Writer's Blog - Writing Strategies

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A Writer Is Someone Who Writes

The question, “Should I be a writer?” can be answered with another question: Do I need to write?  If your answer is “yes” -- if you need to write -- you should be a writer.  

Just as a painter is someone who paints, and a musician is someone who makes music, a writer is someone who writes. It really is that simple. 

The writer or painter or musician may not get paid to perform these skills, but the presence or absence of payment has nothing to do with the definition of an artist. Payment defines an artist’s commercial success, nothing more. Terms like “amateur” and “professional” are useless for illuminating what it means to be a writer. They’re technicalities. The day before Shakespeare made his first pound as a playwright, he was an amateur.   

A writer is someone who writes. If you consider this a glib statement, it isn’t.  When I watch LeBron James play basketball, I’m aware that I’m watching a man who HAS to play basketball. Artists are no different. They do what they do because they must. They are driven to it. 

Talent at writing includes the inclination to write. Talent is drive plus aptitude. Which doesn’t mean that drive equals talent anymore than talent equals drive. You can be driven to write without thereby being Shakespeare. Or, you can have the imaginative and verbal gifts of Shakespeare without the drive to write. There is no such thing as a literary genius who never writes. 

And I think the opposite is also true. There is no reason why a person with a drive to write cannot become a skilled writer. Gifts may be genetically given; skills are not. Skills can be acquired. 

Does this displease you? Is it a let-down to hear the word “skilled” where you’d rather hear “gifted?” Is “skilled” an anti-climax to the drama of your becoming a writer? Is the work of becoming a writer not worth it if, in the end, you will be a skilled, but not an ingenious, revolutionary, or brilliant writer? Are you nodding your head? Are you saying ‘Yes, it’s not enough for me -- if I’m not going to be acknowledged as a literary genius, a talent of gargantuan proportions, a monster of verbalization, then I don’t want to do all that work’? If so, you’re probably not a writer. 

But if you are a writer, I’m not saying you won’t become an extraordinary one. You might, and if you do, this will be the reason: by learning the skills of a writer, you will have given yourself a framework in which your native ability – your talent – can emerge. . . . 

Art From A Bottle

There is a tenacious myth about great writers: they operate in an altered state of consciousness. Their greatness -- the lyrical flourishes, the verbal dexterity, the imaginative machinations – must come from periods of intensified, uninhibited sensation about both the world without and the world within. In other words, they must be high. Probably on alcohol. Stories circulate about books written in fantastic furies of drunken inspiration. So-and-So wrote his masterpiece, The Plasma Chronicles, in a single 156-hour sitting with nothing but a case of bourbon and two cases of cigarettes astride his laptop. One-thousand, one-hundred and three pages later, his Mac was a smoking ruin but his manuscript was complete and his publisher orgasmic. 

In a few instances (very few), something like this does happen to a writer. John Guare described having written SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION in three days, but he also said that it took him fifty-one years to arrive at those three days.  And he wasn’t drunk when he got there. 

More often than not, the person who tells you they’ve just finished a W.M.U.I. -- whirlwind manuscript under intoxication – has less in common with Gustave Flaubert than with the writer portrayed by Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING. There’s a lot of junky writing out there written with tremendously appropriate haste. 

Yes, it can happen that a writer, like an athlete, gets “in the zone,” that mental space where you can’t miss. When they do, they turn out pages of inspired text with the same amazing consistency of the basketball player who makes ten three-point shots in a row, or the pool player who runs the table, then runs it again as their opponent looks on in grim resignation. There is something daunting about this phenomenon of performance, so depressing when achieved by our competitors, so sweet when demonstrated by us. I think there is an element of “zoneness” to any period of time when we’re writing well, whether it last fifteen minutes or five hours. Being “in the zone” means, at bottom, being extremely focused on a goal, so focused that your mind operates without distraction. It’s the kind of concentration that leaves you feeling transported – if someone interrupts you, it takes a moment to remember where you are – and in that sense it is akin to a mystical experience. 

Which is probably why the myth of the drunken writer persists. We know that great artistic performances have a magical quality to them. We don’t know when or why or how they arrive, those outbursts of exquisite creativity. They seem to just . . . happen! 

We sense that we cannot force them into existence. Hence the analogy to intoxication. When we drink alcohol, something magical happens (at least for a while, before the malaise, the brawl and the stupor). One moment we’re full of worry and anxiety about our social performance, then – presto! -- suddenly we’re feeling fantastically free and easy, enjoying those around us and enjoying even ourselves. Rapport flows like wine. We have what psychologist Abraham Maslow famously described as a “peak experience,” a feeling of oneness with the world and a heightened sense of our own bright, unbounded potential. 

A few years ago, under the influence of the intoxicated-artist myth, I conducted my own little literary experiment. I drank six consecutive shots of Southern Comfort, sat down at my computer, stared out the window looking over the beautifully urban landscape of Hell’s Kitchen, and began writing. It was about 10:45 A.M. 

I decided to write a poem, because I suspected I had special poetic gifts that had lain dormant from childhood to middle age, waiting to be awakened . . . now! Unburdened by the bourbon, I wrote without inhibition and without worry. By noon I was done! (The excessive exclamation points are intentional.) The remainder of my stoned time I spent imagining what kind of feedback Billy Collins would give my little gem. I didn’t know Billy personally, but I knew he taught at City College, or some nearby school, and could be easily reached by subway.  

I’ve never again appreciated the virtues of the “Delete” button as much as I did that afternoon at about 2:30, when my mini-masterpiece, “Untitled,” joined the other digital flotsam-and-jetsam in my Trash folder, bound for that mysterious zone in cyberspace where non-analog junk ends up. It wasn’t that whatever I’d written was so awful. I don’t even think it was much more awful than what I would have written sober. But the lesson was clear: altering my state of consciousness did not alter my ability to write mediocre poetry. 

Every great novelist I’ve heard interviewed on the subject has said that alcohol makes it impossible to write well.

Songwriter Elliot Smith has left us one of the saddest, most eloquent testimonials on this subject. In his great song “Between the Bars,” Smith, who committed suicide in his early thirties, wrote, “Drink up baby, stay up all night/With the things you could do. You won’t but you might./The potential you’ll be, that you’ll never see./ The promises you’ll only make.”

The reason intoxication and great writing don’t mix seems pretty obvious, if you think about it. To do anything well requires concentration. And what is alcohol famous for? I know -- I can’t remember either. But I think it started with the letter “G,” or maybe with the letter “Egma.” . . .

Let’s begin with something that may seem small but isn't: Word Placement. 

Notice the title of this post: To Write or To Not Write . . . And notice the placement of the word "not" in "To Not Write."

“Ok,” you may be saying, “so what?” Well, there's something not quite right about it.

Where we put that little word makes a difference in how our reader understands what we're saying.

If we say "to not write," we are splitting the infinitive. (The infinitive is "to write," and by inserting a word between "to" and write" we are doing what grammarians call "splitting the infinitive.") 

In the bad old days of grammar teachers and corporal punishment in the public schools, you weren’t allowed to split an infinitive. “To think deeply” was correct; “to deeply think” was incorrect. “To leave quickly” was right; “to quickly leave” was wrong. 

The main reasons for this rule had to do with clarity and power. It’s clearer and stronger to keep the two parts of the infinitive together than to separate them with other words. 

Shakespeare understood this when he wrote, “To be or not to be?” Compare that to: “To be or to not be?” The second version sounds much worse because it’s weaker. In Shakespeare’s day there was no grammatical rule prohibiting split infinitives, so he could have written “To be or to not be?” if he’d wanted to. Why didn’t he? Because the man had an ear. 

Today it’s acceptable for a writer to split an infinitive. Sometimes a phrase or sentence sounds better, more natural, if you do.  “I wanted to quickly leave the room” might work better in a particular passage than “I wanted to leave the room quickly.” In either case the meaning is completely clear (you’re leaving fast), so which choice the writer makes has to do only with what effect they want to create. 

But the case of “not to write” is slightly different. Take the sentence "We want to learn to NOT write junk." By splitting the infinitive, we create a little confusion. Are we learning to NOT write? And the thing we’re NOT writing is junk? 

Yes, you probably understand what I mean if I say it this way, but your brain registers the slight confusion caused by my sticking “not” in between “to . . . write.” The more slight confusions your mind encounters during a conversation or during a period of reading, the less engaged you become. 

This may seem like a small thing but it points to a larger, extremely important issue for the writer: being acutely attentive to where you place words. Even the smallest words -- “to” or “not” -- can have a significant effect on your reader, and that effect will depend on where you place the words. 

Which is why Shakespeare DIDN’T write: “To be or to not be?”

Rule One for the Good Writer:

Do not introduce confusion into your reader’s mind. 

(Unless it’s deliberate confusion, as in a novel or a play; and even then, be careful not to go too long before resolving the confusion, or you’ll lose your audience.) 

This one’s going to be short and sweet. OK, short.   

If you want to say something is simple, just say: “It’s simple.” Don’t say: “It’s simplistic.”  

Why? Well, for one, it’s wrong. For two, it’s pretentious.   

“Simplistic” means an over-simplified explanation. If someone tells you that oil is the cause of all wars in the Middle East, they're being simplistic because there are various causes of warfare in the Middle East. If you tell me that your marriage dissolved because your spouse was a jerk, you’re being simplistic. Your spouse may be a jerk, but that’s rarely the sole cause of a divorce.   

Simplistic does NOT mean “simple.” 

SIMPLE refers to something that is uncomplicated. If the instructions for installing a light bulb are quick and easy to follow, they’re SIMPLE, not simplistic.   

Why did many people start substituting SIMPLISTIC for SIMPLE? Because SIMPLISTIC sounds big and important, whereas SIMPLE sounds, well, simple.   

So the next time you want to sound big and important, say ‘transmogrification” instead of “change,” but leave SIMPLE alone. 

Until thirty something years ago, the grammatical rule was: never end a sentence with a preposition.  

So, in conversation you might say to someone, “He’s the man Ambrosia voted for,” but in formal writing it had to be: “He’s the man for whom Ambrosia voted.” 

“This is the book Alphonse searched for!” had to be: “This is the book for which Alphonse searched!” 

The wittiest comment on this rule came (allegedly) from Winston Churchill, who said (more or less; no one knows for sure): “That’s the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.” 

Today nobody stays up at night worrying about the placement of their prepositions. But even though this rule, if followed to an extreme, will produce extremely stilted sentences, it’s still worth knowing. Why? Because it can add power to your writing.

Compare: 

1. He’s the man Ambrosia voted for.

2. He’s the man for whom Ambrosia voted.

Obviously #1 sounds more familiar, more relaxed, more . . . colloquial. Why? Because it is. It’s how we speak. And if you want a particular sentence to sound more familiar, relaxed and colloquial, then you should use this syntax (syntax being the technical term for “word placement” or “sentence structure”).

However: Listen closely to the sound of each sentence, and you’ll hear the strength of #2, which tucks the preposition neatly into its middle. 

When “for” comes at the end, it creates a “trailing off” effect, a “. . .”ness. Your ear registers the fact that more words could easily be added: “He’s the man Ambrosia voted for on Tuesday after dinner.” In contrast to this, sentence #2 suggests finality, because it ends with the the completed action: “voted.” Period. Done. 

Even if the verb were in the present tense -- “for whom Ambrosia votes” -- the sentence still possesses greater decisiveness, because a verb is by nature much, much stronger (more concrete, more vivid, more DEFINITE) than a preposition.

Sentence #2 creates another interesting effect: it places the preposition (“for”) next to the object of the action (“the man”). What does this accomplish? It emphasizes the object. “... the man FOR WHOM ...” The “for whom” reinforces in our ear and in our mind, the word “man.” Whereas in sentence #1 -- “...the man Ambrosia voted...” -- the word “man” is only briefly touched on the way to Ambrosia and the action she took.

So, sentence #2 gives greater emphasis to both the action and the object of the action, leaving us with a sentence in which the three main parts -- the subject, AMBROSIA; the object, THE MAN; the verb, VOTED -- all stand strong.

A preposition is a relationship word, a connective word. By-for-with-at-on-in-against-of-to-around-near-alongside, etc. 

A verb is an action word. So the question is: do you want to end your thought (i.e. your sentence) with an action word, or not? Do you want the action, and the object of that action, to stand out more strongly in your reader’s mind?

Yes, doing so will make your sentence sound more formal. But why is that bad? 

Not only is it NOT bad, it’s often great. Why? Because in our society writing has become increasingly informal. As a result, a more formal expression stands out, draws our attention, wakes us from the slumber of all that relaxed syntax. 

And that’s a conclusion away from which I will not back.
​

VERY is a word we need, but not as much as you may think.  

What can you say about a meal that’s better than good but not quite excellent? You can say it’s VERY good. 

And how about that time you sprained your ankle while running? “Painful” didn’t really express how you felt. You needed a VERY. 

But if you correctly describe the weather as rainy, and I reply, “That’s very true” -- then your language buzzer should be buzzing. A statement can be true or false, but it makes no sense to say it’s VERY true or VERY false. 

Sure, in colloquial speech, there’s a reason I might reply, “It’s very true.” It’s a way for me to reaffirm what you’ve told me, a way to agree heartily with you, like saying “It sure is!” or “You’re really right about that!” In that case the language has a social function; it’s a bonding device. 

But for prose writing, there are correct and incorrect uses of “very.” 

Here are several examples of incorrect VERY’s:

Sheila was very indignant about that.

Herbie is very miserable today.

He is very infatuated with her.

Why are these wrong? 

Take a moment to think about the adjectives that are being modified here: indignant, miserable, infatuated.  These words convey a state of mind that is already extreme. Indignation is a state of being VERY offended; misery is a state of being VERY unhappy; infatuated is a state of being VERY attracted. So, if you modify these words with “very,” you’re diminishing their inherent force; you’re implying that there are degrees of “indignant” and “miserable” and “infatuated.” But the entire point of words like these is to convey a feeling of extremity, of “there’s nothing greater than this state.”

Is Hyman Collosal’s latest novel superb, or very superb?

Is Felicity Bumpercrop’s voice angelic, or very angelic?

Is Kenneth Kipplemaster's personality unique, or very unique?

I think the appearance of so many misplaced VERY’s today comes from our weak understanding of the words in our vocabulary. If we don’t realize that SUPERB and ANGELIC and UNIQUE refer to extreme states or to qualities, like Truth and Falsehood, that can’t be increased, then we don’t really understand those words. 

Am I right? Or am I very right?

In this and the next post, I’m going to talk about the single most important element of strong writing: detail. 

This rule applies to all prose writers. Whether you’re doing fiction or non-fiction, the better your details the more lively and effective your writing will be. 

The two most common types of detail are: personal and situational. Personal detail means just that: the details that identify a person. Situational detail refers to descriptions of places, environments and interactions. 

In today’s blog I’ll confine myself to the topic of personal detail. The next one will address situational detail. 

A quick, easy way to start thinking about personal detail is to consider yourself. You’re the person you know best (whether you know it or not). 

Most of us don’t realize how thoroughly unique we are. We tend to lump ourselves with other kinds of people whom we resemble (or think we resemble) in behavior and outlook. “I’m an extrovert” or “I’m a Democrat” or “I’m a doer” or “I’m a meditative type” or “I’m a family person” or “I go my own way,” etc. 

While any of these labels may apply, they don’t tell much about who you are. What does? Every habitual action you do, especially those that may seem so small or unimportant that you’re not aware of them. 

How do you discover your personal details? By answering such questions as:

How many physical mannerisms do you have? (Do you bite your nails, pick your fingers, scratch your face, rub your skin, play with your hair, pick your nose, twiddle your fingers, wiggle your toes, hold your torso erect, slump your torso forward, walk fast or slow or with your toes inward or outward, squint your eyes, adjust your glasses, blink a lot, hold your head still, move your head around a lot, look at people when talking to them or look away, shake hands firmly, avoid shaking hands, whistle, hum, sing to yourself, hold your mouth open, keep your mouth closed, hold your jaw tight or relaxed, click your teeth, lick your lips, hold your stomach in, flex your muscles, speak loudly, speak softly,speak with a lot of emotion in your voice, speak in a detached manner, erupt easily into shouting, withdraw easily into silence, cry easily or rarely, have nervous tics involving your eyes, nose, mouth, ears, brow?) The list, as you can see, is virtually endless. And that’s only one category of behavior: physical habits. 

If you think about it, though, you could probably extend the list of your physical habits until it encompassed much of your behavior, if only because we are physical beings. We have bodies and must conduct ourselves in the world through bodily movements. 

But to extend your observational list, ask yourself pertinent questions about your daily life. What do you do, hour by hour and minute by minute, when you’re at work? When you shop, how do you shop? (Do you love shopping for clothes but hate shopping for groceries? Do you decide quickly what you want or take a long time deciding? Do you concern yourself with your budget while shopping, or momentarily forget about it? Do you love shopping online but hate going to stores?)

Behind every one of your habitual behaviors, there is a mine of information about yourself. Why do you talk on the phone a lot during work? Why do you love food-shopping but hate clothes-shopping? Etc. 

Of course, you could also sharpen your powers of observation by focusing on other people, but you have much less access to the complexity of their world. The exercise of self-observation, by its almost limitless specificity (you could devote your life to the task if you wanted the most refined list possible) tells you what kinds of things to look for in describing a person, whether real or fictional. You become like a detective, noticing the details that others overlook. 

You can’t write what you don’t observe. The less you observe, the more generic your writing will be.  The more you observe, the better you’ll be at bringing a character, real or imagined, to life. 

Here's the first of a series of posts on the single most important element of prose writing, regardless of whether it’s a play or a novel or a short story or an essay or an editorial or a nonfiction book. That element is FOCUS. 

While the most important element of good sentences is CLARITY, the vital ingredient of any writing project is FOCUS. Your book or your play or your story MUST have a focal point. 

At the start, you may not know (you probably won’t know) what your focus will be, but at some point you’ll have to determine what it is, because that is the tool with which you’ll craft your writing. 

If you’re not sure why you’re writing, you won’t come up with anything worth reading. 

Imagine a photograph without a focal point. You’re not sure what you’re looking at, because everything before your eyes is equally fuzzy. Nothing stands out with clarity. You get bored, or you get a headache. The same holds true for writing. 

Great writing is intensely focused. Like a sharp photograph, sharp writing invites us to look at a particular subject in detail. If the writing is an editorial, we’re looking at the reasons why we should believe X. If it’s a novel, we’re looking at a main character or a group of characters, or both, in order to see what happens to them. The same with a play. In the case of a nonfiction book, we’re looking at a thesis, a central argument, which gives us a way to understand Human Evolution or the Bible or the Civil War or Democracy or Fascism or Electricity or Cars. 

(Yes, there are coffee table books that give us lists or descriptions of things -- the cars of the 1960s; the plants of California -- but that’s not the kind of writing we’re concerned with, because it doesn’t require either craftsmanship or artistry.)   

So, in the next few blogs I’ll take up several types of prose writing -- editorials, fiction, plays, essays, and nonfiction books -- in order to illustrate how FOCUS works in each case. 

And here’s a good principle to keep in mind: LESS IS MORE. 

By focusing your writer’s lens more and more sharply on a subject, you’ll be able to enter into it more and more profoundly -- you’ll be able to see more and thus say more about it. 

This is why we call a weakly focused piece of writing “breezy.” It rushes past, barely disturbing us. It stimulates briefly but makes no lasting impression. 

Strong writing is never breezy.  

You may think that only nonfiction requires a focal point and that fiction, by contrast, can be “free form,” following the artistic whim of the novelist. 

Well, it can be . . .  but generally it isn’t. Generally, the good novelist, like the good nonfiction writer, maps out a very clear path for her characters to follow. 

That path may not be immediately apparent to the reader. In fact, unlike nonfiction, a good novel or short story does NOT tell you at the start where it’s headed. But its author knows where the story is going, and she knows with almost mathematical precision. One of the joys of reading a strong novel or short story is the joy of discovery, the “ah-hah!” moment when you see where the story has been heading all along. Fiction writers use the element of surprise to entertain and delight and shock and provoke. That’s why a great story is never predictable (unlike an uninspired “formula story,” which is absolutely predictable). 

The “thesis” of a novel, so to speak, is the drama of its protagonist (or protagonists). Will Oliver Twist escape a wretched fate and find happiness? Will Huck Finn face the challenges (especially the moral challenge) of his adventure on the river with his slave companion, Jim? Will Don Quixote (the book which many consider the first novel) attain (or survive) his chivalric goals? In each of these stories, a main character has a clear mission, a profound desire, an overarching goal -- and he must face a series of obstacles in order to fulfill it. That is the focus of these novels; that is their plot. 

Whether a work of fiction centers on one main character, or a couple, or a trio, or an entire community, it should perform the same basic function: dramatizing a powerful, high-stakes struggle toward a fundamental goal (love, justice, freedom, survival, etc.) 

A great short story is even more demanding of a strong focus. Unlike a novel, which can traverse hundreds of pages and take many detours in the course of its journey, the ideal short story is about one moment. Many writers say that every sentence of a good short story must build to that single moment. There’s no slack, no space to waste. 

That’s what focus is all about. 

And if I tell you, “when it comes to  FOCUS, playwriting follows the same rule as novels and short stories,” you shouldn’t be surprised. 

Why? Because in Western civilization plays MADE the rules for creative writing. The novel didn’t emerge until the 17th, 18th, or 19th century (depending on which scholar you’re reading) but playwriting dates back to the ancient Greeks, whose work we continue to revere and stage. More than two thousand years ago, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides laid the foundation of magnificent story-telling. They did this by creating tight, highly dramatic plots in which we follow the struggle of an individual toward a great, often tragic goal. 

Is there any confusion about the focus of Oedipus Rex? A gifted king must find the reason for the plague that besets his city, so he sets out, like a detective, to solve the mystery (and learns, to his and our horror, that the solution is: himself). Or what about Antigone? A young woman who feels in the pit of her soul that she must honor her dead brother by giving him a decent burial, even though the State, having branded him a traitor unworthy of burial, will execute anyone who violates that ban.

Such stories as these dramatize a single, universally understood struggle (for Oedipus, the struggle is with himself; for Antigone it’s with the State). Virtually all great plays do the same thing. What does Hamlet want? To avenge his father’s death. What do George and Martha (of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?”) want? To fix an almost tragically destructive marriage. 

We understand these desires. They’re universal (the desire for revenge -- to see that evil is punished -- or the desire to fix a broken, intimate relationship, whether between spouses or siblings or friends or parents and children). That’s why, on one level, we continue to write and watch plays about the same basic struggles. The times change, the settings change, but people are still people. Our desires haven’t changed at all, and those desires are the focal points of plays (and, by extension, screenplays -- though these depend more on images than words). Incidentally, though the examples I’ve given here are tragedies or intense dramas, comedies take the same powerful drives (love, retribution, victory, etc.) but spin them toward a different conclusion. (Which is why so many sitcoms revolve around marital or family conflict. It’s a superb focal point.)

Yes, a great play raises all sorts of questions and leaves us thinking about all kinds of things. It may  have subplots (i.e. secondary focal points) and a range of characters (each of whom has his own focal desire). But the play itself turns on ONE clear and overriding problem. 

Step one for the playwright: determine “What is my play about?” When you come up with one clear answer, expressible in one clear sentence, then you’re ready for the fun (by “fun” I mean, of course, the agony of figuring out how to write the damn thing).