On Writing Well

Five years ago I read On Writing Well by William Zinsser — I wish I hadn’t waited this long to read it for the second time.

I grabbed it from the bookshelf earlier this month. What I thought would be a quick refresher turned into underlining, dog-earing and writing in margins.

Here is Zinsser answering the question “Who am I writing for?” The answer is yourself. He says about the audience, “You are who you are, he is who he is, and either you’ll get along or you won’t”.

Since I read a lot of books, I am inspired by lots of authors. I’ve been collecting advice for a number of years. What surprised me is to find most of that advice summarized in one, neat 300 page book.

For example, Scott Carrier advises Najib in Prisoner of Zion about writing what you say, writing conversationally, naturally. Zinsser says “Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation”

Another example: Ursula Leguin talks at length about the rhythm of writing in Conversations on Writing. Zinsser highlights the same point on Thomas Paine’s “These are the times that try men’s souls”. There is no other way to rephrase Paine’s words that bring this much delight:

Times like these try men’s souls.

How trying it is to live in these times!

These are trying times for men’s souls.

Soulwise, these are trying times.

I must read this book every year!

Newsletter No. 5

CJ Chilvers and I emailed back and forth briefly. I have been reading CJ’s newsletter for many years. I find newsletters to be an engaging medium, partly because the subscriber has made a tacit choice in subscribing, and partly because the writer knows their’s audience’s intention and wants to make it count.

CJ send me a link to Mike Crittenden’s blog post about writing 5x more but 5x less. This advice was poignant. I tend to write on and on, tackling evermore large topics. Nothing wrong in writing longer text. However, unelss you write full-time, you produce long articles infrequently. Writing infrequently prevents formation of the habit of writing and sharing.

Austin Kleon further makes this point in his book Show Your Work. Writing longer means you show less work.

Another benefit of writing shorter — the brevity invariably leave gaps in the idea. These gaps are essential in growing ideas. Itay Talgam makes this case in his book The Ignorant Maestro and also in this very popular TED Talk on Leadership.

With this I posted five articles last week. This is a new habit for me and one I am hoping to stick with all year.

2021 In Review

Here I got into what worked and what didn’t last year. 2021 was a challenging but illuminating year.

Books I Read in December

I list the books I read in December. I had 10 days off from work which allowed me to finish six books, one of which was 530 pages excluding index and notes!

My Reading Habit

I have started reading more and this post explains how I am trying to do this. I am hoping this is a habit that will grow and morph this year. Just last week I finished two books but I lost harmony between reading and understanding.

Fleeting Notes

I go into the first step of understanding when I read books. Understanding gives meaning. Or else reading regresses into watching mindless TV.

Literature Notes

This is the second step of understanding. Writing Literature Notes is like re-reading the important parts of the book well enough to be able to explain it to someone!

I am traveling for work next week. This will be a good chance to practice reading in a very distracting and noisy environment of airport gates and airplanes. If I can be successful in reading on a plane, I will treat myself to a pair of noise-cancelling headphones!

Rhythm

I have been drawn to Ursula LeGuin's literature for many years. And I can't really tell what draws me to her works other than the simple knowledge that I just love to read it. There are great many fiction books out there and some just take you for a ride.

I tried to (poorly) explain the draw I have towards fiction when I have been reading too much non-fiction in my previous blog post. I think there is another explanation.

I am reading "Conversations On Writing" by Ursula LeGuin and David Naimon. It is a series of interviews between Naimon and Leguin. In this book Naimon brings up a quote from Leguin's talk at the Portland Arts & Lectures in 2000:

Beneath memory and experience, beneath imagination and invention, beneath words, there are rhythms to which memory and imagination and words all move. The writer's job is to go down deep enough and feel that rhythm, find it, move to it, be moved by it, and let it move memory and imagination to find words.

Further, Leguin expands in the interview:

That is something I learned from Virginia Woolf, who talks about it wonderfully in a letter to a friend Vita. Style, she says, is rhythm -- the "wave in the mind" -- the wave, the rhythm are there before the words, and bring the words to fit it.

I had to stop reading here.

Reading these passages felt like I was on the precipice of something, about to leap off, a new idea waiting below. It felt like something was starting to crystalize in my brain. I felt my eyes darting to find it. I eventually continued reading the rest of the book but I kept feeling a pull, like a rubber band, back to this idea, to page 17 of this book.

Reading this reminded me of a comparison I made some time ago in a blog post titled Showing, not telling. I had felt something click when I read the first excerpt in that post. The second excerpt -- the poor example -- didn't connect. I had chalked it up to what novelists often recommend -- show, don't tell. While I think my assessment back then was true, I may have missed the rhythm piece entirely.

The passage that I had liked, the one that showed instead of told, that passage was written by Ian McEwan. I feel drawn to his writing like I feel drawn to Leguin's.

Presently, I am reading Richard Russo's Empire Falls. This novel has a lot more about character's lives and their conversations. But there are a few paragraphs here and there that makes me think the author himself appears in the pages. Not just the narrator of the characters, the invisible author behind the lens looking into the lives of Empire Falls -- no: It feels in some passages that Richard Russo's personality is showing up as a distinct character. And I think I can tell that because it has a particular rhythm to it. I'm not sure.

I am, however, anxious to finish Empire Falls so I can start on two new McEwan's books. I'll be looking for that rhythm, and I will try to steer away from affirmative bias traps.

Showing, not telling

Friday, noon. Four of us were on our way to lunch. Someone asked me if I liked the book he had recommended. Friday lunch is to decompress and we are normally frank with each other. I said, “It wasn’t written well”.

I am no judge of English literature. But it was Friday lunch and I was asked for a judgement. There it was.

A good novelist once invited me to find awareness of the difference between showing and telling. I am a slow reader; my mind frequently wanders around the prose while I gaze between the folds of the pages. Years passed since that invitation and years of reading while aimlessly wandering seems to have helped me spot novels that show versus those that tell.

Below are the beginning lines from two novels. See if you can tell.

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2

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The first excerpt paints a beautiful picture that slowly comes into focus. I can’t wait to read further. The second sort of spoils the ending. This chapter continues telling what’s going on with Nicholas’ life. I didn’t read past the first chapter so I don’t know if this was really a spoiler but I don’t feel like finding out.

The first is like sipping a beautiful wine. The second is like chugging lager.

It is not only a matter of taste; it is a question of appetite.