Just right - it doesn't have to be

The first thing my inner teacher taught me about writing was that if I wanted to be a writer I had to write. In the early stages I found this very difficult. Like every blank canvas is a potential masterpiece, every blank sheet of paper, or new blank document on my word processor, has the potential to be brilliant … until that first mark. 

Inner doubts lurk in our minds. Tiny voices whisper:

What if I am not good enough?

What if I have nothing to say? 

The thing is, when it comes to writing, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you write.

After writing comes refinement. After writing that first draft you can think about your choice of vocabulary, your sentence constructions, the narrative voice you use, the characters, the world they inhabit and all those other important things.

But if you don’t write, if you wait until everything is perfect before you make a mark, you will never start. 

So ignore the voices in your head, and write. Resist the temptation to read another book on writing (if you’re like me you have shelves of these). Ignore the housework, or the gardening. It doesn’t matter what you write; it doesn’t matter how good, bad or indifferent it is. Once you’ve got it down you can come back to it and improve it, or throw it out. The important thing is that to be a writer, you have to write.

Why I write ...

Margaret Atwood, in the introduction to her delightful book about writing, Negotiating with the Dead, wrote about the feeling of “finding yourself in a great library as a young writer, and gazing around at the thousands of books in it, and wondering if you really have anything of value to add.”

I write for other people. I write what they need or want me to write. They tell me what it is they want written – and this sometimes makes life a little easier. I don’t have to think up amazing topics or profound insights. And I love writing so this is all quite fun.

But I do often wonder if deep within me there is something “of value to add”. I’m not talking about an extraordinary, unexpected addition to scholarship. What I would really like to achieve is the ability to write just one or two phrases that stick in people’s minds – phrases that they quote at dinner with friends because they express so perfectly an idea they wish to convey. They won’t need to find the words because they have mine.

Of course, there are other things I want to achieve with my writing. I want to make a good living. I want to have time to explore new ideas and find ways to communicate them. I even want to one day dream up a fascinating plot for a novel.

Meanwhile, I will keep writing what others want me to write. And put my occasional thoughts on writing into this blog.

The dictionary is your friend

Or if it isn’t, it should be.

Why do you read and write? The power of our language is that it can take us anywhere. It can create emotions, show us places we’ve never seen, allow us into the minds of strangers –real or fictional. It allows us to communicate with each other with varying degrees of sophistication and effectiveness. And along with all this, language is fun.

I love dictionaries. The English language is incredibly rich. It includes hundreds of thousands of words (how many exactly is a difficult question, but there are definitely a lot).

This means that there is a word for just about everything. And for many things there are words and words and words. 

It is a gift to have the opportunity to explore this rich vocabulary and learn new words. There are times when I read deliberately to learn new words, but sometimes I don’t want to face the risk of not finding words I don’t know. I want a guarantee that something new is going to seep into my brain.

This is when it’s time to get lost. You know that wonderful feeling when you’re in an unknown city or town and you just wander to see what you can see. That’s what I like to do with words. I like to get lost inside my trusty hardcopy dictionaries, or delve into one online, or range around the dictionary on my Kindle. I can spend hours lost in a dictionary of synonyms.

The words you use and the way you use them is what makes your writing unique. The way you as a writer put words into the mouths of your characters is what differentiates them and gives them life. They are an essential tool of your trade. Put aside some time to get lost – I’m sure you won’t regret it.

And if you find any really great words you think others will love, please leave them in a comment …

Quotes

Today I want to talk about using quotes. First, an admission. I don’t have anything original to say on the topic.

Why use quotes?

In the words of Joe Glaser in Understanding Style, “At times the best words you can use are someone else’s.” Paul LaRocque in The Concise Guide to Copy Editing states, “Quotations add life, authority and veracity to a story …”

How long should they be?

LaRocque’s advice to editors is to not be “slaves to the quoted word. Paraphrase when necessary. Cut when necessary.” If you’re quoting someone you’ve interviewed, put yourself in the position of your reader. Would you want to read every word they said. Thing is, when we speak we use a lot of redundancy. We say things over and over again. Repeatedly. It’s not nice to read, is it? So be ruthless. Cut.

Very Important Thing to Remember

Attribute the quote. Don’t pretend the words are yours if they are not. In most writing it is enough to use the name of the person who wrote or said the words. Glaser says, “Include the title of the piece if you think it will be useful to the reader.” He also states that in academia and research there are more rigorous requirements which you must follow.

An otherwise dull piece of work can be enlivened by quotes. They change the pace. They add another voice, and thus add interest. They can also lead the reader to discover new insights when they follow up on the source of a quote. 

Useful things really.

The Power of Numbers

I love writing, and almost as much as I love writing I love reading about writing. This morning, as I was easing into my day, I decided to dip into one of my favourite books on writing and rediscovered something I’d forgotten – a short section entitled “Choose the number of elements with a purpose in mind”. Roy Peter Clark claims that the number of elements we choose sends a subliminal message. 

Here’s a quick summary:

One:    “That girl is smart.” The reader focuses on that particular quality and no other. Clark suggests writers should use one for ‘power’.

Two:   “That girl is smart and sweet.” The reader now has to balance two characteristics. Use two when you want the reader to contrast and compare.

Three: “That girl is smart, sweet, and determined.” Three sends a message of wholeness, completeness. 

Four:   “That girl is smart, sweet, determined, and neurotic.” Four or more is when we want to “list, inventory, compile, and expand”. Four or more creates a flow, a ‘literary effect’.

So next time you’re writing, try making a deliberate choice about how many elements you include, rather than just letting the words run rampant on the page. Make a conscious decision about number. Play with it. Try different alternatives and discover the effects for yourself so that your reader can discover them later.

To illustrate his point, Clark includes some fantastic examples in his book; I encourage you to take a look. My favourite is the example he gives from Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem:

Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I’m a carnival barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster. I’ve got Tourette’s.

Musings about Editing

Most of us make errors when we write. That’s what drafts are for. Australian author Peter Carey reportedly wrote twelve drafts of his novel The Tax Inspector. Some people do a series of edits, each focusing on a different aspect of their writing – it could be a plot thread, a location, a particular character, narrative voice, verb choice. However you do it, one thing is important in both fiction and non-fiction writing – getting rid of the words that you don’t need, that don’t fit or that are downright wrong.

Here are some tips on how to do it:

1.      Get rid of wordy phrases. You know the type of thing: “at this point in time”, “in order to”. Short and clear is what you are aiming for, especially in business writing. And it’s not just the number of words. Be thrifty with syllables. When you’re tempted to use a three or four syllable word, see if you can find one that works as well but only has one or two syllables.

2.      Use everyday words. When you see an “expedite” or “optimize” creeping into your sentence, or if an event is going to “afford an opportunity”, stop. Think. Look up dictionaries, thesauruses, anything. Find another way to write it.  

3.      Avoid clichés. They are tired. Refuse to use any phrase or expression you’ve heard often before. As Mark Tredinnick writes in The Little Red Writing Book, “they belong to someone else.” Write every sentence your way.

Once you’ve banished the useless words, there are a couple of other things to think about – your sentences and the logical flow of your writing. 

1.      Use different sentence structures. Mix up short and long sentences, simple and complex sentences. Add variety in form, always remembering the importance of clarity. Keep your writing interesting. But don’t write long sentences just for the sake of it. Write them when you need them.

2.      Work from a plan when you write. If you are editing something that you didn’t plan, read it and write out the plan. Are the ideas expressed in logically? Have you used paragraphs correctly? If you didn’t plan first, at least make the effort to plan afterwards and fix up any errors.

Many people believe that setting down the ideas is the most interesting, and therefore most important, aspect of writing. But writing is about communicating. You might be setting the ideas down, and they may be brilliant ideas, but someone else is going to be reading them. You want to be sure that they understand what you mean and, if possible, that they enjoy reading your work.

For the Love of Words

 

I love words. I read dictionaries for fun. I read the words aloud to discover which flow from my tongue, and which cause me to stumble. I love to unearth new, unfamiliar words and to revisit old friends. Words matter. It’s not just about meaning and communication. They create the rhythm of your writing. Word choice is an art. It’s rare for me to review a draft for a professional piece I’ve written and not change maybe 10% of the words. It’s about using words that your readers understand, but that they probably don’t use. You want to keep your writing fresh and interesting, and avoid overusing certain words and phrases.

Words are the building blocks for what writers do. Appropriate word choice helps make your meaning clear, and helps you avoid that enemy of lax communication – confusion.

Of course not all of the confusion when we communicate comes from the actual words. Some of it is the result of how we string them together. By using fewer words, and striving to use words accurately, we make it easier for our readers to know exactly what we are saying. And by making sure our sentences aren’t too long, we make sure they remember what happened at the beginning of the sentence when they get to the end.

When writing in English you have a lot of words to choose from. According to the Oxford English Dictionary’s website, the second edition contains, “... full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).” The site then suggests that there are at least a quarter of a million distinct English words.

So when you’re lost for words, you can be fairly confident that the right word to express what you want to express exists – take the time to look for it. It’s fun and your writing will thank you for it.