My friends, Stephanie and Jen, have been part of a series of blog posts on writing and have asked me to join them. I started this post back when Jen asked me, and then put it off to think about it for a few days. Imagine my surprise when I went back to finish the post and discovered three weeks had gone by. So, just to review, here's a quick summary of each of their three tips for good writing:


Steph: Be stylish, be fearless, be inspired.

Jen: Writing does not start when you sit down at the keyboard; learn to love the red ink; don't be afraid to try something new.

To be perfectly honest, I'm struggling a little to come up with three of my own. Steph and Jen have covered a lot of ground with their tips, and there are only so many things you can teach about composition, before the student just has to sit down at a table or computer and start writing for herself.

One thing, however, that I have to continually remind myself about writing is that it takes time. There aren't any shortcuts. On rare, rare occasions, the words just pour out beautifully when I sit down to write something, but the vast majority of the time I have to sit and think, and type a little, think some more, go back and erase the first thing, type something new, sit and think awhile longer and so on, until I have page or two I like. Which is part of the reason I had so many more great posts for my blog back in grad school--I had nothing but time. I'm finding it much harder to fit in time to stare at a computer screen now that I'm working ten or twelve hours a day.

For my second tip, I'm going to rely on a quote by Hart Crane: "One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right words form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." It's a cliche that writers must be readers, but I think to be a good writer, you have to really appreciate the resonances of words--the way they feel on your tongue, the associations they connote, the sound of them in the sentence, their rhythm and momentum. When you read a brilliant writer, you feel that each word is inevitable, that what they have written could be said no other way, that to paraphrase them would be impossible.

It follows, then, that good writing is intentional. When you dash off an email to a friend or write an interdepartmental memo, whatever phrases come to mind first are probably good enough to leave on the page. But for crafted writing, each word has a purpose--or, ideally, several purposes. I tell my students that it is their job to lead the reader where they want him to go. Topic sentences, transitions, figurative language, even the grammatical construction of your sentences communicate to the reader in multiple ways--likely in more ways than you intend. It's your job as the writer to make the endless layers of conscious and unconscious communication work for you.

(Incidentally, that's one reason why grammatical errors are so irksome to me. The offending writer, in a show of embarrassed bravado, argues, oh, everyone knew what I meant, and she's right. The reader can figure out what she meant, in spite of the error. But in requiring of the reader that mental pause for comprehension, however brief, she has distracted him from her message and thus weakened it. What's more, she has introduced doubt in her reader's mind of her reliability: she must be either ignorant or careless, so her message is that much less trustworthy. Plus, occasionally, it might subject you to ridicule. Example: I was walking past a farm on our road this afternoon, and I came across a sign written, "Kid's due in March. Milk available, etc." What? I thought. Someone's expecting a baby? And what's this about milk? It took me about five seconds to realize that the sign should have said "Kids due..." without the apostrophe. The owners are anticipating baby goats to be born next month. I laughed all the way back to my house. Apostrophe misuse strikes again. --I will concede, by the way, that grammar rules can be intentionally broken to striking effect. But again, the key is intention.)

So, having said all that, you can understand, can't you, that I don't yet have the story of my little trip all written up for you yet? (Hmm, if only I could make "Good writers ignore deadlines" sound convincing as a tip... oh well.) I will give a few more hints, however... there was sun; there were daiquiris; there were beads!

Labels: writing

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Wednesday, February 06, 2008