Inspiration from Great Writers
Every once and a while I think it helps to look up tips from modern writers. I say modern because they are often still doing interviews, but even those who have passed on before us have given advice not only about writing in general, but about storytelling and wisdom on just how to sit down and write a few hundred words each day.
So here are some words from those I personally think are a little bit wise:
“The only way to write a good short story, we were told, is to write a good short story. Only after it is written can it be taken apart to see how it was done.”
- John Steinbeck
“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”
- Mark Twain
“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
- Ernest Hemingway
“Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.”
-William Faulkner
“There are three types of speech – I don’t know if this is TRUE, but I heard it in a seminar and it made sense. The three types are: Descriptive, Instructive, and Expressive. Descriptive: “The sun rose high…” Instructive: “Walk, don’t run…” Expressive: “Ouch!” Most fiction writers will only use one – at most, two – of these forms. So use all three. Mix them up. It’s how people talk.”
-Chuck Palahniuk
“As for writing, most people secretly believe they themselves have a book in them, which they would write if they could only find the time. And there’s some truth to this notion. A lot of people do have a book in them – that is, they have had an experience that other people might want to read about. But this is not the same as ‘being a writer.’ Or, to put it in a more sinister way: everyone can dig a hole in a cemetery, but not everyone is a grave-digger. The latter takes a good deal more stamina and persistence.”
-Margaret Atwood
Now, go write!
The Notion of a Free Press
This morning on my drive into work, I heard a story on NPR about a book publisher that doesn’t ask anything in exchange for its books. The books—yes, hard copies, and I do believe they realize they would make more money doing e-books—can be picked up at various bookstores or requested through their Web site, and are shipped for free, too. The idea is that you donate to a cause you support in lieu of paying for the book, and pass the book along when you’re done.
What is different is that they support book publishing, reading, and recommending books to friends, but don’t really care about the economics of it all. It’s a good approach to have in a time some would consider the death of the traditional publisher. Growing up as I did, with memories of holing up in a neighborhood tree with my well-worn copy of 10,000 Leagues under the Sea, or staying up during an all-night bus ride to Colorado because I couldn’t put down The Amityville Horror, I will always have an attachment to hard copy books. Part of it is the feeling of disconnectedness, not needing a battery, plug or cord to do what I want to do until I’m done. The other part is that I sit and stare at a screen all day at work, and I presume (although do not know for sure) that an e-reader would feel like just another screen, even though I support the idea of low-cost publishing in that format, and feel that it will propel more kids and adults alike to read, not to mention open publishing to more than just the folks who sell copies in the impulse aisle at the grocery store.
I hope e-books will do for publishing what cable networks have done for TV: get past the mass-produced, quick-sell, laugh-track-lined shows and produce something worth watching with a good story and good writing. And even though one day my daughter may create her own fond memories squirreled away somewhere with her e-reader, I will always have a place in my heart for dog-eared, roughed up, hard copy books.
Visit the Concord Free Press to request a book ONLY if you:
- Promise to make a donation
- Record your donation on their Web site
- Pass your book along to a friend who will do the same.
The Paramedic Method of Revision
Whether it’s for an email, a report or a PowerPoint presentation, many people write every day who never set out to make writing their job. But those who write well succeed because they communicate better.
On the corporate level, writing is not a gift; it’s an easily learned skill. Following the Paramedic Method of revision can teach any writer to clean up boring, passive writing and create fast-paced, more interesting prose—of any kind.
Developed by Richard Lanham in Revising Prose, the Paramedic method is a simple set of steps that will help you accomplish the following things:
- Shorten slow, meandering sentences
- Write in active voice
- Create action-packed sentences
- Identify the key parts of your information
It’s easy. Step one: Write normally. This is what I think is great about the method. You have to write as you normally do to use it, which helps teach non-writers one of the most important things about writing: Revision is a writer’s best friend. Once you have written something, either a sentence or a short paragraph, follow these steps:
- Circle the prepositions (of, in, about, for, onto, into)
- Draw a box around the “is” verb forms
- Ask, “Where’s the action?”
- Change the “action” into a simple verb (has been kicking = kicked)
- Move the doer into the subject (Who’s kicking whom)
- Eliminate any unnecessary slow wind-ups (Find that action verb and start there)
- Eliminate any redundancies. (Where can you economize?)
Once you rewrite your sentence, success can be measured in the form of a smaller word count. Every sentence should be shorter. Some examples from FaceBook posts:
Before: A check for $750,000, the largest amount given to the Memorial in the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon’s ten-year history, was presented to the Memorial today. (25 words)
After: Today the Memorial Marathon presented the Memorial with a $750,000 check, the largest in the Marathon’s 10-year history. (18 words)
Before: New medicines are being developed that are expected to transform the care of patients with hepatitis C, making treatment far more effective and far less grueling. (26 words)
After: New medications for Hepatitis C may make treatment more effective and less grueling. (13 words)
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A Difference in Style
Often I get asked what the difference is between the different style guides, mainly because at my current position, we recently switched from Chicago Style to New York Times Style.
Much of the difference is personal opinion on how things should be, but much of it also has to do with the history of the guide and its original purpose. What this means for users is that there is no shortcut to learning a new style. I always begin at the beginning, reading the new style guide from cover to cover. You can find my exercise in that with the NYT style guide in past blog posts.
The Chicago Manual of Style, probably the most expansive of all guides, was originally put together by the University of Chicago Press as a way to creates processes for book publishing. That’s why in it you’ll find information on type setting and layout instructions. Because of its roots, it’s more literary in nature, and you’ll find most of your favorite books adhere to this guide. Many arts organizations and those who deal in publishing about fine arts also use this guide. It is a little bit harder to reference, but has much more information on grammatical topics and really dives in to the minutia. When you can’t find a reference to what you are looking for in other style guides, you can usually find it in the Chicago Manual.
The Associated Press Styleguide and The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage are geared, understandably, to journalists. Because of their purpose, entries include preferred usages and fairly black-and-white rules. Because news is written for the dissemination of information and a wide variety of people must be able to understand it, clarity is king and they adhere to rules that ensure unimpeded meaning, objectivity, and strength of purpose. The two guides are fairly similar except for some differences of opinion where opinion is the only glue you’ve got: serial comma or no? Email or e-mail?
APA/MLA Styles are issued by the American Psychological Association and the Modern Language Association, respectively. These styles are mainly meant to standardize the way researchers cite sources and record references.
Corporate style guides are a business’s way of staking how they fall on sticky grammatical questions. Whether it only extends to logos and branding, to how you refer to products or services within the company, to creating your own standard abbreviations and shorthand, an internal style guide can help your company speak with a unified front and keep your branding strong.
Does your company have its own style guide? Need one? Contact BurtCreative to get a quote.
I Stand Corrected
As an editor or proofreader, there is The Line. The Line is the difference between being a capable and knowledgeable grammarian and being an unbearable know-it-all twit. Some people are able to straddle this line better than others.
Correcting those you work with has to be done judiciously if you don’t want the whole office falling silent when you walk into it. Corrections are certainly appropriate, but it’s important to know the time, place, and how to go about it, whether you’re the new kid in the cube or the weathered expert.
Five Rules for Correcting Your Coworkers:
1. Save it for the proof: There’s a time and place to correct people’s grammar. Unless you are working on something that will represent your brand or company, save it. Don’t correct grammar on the spot as a joke, either. Teasing is wasted on people who don’t know you at best, at worst it’s could be considered juvenile and a waste of time.
2. Pick your battles: Now there may be times where a casual reference may need correction. Take the example of Queen Elizabeth versus Queen Elisabeth; a coworker was about to post a tweet about the Queen Elisabeth competition, but in the email it had a “z” instead of an “s.” At the risk of sounding obnoxious, I did double check to make sure the right spelling went up, but only because I knew the spelling would go live.
3. Keep it discrete: One thing I didn’t mention about the above example is that it all happened via group email. Instead of emailing the entire group, including the person who misspelled the word, I only emailed the party who would be posting it to make sure she was aware of the differences in the spelling. She was, and there did not end up being a problem. But by confirming and not correcting, I kept myself from looking like a know-it-all, which is The Line we editors walk daily.
4. Know your stuff: When you do have to go out on a limb and correct, make sure you’re right, even if you think you are. I feel like grace is the best attribute an editor can have, because the harsher you correct others, the harsher they will correct you when given the chance. There are a million exceptions in the English language. So look it up before you open your mouth, and be ready to back yourself up if necessary.
5. Put it to a vote: One thing that makes our lives as editors even hard is that at the end of the day, that which is technically right may give way to that which is more readable. Obviously, strive for correct grammar and spotless punctuation whenever possible. But when it comes to blows, put it to a vote. Find your audience and poll them. Does a figure look fine or should you spell it out? If something looks odd when done correctly, is there a way to rework it? Remember that the rules of grammar ultimately serve the purpose of clarity. If your “correct” text confuses or distracts the reader, it may as well be wrong.
Writing Jobs—Where You Least Expect Them
Freelance writers and full-time writers alike have probably noticed that traditional sources of work—magazines, newspapers, and other publishers—aren’t hiring, taking submissions, or contracting work out. But there are places where writers are still needed, you just have to know where to look.
1. Arts organizations: The Arts are in need of everyone right now, and you don’t have to have experience in their field to work for them. Many Arts organizations depend on press releases, email missives and newsletters to cull donations and garner support, so operating without an editor is not a choice. These include for-profits as well as nonprofits. Check your local arts coalition to get names of organizations and Web sites.
2. Specialty publications: You may have never heard of the American Paint Horse Association, but they need an editor! You’ll be amazed at the diversity and breadth of special-interest publications or Web sites that cater to specific interests. Some require knowledge and experience in their field; others do not. Start with topics that are of interest to you and branch out from there. A long shot in this area is likely to pay off since postings or openings are not going to be widely publicized.
3. Specialty skill-sets: Many times organizations are interested in one specific skill set, such as grant writing, technical writing, press release writing or report writing. These kinds of skills can be learned without on-the-job training. Take an online tutorial, volunteer to do some of the kind of writing you need to learn for a charity, or ask someone who does it for a living to show you the ropes. Since this kind of work isn’t published anyway, you can usually make up your own samples to show or email out. Just be clear about the intent and purpose and don’t misrepresent yourself.
4. On the cusp: Many jobs require writing but don’t have writer or editor in the title. As a Promotions Coordinator for a local news station, I did lots of writing, including a script for a reality show. You never know what opportunities will arise once you are in a position. I also got plenty of practice writing presentations and business plans, as well as sales materials, and before long I was the go-to person for any kind of writing and editing our department needed. When looking for jobs, keep in mind that most marketing (not sales) positions will require lots of writing, and you’ll get some great cross training in other skill sets, too. You can also spin your writing experience into something appropriate to show off at the interview, since most writing is selling, whether you are selling an actual product, an idea or point of view.
5. Network: Most jobs get filled without ever going on a job site. Network with people you know, have businesses cards, and encourage your friends to keep an ear to the ground for freelance work! You are much more likely to get work from friends than strangers.
Are You a Self-Starter?
When working with clients, many freelance writers may experience fear of two things: not asking enough questions, and asking too many. In your zeal to best serve your client, you do need to ask a lot of questions, but they must be the right kind of questions.
Do your research beforehand: know your clients’ voice, their audience, their business, and their competitors. When you do have questions, make sure you have googled, researched, asked the secretary, and taken every other route you can to find the answer independently before bothering your client mid-project. Make executive decisions as you go; don’t get hung up on getting input for every single detail. If they wanted to micromanage the writing process, they wouldn’t have freelanced it out. Instead, take the vote of confidence they gave you by hiring you, and do what you do best.
However, the flip side of being an independent worker is that when it comes to the proofing stage, let your client rule with the red pen. They need ownership and input, and the payoff for not being bothered with the technical details is getting to add a few personal touches. You get control, they get buy-in. Everyone wins.
On technical edits: Some writing/editing work may lead to some odd-looking albeit correct results. Be ready to explain–without being defensive–why question marks reside outside of those quotation marks, or why the line break happens in that spot. You may prepare a pre-review explanation of edits for the lay-reader, or go over that first to ensure your client trusts your judgment and knows that even off-putting edits are technically sound. But be ready to give in other areas, such as commas, word choice, and other somewhat subject matters.
Above all, keep in mind that clarity is king. When editing, don’t get so over-technical that you are sacrificing clarity for editing prowess. Remember, if a reader thinks it’s a mistake, it IS. Reword and rework anything your client just can’t get past. It will pay off in the long run.
Book Review: Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion
I picked up this book after having read Joan Didion’s memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking and enjoying her point of view. I think Didion has great insight and writes about sorrow in a believable way, which is why I was shocked to learn Play it as it Lays was decades old and I had never heard of it.
The book has been both praised and criticized for it’s neutral tone and unlikable characters. I didn’t find Maria unlikeable. It is a hard book to read, but I think it perfectly captures that moment when one person has gone beyond the threshold of what they can endure. I think we all know what this place is if we haven’t been there ourselves; it’s the moment you get the call about a loved one dying, or find out something horrible has happened, or find out a relationship is over, and you can’t even cry. You think maybe you have no heart, or you’re a monster, but that’s not it. I have learned to fear the moments when I should be crying but I’m not. The real sorrow is on its way, it just hasn’t hit you yet.
When it does, you have two choices, but only because we always have two choices, don’t we? You can go on, manage as best you can in some way, somehow– or quit. For some people this second option equates to suicide, but for Maria it doesn’t seem to enter her mind. I think this is because the failures mount slowly for Maria, and the realization of what life has become comes even more slowly for her. First it’s her mother’s death, the end of her acting career, then the unnamed disorder that has taken her daughter, Kate, to what appears to be a group home for developmentally disabled children. Then it’s her marriage, the constant one-two punch of “I hate you; don’t leave me.” They never seem to be on the same page, even when it comes to separating. Then it’s the unwanted pregnancy, and the only solution they had to that problem in the 70s.
I believe this story may be a more common one in the film industry, where rejection is sudden, all-encompassing, and leads to more rejection in other areas, like finances and relationships. It may be slightly harder to get a train wreck of these proportions in civilian life. For that reason, Hollywood is a great place to start with this story, but I really don’t think that Didion set out for it to be a commentary on the film industry. Much more so, I think she wanted to explore the other option, of not going on, what happens when you decide you’re “not okay,” how the people around you deal with it, and how uncomfortable it makes people feel when they see someone slipping under that delicate emotional divide. Through Maria’s eyes, people even only want to help her so they don’t have to feel uncomfortable.
There’s also a question of faith here, for me. There’s a Bible verse about God not ever giving anyone more than they can bear. And you can argue that if a person gives up, quits living, they have received just that. So who decides what is more than you can bear? Is God a coach, urging you to tough it out, or an accountant, making sure the ups are evening out with the downs? Either way it seems out of mortal hands, and if Didion did intend for this question to enter into the discussion, she seems to be calling God a liar in that sense.
Maria becomes a ghost, and this book is that tale, because although we all have two choices, what is life if the living give up? The story we hear oft repeated is of the fighter, the person who keeps getting knocked down, and keeps getting back up, because the human race would die out if we didn’t. The antithesis of that is Maria’s story. For me, this book felt extremely similar to The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It is full of the same kind of unchecked depression of youth, the same feeling that makes you want to lie in the floor and listen to sad songs in the dark and cry about nothing. I suppose to some that makes Maria hard to empathize with, hard to like. For me, it made her easy to understand.
Book Review: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
It’s taken me a while to get through this book, both because it’s lengthy and my schedule allows me mostly reading just before bed these days. But most of you may know Atwood for her stunning work in A Handmaid’s Tale and other novels. She’s a brass-tacks writer with no tricks up her sleeve, just a seriously dim view of the future and a knack for plots that are unpredictable without being predictably so.
However, this book left me a little hungry. Part of the problem was that it seemed to be a prequel or run concurrent with another book of Atwood’s, Oryx and Crake. I have read that one as well, but it had been a while, so the details of that post-apocalyptic drama were a little fuzzy, made worse by the fact that Atwood wasted no time rehashing them for me. This led me to wonder if the book could even stand alone without the reference from the previous book.
But previous references aside, the vague nature of this apocalyptic world felt somewhat trite. People had used up all the natural resources! They were engaging in unethical gene splicing and bizarre treatments to seek youth! Most animals and habitats and now extinct! Not remotely shocking, considering at this point much of this behavior is no longer considered the stuff of dystopian fantasies, but the short-term reality. The (literally) saving grace of the God’s Gardeners, the group of protagonists in the novel, is that they recognized the values of recycling, natural eating, and living off the land just in time. It’s all a tad sanctimonious, even for someone who believes in those virtues.
There’s also the element of the militant and brutal CorpSeCorps, which adds a big-brother like angle that implicates capitalism in the whole end-of-the-world business but never goes as far as to explain how we got there. To me, this is problematic because the whole lure of the dystopia is the question, How did we get here? What benign decision, what arcane regulation or loophole got us to whatever horrifying reality the writer is laying out for us? Because if that question has no answer, then you have not a dystopia but a novel of fantasy.
And maybe that is what Atwood set out to write. It just seemed to have to many great elements of a dystopia to not go the extra distance and set up the world she created (or destroyed) for us. I get the sense that Atwood perhaps had a hard time of letting go of the whole idea of Oryx and Crake and just needed to get it out of her system. But it does feel a little rushed, and a little too enthusiastic. All in all, Flood is an enjoyable read if you don’t ask too many questions, especially if you are an unwavering Atwood fan like myself.
Editing vs. Proofing
Most people don’t understand that editing and proofreading are not synonyms. This article explains the difference so that you can get the most out of your revision process, whether you are a contractor, working in-house somewhere, or just trying to get the process down yourself. So let’s take a look at the writing process:
Prewriting: Initial outlining or freewriting
Rough draft: First draft
Editing: Major revisions
Copy editing: Fine tuning
Proofreading: Final clean-up
Not knowing the difference between these stages can merely frustrating if you are doing them all yourself; when other people are involved, it can be downright maddening. It’s a waste of time–and often money–to debate commas or word choice on a printer’s proof.
You’ll notice the editing phase for me comes only about halfway through. That’s because I do major revising in the editing stage, including re-ordering, additional research or writing and sentence restructuring. Because I am doing so much at this phase, I don’t want it to be anywhere near the end, because I need to be able to look at the revisions with fresh eyes. I separate out copyediting because it involves revisions for style, consistency, word choice, and pacing, but no major revisions.The main difference to me is the focus of your work. During the editing stage, your focus should be on what is BEST for your publication or document. When proofreading, your focus should be on what is CORRECT.
To draw an analogy with painting, imagine a painter with a tiny brush at a large canvas; he isn’t going to paint huge swathes with it, he is going to be doing detail work. By the proofing phase, you should not be making any more changes for flow, consistency, style or word choice. At this point you should only be concerned with finding those small details to correct. Proofing involves fact-checking any non-words, such as names, prices, email addresses, street addresses, and phone numbers. You should be concerned with making sure every sentence has a capital letter and punctuation, and making sure words are spelled right. Some great strategies for proofing include reading out loud (although you should also do this much earlier in the process, too), reading from end to beginning, and circling all punctuation marks. The more changes you make at this stage, the more opportunity you have to make a new mistake.
The chart below should help if you are trying to set up a proofing versus editing policy at your workplace, for your clients, or for yourself. To me, this clearly defines the differences in the two processes and can help lay out changes that are out of bounds during the proofing phase.
| Editing | Proofing |
| Focus: What is BEST? | Focus: What is CORRECT? |
| Consistency | |
| Wording | |
| Clarity | |
| Grammar (style) | Grammar (errors) |
| Look and feel | |
| Message | |
| layout | |
| Graphics – alignment, consistency | Graphics – correct colors, images, no missing elements |
| Fact-checking | |
| Sponsor logo inclusion | Logos for sponsors |
| Spelling | Spelling |
| Names | Names |
| Addresses | Addresses |
| Phone numbers | Phone numbers |
| Prices | Prices |
| Web addresses | Web addresses |
| E-mail addresses | E-mail addresses |
Of course, this is just my opinion, so if there are other takes on it out there, I’d love to hear them. Leave your notes in the comments section, and if I hear some great feedback, I’ll revise and repost as a PDF.
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