Week #24 Chip on Your Shoulder: Lessons on the Writing Craft
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Tokyo Steam Railway 1879/Utagawa Kuniteru
WRITERS SPEAK
"Talent is cheap. What matters is discipline."
-Andre Dubus II
CRAFT LESSON: The value of keeping it simple
William of Occam was a 14th-century philosopher, monk, and — few people realize — police reporter for the Occam News. (Okay, I made that last one up.)
He is remembered as the father of the medieval principle of parsimony, or economy, that advises anyone confronted with multiple explanations or models of a phenomenon to choose the simplest explanation first. Why Occam's Razor? Because scientists use it every day or because it cuts through the fog of confusion are two explanations I've come across.
"If you hear hooves, think horses," is one way to understand the principle. Or put another way, Keep it Simple, Stupid. K.I.S.S.
I didn't know it at the time, but my introduction to Occam's Razor came in my early 20s, when I was working for a crummy little newspaper and dreaming about becoming a writer, but doing more dreaming than writing,
A friend introduced me to a published writer. I asked her how I could become one, too.
First, she said, you have to read all the time. Read everything — books, stories, newspapers, magazines. Everything. Read. Read. Read.
Okay, I nodded. What else?
You have to write, she said. All the time. Every day. Write. Write. Write.
I leaned forward expectantly, waiting to hear the rest of her advice.
That's it, she said.
"Thanks a lot," I remember thinking. "For nothing."
I didn't realize it at the time, but she was right. If you want to be a writer, you have to read all the time and write all the time. It's as simple as that.
Being a callow youth, I couldn't accept it. There had to be more to it than that. Some magic formula.
But there really isn't.
Want to write a story? Sit down and start writing. And then start revising.
Want to get published? Submit that story to a magazine or a literary journal. After more than a year of drafting, multiple revisions and savvy help from writer friends, I finally shipped my short story "Comma" off to a dozen of them the other day. Fingers crossed.
Write a novel or a screenplay. There's no guarantee you will succeed, although it's a safe bet that if you never try you won't make it either. It's that simple, and difficult, but well worth the challenge.
What many writers I have met over the years seem to want, and need, permission.
Can I do this?, they ask. Can you do that? Is it okay to...?
My answer is always, yes. Yes, you can. It may suck, you may fail, you may get rejected, but the only way you'll ever find out is by trying.
Want to write well? Follow George Orwell's six rules from his essay "Politics and the English Language."
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Heed the classic prescriptions of "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. A sampling:
Make every word tell.
Omit necessary words.
Use parallel constructions on concepts that are parallel.
Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.
Use definite, specific language
And finally the simple advice I try to follow for compelling writing.
Use short words.
Short paragraphs.
Short sentences, but don't be afraid to vary length for pacing and style.
Go on a "to be" hunt,' striking out passive instances of "is, was, were." Replace with action verbs.
Search "ly" for unnecessary adverbs.
Trim bloated quotes.
Spell check. Cliche check.
Read aloud.
Research. Revise. Rewrite.
Looking back, I wish that writer had been more specific with her advice. Constant reading and writing are critical to becoming a writer, but there is so much more to becoming a published writer. Years of work.
Like her counsel, some of this advice is obvious. But there's a reason that scientists and other investigators continue to cite Occam's Razor, more than 600 years after his death. It's that simple.
INTERVIEW: Where Words Sit: Four Questions with Michael Kruse
The most striking part of my interview with Michael Kruse had to do with confidence and the role experience plays in fostering it.
Kruse has been a journalist for twenty years. His career is distinguished by prize-winning narratives for the Tampa Bay Times and incisive longform profiles for his current employer, Politico and Politico Magazine. where he is a senior staff writer covering, as he puts it, "the president and the people who want to be president next."
Even with two decades of professional experience, Kruse says, "it isn't getting any easier. The better I get the harder it takes."
He copes by trying "as hard as I can to be better than I actually am."
The most important lesson he's learned: "Writing is structuring," he told me. "The right structure lets words work. Words work not because of how they sound but because of where they sit."
The best piece of writing advice Kruse ever received came from a long list of admirable colleagues, past and present: "Report, report, report, to earn the right to take charge, to make choices, to run a rope from post to post, stretched taut, taking and using what serves the story and moves it forward, from beginning to middle to end, while unsentimentally leaving behind what does not."
Steam Locomotive in Tokyo 1872/Utagawa Kuniteru
TIP OF THE WEEK
Don't be afraid to admit your ignorance.
Journalism is a lifetime of continuing education. People often say reporters are superficial, uninformed or downright ignorant. In some, but not all cases, they're right. But critics don't understand how hard tthe job of reporting is; that on any given day, you may be thrust into a subject you know nothing about and be expected to produce a concise, clear and accurate story on an impossible deadline. That's why having basic information about how society operates is so critical. You need at least a rudimentary understanding of how things work, whether it's the difference between an arrest and an indictment or how a bill becomes a law. The only way you're going to get to this point is by studying, by asking questions, by keeping your eyes and ears open, by being curious, by being humble enough to admit you don't know. People may criticize you for not knowing something, but they can't knock you for trying to learn and wanting to get smarter.
BOOKBAG: Crime fiction hot and cold
If you're a fan of crime fiction and you haven't read Carl Hiaasen, you've been missing out on some of the quirkiest, funny and suspenseful thrillers written by an American working in the genre. Hiaasen has been likened to "Elmore Leonard on nitrous oxide" and a combination of the "scrutiny of Tom Wolfe and the twisted imagination of Hunter S. Thompson."
Hiaasen's 20 novels, including six for younger audiences, are set in South Florida. a steamy, venal locale where, as one of his detectives says, "every pillhead fugitive felon winds up eventually." (As someone who lives in the Sunshine State, I can attest it sometimes feels that way.) Book editor Neil Nyer gives a close reading of the "wild, corrupt and uproarious" Hiaasen oeuvre in all its perverse glory. A special bonus: an excerpt from "Squeeze," Hiaasen's latest, due out in September, with a note from the author who says it's just a coincidence that the main character is a "volatile, cheeseburger-loving president who has a winter home in Palm Beach."
A wider range of crime thrillers makes up this rundown by Lit Hub's Greg Bastianelli, who focuses on a seasonal theme: winter. From classics like "Smilla's Sense of Snow" to the recent "No Exit" which has all the ingredients of a nail-biter—a blizzard, a remote rest stop, a group of strangers and a psychopath—the list proves that there's nothing more chilling or readable than stories set in remote locations where characters must battle the elements as well as evil.
Steam Locomotive Running on the Takanawa Railway, Tokyo 1873/Utagawa Kuniteru
CHIP IN YOUR EAR
"Is it a crime?"/Sade
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