Sound Advice for Writers

I am always glad to find well-known authors who agree with me, especially when it comes to writing.  Although this is the first year in a while that I will not be teaching a summer workshop on style, I plan to return in 2014 and, of course, continue to write and help others, when I can, mainly with editing, having spent 45 years doing so.

I always tell my adult students that writing may be impossible to teach but that revising is not: it is what excites me, the chance to re-work sentences and play with them until they are more clear or expressive or concise.  So the following statement by Susan Sontag was very welcome when it appeared in my "In" box not long ago:

"Though the rewriting--and the rereading--sound like effort, they are actually the most pleasurable parts of writing.  Sometimes the only pleasurable parts. Setting out to write, if you have the idea of 'literature' in your head, is formidable, intimidating. A plunge in an icy lake. Then comes the warm part: when you already have something to work with, upgrade, edit."

The second meaningful quote is from Sebastian Junger: "Don't dump lazy sentences on your reader. If you do, they'll walk away. You have to push yourself to find powerful, original ways of describing things."

This brings us back to revision and the time required, and the honesty, to look at each sentence we have written and see if it sounds trite or wordy; how does it sound aloud?  How can it be improved?  Not being satisfied with a draft until it is as perfect as possible requires effort and time, more  than the original drafting, in  most cases.

Just recently, I completed the revision of a story--my first complete piece of fiction--to be published soon by the Provo Canyon Review, which asked that I prune it considerably.  It took several weeks to consider which sections could be cut so that the 8,000-word story could be closer to 6,000. Painful work, letting go of sentences I had crafted a year before; yet as I finished the revision, I could see how much tighter, and better, the polished story now was.  No doubt the editor, with his own perspective, will find other sentences to trim and, as with previous work of mine, I will be pleasantly surprised by the final product.

So, as Donald Murray has preached, there is no writing without rewriting.

I have encountered a number of wannabe authors who seem in a great hurry to get published, but they have not yet honed their own style.  Perhaps they have not read enough to know what sounds right in a sentence.  This brings me to my third quote, from fiction writer Jennifer Eagan:

"Read at the level at which you want to write. Reading is the nourishment that feeds the kind of writing you want to do."

If there is no writing without rewriting, there is also no writing without reading.

How can anyone write a crime novel or children's book without having read the best in the genre? This is not only professionally necessary but a source of stimulation in the ongoing interwoven web of reading and writing that is at the heart of the literary life.

If you are a writer reading this, I hope this advice, though perhaps familiar to you, will help you along the way.

Writing by Hand in the Electronic Age

I recently read an article about Robert Caro, the American author who has spent 36 years writing the biography of Lyndon Johnson and has already published several massive volumes, beautifully written--and done by hand.

I am always surprised to read of authors who still write lenghty works in longhand or who use the typewriter since it seems from my experience as a writer and teacher of writing that the flow of my work, and my ability to revise, has been much improved over the past twenty years or so because of word processing.

In my earlier days, when I typed, I invariably wrote out every word, then would make minor changes in the typing, which was laborious. I cannot imagine having had to write by hand all that I have published in the past twenty years, but I know that, on some occasions, when I write a personal note, for example, the old, familiar pressure of the pen inscribing the words on the paper is akin to cutting into wood: there is pleasure in the slowness of the process. And in the very physicality of the act.

In reading some recent ruminations by Kevin Hartnett on writing by hand, I expected him to say more about the appeal of slowing down. Instead, he reflected on bigger issues: the relation of thinking and writing. (I found the article "High Wire Act in www.themillions.com for April 16.)

Since Hartnett often finds that the blank computer screen is intimidating, he tried an experiment: writing a full article entirely in longhand before typing it. He suspects that the old-fashioned way might be better, although all the reconfiguring he does on the computer produces more sophisticated thoughts.

He has learned that he must always form a complete thought in words in his head before he can inscribe it on paper, so that the correlation between his thoughts and what he writes is closer than if he had composed the article on the computer.

So writing by hand "alters the relationship between forming a thought and recording it in words." On the computer, Hartnett finds that he begins (as I do) to type at the onset of an idea and then completes the idea/sentence, which he figures out in the process of recording it. His thoughts come out "cleaner" when he works in longhand, he thinks.

And he uses shorter, simpler words. I assume his sentences, too, are different and his overall style is more spare than if he used the computer since the complete thoughts he is able to hold in his head until he gets them down on paper are briefer. His cross-outs or revisions tend to be fewer by far than if writing electronically. This is one obvious advantage of word processing: that it makes changes almost enjoyable and, at the same time, facilitates the flow of interesting, expansive sentences, the kind that reflect the immediacy of unfolding ideas. This is why I value the computer for writing and have no interest in returning to the older technology.

Hartnett speculates that there is, for him, a higher reward in writing by hand, self-indulgent though it may seem. He may not be aware that academic research in the composing process of students has long been concerned with the cognitive aspects involved in his experiment. The complex relation of thinking, learning, and writing is still not fully understood, and Hartnett's article, which suggests some ambivalence about which method if preferable, is a valuable contribution to this field.

I would welcome the reactions of any writers who have a preference for writing by hand or by computer and the reasons for the choice of one over the other: write to me at schiffhorst@yahoo.com (type "revision" in the subject line).