Conference notes, part 1: Writing tips from Naomi Wolf
The San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference wrapped up last week, along with a panoply of workshops and big-name writers headlining the conference catalogue. It was my first opportunity to hear Margaret Atwood speak in person, but I'll write about her later in this series of workshop recaps. I've needed a week to catch up on everything I left at home–work, Arabic lessons, writing, and the ryegrass jungle beyond my office window. Therefore, I am starting off with Naomi Wolf's workshop because it lends itself so well to an organized summary.
First let me say: I love this woman. She has an enormous amount of raw energy. She moved back and forth across the stage and into the front of the aisle, as if we were standing in a big town square instead of a packed lecture hall. And she's a lively and organized thinker, too, moving her talk from the intellectual atmosphere of her childhood, to the sexual harassment scandals at Yale and Cambridge, to the necessity of finding one's true voice.
So, for a seminar about political writing, she walks the talk. The talk was about shedding the invisible rules we've grown up with. (I felt the message was addressed to women, especially, but it was inclusive.) And the "walk" is powerful, persuasive writing that comes from questioning and/or rejecting those rules, speaking your truth, and using it to create change in the world.
She offer six pointers for finding your true voice, and some tips for good activist writing.
1. Get used to being weird.
2. Don't seek approval, because approval is stifling.
3. Practice the belief daily that you are entitled to your own opinion. Seek to know what you think.
4. Divest yourself of anyone who trivializes you.
5. Avoid jargon, complications, Latinates, and hiding.
6. Use clear structure. Logic is your friend.
Other tips include changing the frame of your opponent's argument; appealing to empathy; appealing to moral coherence; subversion, mischief, and humor; using the individual story to get at the big story; and addressing your audience, no matter who they are, as "us," not "them."
She offered the example of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s political writing as a perfect case of this last point. He used "us" even though his audience were white racists. Like him, we must practice thinking in terms of common humanity when arguing for human rights, and avoid divisive thinking.
Naomi Wolf is unabashedly principled, and unabashedly smart–qualities that give her the courage to not only engage in important political battles, but elevate the quality of argument. I read The End of America in 2005-ish, and was impressed by its succinct, ten-point argument that the Bush Administration's security policies overreached the U.S. Constitution so grossly that they constituted an existential threat to American freedoms.
She reminded me in her talk that taking a side isn't a matter of political affiliation–it's about deriving the truth from the facts around you, and having the courage to step into the ring.
In honor of Tip #6 above, here's a brilliant little reference tool for learning all about logical fallacies. If you have the mettle for tuning in to the presidential campaign rhetoric, you'll find many opportunities to practice identifying them.
