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.