Resolved (Part 2) – Writing is work, but DO it

Once the fledgling writer commits to becoming a Writer, a modicum of discipline must emerge.

Writing doesn’t just happen.  It’s crafted.  Molded.  Cogitated over.  Revised, reviewed, reworked and rechecked.

How’s that done?  What’s the secret?  What does the fly on the wall see when it looks down upon the struggling author?

Probably, in Winston Churchill’s immortal words, a lot of blood, toil, tears and sweat.  It’s war.  And the words always win.

It’s only a question of whether the author is wise enough to quit fighting the words, and sign on as an ally.

Between now and the end of the kickoff of the BCS Championship Game in Pasadena next Thursday, let’s look at six tactics the wannabe writer can pursue – not tips or tricks or strategies, but physical actions that real-world Writers all embrace.

Tactic 1: Do it.

Yeah, it’s really that simple.

The Great American Novel doesn’t write itself.  You’ve got to move the pen.  Punch the keyboard.  Delete, cut, paste, undo ... but most of all, DO.

Create a benchmark: 500 well-crafted words is a good day – 250 superbly crafted is probably better, but that depends on the sophistication of your audience.

Devote two, maybe three hours a day to the keyboard – more if you’re really on a roll; less if the muse escapes you.  And realize that the physical act of typing words into a dumb terminal is only one phase of the writing process.

The rest?  Read, research, talk on the phone, network, sell yourself, market, blog, and then read some more.  Any time you dedicate the attention of your brain to the writing chore ... well, you’re writing.  You can do it standing in line at the movie theater, daydreaming in the park, pumping iron at the gym or stuffing a breaded pork chop in your left cheek.

Doing it, however, is not recommended when you’re doing it, if you catch my drift.

Bottom line, you need only spend half a day working at it to become a successful writer.
What you do with the other 12 hours is your own business.

Next: Resolved (Part 3)

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Resolved (Part 1) – New Year's resolutions for writers

It’s nearly New Year’s Day.  Most resolutions made 363 days ago have (unlike old acquaintance) long since been forgot.

The inside skinny on that diet I committed to?  Down 28, up 13; net decline – 15 pounds.  Not bad, but it’s near the top of the Friday morning list.

Reading paves the road to Writing, and my Kindle has been burning up.  A recently re-discovered library card got renewed usage this year, but a long list of unread classics remains (and the latest James Patterson / Alex Cross thriller sits, unopened, on the shelf).

But 2009 was the year I finally confronted a long-held regret.  The resolution came, not in January, but in mid-November.

I transmogrified years of sheepish resolutions into leonine resolve and embarked on a journey in pursuit of the Joy of Writing – a joy that was so much a fixture of my youth.

I left the day-job behind, and plunged into icy waters of dysprosperity.

I built a website (www.fixadocument.com).

I created this blog, religiously posting daily entries (weekends and legal holidays excepted).

And I opened the door to a new adventure as a writer for Examiner.com, an online source of local and national news, features and commentary – a fledgling home for “citizen journalists.”

In short, I have many promises to keep, and many words to write before I sleep.  And there’s no turning back.

The single best advice I can provide to a would-be Writer, is to commit.  Go out and burn bridges (not in the classic sense of the phrase, of course ... keying the car door of your soon-to-be ex-boss is a bad idea).

Cut the ties to daily routines – no matter how comfortable – that keep you from the creative process.  Desperation is not necessarily an unhealthy state of mind.

Climbing out of the well-worn rut may mean quitting a job and investing time and money in the tools you’ll need to succeed – a computer upgrade, perhaps, or membership in writer/sales networking groups (live or online).  And, you just may need to drop an hour of TV and 45 minutes of sleep to get the hard work of writing accomplished.

Over the next two days, we’ll look at six ways to get where you’re going – six New Year’s Resolutions, if you will – with an eye toward substantially improving your craft in the coming 12 months.

Next: Resolved (Part 2)

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PUN-ditry

The term “bad pun” is at least redundant, if not fully oxymoronic.  If it ain’t bad, it ain’t a pun (though I’ve never comprehended why everybody thinks the ox is so dumb).

Shakespeare punned.  A flock of doves puns when it stages a coo.  W.C. Fields drunkenly professed he’d “rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” ... a gag further pickled by Dean Martin, who said, “I would rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy.”  Even Jesus punned, suggesting  He’d build his church upon Peter – a solid foundation – playing on the similarity of the apostle’s name and the Greek word for “rock.”

At Christmastide, when Guinevere saw that Lancelot’s bright new armor had been rent repeatedly with swords, she reputedly bent over the pronate form, lamenting her dying lover: “Oh holey knight!”

The best and worst of writers alike struggle for topics.  Puns are definitive proof that a Writer can write about anything – absolutely anything.

As a daily newspaper columnist, I would stare out the window when blocked, and found that a bed of flowers, a fire hydrant, a telephone wire – virtually anything visible – might nurture my sleeping but unquenchable fire to communicate (sorry ’bout that).  My own version of the Holy Grail was a column filled with 350-syllable words ... er, 350 salable words (can’t help it).

In college, during Finals Week, I sat with elbows splayed across a dormitory dinner table, my bleary eyes closed in rest, buried in my sleeve.  My roommate approached, carb-heavy tray in hand .... “Eddie ... Eddie,” he said, gently shaking my shoulder.

“Are you tired, Eddie?” he asked in a lame Topo Gigio imitation, plucking a paper napkin from the dispenser nearest my left forearm.

“Cause if you’re tired, you know ...” he continued, brandishing the paper catalyst of his somnambulant wit, “When you’re really tired, a napkin help.”

The groans of those nearby assembled stirred me from my reverie.  Nap ended.  Possibly the worst pun ever.

And proof again that anybody can write 350 syllable words (exactly), if their backs are to the wall.

Next: Resolved (Part 1)

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

Your two cents worth

A 74¢ check arrived in the mail last week from Bank of America.

You remember B of A – the HUGEST holding company on Planet Earth.  Borrowed 58 gazillion dollars from the U.S. taxpayer to keep from going belly up a year ago.

Pays its top execs $25.75 a week, plus stock options valued at, oh, $42.7 million annually, give or take a decimal point or two.

B of A sent a cashier’s check for “NO DOLLARS SEVENTY-FOUR CENTS.”  Seriously – would you ever pull out a checkbook to belly up 74¢ ’cause you only had $3.24 in your pocket for a $4 draught of Schlitz?

Now, the details aren’t interesting: Suffice to say, B of A inexplicably delayed payment on an insurance claim for three weeks or so ... (but apparently only about 17 hours longer than the bank deemed necessary – interest would have amounted to a little over a buck a day.
 
Already a month late (in my book), it took ’em six weeks more to write and mail the 74¢ check.  Truth be known, nobody here much cared about getting the 74¢ to begin with, but it apparently allowed B of A to close its books on the matter.

The incident offers several telling lessons to the Writer:

• First, meet your deadlines, or there are penalties to be paid (in this case, 74¢ plus a perception of stultifying incompetence).

• Don’t invest in a 42¢ stamp, $2.12 of somebody’s work day, 19¢ worth of perforated check stock, a 9¢ envelope and $24.34 of someone else’s much more valuable time – all just to chip your two cents worth into the general discourse.

• Most importantly, recognize that Joe Sixpack revels at turning a blind eye to the multi-billion-dollar ineptitude bankrupting international coffers ... but he’ll spring from his couch ranting at the idiocy of a 74¢ foible he’s got stuck in his craw.

B of A’s 74 pennies were meager redress for a wound already healed ... scarred, but healed nonetheless.  The obsequious proffer of a filching manservant.  A nickel tip in a tin ash tray.  A condescending nod, regurgitating all the inconvenience, aggravation and suspicion.
If what you have to communicate isn’t enough to put a digit to the left of the decimal point, keep it to yourself.  

On the other hand, if you contrive to make it personal, the most trivial of communications can carry a stinging wallop.

Good writing is personal.  Bad writing – no matter how grandiloquent – ain’t worth a buck.
 
Next: PUN-ditry

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God, the Damned

Tomorrow is the birthday of God’s only begotten Son.

Jesus – the Christian incarnation of God – been much abused since the middle of the 20th century, when trippy-hippie philosophers proclaimed him “dead.” Holiday marketers began ripping references to God’s son from the public discourse.  Nativity scenes and Ten Commandment scrolls seem quaintly out of step with today’s politically correct doctrine.

In schools, “God Damn You” is more readily tolerated than “God Bless You.”  A centuries-old doctrine of prayer in the school has been relentlessly trampled by Courts drunk with the new wine pressed from the vineyard of secular righteousness.

When I was in high school, it was fashionable to teach “The Bible as Literature.”  I believed then that the nomenclature was a convenient invention to sidestep an inane Supreme Court decree.

In retrospect, however, reducing the Bible to mere “literature” cheapens it.  Yes, writers of scripture are placed alongside Shakespeare, Flaubert and Dostoevsky – but also tripists like Vonnegut, Baudelaire, Roth, Chaucer, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Koontz and Krantz.

In short, the pedantic proprietors of academe – landed lords of literacy – condemned The Ten Commandments to cohabitation with The Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV, and let the chips fall where they may.

More than 9 of 10 Americans believe in God – mostly in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Writers should avail themselves of the tradition of Christian allusion unabashedly, where appropriate.  To ignore it, while fashionable, ignores a wealth of cultural richness dysobviated by Cultural Correctness.

Next: Your two cents worth

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God Bless Us, Every One!

Charles Dickens was not one to over-capitalize, or to exclaim with an exclamation mark when a simple declaration and a period would suffice.

Yet, in Christmas Carol, he capitalized each separate word of the signature “God Bless Us, Every One!” and added an exclamation point for good measure.  What are we to make of that?

Well, the exception proves the rule ... and the exception emphasizes the new and different element being used.  Dickens understood the emotional impact those five words would have on the Reader, who has witnessed the tale lovingly unfold, like a Christmas treasure from a ream of silver paper and bows.

Pacing. Pitter-patter.  Words that flow across the page in long and sweeping paragraphs ... and then are suddenly adorned by the staccato flourish of a catch-phrase sentence.

Today, nearly two centuries later, most can readily identify Tiny Tim as the speaker of the prayerful affirmation (though they might lack the perspicacity to reckon those who lectured on the mustard seed, the value of a penny saved, or of peace in our time.

Tiny Tim’s exclamation (Dickens actually characterized it as an “observation”) is variously recorded in source materials, though the five-words version – each capitalized, with a comma and exclamation point – seems most authoritative.  But tinkering with the craftsman’s art can leave us far from the mark.

Altering it ever so slightly to “God bless us, everyone” for example, seems to invite a rather mundane and secular blessing – calling for those assembled to take note of the invitation.

“God bless us! Everyone!” sounds like the whole room just sneezed.

The proper “Every One!” places staccato emphasis on you, and you and, most especially YOU, great-uncle Ebeneezer.  Capitalization lends an air of formality – even holiness – which might also be inferred from the application of the word “truly” a few words prior in the Dickens script (the Gospels utilize the phrase “Truly I say to you ...” when Jesus wanted particularly to stress a parabolic subtlety).

In any case, it seems clear that Dickens intended to invoke the authority of the Christian God, having previously interwoven an easily recognizable theme of Christian forgiveness and redemption with four rather pedestrian Pagan “spirits.”

It’s fortunate Dickens’ artistry was spawned in the free-enterprise journals of 19th century England.  Clearly his profanely “spiritual” message would never survive the blue pencils of the NEA-driven dilettantes churning out contemporary manifestoes.

And such is our loss.

Next: God, the damned

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Bah, Humbug!

“Bah!” said Scrooge.  “Humbug!” he added.

And our English-speaking world was never again the same.

Now, the word “humbug,” in and of itself, predates the Dickens Christmas Carol by nearly a century – an archaic exclamation even then ... the callous utterance of a wrinkled curmudgeon graying of hair and spirit alike.

“Humbug” is variously defined as “Rubbish, pretense, deception, or a sham.”  Its documented origin dates to 1751 as student slang for a “trick, jest, hoax, deception ... of unknown origin” ... even referring to a type of British hard candy (though that repugnant name surely negates whatever dulcitude it might possess).

Skulduggery.  Buggered.  Don’t bug me.  Repugnant.  Ugly. Somehow the “u-g” (or “ugh”) construction proves onomatopoetical in most of its varied incarnations.  But that may just be me, bludgeoning you, tough guy, with curmudgeonly sludge.

The sound of a word often enhances its inherent meaning.  Consider how simple rhymes of “power” can mirror the emotion when we speak of “a towering triumph,” for example, a “shower” of gifts, or a “glowering” gaze ... and even “cowering” in a corner seems to carry timidness to a powerful extreme.

You can “plunk” cash on a counter, or plunk away at the keys of a piano – implying a carelessness in dealing with “junk.”  The word “fiery” carries so much more impact that “hot.”  Words like “aloof” and “benign” look and sound like we shouldn’t pay attention.

And I never cared a lick for hicks like “Tricky Dick” and “Slick Willy” – and I could tick off a hundred reasons they made me sick in their day (yet “Nick” is the devil, and “Old St. Nick” the jolliest of elves ... go figure).

Still, I always find it ironic that “onomatopoeia” doesn’t sound like what it means (else rather than describing a word that sounds like its meaning, it would describe a word that not pronounced the way it’s spelled).

Bottom line: Powerful words can add “pop” to a passage of text – a little “zing” to linger on the lips.

Next: God Bless Us, Every One!

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You will be visited by Three Ghosts

A trivia question: How many spirits visited Ebeneezer Scrooge in the Dickens’ classic, Christmas Carol?

Without thinking, most will respond “three!”  Cleave to those who correctly reckon “four,” for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.  Verily, Jacob Marley was the first of four spirits who visited the cowering hermit – telling him to expect three (more) spirits ere the dawn of that Christmas morn.

Christmas Carol is a favorite work of fiction (or of nonfiction, for that matter).  Were ever such characters caricatured, before or after?  “Christmas Eve Scrooge” is the epitome of the Anti-Christ, the antithesis of the Spirit of Christmas.  Likewise, Tiny Tim embodies the innocence of a child seeking something unseen to be believed (a mother’s love, perhaps, or the miracle of Santa Claus.
In my own career as a “ghost writer,” I often have been asked to infuse spirit into the text of greedy and spiritless offerors of products and services as empty and cold as the offices of Scrooge & Marley.

“Please make the writing more stylish and elaborate ... simple and strong,” my taskmaster begs of me.

I may be willing to lay aside, for the moment, the observation that “stylish and elaborate” are pretty much the EXACT opposite of “simple and strong.”  And I may even bite my tongue at applying these kinds of attributes to a box of 3-inch wing nuts or a bank’s mundane offering of “free” checking.

But I am forever doomed it seems – without no prospect of reprieve at the rising of the Christmas Day sun – to grasp at some chain that might bind strong and stylish words to some product or service whose benefits are ethereal, at best.

Yes, the English language is gorgeous, melodic.  The mere rhythm and pace of well-formulated rhetoric can entertain and even hypnotize.

But if rhetoric is to be more than eloquent pomposity, there has to be some there ... THERE!  To write effectively about some commercial product or service, I have to touch, feel, comprehend its essence.  And if there is no there there, it’s a ghost, and no measure of elocution blended into the ghostwriting recipe will save the sales campaign.

Fiction and narrative nonfiction writers are faced with the same dilemma.  You can write about nothing, and the words may ring admirably in the air ... but they won’t ring true.  It is a great exercise to write words simply for their own sway – sound and fury signifying nothing, if you will.

Writers, demand of your employers the substance to ply your craft.  For if you are blessed with the tools of a carpenter, yet have no wood to shape, you are little more than a well-meaning spirit wielding no tool of shape or substance.

In the end, substance, and substance alone, begets great writing.  The exercise of wordsmithing begets sweat.  It is practice.  And while it may even be practice worth committing to, you are left, in the end, with an idiotic voice crying in the wilderness at the silent, fallen tree.

Next: “Bah, Humbug!”

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Back to Basics (Part 8) – Love!

A Writer must have love in his heart, love the craft, love the subject, love the chase for the perfect word, the perfect phrasing, the perfect construction.

If you don’t love to write, give it up.  It’s much too hard, much too taxing, the rewards much too elusive and fleeting.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer recently marked his 25th anniversary as a writer with a column of apologetic self-reflection (see 25 years).  He notes that producing a column three times a week “is like being married to a nymphomaniac – as soon as you’re done, you’ve got to do it again.”

Love has to be your mistress (mister?), with all the intrigue of excitement, guilt, ennui, power and hopelessness inherent in such furtive pursuits.  Writing is at once a secret pleasure and a secret sin – the kiss of an arrogant mistress threatening more to consume than to consummate.

But if you can embrace the mistress in spite of that, writing is easy.  You may not write inspiringly, or even competently … but it is akin to el acto sexual: It cannot be done badly.

The cathartic scrape of pen on paper alone is a productive act of holy – nay, unholy – personality.  The act distinguishes our uniqueness, for no one can ever again communicate any precise thought in the same way, with the same history of personality, occupying the same point in space and time.

Like a loving mate, writing completes us and, in making us whole, simultaneously shreds the fabric of the constituent components.  Blood, coursing through arterial and venous highways, fills the heart, engorges the organ, and fills us with the breath of life; spilled into the gutter, it is the extinguishment of our being through the dark power of evil and death.

The Writer bleeds on the page, whether in blistered anguish or with wrenching glee – whether with words meticulously crafted or divorced from the subjugation to self-discipline – or whether lighting upon any click of the cosmic compass orbiting between the extremes of infinite straight-line continua.

Truly I tell you, the creation of a written masterpiece is like God’s creation of time.  A succession of events move point-to-point in a straight line, yet always circling around to a point of origin as singular and infinite as an atom spiraling into the black hole of universal birth.

And each unique succession of events moves along a parallel orbit to another, and another, and another – smothering us in the entanglements of life.

In a world filled with creation, the expression of our own unique circumstance and perspective contributes, however ponderously, to the whole.  The innocuous, the trivial, the venal, the blasphemous all – all – contribute to the continuum in the same manner and breadth as the pompous, the significant, the inspirational and the pure.

As a moth is drawn to the light, we are inevitably drawn to the latter circumstances: We scorn the innocuous to embrace the pompous and the significant; renounce the vulgar in order to court the inspiring purity of holy verse.  And yet, the enigmatic juxtaposition of good and evil fuels our very being.  Absent the contradiction of black hole and the nova, the universe is less than complete.

Love your writing … love all writing.  Learn what you can, while you can, from the good, the bad and the ugly old hag staring back from the page with lust in her eyes.  And yes, strive to be better … but embrace every act of creation.

Next: You will be visited by Three Ghosts

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

Back to Basics (Part 7) – Practice!

I’ve been writing professionally since Richard Nixon was President.  But I went on holiday for the better part of two decades, and it’s taken me a month to get my mojo back (if indeed I have begun to mojinate) ….

Remember when you were a kid, and you could run barefoot across the fields – all day long, without hardly breaking a sweat?  When you got to the high school track team, you shod yourself with metal spikes and accepted mentoring from some quasi-sadistic math teacher wannabe who forced you to practice block bursts, to practice turn technique and to practice elbow stride until they became second nature.

Today, decades later, parallel elbow stride make jogging sessions a little less taxing.  No longer do you wear shorts (cutoffs or team-clad), having long since abandoned any thought of exposing hairy legs to the elements in favor of comfy gray sweats.  All the practice on the turns makes it a little less likely you’ll slip on a patch of ice on that first Adidas-shod session following proclamation of your New Year’s Resolutions.

The practice of your youth still lends competence and maturity to your stride.  But only the tribulatory practice of a quasi-daily regimen would ever again bring you within spitting distance of a 12-flat hundred or a 5-minute mile.

Writing is a marathon. 

That marathon consists of nightmarish sprints, hurdles, endless challenges of many miles to go before you sleep … all scrumpled in with the 26-mile, 385-yard curse of the courier – sprint to herald the conquest and then you die – a conjugational, convoluted, convocational marathon convulsion of the author’s yearning to be heard.

Practice writing as you would train for a marathon.

Practice writing as if you were straining to avoid embarrassment at a piano recital.

Practice like the next home game pits you one-on-one with LeBron.

Practice because you know you’ll only get one chance, on bended knee, to sway her with the question you mean to pop.

Practice writing as if your livelihood depended upon it – for if writing is in any way involved with your vocation of choice, it does.

Now, despite what NFL gurus and blue-haired piano teachers may try to tell you, let me debunk a myth about “perfect practice.”  Practice alone does make perfect.  The written word morphs to the beat of a devil-went-down-to-Georgia fiddler straddling the high-wire demarcation of the space-time continuum.  Wait for a thought to be “perfect” and it will never meet with the page in this or any alternative universe.

Get it down.  Try it out.  Listen to it.  Think about it.  Parse it.  Cull it.  Tweak it.  Cut it.

But do SOMETHING!  That’s practice.

One more word, parenthetically: A piano teacher used to urge me to practice at the keyboard for an hour a day … and to practice in front of a record player for an hour more, listening to masters performing the same Chopin nocturne I sought to passably reproduce.

Listening is practice, he said, and in that same vein I urge you, dear reader, to listen to orators great and small; read the great writers and their flailing imitators.  Puddle around the internet.  Lurk in chat rooms and boards of every description, pining to hear the fresh turn of a phrase, the newly fashionable word.

On average, True Writers only work half a day – the practicing consumes the other 12 hours.

Next: Back to Basics (Part 8) – Love!

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Back to Basics (Part 6) – Read!

Reading is the consummation of the Writer’s love affair with the written word.

Reading is as intensely intimate as the sexual consummation of love.  A best-selling author repeats this orgasmic sharing of self with millions of total strangers.

Strangers aching for the pleasure to be derived from the printed page.

Strangers whose coin lines the pockets of a Writer who has whored out his innermost sanctuaries.

Strangers who make this rich creation unique to themselves, each filtering it through a lifetime of experiences, prejudices, emotions, actions, inactions, successes, failures and unacknowledged sins.

The art of this Writer – this Lothario, this whore, this genius, this enigmatic dreamweaver – rivals awe inspiring Michaelangelic strokes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel … mirrors the power of the athlete’s churning thighs … fuels the siren-song of the screen actress in her greatest role.

We assume this great art of writing is a super power – the sort of virtuosity reserved for Mozart, Einstein, daVinci, Socrates, Galileo, Curie, Poe, Newton, Goethe, Genghis Khan, Clark Kent or Shakespeare.  But another genius, Thomas Edison, famously preached that diligence, hard work and good fortune are as important as inspiration. 

How many geniuses have squandered immense God-given talent in favor of drink, lust or sloth?  How many relatively inferior minds have created great and lasting works that endure in testament to the sweat of the brow, defying the ravaging winds of history?

Read and learn the lessons of history.  Pore through the great works and the mediocrities.  Try to discern how the process of thought evolved.  Imagine a book unwritten, and the tenacity required to bring it to life.  Step by painstaking step, bits and pieces have fallen onto the page, spiriting themselves into a coherent, compelling, then masterful body of work.

Gaining understanding by deconstructing the masterpiece – THAT is the process of reading.

The best example on the streets right now?  David Benioff’s City of Thieves.  Its plot evolves innocently enough – but quickly proffers layers of subtlety that enfold the reader in the mantle of words spinning from the page.  Slowly, the reader recognizes the tale of a book being written, an author being born.  It is the story of human talent and will being applied to need … with the inevitable emergence of situational genius.

I’ll say no more, save to recommend it for the next session cuddled in front of the fireplace.  And when the page turning reaches Chapter 17, linger awhile to admire the artistry of what is, perhaps, the consummate passage in the literature of the new millennium:

Talent must be a fanatical mistress.  She’s beautiful; when you’re with her, people watch you, they notice.  But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence: your wife, your children, your friends.  She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good.  One night, after she’s been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.

Embrace the mistress. 

Next: Back to Basics (Part 7) – Practice

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

Back to Basics (Part 5) – Speak!

Peggy Noonan is a remarkable Writer – one who brandishes the aural tools of Terse and Verse with quintessential mastery.

She burst onto the scene in the 1980s as President Reagan’s speechwriter.  She sculpted a practice still fashionable major Presidential addresses – notably the State of the Union.  Noonan would script Reagan to acknowledge some ordinary citizen in the gallery, having thematically woven that person’s special experience or even some heroic contribution into the text of the speech.

Noonan also is responsible for probably the third-most-famous passage penned (in my lifetime, at least) by a Presidential speechwriter.  It concluded Reagan’s tribute to brave astronauts in the wake of the catastrophic 1986 Challenger explosion:

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives.  We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

(The most famous?  John Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you … ask what you can do for your country.”  Second?  Reagan again: “Mr. Gorbachev – Tear down this wall!”)

Now, it should be noted that Noonan’s script was adapted from the words of British aviator John Magee, who was killed at the age of 19, shortly after writing this now world-famous poem.  No great writing is truly original; to one extent or another, writers draw on the works and experiences of others.

In the end, the genius of the speechwriter is in writing to the ear.  Would “four-score and seven years ago” have ever escaped the blue pen of a newspaper’s city editor?  Without the speechwriter’s craft, December 7th, 1941 would simply have been “a date which will live in world history” (as it was in the first draft) – wholly lacking in rhythm, tone and urgency.

But now, the date forever is associated with FDR’s unique elocution as “a date which will live in infamy.”  Who, before or since, has ever used the word “infamy” with any effect whatsoever? (and, for that matter, how many speechwriters might have taken the risk, with a lesser orator, to back up the words “in” and  “infamy” on the page?)

Superior speechwriting invokes rhythm.  Its syntax consists of “Terse and Verse” … weaving short bursts of energy and content among a prosaic lullabye of calming poetry.  Speechwriting involves carefully plotted repetition, always scouting for words or concepts that might not be immediately clear to the ear.

Consider a simple example – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s introduction of Daisy in The Great Gatsby.  On the written page, it went like this: 

Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression – then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.  "I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."  She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see.  That was a way she had.  She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker.  (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

Suppose that was to be the passage of a speech.  It might be re-written like this:

When I first met Daisy, she told me she was paralyzed with happiness.  “P-paralyzed” she said.  Laughing.  Charming.  She started to rise, then leaned forward, holding my hand and looking at me with eyes that promised I was the one man in the world she wanted to see.  That was her way.  Her charm.  The balancing girl’s name was Baker, she said.  Said?  No.  No, she murmured.  Murmured in a low, intimate voice that made people lean toward her.

Notice the mechanics: 

• First, the use of the inadvertent stutter to repeat and emphasize the word “paralyzed.” 

• A wholly ordinary sentence of moderate length followed by a three-word burst and two one-word punctuations. 

• Then, a lilting 30-word sentence featuring short, common words – easy to spit out in a single breath – but with a splash of character and content – offering the speaker ample latitude to employ a bit of charm or showmanship with the line. 

• Three terse sentences, then four (three shorts and a long fragment, actually) crafted to explain the important word “murmur” – a word that is hard to enunciate clearly, and one that many people might not be able to define or recognize out of context.

Ever wonder what goes on inside a Writer’s head?  Well, fortunately, much of the nitty-gritty passes in a flash – judged by experience against the exigencies of the moment – without much thought to the specifics of craft.  The rules have long since been learned, memorized and broken (often … and typically with little consideration devoted to the act).

Next: Back to Basics (Part 6) – Read!

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

Back to Basics (Part 4) – Write!

Writing is easy.  So DO IT!

My life has no shortage of regrets.  Laying the personal ones aside for now (and maybe for the next decade or two), my greatest professional regret is drifting away from the discipline of writing every single day.

I was a bit of a child prodigy (a very bit).  I always got “A’s” on book reports, term papers and such. 

The other day, I dug into some old boxes in the basement and found a wealth of materials from those old days – journals, diaries, poems, short stories – all on yellowing paper, most hand-written in fading blue ink.  All were dreadfully dreadful by my current standards.

The problem was, I think, I hadn’t really done a lot of living at that point in my life, so the admonition to “write what you know” predictably resulted in relative drivel.  Yet my high school and college mentors seemed to always feel I was ahead of the curve, and never let me get frustrated. 

In college, I majored in journalism and creative writing, producing hard news, features, fiction, poetry – you name it – virtually every day of my young life. 

When I finished school, I spent 12 years in daily newspaper journalism … but as I gained experience, I predictably became a supervisor, an editor, a manager. I wrote less and less. Eventually, I fled professional journalism entirely, in favor of the more lucrative (I thought) PR and marketing departments of some fairly large organizations.

I became Willie Loman – a salesman without a future … and not much of a past, truth be known.  My “Great American Novel” was not only unpublished, it was largely unwritten.  Life got in the way of writing – and writing was my life.

One month ago today, I cast off those chains.  I created an alter ego – The Fixer – and built a website at www.fixadocument.com.  I started to blog every day – long blogs, because I was too busy to write short ones. 

In the short run, I’ll make enough money to scrape by, writing, editing, blogging, ghostwriting for companies … helping students break down the barriers that poor writing imposes between the great ideas in their heads and the full and complete understanding of their teachers and profs.

In the not-so-short, but still-not-long term, I’ll publish and market a book about writing – I could call it Writing is Easy, but the name’s probably already taken.

Ooohh … just Googled that, and found a cool quote from some guy named Gene Fowler:

“Writing is easy.  You just stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Blood or no blood, writing makes you immortal (though not necessarily famous or rich).  One of these days, I’ll be dead, too.  Hope some young punk finds a reference to my novel, my book … heck, even this lonely little blog … and finds something to keep him going on a blustery Monday morning.

With that comforting thought in mind, I’ll continue to stare each day at a blank page, knowing that even if it’s filled with little more than junk by the end of the day, I can always edit it tomorrow.

If you’re going to be a Writer, you’ve got to write.

Next: Back to Basics (Part 5) – Read!

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

Towers – An interlude

On the evening of the fall of the Twin Towers in NYC, September 11, 2001, I sat down to write – completing the following verses some nine days later.  The final six lines, with heavy religious and patriotic undertones, have at times been published separately.

Towers

With towering fury, the devil let go,
and the walls came a tumblin’ down;
The sun burned red and the sky festered black,
as the air choked the very soul
    with a stifled gasp, a shriek, a sob
    and the stenching inferno foul.

The noble American spirit was there,
in the aerie-topped monuments tall;
But America slept, she was deaf to the call
  ’til satan slapped hard at the wall ...
  ’til satan slapped hard at the wall.

The blow punched a ghastly hole in the wall:
in the smoke satan callously laughed.
    The Innocent blinded
    They wept and They clawed
    through the rubble and chaos of
    hell
    They prayed as the flame
    sucked the air from Their lungs
    and melted the steel in the walls;
    from high up above
    They tumbled and leapt
    to the maw of the hungry mass grave;
    Now buried alive, They wept
    and They clawed
to the waiting arms of their God ...
to the waiting arms of their God.

The temple crashed with pond’rous fury
in the morning’s darkest hour.
With a shaken lip and a teary eye,
the son said “We walk with God.”

I watched him and I thought it odd
Death’s Shadow could make him cower
    (Here where his father had likewise once stood
    with myriad swords, shield and flame;
    to call us to risk a horrible cost
    the devil’s will to tame ...
    The devil’s will to tame.
    With wisdom, restraint and
    much to be lost,
    he drew a line the sand ...
    With sweat and blood risked
    holocaust,
    He drew a line the sand).

Then time unfroze; the son’s eye firmed,
the Shadow coursed his veins with blood;
his grief must wait, tho’ the nation mourn;
his countenance drew morally taut.
With a steely glower the son looked out,
but bridled unsavory power.
Vengeance is His, but justice is ours:
“This act, it shall not stand.”

The Father is cruel, His lesson is harsh,
In our gut He emblazons his brand.
This heinous act, this wound most cruel:
“This act, it shall not stand.”

The son drank the cup with a painful draught
then re-echoed through the land:
“I vow it once again,” he said:
“This act, it shall not stand.”

To the heart of the meek now
may God stretch his hand,
for the cowardly act on these towers.
The world looks to us to replant the flower:
“This act, it shall not stand.”

Retreating again
to the comforting den,
to his harbor of darkness and flame;
satan slept
but was waked
in the night by the din:
    the pealing bells
    the clanging picks
    and roar of cranes and shouts;
still, satan turned to
his naked red bedmate
and hissed as he lovingly sneered:
  “Here once again I am safe now, my friend ...
  Here once again I am safe.”
   
But from deep in the chasm
another hushed voice
whispered ten million times strong.
The devil shuddered as
Ice coursed his veins,
and the voice came again from the Light:
  “No harbor is yours
  ’til your own grave is mined,
   and evil forever is banned.
  This act, simply never will stand, my friend ...
  This act, it shall not stand.”

With fury and vengeance
a mustard seed plant
where fell steel and concrete and soot;
The flower of Freedom will grow once again
in the junkyard at Liberty’s foot ...
in the junkyard at Liberty’s foot.

© 2001, Ed Swartley / Communic-8

Back to Basics (Part 3) – A Tale of Two Sentences

OK.  Reviewing lessons 1 & 2: Keep it simple and write short sentences.

Lesson 3: Put two sentences together (and only two) and your writing usually will look better.

Mark Twain once apologized to a pen pal that he didn’t have time to write a short letter … so he was writing a long one.  Nobody really likes to read long stuff.  War and Peace is more a double-dare challenge than it is a page-turner designed for cuddling up to a fireplace on a stormy night – it’s not even particularly noble literature.  A Tale of Two Cities is a ton better, but I’ll wager less than 1 person in 1,000 has ever actually READ it.  Sure, most people, if put on the spot to quote the opening line of a novel, will spout off “It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times …”  Some significantly fewer in number will be able to expound that it was also “the age of wisdom … foolishness … belief (and) … incredulity.”  Those who can actually reach the far end of Dickens’ 84-word sentence (“we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way”) can likely be counted on my two hands … and maybe a toe or two on a good day.  (Second place, BTW, on the opening-lines challenge: “It was a dark and stormy night.” … but most people don’t believe that’s the start of any for-reals book.)

But I digress.

Raise your hand if you read paragraphs 1, 2 and 4 above.  Skimmed #3, I’ll wager, trying to get to the point.  Just like the Writer, apparently.  The Defense rests …

(However – readership likely would have spiked had I split paragraph 2 into, say, four of them – same 207 words, you understand, same bulk; just less physically imposing.)

Short paragraphs not only address the challenge of the reader’s “will to read,” but they’re easy on readers’ eyes.  Long paragraphs cross the eyes.  Two sentences or fewer, please.

Graphic design gurus preach an optimal width for a line of type of 25 to 50 letters.  The width of the page you’re reading right now is actually a tweak wider, which means its readability might improve slightly if I pushed the type size up by a point or two (not that big a deal on a large computer screen).

Line-width theory involves the ability of the eye to read a line, right to left, and then rebound accurately to lock on the first word of the next line.  Too long, and the eye loses connection; too short and a Ping-Pong game erupts in your eye sockets.

Instructors dictate the parameters of term papers: 12-point, double-spaced, Helvetica font, 1/2-inch margins, etc., etc., etc.  (FYI, sans-serif typefaces like Helvetica, Arial and Verdana are actually poor choices for this kind of wide format.  They lack the little “serifs” – the hooks characteristic of fonts like Times, Courier or Georgia.  If you look at the latter three along a line of text, the sequential serifs create the optical illusion of underlining, which helps keep the eye comfortably on-track.)

But if you control the format of a document, you might want to choose a narrower column (or multiple columns) and/or a larger type size to facilitate easy reading.

Instructors also traditionally dictate paragraph structure: Topic sentence, argument, exposition, exposition, exposition, summary, restatement of the topic sentence, new paragraph.  Wow … one seven sentence paragraph, and you’ve easily got a page covered (with at least four or five paragraphs to go), along with a guarantee that NO ONE will actually read your work – not even el prof-bo, who’s long since deferred to flinging papers across the room and awarding “A’s” to the ones that fly farthest.

You’d think tenured professors see enough gray across the dinner table when the go home in the evening, without soliciting a lot of gray text from students.  Corporate marketers spend big bucks on full-color design and printing, only to muck up the project with a bunch of gray-looking text.  Actually, I'd bet most profs would neither notice nor care if you provided a bunch of two-sentence paragraphs, so long as they were well-researched, full of thought, and to the point.

Use your head.  Use narrow columns, big type, headlines, photos, logos, subheads, pullout quotes … whatEVER.  But take a cue from the old shampoo commercial and wash that gray right out of your hair … or your written document, as the case may be.

Next: Back to Basics (Part 4) – Write!

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

Back to Basics (Part 2) – 25 Words

Here is something to think about: Write short sentences.  This helps avoid confusion for the reader.  Limit each sentence to one single thought.  Insert a period.  Start your next thought off fresh, with a new sentence.  It helps the reader understand better. 

To illustrate, compare the six-sentence paragraph above to the sentence below:

One thing to think about is writing short sentences, limiting each sentence to one single thought, helping avoid confusion for the reader, who will understand better if you insert a period after each thought and start the next thought off fresh, with a new sentence.

The two passages are almost identical, but the first is much easier to follow.  Admittedly, the first paragraph is also a little choppy and unnatural, but if you practice writing short sentences, your “ear” will tell you when mixing in a longer sentence “sounds right.”  In fact, your writing gains a pleasing “rhythm” if you vary short and long sentences – like Morse code … maybe two longs and a short, a long, a short, a long and three shorts.

As a rookie reporter, my editor demanded that the first paragraph, or “lead,” of any story not exceed 25 words.  In fact, he wisely limited paragraphs to two sentences.  (As a practical matter, newspaper type is set in narrow columns – a couple inches wide, at most.  Lengthy paragraphs looked gray and daunting without the visual relief of a paragraph-starting indentation.)

Think of it another way: 25 words is about as much as a speaker can utter without stopping for a breath.  Do the guy a favor: Serve up a “period” to time his every gasp.

Or, 25 words is about as much as any reader can hold in his pea-brain at any one time.  Write longer, and he’ll have to retrace your words to follow along.

A lot can be communicated in only a few words.

About two hours after JFK was shot in 1963, for example, the Associated Press confirmed his death with a stunningly terse “FLASH” alert:

President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. CST.

Moments later, a “BULLETIN” followed – exactly 25 words, depending on how you count compound adjectives:

President John Kennedy, thirty-sixth president of the United States, was shot to death today by a hidden assassin armed with a high-powered rifle.

Books have been written on the subject of the Kennedy assassination.  The comprehensive Warren Commission report, not published until the following year, covers 888 pages, and is supplemented by 26 supporting volumes.

Yet first news – history in a hurry – came over the AP teletype mere minutes after shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.  They were written under deadline pressure, with a world breathlessly awaiting word – long before the carefully confirmed “FLASH” and precision-crafted “BULLETIN” … even before the President died, before the most basic facts had been confirmed. 

In the mellowing light of historical perspective, that very first teletype may be the most poignant 27 words ever penned:

President Kennedy was shot today as his motorcade left downtown Dallas.  Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy.  She cried, "Oh, no!''  The motorcade sped on.

Still think you’ve got a thought worth more than 25 words?

Next: Back to Basics (Part 3) – Two sentences

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

Back to Basics (Part 1) – KISS

KISS … an all-American acronym for Keep it Simple, Stupid. 

American culture is full of examples of the KISS concept: President Truman kept a sign on his desk that read “The Buck Stops Here” to remind himself (and Oval Office visitors alike) that he alone held THE ultimate say-so.

In practice, that covered everything from complex decisions regarding the military-industrial complex, to the matter of choosing a route for his morning walk.  When push came to shove, those four words – The Buck Stops Here – spoke volumes. 

President Clinton had a similar sign.  The words “It’s the Economy, Stupid” reminded him that, whatever issues he might face, if voters didn’t have jobs or rent money, then HE was likely to be out of a job soon himself. 

Traffic signs generally consist of one or two words: “Stop” or “Railroad Crossing.”  We’re too busy driving to absorb more.  Experience dictates action when we see these simple signs – no need for the Highway Department to ramble on. 

Photographers recognize the importance of isolating a subject from the background.  Ham radio operators constantly fiddle with their frequency dials to eliminate static and clutter.  The recipe for “Aunt Tillie’s Crock Pot Chili” calls for a pinch of salt and a dash of Oregano … to invoke more precision would take the joy out of cooking. 

Eliminate the unnecessary.  KISS. 

Writers should remind themselves of the elegance of simplicity.  Don’t use a five-dollar word when a 50-cent special will do.  Speak your mind, but limit your thoughts to one idea per sentence.

Read your written word aloud – to yourself, first, just to see whether your tongue gets tangled along the way (if so, edit and revise), and then to a friend, family member or colleague.  Pretty soon, you’ll find the ears on the side of your head gradually giving way to the “ears” inside your head … and you’re editing those tongue twisters before they ever hit the page. 

When it all comes out in the wash, a writer plagued with Writer’s Block is no different than a baseball slugger in a hitting slump.  Nothing is more confounding to Albert Pujols than having coaches “tweak” his stance, or suggest he drop his wrists a bit and cut down on his stride.  Later, Phat Albert might be signing autographs, only to be plagued by “helpful” fans suggesting a less open stance, more sleep, an energy drink, a margarita ….

But in the end, El Hombre’s slump is likely to end when he clears his mind of all the garbage … and just swings naturally.  No conscious thought.  No contrivance.  Just instinct and reaction. 

Be a Writer.  Do the same.  Kisses to all … 

Next: Back to Basics (Part 2) – 25 Words

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

Back to Basics – Intro

Writing is easy.

But try blogging – five, six days a week, 500 words or so at a throw – and you find out what Honest Abe meant when he said you can’t please any of the people none of the time … or some such thing (I’m sure a good editor cleaned up his rough draft before the quote hit Bartlett’s).

Writing is hard work.  It’s inconvenient.  It’s easy to postpone. 

Poke around the blogosphere and see how many bloggers post one entry … and disappear.  A relative few get past the first three or four.  It is rare, indeed, to find a daily-active blog, rich with content, alive with the spirit that brings you back – as the followers of Thackeray, Dickens or Eliot might have breathlessly awaited each published episode.

As kids of the Great Depression plunked hard-to-come-by nickels under the Flash Gordon marquee.

As Watergate co-conspirators jerked awake when the Washington Post slapped onto the porch full of the latest revelations of Messrs. Woodward & Bernstein.

To date, “Fix Your Writing” has been two parts coaching, three parts philosophy and four parts specimens of memorable writing.  That’s nine parts, and many of you, Dear Readers, have characterized a tenth part – if not the entire effort – as more specimen than memoria.

Perhaps it is time to return to the basics.

Yesterday, I met a man whose 60-something mother is embarking on an adventure … a quest for long-yearned-for college degree.  Intelligent, intuitive, the major obstacle (now that said son and siblings have vacated the premises) is a set of writing skills that have atrophied over several decades of disuse.

Like millions of us, she needs a little help with her writing – someone to look over an essay, book report, term paper … whatever.  Someone to nosy through pages of text, and make sure her words are as clearly understood as a mother addressing her child by all three names.

For some, a critique of one’s writing is daunting – potentially humiliating.  But all of us should be lucky enough to approach a critical challenge with the mindset of this venerable woman.  She’s a mother.  After decades of romping through the forest of Motherhood, bouncing off the tree trunks and cursing to the squirrels, what could possibly seem embarrassing?  Challenging?  Novel or unique?

In her honor, let’s tackle eight basic lessons over the next two weeks – lessons every student should master.  And since all of us are students of one discipline or another, the advice applies to first-graders, high-schoolers, Freshman English enrollees, interns, managers, CEOs and retirees:

• KISS

• 25 words

• Two sentences

• Write

• Speak

• Read

• Practice

• Love

Grandma (you’ve earned that title and, I’m confident, cherish it dearly) … I know you’ll make this.  After all, if the big fella’s boarding-house reach across the Thanksgiving table every November hasn’t pounded your spirit into submission, what’s going to stop you?

Next: Back to Basics – Part 1

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