Chip's Writing Lesson #51
IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Ann Patchett on separating writing from editing
Interview | 4 Questions with Glenn Stout
Craft Lesson | Getting it Right: a passion for accuracy
Writing to Savor | “Her Time” by Katie Engelhart, California Sunday Magazine
Tip of the Week | Steer clear of “Tom Swifties”
WRITERS SPEAK
“Writing must be separate from editing, and if you try to do both at the same time nothing will get done.”
— Ann Patchett
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH GLENN STOUT
Glenn Stout
Glenn Stout began freelancing in 1986 and became a full-time writer in 1993. The only series editor of The Best American Sports Writing over its 30-year existence, he is the author, editor or ghostwriter of 100 books. His titles include Young Woman and the Sea: How Gertrude Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Changed the World, now in development as a motion picture for Disney+, and, most recently, the upcoming Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s Original Gangster Couple. A citizen of the U.S. and Canada, he grew up in Ohio, studied poetry at Bard College, and worked as a librarian at the Boston Public Library before turning to writing. He now lives in Vermont, where he writes and serves as consultant and freelance editor on book proposals, manuscripts and long-form features.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
To learn how I write, not just word by word, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, but also to learn the process that works for me both before and after the words first go on the page. I think when we begin to write we often sabotage ourselves through comparison with others. We all want to write like writers we admire, but discover we don’t sound that way. Then we learn that writer “A” hews to a strict schedule and writes a thousand words a day…and some days we write and some days we don’t. We learn that writer “B” meticulously takes notes on index cards…while we scrawl in notebooks and create vast piles of pages of reporting. We learn writer “C” creates grand sculptural dioramas of every story in advance of writing it…while we an outline that could fit on the palm of our hand.
It’s easy to look at our own words and methods and feel diminished, lesser than. But instead of beating ourselves up by comparison, better instead to learn to recognize those first few snippets that sound like ourselves and build from that, and find the methods that best work for ourselves. Not that we don’t learn from others; we do, but the lesson is that while there is no single best way to write, there are many ways, and each of us has to discover the way that best works for us.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
Realizing that stories are the way be connect with others, that they are the basis of communication and connection. For a long time I don’t think I was aware of this, but when I began working with other writers it suddenly became clear and I finally understood why I do what I do.
You may meet a stranger and exchange small talk, but at some point you start sharing stories with one another, and when you do that you begin to find a part of yourself in the story of another. That is how we connect, and why we connect, and that’s why we do this. Because, let’s face it, none of this, really, makes sense in terms of making a living. Writing can be isolating, it doesn’t always pay well, if at all, and most of what we do only speaks to a limited audience. It’s hard to make a living this way. If you look at it logically, there are thousands of reasons not to be a writer. Yet people do it all the time. And I think the reason for that is because we’re put on the planet to connect with others, and the only way we know how to do that is through the stories we share.
If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be and why?
I always say I’m a laborer. When I was younger I was fortunate enough to work several years in construction, first as laborer, then form carpenter and foreman, working in concrete and steel. That experience taught me as much about writing as any workshop or conference I’ve ever attended. I learned that you can begin with a complete empty slate, a roughly graded empty lot, but that by dint of labor, showing up each day, staying at it, focusing on the job right in front of you, that six months or a year later, well goddamn, there’s a building. And then you can do it again. It’s the same way writing a story, or a book. You stay in the chair long enough, do the next task, and there it is. Writing is done in increments, one after the other. The result can be art, but the execution is mostly labor and effort, and that, in the end, is all you can control, if you show up every day.
What’s the single best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
Listen to written words spoken aloud. My early background in writing was almost entirely in the writing and study of poetry, and I learned that sound is just about everything, that it is the sound of the words, as much as what they mean, that distinguishes writing. I believe that a work can be accurate and correct in every way, but if it lacks sound and rhythm and pace, I don’t think it sticks in our brains, the impact is blunted. Then we don’t occupy the work, it remains at arms’ length and we don’t experience and inhabit the story, and I think that is the goal: to be immersed in a story so that when it ends we are somehow changed in ways large or small. I think sound is the key to that experience, where no part of the work pushes us away, or disrupts the experience. I’m not saying we read aloud always, but that by reading aloud we learn to hear, and by learning to hear we can also learn to write so others listen and hear us.
CRAFT LESSON | GETTING IT RIGHT: A PASSION FOR ACCURACY
Have you ever been on the receiving end of journalism: the subject of, or even just a mention in, a news story? Perhaps it was about a friend or relative. Or an obituary of a family member. Did they get it right? Ask readers, reporters and editors this question and you’ll hear a catalog of misspelled names, mangled quotes, factual errors. My father’s obit misspelled my sister’s name. Surveys have shown that the public expects the news media to be accurate, even though people are less confident than they used to be that news organizations get the facts right. That’s why getting it right must be a mindset—a passion for accuracy.
Everyone makes mistakes. No one is perfect, but journalists and other writers must take great care to get it right. Otherwise, they lose their greatest asset: credibility. Accuracy is the goal; fact-checking is the process. After tracking errors in The Oregonian of Portland, editors concluded that the three most frequent sources of error are:
Working from memory.
Making assumptions.
Dealing with second-hand sources.
The way to achieve accuracy is to develop a system and adhere to it religiously, former Oregonian editor Michele McLellan found in her research. One of my favorite resources remains “44 Tips for Greater Accuracy,” created by Frank E. Fee. Jr., the former Knight Professor of Editing at Ohio University. Aimed at copy editors, Fee’s tips are an invaluable checklist for writers as well. For me, the most important one is “Never assume anything,” followed by “Don’t be too busy or too proud to check a fact.”
If you’re having an accuracy problem, pay attention to three fault lines as you go about your job:
DURING THE REPORTING, take the extra seconds to read back the spelling of the source’s name. Ask for the person’s age. If you ask for birthdate and year, you’ll always have the information needed to update it. Some writers ask sources to write down their names in their reporter’s notebook.
DURING THE WRITING, consult your documentary sources—notebook, printed materials, audio recordings and transcripts. If you don’t want to interrupt the writing flow, make sure to put a mark reminding you to double-check it later. “CK” for “check” is the standard proofreader’s mark. “CQ” is shorthand for “this has been checked for accuracy”; it is often used with unusual spellings, facts and figures. It alerts copy editors that you’ve done your job. Of course, they should double-check nonetheless.
AFTER THE WRITING, assemble all your source materials—notebooks, interview transcripts, tapes, books, studies, photographs—everything you’ve used to report and write your story. Then go over every single word in the story and compare it to the original source. That’s the approach that Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative writer Tom French took. At the St. Petersburg Times, where we worked together, I watched in awe how, despite the length of his serial narratives, he put a check mark over every word to show that he’d linked it to a source. Sure it’s time-consuming, but you can sleep a little easier and increase your chances of dodging a libel suit. Even on daily stories with very tight deadIines, you can manage your time—setting a deadline 15 minutes before the story is due—to make one printout just for names and titles, another for quotes, a third for other factual details. An eminently helpful aid, as I wrote in an earlier post, is your computer’s text-to-speech ability to read your story aloud. Reading while listening usually flags flaws that eluded you.
Don’t be afraid to call your sources back and double-check. If you’re describing a financial transaction, a medical procedure or how a sewer bond works, there’s nothing wrong with calling an expert and asking her to listen to what you’ve written. Your obligation is to be clear and accurate.
Listen to the voice in your head. Whenever I made a mistake in a story, I could always go back to a moment where it happened. It was almost as if a tiny bell was ringing a faint warning that I ignored. Usually, it was an assumption I made or a question I failed to address. There is a moment of truth in writing where you can take either the accurate path or the inaccurate one.
I was obsessive about it, but in 22 years as a reporter, I wrote stories that had corrections appended only about a half-dozen times. That doesn’t mean all my other stories were error-free; they just went unnoticed, I imagine.
Errors are the bane of journalists. As a rookie reporter, I used to keep my corrections in my top desk drawer; Painful as it was, I wanted their presence to remind me to get things right. Reporters who start their careers working for small-town papers, as I did, learn an unforgettable lesson about accuracy when they make a mistake in an obituary and hear from the deceased’s survivors.
Some magazines employ fact-checkers. They verify facts, names, titles, ages, addresses and quotations in the story. Other writers I know rely on friends and family to keep them out of trouble. (Thanks, Casey and Jeff!)
Despite our best efforts, some mistakes have slipped through the cracks. A case in point: “In This Issue” of Chip’s Writing Lessons #49 had two formatting errors: the wrong headline for the tip of the week and a headline for a “Writing to Savor” that didn’t appear later in the newsletter. I regret any confusion this caused.
I try to remember that Appalachian quilt makers put mistakes in their work because, they say, the devil loves perfection. But the careful, responsible writer always tries hard to get it right, even if they don’t always succeed.
WRITING TO SAVOR | “HER TIME” BY KATIE ENGELHART, CALIFORNIA SUNDAY MAGAZINE
Debra said that if she were a dog, someone would have put her down long ago. She had euthanized sick dogs before, dogs she loved, and even as a child had understood the act to be merciful. “I thought, Wow, this is such a wonderful thing, that I am able to ease the suffering and pain of my beloved.” When Debra watched her grandmother die, she wished “there was something we could do for humans.”
Sometimes the question was if. Usually, though, it was when. Debra said that she would kill herself before she lost herself completely. She would wait for as long as she could because she did not want to die, but she wouldn’t wait too long. “I have to be cognizant in order to do it,” she told me. Brian would show her how to do it, but he couldn’t help. “No one can help me because that’s murder. I have to do this on my own, so I have to go at a time when I still feel I know what I’m doing.” For the moment, there were still good days and bad days—soon, though, a bad day would stay a bad day, and then she would vanish.”
This is drawn from “Her Time,” a riveting story about a 65-year-old Oregon woman with dementia who is determined to end her life, but is kept by state law from doing so. I had the chance to interview author Katie Engelhart and produce an annotation of the narrative for Nieman Storyboard. The analysis takes readers behind the story of this absorbing, disturbing excerpt from Engelhart’s new book, “The Inevitable: Dispatches from the Right to Die.” The graying of America has left millions of older Americans suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and chronic physical and mental illnesses and looking for a way to die on their own terms, but barred by the traditional settings of hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes controlled by lawmakers and medical professionals. It’s a compelling, gracefully written and essential read.
TIP OF THE WEEK | STEER CLEAR OF “TOM SWIFTIES”
One of the clearest signs of an amateur writer is one who uses speaker attribution that echoes the dialogue. “My leg hurts,” he groaned. “You’re the best,” she beamed. “That’s funny,” he chuckled. The most flagrant abuses of this principle are “Tom Swifties “ named after the hero of a long-running series of juvenile science fiction and adventure novels famous (or infamous) for their punning attribution.
I’d like to stop by the mausoleum,” Tom said cryptically.
“Pass me the shellfish,” said Tom crabbily.
“We just struck oil!” Tom gushed.
“I have no flowers,” Tom said lackadaisically.
“I forgot what I needed at the store,” Tom said listlessly.
There’s no need for attribution to convey meaning already contained in dialogue. And it’s best to keep speaker attribution, also known as a dialogue tag, simply, to “said,” Renni Browne and Dave King maintain in “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself into Print.” That way you don’t draw the reader’s attention from what the speaker is saying. Verbs, they say, other than “said” jump out at the reader, making them aware, if only for a second, of the mechanics of writing. "Think of “said” more like a punctuation mark than a verb, and thus, graceful and elegant.”
A bonus tip: Give the reader a natural break by splitting dialogue with attribution.
“He had to go out of town,” Suzanne said. “Spur of the moment business trip.”
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Nulla dies sine linea / Never a day without a line
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