1) Show don’t say.
You’ve heard this one but it really is the most important.
Which of the four sentences is better?
Carol responded in the negative.
Carol said no.
Carol shook her head no.
Carol’s long bangs swayed from side to side as she disagreed.
Number four is better. Because we are visual creatures. Yes, we have recently learned to read. But we’ve been figuring stuff out with our eyes for a million years longer. As a writer, you may feel like a highly evolved being, but you are still talking to cavemen.
2) Typing is not Writing
Computers and keypads have joined thinking to typing to writing. You can write your thoughts almost at the speed at which they occur. Congratulations! But thinking is not writing.
Thinking is a private activity, and it’s mostly random. You are thankful you can think at all. Writing is a public act in which the order of thoughts is of paramount importance. The order – the story — may be as important as the thoughts themselves. That’s what makes it writing.
3) All writing is rewriting.
There is no “writing.” Any writing that’s any good has been rewritten extensively. We should just call it “rewriting” and be done with it.
4) All writers are readers.
It’s unfortunate that writing and reading are taught more or less at the same time. Reading is a better way to become a writer than writing, for the first ten years at least.
5) Writing shouldn’t sound like writing.
You hear a lot about “style” in writing. But here’s something odd. Three of the greatest New Yorker writers, E B White, Joseph Mitchell, and John McPhee, all seem to write with no style at all. Get rid of the marks of writing from your writing.
6) Take the time to make it shorter.
My number one favorite epigram is my boy Michel de Montaigne: “I apologize for writing such a long letter, I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.”
7) Avoid word balls.
Word balls are like dust balls. One word sticks to another, and when you pick one out, a bunch of others trail along. As in:
“It is interesting to note that.”
Note it, and if it’s interesting, let the reader decide.
“Due to the fact that…”
“Until such time as…”
Vacuum word balls from your texts!
8) Don’t use jargon to make yourself sound like you know what you’re talking about.
Here is an actual quote from Verizon CEO Lowell Dumbass McAdams, explaining Verizon’s recent purchase of AOL:
“Verizon’s vision is to provide customers with a premium digital experience based on a global multiscreen network platform. This acquisition supports our strategy to provide a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators to deliver that premium customer experience.”
Clearly Mr. McAdams doesn’t really know how this deal will play out for his customers, so he is reluctant to commit to a clear, meaningful comment about it. And, it turns out there are large swathes of public life in which the less clear you make yourself the better! No politician wants to stick his neck out with a clear statement about an issue that might come back to haunt him.
This is what makes writing different from most jobs. You have to say what you mean. That’s why you’re a writer.
9) Writing isn’t fun to do, but it has to be fun to read. Deal with it.
10) Trust your instincts as a researcher. Make the most of your search engines. Your luck in having them is beyond reckoning. If you think it looks interesting over there, head that way. Investigate further. Reward your curiosity.
11) Make an outline, but feel free to ignore it. Constantly revise your outline as you go along. Encourage accidental associations in your writing, ideas you never would have put together in an outline, but which turn out to go together naturally and give juice to your writing.
12) Don’t glorify yourself for being a writer. There’s nothing romantic about the actual job of writing. It’s messy and chaotic, like using your hands to plant rhododendrons. As in a Hollywood disaster movie, a lot of good people have to die to save one little family. But that family is your story.
13) Think of yourselves as decision-making and problem-solving machines. You make decisions about how to construct sentences — what nouns and verbs to use, the sentence structure, adjectives, when to end one sentence and start another. Dozens if not hundred of decisions for every sentence. After you’ve written a few sentences you encounter a problem. The writing isn’t heading in the direction you want it to go. So you go back, identify the spot where you went wrong, rewrite and move forward. Easy Peasy.
14) Develop good writing habits.
Start on your projects early. Don’t wait until the last minute to do your writing assignments. Writing needs time to breath and to sleep. Sleep is as important to a project as work. As writers you need and deserve sleep. Luxuriate in it.
15) Don’t neglect the ending. Just because the ending comes last, doesn’t mean it should get the least amount of work. It deserves the most! Because the ending is the most important part of all.
16) Finally (in the spirit of ending with the most important thing) always ask yourself, What Am I Trying to Say? If you do that honestly, ruthlessly, and constantly you will be writers.
And may the Force be with you.
