & White’s Elements of Style for the first time) was to trash “There is” constructions.

          There was a fight.

          There is a meeting at 7:30 a.m.

          There is an answer to the question.

Let those sentences whisper to your inner ear.  Not so sexy, huh?  But what do you do when you see the words “There is,” or “There were” and variants?  The answer is as simple as the Drop the ‘y’ and add ‘es’ adage we all learned as kids: Drop “There is” and add a verb.

There was a fight, was there?  Well, strip that four-word construction to its core: “A fight.”  Now, just find the appropriate action verb, and you’ve taken your first step to better writing … “A fight erupted” was the best option offered up by Messrs. Strunk & White, if I recall the days of my youth with felicity.  But a fight “broke out” or even “A fight was” are improvements.

There also are better ways to have written those last two sentences:

          The meeting begins at 7:30 a.m.

          There is an answer (no redundancy – what, other than a question, has an answer?) – or “An answer presents itself …” or “The Answer? Don’t do that!”

Got it?  Good.  Now there is a homework assignment: Fix my phrasing a couple lines previous: “There also are better ways to have written those last two sentences.”  (Surely there’s a better way to have constructed that sentence, right?)

There are no right answers.  There is just some probing thought to be performed on the structure of your writing.  There are times, after all, when a “there is” construction is perfectly OK to use.  But there is a limit to how many times you can tolerate its presence, once you know it’s there.

There is, isn't there?

NEXT: For Example, Part 2

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

The Perfect Words (Part 3)

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the Kingdom

and the power

and the glory.

Forever and ever.

Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer consists of seventy words in its common English translation.  Seventy.  Yet this seemingly simple expression of faith transcends hundreds of languages and cultures.  Around the world, some two billion Christians turn to this compact prayer for comfort, support and inspiration.

But how many appreciate its nuances as a work of literature?  These 70 words articulate the astonishing architecture (as well as many surprising subtleties) of a creed spanning more than two millennia.

Whatever convoluted process eventually resulted in the compilation of the Christian Bible over several centuries, reasonable persons can agree that these 70 words are “The Word of God.”  This is true, perhaps, literally.  It is almost certainly true in the sense that the exact words recorded in the original Greek (or, perhaps, Hebrew – it’s a long story) were spoken or divinely inspired by a man known as Jesus Christ, whom believers (myself included) know as the Son of God within the Holy Trinity.

Wow. 

Short take: It’s an amazing prayer.

Consider only the first two words: “Our Father.”  To 1st century listeners, the idea of one, single paternal Father was peculiar, at best.  Up til now, “gods” had been created largely at whim, and most often resembled a vindictive brute home from carousing downtown bars on a Friday night: Thor, casting bolts; the warrior Ares and the sacrificially worshiped Quetzalcoatl; even the slave-mongering Yahweh of the Old Testament, who scourged the whole human race (save for eight zookeepers floating in an ark).  The words “Our Father” introduce a man-god who taught us to turn the other cheek – a gentle innocent who accepted torture and crucifixion for the sins of strangers.

Two pretty good words, no?

The remaining 68 words characterize a New World Order in which sins are forgiven, not punished; in which we receive the precise dosage of our needs – no more, no less – each day, from a glorious, powerful God who does all in His power to shelter us from evil and the devil.  And, significantly, God art in Heaven (always has and always will, but right now is in Heaven.  God lives!)

That last paragraph alone, which pales in the shadow of the prayer’s eloquence – took 70 words.  Corporate statements of mission and goal typically are far wordier in attempting to forge a code of conduct and purpose for a handful of employees laboring for a company likely to be bankrupt or merged away in a decade or two.

The Lord’s Prayer has stood for 200 tumultuous decades as a shining beacon for Christians … and even as inspiration for Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, and even atheists who appreciate its profound logic.

Any wanna-be Writer out there who can top that act?  Thought not.  It’s Perfect.

Next: A week of Examples

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

The Perfect Words (Part 2)

All writing is for the ear.

That’s obvious to one laboring over a script or a speech, but approximately 99.999713% of authorship is doomed for eternity to ink on paper (or pixels on screen).

No matter. Every written word or phrase is judged by the ear, even (alas) if it’s only the inner ear attached to the mind’s eye. (It gets lonely in there: Tell the truth – are you voicing these words, internally, at this very moment as you read them? Don’t let anyone catch your lips moving.)

So, the trick to superior writing is not necessarily wrapped up in reading the great works of literature and learning from them. It’s good advice – to devour the classics – but it’s not the be-all and end-all.

Want to learn “tight” writing? Charles Dickens, perhaps the greatest writer of all time, was also the most prolific. Why? Chuckie was a combo journalist / pulp-fiction writer; he was paid by the word, writing under deadline. Great stuff. Not terse.

I wonder, frequently, how Clancy, King, Grisham, Wouk, Lennon, Rowling, Conroy, Michener, Follett, Steele, Seuss and Simon will stack up two hundred years hence against Poe, Dumas, Hemingway, Twain, Du Bois, Joyce, Grey, Tolkien, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Fitzgerald and Shakespeare. (I know: I need a life.)

Well, in Shakespeare’s day, “The Theatre” was a shameful vice of the unwashed – akin to “Reality TV.” Hemingway was an “emigré” – a card-carrying member of Une Generation Perdue – a hippie long before geodesic domes were fashionable. It’s hard to know from which cubbyholes the literary geniuses of the 20th and 21st centuries will emerge.

To the point, today’s “Perfect Words” emerge from the screenplay of “Shall We Dance,” a 2004 movie starring Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez. Sarandon’s character, Beverly Clark, offers up a gut-wrenching answer to a seemingly rhetorical question: “Why is it, do you think, that people get married?”

BEVERLY: We need a witness to our lives.  There's a billion
                  people on the planet.  I mean, what does any
                  one life really mean?

                  But in a marriage, you're promising to care
                  about everything – the good things, the bad
                  things, the terrible things, the mundane things
                  – all of it, all of the time, every day.

                  You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed
                  because I will notice it.  Your life will not go
                  unwitnessed because I will be your witness'."

Consider what a curmudgeonly City Editor might do to that stunning soliloquy. It’s obviously wordy. Awkward. Not fit to print, certainly, these 79 words on a page. Just the facts, ma’am … Oughta cut that back by half, at least:

EDITOR: Marriage exists because the world’s 6.8 billion
                lives need witnessing. What’s one life?

                But spouses promise to care – constantly, daily –
                about all good, bad, terrible and mundane things.
                Each spouse witnesses the other’s life.

Screenwriter Audrey Wells captured the essence of emotion, setting, plot movement and character. But our imaginary editor trashed her eloquence for the sake of expunging 45 words – even though he might … might have communicated the same set of facts.

But the ear tells the gut different. Great writers let the ear inform the gut – and, ultimately, the rest of our anatomy. And if the writer fails to move the heart, gut, lips and brain … the writer fails.

Next: The Perfect Words (Part 3)

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

Tang-ran mode

Exploring Tangents of Random Curiosity may not  yield thoughts worthy of the NYTimes Bestseller list, but the "Tang-ran" exercise is worthwhile.  In the wake of yesterday's "Big Bang" blog, I got to thinking about the 14 billion year history of the universe (I suspect Kurt Vonnegut's mind wandered off into Tang-ran mode while writing Slaughterhouse Five ... or perhaps he was just stoned):

• 4,000 years of recorded history could have occurred 3.5 million times since the Big Bang (a huge window of opportunity for alternate and pre-historic universes filled with Romulans and Borg).

• The Bang theoretically occurred roughly 250 million generations ago (a potentially devastating stat for proponents of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon concept).

• That's 5.1 trillion days, 122 trillion hours, 7.4 quadrillion minutes or 442 quadrillion seconds. (So, in the grand scheme of things, that blind date last week only seemed like an eternity.) 

Poo-tee-weet, y'all ....

The Perfect Words (Part 1)

It makes me laugh out loud.

True, joyous, unencumbered laughter.

“The Big Bang Theory” is a television program.  It’s ground-breaking, with superb writing that transcends excellent (though sometimes spotty) acting, fitting the pattern of previous shows that capture my undivided attention for 30 to 60 minutes at a time: M*A*S*H, Hill Street Blues, Star Trek: The Next Generation, My World and Welcome to It, West Wing and The Dick Van Dyke Show, to name a few.

Writing.  The magical element of McLuhan’s cool, passive medium  (tailor-made for the post-intellectual American couch potato).  I suspect Big Bang’s creators never anticipated the skyrocket arc of Sheldon’s appeal, but out-of-this-world writing made that ascendancy possible.

But let us focus, not on words, but on lyrics.  Near the start of each episode, a quasi-intellectual diatribe explodes for 20 short seconds, then dissolves into five ordinary 20-somethings eating pizza in a nerdishly furnished living room:

Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state.

Then nearly 14 billion years ago, expansion started …

Wait!

The Earth began to cool,

The autotrophs began to drool;

Neanderthals developed tools:
We built the Wall!

We built the Pyramids!

Math, science, history – unraveling the mystery

that all started with a Big Bang.

Genius.  Pure poetry for the 21st century.  Taken as a whole, the prototypical TV viewer salivates over the 29 remaining minutes (less commercials and station breaks) of diversion to come.  But embrace the genius; venerate the selection of precisely the perfect words, the ideal turns of phrasing:

Not 13.5 to 14 billion, but “nearly” 14 billion; not 6,500, as many Fundamentalist Christians believe, nor the 4.6 billionth birthday of our Earth.

What IS and autotroph, anyway, and what’s the relevance of their drool, except to rhyme with “cool” (a state not share by Leonard and Friends)?

Selective points in history – the Wall (presumably the big one over in China, not the ex-one over in Germany), the Pyramids …

And then a quick resolution to a pizza-crunching brat packet.

Veritably, ya gotta get a Big Bang outta that show, doncha?

Next: The Perfect Words (Part 2)

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

Writing for the Ear

The best writing advice I’ve ever received actually mirrors the best speechwriting advice I ever got: Read your copy out loud.

What’s so special about that?  Think about it.  When you were a kid, your Grampa probably read to you – something like “The Little Engine Who Could” – the onomatopoetic “I think I can, I think I can” emulating the chug, chug, chug of an overburdened little train struggling up a mountainside.

To this day, most every English speaker under the age of about 80 can hear that little train engine inside our brains … evoking memories of a simpler time.

Words on a page are not meant to be read.  They are meant to SHOUT inside our heads, resounding off the hard surfaces.  If you stumble or cringe when reading your written copy aloud, it’s better scribed into a lawyer’s court document or spat out on the sawdust-covered floor of a barroom.

Of course, the setting of your words must, too, be considered with care.  An off-the-cuff phrase appropriate to “The Grapes of Wrath” doesn’t work in the 21st century, no matter how informal the contemporary setting.  Similarly, you can’t communicate four letters at a time in a church, a school or a white-collar workplace (although the Oval Office, apparently, is a different case entirely).

But the proper words, set forth with skill and verve, can be elevated by setting to a true art form.  A story, if you will:

I’m a singer – not by avocation, nor by virtue of any particular talent (though I can basically carry a tune), but because I like to do it.  My tummy tingles and my cerebrum floods with endorphins when just the right confluence of four notes – soprano, alto, tenor and bass – creates a harmonic envelope around the choir loft. 

Actually, it’s akin to an opium high – a concept that would, I’m confident, horrify our resident Choir Lady, who is diligent in focusing our attention on the words of the text, and away from the harmonics of performance (one never “performs” in church, I’m told, but rather “sings praises” …. the distinction is largely lost on me).

That feeling should never end.

That same “high” ensues from a particularly well-turned phrase.  “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” makes plain sense on a literal level, but also imputes a moral mini-lesson, along with sound financial advice.  A fascinating cultural colloquy might evolve contrasting the Spanish, “A bird in the hand has more value than a hundred flying,” with its English counterpart.

Music, repetition, harmony, counterpoint and a magical acoustical setting can combine to elevate the most mundane of prose into the Voice of God.  Our choir next month will present “Handel’s Messiah.”  Singers who don’t so much as hum in the bathtub anymore come out of the woodwork at this season to deign be a voice in that grandest of Christmas communiqués.

True, the music is magnificent, and the voices typically outstanding.  But have you ever paid attention to the words?  At the first strain of organ/violin/trumpet sounding, an entire congregation, Carnegie Hall, heck, Yankee Stadium rises to its feet in anticipation of the first thrilling “hallelujah.”

But have you ever paid attention to the words?  The words of this revered offering, whose harmonies traverse the spine like a stairway to heaven?  They are a testament to appropriateness of setting, for surely, without the trumpets, adoring audiences and centuries of tradition, these 37 words would be overlooked and ignored in the busy-ness of the Christmas season.  In their entirety, unrepeated:

Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.  The kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.  And he shall reign forever and ever.  King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Nice, but not likely to be case-bound and featured on the New York Times best-seller list, or sell for a buck-three-eighty on eBay … except that they are 37 entirely proper words crafted aptly for a glorious setting: The worship of our Lord at Christmastime.

Write to the ear.  Consider the audience.  Get that small voice heard inside the head.  For if you succeed with your audience, you are a Writer of no small skill.

Next: The Perfect Words (Part 1)

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

Research and Reporting

In another life, I was a daily newspaper reporter. 

It’s been 20 years, and yes, the field of journalism has changed markedly over that time – it’s no longer a profession, really, although a few choice professionals do remain employed by companies rapidly shrinking in numbers and size, vainly trying to salvage revenues being sucked away by online and economic forces.

Writers have abandoned the factual 15-word statement in favor of rambling 52-word diatribes.

Look at local news and you’ll likely be struck how many drive-by shootings and lurid lawsuits can be gleaned from police blotters and internet searches.  A discerning eye might also lament a stunning lack of historical perspective, skill and creativity in the writing.

The problem: Today’s “reporters” are rarely more than passive observers.  Most White House reporters would wither on the vine without their daily “Gaggle.”  Newsrooms are feebly disguised internet chat rooms, housing a poorly cloned generation of news junkies fixated on “Google.”

Mark Twain most famously advised: “Write what you know.” 

U.S. Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov cynically expanded on Twain’s wise counsel: “Write what you know,” Nemerov said.  “That should leave you with a lot of free time.”

Contemporary journalists are a particular pet peeve of mine, but a simple observation applies aptly to the vast majority of writers: They don’t get around much anymore.  Cyberspace is a pernicious shroud that blunts the consequences of assertion.

As a young reporter, I harbored the opinion that a local football coach’s blind eye to steroid use was bad for his kids; I later harbored a black eye when one of his 240-pound kids begged to differ.

My car was overturned on a busy public street.  I had a gun flashed in my face once, dodged a couple tornadoes and was sued for $16 million in a state district court before I’d earned a fraction of my first million.  I’ve been lectured, insulted, bullied and reviled.  But I’ve also been counseled, corrected, edited and educated.  Oh yes, it all was terribly exciting, Auntie Em … and it makes me a better writer.

I take pride in being a researcher into the human condition.

Drafting a marketing brochure?  Talk to marketers, CEOs, sales reps, customers, prospects and seven average Joes and Janes. 

Writing a term paper?  Try reading the entire book instead of just glomming a sexy quotation.  Phone a couple local experts and pick their brains – you’d be surprised how often an accountant, author, artist or auto-immunologist will take 10 minutes out of a busy day to “talk shop” with a genuinely curious inquisitor (and that's just the "A's").

Working on the Great American Novel?  Travel, read fiction, read non-fiction, spend money you don’t have, go hungry for a week, climb a mountain, visit a brothel.

Research needn’t be tedious and obscure – though, in my experience, it is when it involves digging through boring tomes, or poring over reams of scientific research and legal minutiae. 

LIFE is research.  Live it.  The end product may be a manuscript, it may be a letter to your congressman, it may be a toast at your daughter’s wedding.  Writing is the expression of the lives we lead.

Write what you know.  Combined with taking the time and effort to research life … it won’t leave you with much free time.

Next: Writing for the Ear

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

Writing is easy

Writing is easy. Rewriting is harder. Editing is harder still.

Being satisfied with what you've written is relatively easy. Having others fully understand your meaning and nuance is nigh impossible.

Pat Conroy, Jane Austin and William Faulkner ... they let you inside their brain.  Writers like you and me can't get inside our own. We find it difficult to focus a thought long enough to express it poorly -- let alone eloquently ... forget expression worthy of mention in posterity alongside The Prince of Tides, Pride and Prejudice and The Sound and the Fury.

Inside our brains, we're all hard on ourselves.  "Stupid!" .... "I can't believe how creepy my hair looks" ... "Is that a zit or do I have a hunk of pepperoni dripping down my cheek!?"  We don't let other people talk to us like that; but we all surely hear a familiar ring in these tacky utterings.  It's human nature.

But it's not human nature to be as tough on the words we commit to the printed page.

Great writers talk to their prose in exactly that way; critical of every subtlety, noteful of subtext (whether richly embroidered or shallowly cast).  Write.  Rewrite.  Read.  Cogitate.  Criticize.  Get nasty. Respond to your internal criticism and rewrite that passage again -- this time, the way it should have been written from the get-go.  Read it again.  Cross through liberal portions with vivid red ink.  Edit.  Add.  Cross out.  Flash another three sentences on the page.  Et cetera.  Et cetera.  Et cetera.  Ad nauseum.

Satisfied?  Good.  Give it to someone else -- preferably someone utterly unconcerned with hurting your feelings.  See whether someone else even remotely begins to fully understand your meaning and nuance.  No?  Good.  Take the page, with red ink liberally splashed across it anew, and read it.  Rewrite it.  Read it again.  Edit.  Cross out.  Sleep on it.  Wake up at 3 a.m. and rework the last paragraph while you sit on the toilet in the semi-dark.  Show it to your spouse, bleary-eyed, across a bowl of Lucky Charms and yogurt.

If you've come up with a half page of prose that will survive the day, NOW you're a writer.  For now, that is.  Now ... until cometh a compelling need to communicate something new.  Now becomes "what have you done for me today."  You start fresh, stripped of any past accomplishment, staring at the eternally blank page.

Work inside your brain again, and find out what you REALLY think.  What you REALLY learned about yourself in the dank light of pre-dawn.  You'll probably discover that a half page of memorable prose has pretty much exhausted the eloquent expression of ideas just rattling about in your brain that the world will find worthy of exposition.

That half page of purple prose was your 15 minutes of fame.

So what do you do to turn out that novel that every person supposedly has stored up within?  Chances are you're pretty much stuck turning out the weekly Operations Report you've got to write down at the office.  Whaddya gonna do now?

I lied.  Writing, editing, rewriting ... all those things are a piece of cake, relatively speaking.  Whether you're composing a one-page book report, a Letter to Shareholders, or the Tale of Two Cities, one simple truth rears its ugly head.  Before you get to the "easy" tasks, you've got to have something to write about.

NEXT: Research and Reporting

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

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If your mind, like the Title of this blog, is a little twisted .... If your writing skills need a serious turnaround .... Watch This Space and you're sure to find something to help you become a better writer.  Few things in life are better than being able to express your thoughts clearly, cleverly and succinctly.  And NOWHERE else will you learn how better to use an interfix in the English language: I guaran-damn-tee that!

Meanwhile, visit www.fixadocument.com for assistance with your writing and editing needs.