The College Intern's take on Procrastination

By The Word Process on Jul 22, 2010

Probably the most common and powerful obstacle to writing is procrastination. There is something strangely and universally intimidating about that blank page that makes us feel the need to do everything else on our to-do list and more before tackling those first few sentences. My roommate, another English major, has a list of about seven websites she needs to check before starting her work. I personally will run, clean the house, go grocery shopping – anything to feel productive without actually writing something. I’ve tried all sorts of tricks to remedy this – the just-do-it method, the reward-yourself-with-a-latte-afterwards approach – but nothing stuck.
And then I came across an article in a women’s health magazine. They offered a whole spread on the effects of procrastination when it came to exercising. Their solution to this widespread dilemma was to work out for only 15 minutes. They claimed that 15 minutes will go by quickly enough, no matter how miserable you are. What tends to magically happen after this manageable chunk of time is that people don’t want to stop – they want to finish.
I tried applying this method to writing. Sure, the first few minutes were agonizing, and it took all of my will power not to check my email for the billionth time. But just like with exercising, I got into a good rhythm, lost track of time, and sooner rather than later had a completed paper on my hands. And the best part about finishing something is the amount of time it leaves you to go over it, change it, and make positive revisions, until you are left with something tangible that you are proud of. That is something I enjoy far more than checking my email.

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The Generation Y Writing Style

By The Word Process on Jul 20, 2010

Molly McKitterick is on vacation this week, and handed the reins of her blog over to me, the Word Process Intern, for the time being. Earlier this month, Molly addressed the social networking website Facebook to illustrate the importance of building suspense and leaving things out as a way to make the reader want more. As an avid Facebook user and aspiring writer, I would say that Facebook demonstrates another element that is especially relevant to today’s writing world – it caters directly to the major stereotype of my generation: short attention spans and the need for instant gratification. This style of writing, characterized by short, to-the-point spurts, is popping up all over the place, from the rise in graphic novels, to Twitter, to blogs like this one. Don’t want to watch a whole movie? There are millions of 30 second video clips designed for our entertainment on Youtube. Interested in a new subject, but don’t want to comb through textbooks to get the basic idea? Get the highlights off Wikipedia. Just plain bored? Stumbleupon.com. What’s particularly interesting is the rise of prestige these mediums are receiving. Literary humor website McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, started by writer Dave Eggers, has both jump started careers of new writers, and been graced by contributions from established and respected veterans. And none of the pieces are longer than 250 words. So what does this mean for my generation and reading? I hardly believe the internet will give rise to the death of novel, as many pessimistic literary figures have prophesied. Successful novels will adapt to their audiences, as they have for centuries. An original voice and a story that drops those captivating little bursts of what the reader craves – plot lines, character development, interesting dialogue – like breadcrumbs into a forest will have its audience committed for hundreds of pages and hours of attentive reading, even if the reader is under 30.

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Writing is not what happens in the moment

By The Word Process on Jul 16, 2010

When the explosion happens or the rainbow appears, the writer has to observe it. Then he or she must gather up the tools to write with, reflect on what has been seen, think about how it is to be recorded and finally, muster the words to describe it.

This description of the writing process is a simplified one because the input is never just one explosion or rainbow, it is also all the nitty-gritty that makes up the writer’s sensibility and character. It is all the other events experienced and processed by the writer, who without being fully aware brings all of that to bear on the explosion or the rainbow.

Writing is a kind of double living.  The writer experiences everything twice.  Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

~Catherine Drinker Bowen, Atlantic, December 1957

So, here to illustrate what writing is by showing what it is not is a rainbow, recorded by video camera as it is happening. No writing. None.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI]

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
~Anaïs Nin

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The Estival Calefaction is Getting to Us – Time to Put the Thesaurus Away!

By The Word Process on Jul 14, 2010

In a recent blog we advocated the use of the thesaurus for writers who employ the same words repeatedly. Today, we want to caution against using it in a pretentious manner. The thesaurus is great to provide variety but when you start using it to find big, obscure words, get hold of yourself, brew some coffee, take a brisk walk and assert control. Hint: if your spell check does not recognize the words you are getting from the thesaurus, it might be time to stop.

Here are some examples:

They raised him so, gambreled up by the bones of his cheek. A pale incruent wound. (This is a corpse being pulled from the river.)

He leaned back against the dark escarpment. Jagged blades of slate and ratchel stood like stone tools in the loam.

These are from SUTTREE, a novel by Cormac McCarthy. Paradoxically, we LOVE this book. This story of a man who rejects his privileged back ground to be a fisherman in 1951 Knoxville is our favorite book by McCarthy. But it is full of $50 words that we suspect may have led McCarthy to resort to his dictionary at least once or twice. Certainly, we needed a dictionary to read the book, Mccarthy’s fourth. Notably, his later books are written in more down-to-earth language.

McCarthy is a great novelist and can get away with almost anything, particularly in a book as masterful as SUTTREE. But mere mortals like most of us should use the thesaurus judiciously – particularly in the summer heat!

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Building suspense, what Facebook can teach us

By The Word Process on Jul 9, 2010

We want to start this entry with a disclaimer: we are not advocating that anyone use Facebook to learn about writing. What people post on Facebook are blurbs and anyone interested in writing almost any kind of narrative has a long way to go after the headline.

But there is this – you might say post modern – thing about what many Facebook entries leave out. Take for instance these fictitious entries:

1) Really like this video. Hahahaha! Link.

2) Going down to the country. Does it get any better than this?   

3) Good friends, good times!!!!!

Do these blogs leave us with anything but questions? Why does poster #1 really like the video? What does hahahaha mean? That the video is funny or something more sinister that we may or may not get by looking at it? What does poster #2 mean by “the country” and how do we know if it gets any better or not when we don’t know where there is? Poster #3: ???????

Yet, we think the holes in these little snippets of people’s lives are what keeps us coming back for more. What is left out gets us hooked on our Facebook friends’ stories. We want to know more; what happened; what it all means.

This is what building suspense in a book is all about, omitting strategic information so that the reader is forced to read on to find out. This can be a hard task for some writers whose natural inclination is tell all. To those of you of the spill-the-guts variety, we say, get a Facebook page.

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Synonyms are beautiful, as well as admirable, alluring, angelic, appealing, beauteous, bewitching, charming, classy, comely, cute, dazzling, delicate, delightful, divine, elegant, enticing, excellent, exquisite, fair, fascinating, fine, good-looking, gorgeous, graceful, grand, handsome, ideal, lovely, magnificent, marvelous, nice, pleasing, pretty, pulchritudinous, radiant, ravishing, refined, resplendent, shapely, sightly, splendid, statuesque, stunning, sublime, superb, symmetrical, taking, well-formed, wonderful

By The Word Process on Jul 5, 2010

Spanish Jesuit and author, Baltasar Gracian once said that “a synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.” Obviously, he was writing before spell check. Way before, as it turns out, since his greatest work, CRITICON, was published in three parts in the 1650’s. Wikipedia describes it as “a lengthy allegorical novel with philosophical overtones.”
Hmmm. We wonder if he used his thesaurus. It is possible. Although Roget’s thesaurus was not published until 1852, Philo of Byblos was collecting synonyms in the first and second centuries of the common era. So, Gracian may have had access to something.
It was nothing like what is available to modern writers, who merely have to type a word into a search function to come up with alternatives. Why, why don’t so many of them do it?
Repeated words ruin the flow of prose. They make it clumsy. Here’s an example: It was a beautiful day. Clare could not believe how beautiful the flowers were in her garden. In particular, her multi-colored day lilies seem to capture the beauty of the day. Orange-, yellow- and peach-colored blossoms made a beautiful display against the blue sky.
Here is the same graph employing synonyms: It was a dazzling day. Clare could not believe how beautiful the flowers were in her garden. In particular, her multi-colored day lilies seem to capture the essence of the morning. Orange-, yellow- and peach-colored blossoms made a brilliant display against the blue sky.
The second paragraph avoids the clunkiness of the first. And since synonyms are not identical in meaning, sifting through them to determine which best captures exactly what you want to say will make your prose richer. Dazzling is a synonym for beautiful, but a dazzling day is different from a beautiful one. To us, dazzling connotes a freshness or newness, as well as bright sunshine. A beautiful day is merely pleasing to the eye.

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Writing your how-to book; it is not about you.

By The Word Process on Jul 2, 2010

A recent query from an author was full of plans for a how-to book that is partially written. Among other ideas, the author said that several autobiographical chapters were in the works. These would take the reader through the author’s background and show just why the author is entitled to the expertise claimed in the book.
What’s wrong with this picture? We think it is this: a how-to book is not an autobiography. People who buy and read how-to books are looking to learn how to do whatever it is. It seems highly unlikely they will care about the author’s background except insofar as that background directly helps them learn how-to.
We don’t deny that how-to authors have to establish their bona-fides. Often, that can be accomplished in a paragraph or two on the back of the book– or perhaps sprinkled in with how-to recommendations in the form of personal anecdotes. In the 2006 book pictured here, HOW TO WALK IN HIGH HEELS, A GIRL’S GUIDE TO EVERYTHING, author Camille Morton is described in four words on the back cover: “international style and fashion journalist.”
One can imagine a young woman dipping into the book to learn how to be stylish, but not to find out how Morton’s childhood experience informed her ability to wear high heels. How-to readers have themselves and their betterment in mind when they delve into a book that they think is going to instruct them. Author autobiography is only a detour around the meat that they are really after. And why take a detour when some other how-to author will lay it out directly?
The effectiveness of how-to books is measured in the minds of readers and the success they see themselves having in meeting a certain goal. If the prescribed steps are clear and effective, that will establish the author’s expertise and it will do so more effectively than volumes of autobiographical material.

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The importance of words from a man who is losing them

By The Word Process on Jun 28, 2010

A society that doesn’t honor words is a society that is short on serious thought. This is one of the messages we take away from an insightful and moving piece in the most recent issue of The New York Review of Books (July 15, 2010). Titled simply “Words” it is about the devaluation of words and verbal expression in the era of Facebook, Twitter and text messaging. “Pithy allusion substitutes for exposition,” writes the author, Tony Judt. Professor of European Studies at New York University and Director of NYU’s Erich Maria Remarque Institute, Judt’s most recent book is ILL FARES THE LAND, published in March.
What is wrong with pithy allusion? It is short, so it leaves a lot out. What is left doesn’t really express much. It is also imprecise, open to interpretation. What is really being said, what thought expressed? When words can be seen to mean many different things, Judt says, “the outcome is anarchy.” He adds, “When words lose their integrity so do the ideas they express.”
Serious writers understand this. The struggle to put a thought into writing can sometimes make us question the validity of the thought. When the words are getting away from us, doing what seems to be their own thing, we often ask ourselves, “What exactly are you trying to say here?” This is a good question, not only because it helps clarify our writing, but because it also forces us to be clear about our underlying thinking.
Judt is in a particular position to understand the value of words and to despair over those who treat them cavalierly. He has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. ALS is a degenerative neuromuscular disorder, and Judt is losing his ability to communicate with either written or spoken words. “Translating being into thought, thought into words, and words into communication will soon be beyond me,” he reports. Can there be a worse fate for a writer and teacher?
Judt has no choice in the matter. There is no cure for ALS. But the rest of us, with our abilities in tact, can certainly think about how we use and value words. Judt concludes with a cry from the heart, “If words fall into disrepair what will substitute? They are all we have.”

The full article can be read at: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jun/17/words/ Continue reading “The importance of words from a man who is losing them”

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The interrobang. You cannot be serious?!

By The Word Process on Jun 25, 2010

Back in the early sixties one of those mad, mad men decided there was a need for a punctuation mark that expressed both a question and extreme surprise. We think this must be something like that television ad for the rental car company where John McEnroe is told he can choose any car on the lot and he exclaims in tone of outraged surprise: “Choose any car? You cannot be serious?”

Advertising executive Martin K. Speckter thought there ought to be a punctuation mark for print ads that expressed the combination of extreme surprise and rhetorical question that McEnroe does so beautifully with his voice. So Speckter came up with what came to be known as the interrobang, a combination of the exclamation mark and question mark.
Ever heard of it? Probably not. While it was something of a fad in the sixties, it never caught on as standard punctuation. Although Microsoft includes several versions in its Wingdings II character set, the interrobang is not on the keyboard along with the common question mark. We can’t use it in the text here, only as a picture.

So, the relevance. Writers do seem to have a need to combine question and exclamation marks. We see this all the time as in:

“You cannot be serious?!” Or, “You cannot be serious!?”

Both ways, because we ran across an Internet query asking which was correct: !? or ?! The answer is neither, if you want to be taken seriously as a writer. This is not correct punctuation. If you want to express in writing what McEnroe does with his voice, write about what his indignation expresses, that he has been mistreated by car rental companies everywhere for a long time and cannot believe that one of them could possibly let him choose his own car. Tell the story, don’t circumvent it with punctuation. The interrobang is not an option.

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Exclamation Marks: One is always enough and even then…

By The Word Process on Jun 22, 2010

Used to show strong or sudden emotion and for emphasis, exclamation marks or points are most frequently used in dialogue in fiction writing.

They are often used to convey urgency: “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

Or command: “Stop the train! Or I will shoot you dead!”

Or astonishment: “Wow! Did you see that flying thing?”

Or shouting: “Come down! The roof is collapsing!”

Or telling the reader that something is funny: “I was smoking a joint and the cop walked right by me!”

So what to make of writers who employ multiple exclamation marks (EMs) as in: “Come down!!! The roof is collapsing!!!”

Does the use of three EMs mean the peril is three times bigger? The urgency three times greater? No, but it does mean the writer is trying to indicate that the danger is very, very great and the collapse is imminent. It also means that this writer is going to be taken as an amateur by people in the book industry who recognize that the use of multiple EMs is a sign of a writer using a crutch with a point on the end.

Use your words, guys: “Come down! The roof is collapsing!” The implosion happened so quickly that it was over with a loud boom before the words were out of Sean’s mouth. Debris rained and a huge cloud of dust obscured the people standing on the roof – or would have if they had still been there.

Even single EMs should be used sparingly. In non-fiction, they should not be used at all. In a novel, they should be confined to dialogue and to first person narration. And they should never, ever be used to indicate humor because that is tantamount to holding up a laugh card while you snicker at your own joke.

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