dagblog - Comments for "HOW TO WRITE GOOD!"

Oh, I so agree with

Ramona — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 13:15:19 +0000

In reply to Writing. I wish I could put

Oh, I so agree with everything you said in that last paragraph. I can save drafts on Blogger, and last I looked I had 31 unfinished pieces that may never see the light of day. I also print up pages and read them that way to see if what I'm writing is working.

I edit constantly, even after a piece is published. I can do that as a blogger, which is one of the reasons I love blogging. But when I worked for pay, I agonized over every piece, picking it apart and hating how I did it; wondering as I read it in print how I could have missed such obvious flaws. Every single piece I've ever published could have been done better, yet when I submit them I believe they're perfectly okay. (Obviously, or I wouldn't have submitted them.)

But you are the first one I've read who will talk honestly about the chronic disease writers. I don't find any of it interesting, either, but I understand how it must be all-consuming to the people suffering. If writing is their outlet, it's natural to write about the one unwelcome constant in their lives, and blogging is an easy, satisfying way to get it all out.

Someone asked me once to ghost-write a book about menopause. I reminded her that there were probably thousands of books and articles already written about menopause, including Gail Sheehey's best-seller on the subject, but she was sure her own story was unique and worthy of yet another book. She offered a goodly start-up sum but I turned it down without even sleeping on it. There's nothing the least bit interesting about hot flashes.

Writing. I wish I could put

MrSmith1 — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 04:13:44 +0000

In reply to HOW TO WRITE GOOD!

Writing. I wish I could put down all the words and stories in my head more easily. I normally write in two ways. One, is what I do when I write haikus; it is off-the-cuff, just making it up on the fly, and playing with words and meanings till it sounds right. That seems to come quite easily to me and I can make up spontaneous poems and haikus almost on demand. (alas, there is not much demand for that sort of thing, especially since I've vowed not to become the crazy wild-eyed guy with the unkempt appearance who approaches people in the park with an offer to write a personal poem for them for a dollar. But I digress.) Sometimes I'll start with an opening line for a haiku and just see where it goes. Sometimes it just flows out in perfect 5-7-5 form. Other times I have to struggle to make the words fit or the thought more concise.

The other way I write is when I write longer pieces, short stories or plays. I tend to write and constantly act out the dialogue, if not verbally, then in my head. Then, I go where the logic takes me. The jokes often just pop up out of the situation. I'm like Ramona and tend to get up and walk around a lot and then come back and re-write again and again.

Writing is such a strange and wonderful thing when it is flowing ...and such an annoying, frustrating thing when nothing seems to work and everything you write seems trite or ridiculous. There is a whole cottage industry of blog-writers with chronic diseases. I marvel at some of them for their ability to wallow in their suffering and create blogs about how much pain they are in. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have much interest in doing that.

Well thank you Ramona! I felt

Richard Day — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:26:41 +0000

In reply to Richard, funny that we both

Well thank you Ramona! I felt shunned on this one. ha

It can be as important what you write about as much as how you write it!

I just finished reading Hitchens today though and unlike Coulter; this guy CAN WRITE!

I never did get "Ulysses"

Ramona — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:21:53 +0000

In reply to Richard, funny that we both

I never did get "Ulysses" either. I only read it for the dirty parts.

Richard, funny that we both

Ramona — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:19:36 +0000

In reply to HOW TO WRITE GOOD!

Richard, funny that we both wrote about writing today. I read the whole article in Slate. Unless I'm on deadline (which I never am anymore, dammit.), I don't see any reason to write faster. I see many reasons to write better.

I do envy people who can write quickly and with many distractions, but I would envy them even more if I thought every word rat-a-tatting out of them was golden. Of course, writing slowly doesn't mean words of gold, either. It's just that writing takes an enormous amount of time, at least for me. I write, edit, write, edit, and then edit some more.

I tend to be this kind of writer:

The scientifically-tested fun facts abound. Ann Chenoweth and John Hayes (2001) found that sentences are generated in a burst-pause-evaluate, burst-pause-evaluate pattern, with more experienced writers producing longer word bursts.

I evaluate by getting up from my chair a hundred times during a writing session and talking to myself while I'm pacing around the room or the yard. I have to hear what I've written before it makes any sense to me.

But what made me laugh about the article is that I kept thinking about what you had to say about Ann Coulter. Michael Agger, the author of the piece, might actually call Coulter a fine example of what he's talking about. She's prolific so we know she writes fast. She knows who she's writing for and knows exactly how to word her views in order to get them to buy her books. She reads a lot and writes a lot. She writes in clear sentences. She's his gal!

But to this I said, Huh???

I remember, too, a former colleague who was blazingly fast. We would be joking at lunch—"Imagine if David Foster Wallace had written a children's book"—and there it would be in my inbox, 15 minutes later. Not a perfect draft, but publish-it-on-your-blog good.

Funny, too, that David Foster Wallace comes up in both of our pieces. I had to look him up, since I'd heard the name but didn't really know who he was. (One of my many lapses due to my insistence on learning only what I want to learn.) I still don't get the references so I guess I'm going to have to go looking for something of his to read.

Good post as usual, Richard. It was fun.