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| On Writing (Not Just Typing) Well |
By John C. Pine
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 John C. Pine is the editor and co-founder of ULiveandLearn. Always learning, he also runs his own Internet and corporate communications consulting firm, Pine Ink. He was a journalist with Reuters, the international news and information company, for more than 20 years, with postings in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Nicosia, Barcelona and London.
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People are doing an awful lot of typing these days, spending hours at computer keyboards each day, at work and at home.
Some type well, having learned the proper mechanics, but most people use a self-taught variation of the hunt-and-peck method. When the typing stops, there is rarely any evidence to show whether the job was completed swiftly or laboriously. The words on the page, or the screen, don't reveal the details of how they got there. |
| It's This Simple - Writers Write |
| Some typists are writers. Their words flow with grace and rhythm. They express ideas with clarity and wit and style. Some are naturally gifted. Ask how they learned to write so beautifully and they may have difficulty giving an answer. Other writers have worked hard at developing their craft, much like carpenters who spent years in apprenticeship. They may make it sound much too mechanical, even confining. |
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There are hundreds of books on the market in the "The Art of Writing" category. Many of them are excellent. They are bought with the best of intentions; some are even read before taking their place on the shelf beside the unabridged dictionary, thesaurus and book of quotations.
The essence of each and every one of these guides is this: Writers Write! And since that thought may make you uncomfortable, if not queasy, before you jump to Amazon.com to buy Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way : A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, or Lawrence Block's masterful Writing the Novel : From Plot to Print, here are a few practical tips that may help you make the leap from typist to writer.
- If you are having trouble getting started, skip the first few paragraphs. Begin in the middle, or at the end. Just get something written down.
- Write as though you are having a conversation with a friend with a fairly short attention span. Keep it simple, yet lively, interesting and engaging.
- Write in your own voice; don't try to impress anyone with your mastery of vocabulary, grammar or punctuation. Leave the thesaurus and Bartlett's Familiar Quotations on the shelf.
- Do not rely on a word processor's spelling or grammar checker. Always save what you are writing, put it aside for a while, and then return to it with an editor's frame of mind.
- If you don't find what you have written interesting, it isn't. Start over.
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| Maintaining Interest |
Write about things that you know something about. Write in the active voice and keep your sentences as short as possible. Don't expect your audience to be extremely well read, or as thick as posts. Find a middle ground where you won't be disappointing either the intellectual or the newly literate.
Build some tension, anticipation or mystery into your sentences. Don’t give away the whole game in the first few paragraphs. Let the information flow naturally, and with passion, as though you are trying to hold the attention of a group of friends sitting around a table in a restaurant. Your enthusiasm for the subject will be contagious.
Good writing leads the reader on from one paragraph to the next in a seemingly effortless dance that requires no tugging or cajoling.
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| Less is More |
I believe that writing is a craft, more akin to carpentry than to artistry. As such the craft of writing can be learned - at least to some degree.
Among the bigger mistakes that aspiring writers make is to try to impress through their would-be mastery of the language. Let's call it the William F. Buckley Wannabe School of Writing. Few people know the English language as well as Mr. Buckley, and in showing us how adept he is at the language, he loses most of us. That is his aim of course, so in sending the masses to the dictionary, or more likely back to the television, he succeeds. He uses the absolutely perfect word in the most appropriate way, and challenges his readers to be more precise and fluent.
But the average writer is trying to communicate to as broad an audience as possible, particularly when composing works of non-fiction. Your aim should be to: Keep it Simple.
In writing, less is more. Do not write as though you are being paid by the word. Strip every sentence to its core components. Strike out every word that serves no purpose. Cut back every long or showy word to a short word. Delete every adverb that simply restates the idea put forward by the verb. Change every passive construction into a phrase of clear action. |
| Write from the Heart |
Sharing your ideas, experience, hope and wisdom will attract readers. They will feel compelled to read on, convinced they will find something that can help them.
When you feel stuck, or blocked, just sit back, take a deep breath, walk around the block. When you return to writing just let it flow. Don't force yourself to come up with the pithiest opening line; start at the middle or the bottom of your composition. You may need to write down your ideas in outline form before you launch into the first draft. Whatever works for you is what you will need to do.
Procrastination and perfectionism are two of the main enemies of writing. The answers to these are simple, too: just get started, even if it is a single line. You may need to pray to some power greater than yourself for help and inspiration. And try not to criticize yourself as you write; we are usually our own harshest critics. Leave the judging up to someone else. You will be amazed how often others think that work you may dismiss as "total crap" is good, even brilliant.
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| Advice From Someone Who Sold 200 Million Books |
I had the good fortune to interview best-selling author Irving Wallace at his home outside Los Angeles in 1986. I learned a bit about my arrogant, pre-judging nature, as I went on the assignment having never read one of his books. I had lumped him into the "schlock writer" category, despite the fact that he had sold something like 200 million books in umpteen languages. In nearly three hours of engaging conversation in his office and library, here is some of what Mr. Wallace had to say about the "art" of writing.
"Writers write. It's that simple. And publishers, including my publisher, are looking for writers who write. People say it's so hard to get published. That may be true, because people who are not writers also write. But my advice to anyone who absolutely has to be a writer is that: Write!"
Asked about his own motivation, he said he never wrote with money in mind. "I have a lot of ideas. I hate writing, but I love it. I love to get something different down that interests me each day."
I wish I could say that I have followed his advice. I know that I'm getting better at it. |
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Additional Lessons for Living and Learning
Best (?) Newspaper Headlines
English and American - Two Very Different Languages
Language - English is Tough
Testing system
The Heaviest Element?
World English - Battered, Butchered and Bewildering
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