Monday, September 16, 2013

Why Is It So Difficult to Write About Writing?

And especially difficult to write about writing fiction?

The simplest explanation might be that no one actually knows how they create their stories, or write their books. Everyone seems to agree that doing so takes a great amount of dedication and hard work. But it's not clear what happens in the space between the idea for each scene, and the paragraphs that appear hours later. And I can't explain it, either. All I know is that once I get started, it works. I just have to effing START.

School teaches us a lot about the mechanics of writing. Most of the articles on writing that I've looked at focus mostly on, quite literally, how to write. Where the mind-to-paper story transcription process is nebulous at best, the rules of proper grammar and writing mechanics are quite clear. "You sit down at your computer and hit the keys. Meaningful sentences will emerge if you possess a tolerable command of english and grammar."

This is a gross oversimplification, obviously, but there are few pieces on writing that don't go there. The article on writing in the April 29th, 2013 edition of The New Yorker, titled On Writing, Draft No. 4, began by talking about writer's block. Complaints about the difficulties of being a writer followed (no recognition, constant self-doubt, flashes of inspiration giving way to drudgery, meager earnings). The author abruptly "pivoted" (if I can use a word that's become a popular euphemism for governments and administrations changing their minds, especially on international matters), to the importance of choosing exactly the right word, and why a dictionary is preferable to a thesaurus.

Admittedly, I enjoyed this part. His examples were interesting, even if they were a thinly veiled way for him to show off. He cited himself, showing excerpts from old pieces that, instead of using a word his brain initially supplied, became stronger for going to the dictionary and incorporating that word's definition.

Instead of being "assimilated" by the Alaskan wilderness, for example, he found himself "almost forcibly incorporated into the Alaskan wilderness," or something like that. It's strange to me to showcase examples of your own writing, to prove a point about your writing style, inside a piece that you're writing.

This leads me to another observation: it's difficult for us to resist showing off. I suspect the urge is part fascination with our cleverness, and part temporary rebellion against our chronic lack of confidence. The stronger we feel that most of our stuff is sewage, the more desperate we are to parade what few gems we've created.

Or maybe that's just me.

I know some writers who won't share anything. Of course, the usual reason for their reluctance is the fear that the writing is bad, and they will be judged accordingly. These people never think they've created anything worth sharing. There's really no difference between us, though, because ultimately we're all suffering from some form of delusion. I, from the delusion that the piece I'm sharing is better than it is, and them, from the delusion that nothing they've written is of any worth.

The New Yorker article ended with this author's observation that it takes him at least four drafts to get things right, and finally, a long account of The New Yorker's house style, and the conflicts he's had with the magazine's copyeditors over things like how to make the word "corps" possessive, as in, "The Army Corps of Engineers."

I walked away with the realization that this article wasn't aimed at me. It was aimed at people who want to hear what it's like to be a writer, but will never really try to become one. It was for people who want to hear a writer tell them stories about being a writer. What it wasn't about was writing.

As a writer, I find it's hard to overcome the urge to problem-solve when it comes to writing. The only real reason I haven't finished anything is that I haven't sat down and really tried. That's all there is to it. Period. End of story. Begin the usual excuses. Tired, time, work, emotional problems, hungry, don't feel like it, on and on.

I know this is the one and only problem, but even so, I still like to read about the elements of great writing, what it takes to create a novel, and so forth, as if my novel were a car engine. If only I could collect all the parts I need, then surely I'd be able to follow at least one of the myriad instruction manuals out there and wind up with a fully functioning engine (novel).

My personal belief, of course, is that this isn't the way things work. To be fair, this approach can be perfect for non-fiction, like memoirs, essays, and academic writing. It's not that such a structured approach can't also help a fiction writer, (I frequently outline, in very broad strokes, what I want my story to do), but I firmly believe that much of the fiction writing process is rather like an archaeological dig.

I'm uncovering the skeleton of a previously unknown dinosaur. I can imagine what the whole skeleton is going to look like, I can sketch my supposition beforehand, but there's no way to see how the whole thing fits together, except by slowly uncovering the entire thing, piece by painstaking piece. I learn so much about my own story by trying to tell it. Things I would never have dreamed up while outlining. In other words, while collecting advice and making lists and attending conferences and so on is usually helpful, there is no substitute for simply writing.

Because of this simple fact, writing (especially fiction) is an act of faith. You must believe in the existence of something that does not exist. Or more precisely, you must believe in the potential for something to exist—believe in your own ability to create it, even though you don't know exactly what it will look like, how it will sound, or what it will say.






Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Missing the Point, Quite Literally: A Review of "Several Short Sentences About Writing"

In Several Short Sentences About Writing, Klinkenborg advocates for an approach to writing that is the polar opposite of Orson Scott Card's. Where Card believes that content and "story," (or meaning, as Klinkenborg would put it) is the source from which all prosaic rivers flow, Klink thinks that everything begins with proper sentence structure—with style. While style matters, asking writers to constantly evaluate style both while reading and while writing is a terrible idea.

Several Sentences does a handful of things very well. Anyone who has ever written anything will recognize the many sources of angst that Klink identifies. Unfortunately, I think most of Klink's recommendations for addressing these struggles are bunk.

Generally, I think that Klinkenborg's advice is a distraction from writing, and borders on the fetishization and worship of grammar.

Klink begins by incorrectly identifying why people have trouble writing. He (correctly) observes that the inability to make sentences say what we mean is a major roadblock. That part is fine. Thus, he concludes, that the solution lies in writers making a deep study of proper sentence construction. He spends half the book talking about this. Unfortunately, he misunderstands the cause of the problem.

The reason we create sentences that don't say what we want:
We haven't decided exactly what it is we want to say.

Over and over again, in my experience, we don't fix bad writing by fiddling with sentence structure (though awkward wording is a problem), but by asking, "what are you really trying to say?" While answering this question usually leads to a revision of sentence structure, the problem was rarely the sentence's fault. "Fixing" the sentence is not what fixes this problem. Instead, it's isolating the single, blazing thread of meaning that lies tangled in that glowing idea ball in your head.

In Card's words, "clarity of writing comes from clarity of thought." This is why outlining can be such a valuable exercise: it clarifies our thoughts, and helps us define, even realize, what we want to convey. This is an approach centered squarely on meaning/content. What Klink is talking about, improving the sentence itself, comes later. In my mind, that has far more to do with editing and revision than with writing.

Here is an excerpt to demonstrate the genesis of my indignation, with my reactions included:

What if meaning isn't the sole purpose of the sentence? What if it's only the chief attribute among many, a tool, among others, that helps the writer shape or revise the sentence? What if the virtue, the value, of the sentence is the sentence itself and not its extractable meaning? ...
[---What would that even mean? The value of the sentence is the sentence itself?---]

... What if you wrote as though sentences can't be summarized?...
[---This has to do with economy of prose, and has very little to do with meaning. Is it remotely necessary to populate your novel with sentences that *can't* be summarized? I see that as a total waste of effort. There's nothing wrong with there being many ways of saying something. Shorter tends to be better, yes, but that doesn't guarantee clarity. Although asking, "could I summarize this sentence," is a great way to parse unnecessary words, it's not necessarily true that a summarize-able sentence is a problem sentence.---]

...What if you value every one of a sentence's attributes, and not merely its meaning? ...
[---Wow! Great noun placement! That seems like an odd way to read. Sure, we appreciate good sentence structure, but would we appreciate it equally with no thought given to meaning? This reduces reading to something more akin to music—appreciation for the order of sounds and their rhythm. While  I'm sure there's value in that, that's typically not the value found in most of the sentences in a novel. (There are occasional exceptions, naturally. The author's intent plays a large role in this.)

Good writing tends to combine meaning with its elegant expression. The two are inextricably linked. It's lunacy to think that a sentence's structure exists independently of its content. It's absurd to me to try to separate a sentence's value from the idea it conveys. And the idea unequivocally comes first. This is not a chicken and egg question. No one says, "Hey, I have this fantastic idea for structuring a sentence with three verbs in quick succession." With the exception of some forms of poetry, in the world of novels, essays, etc, meaning/idea/story is where everything usually starts. ---]

...Strangely enough, this is how you read when you were a child. Children read repetitively and with incredible exactitude. They demand the very sentence—word for word—and no other. The meaning of the sentence is never a substitute for the sentence itself, not to a six-year-old. ... 
[---This final claim made me especially indignant. Children don't read this way in order to appreciate sentence structure. They read this way because they're trying to do something they've never done before. The reason a child reads slowly, precisely, uncomfortably, deliberately, has nothing to do with meaning or writing style or structure. It has everything to do with simply learning to read. It's the awkwardness of trying to master something new.---]  

And another excerpt, from later in the book:

One of the hardest things about learning to read well is learning to believe that every sentence has been consciously, purposely shaped by the writer. This is only credible in the presence of excellent writing.
[---Seriously, Klink? I've seen plenty of successful writers debunk that. Do you mean to tell me that every good sentence is the product of conscious, purposeful effort? Sometimes this is the case, certainly. It's also the case the some excellent writing comes off the keyboard from who knows where, beautiful and ready to go. The idea that you can qualify this statement by saying that "only really excellent writers do this," is even sillier. If anything, the process is even more intuitive, more habitual. This is not to say that for professional writers, writing well requires any less effort, only that it's absurd to think that, "every sentence has been consciously, purposely shaped."]

This book is potentially useful if you've never stopped to consider how to improve your writing. If you never think about the roadblocks to writing well, then this book is a decent place to start, because at least it will get you thinking. Its pitfall is in leading aspiring writers down the cul-de-sac of style-obsession.

In my opinion, focusing so exclusively on style is the exact opposite of what we must do to write well.


Sunday, September 1, 2013

Internal Conflict

The conflict is as follows:
Equal parts
darkest loathing,
and keenest longing.

I hate what I need
and I hate myself
for needing.

It's just a habit.
It's just a habit.
Maybe eventually I'll believe it.

Heartache.
Useless evolutionary development.
Holding too tight
Is worse
Than failing to hold on
at all.