Advice from David Bergen
In 2009 I had the great privilege of spending a week as a student with Governor General’s Award and Giller Prize author, David Bergen at the Canadian Mennonite University School of Writing.
The best general rule David gave us was to think like Earnest Hemmingway and cut adverbs.
Take a sentence like this: "Sam was equally furious and privately believed that the clerk was slightly jealous of the magistrate."
Kill the adverbs (in this case cut the “ly” words - equally, privately, slightly - and you've improved your writing.
Now do the same with your whole book!
David also picked a sentence fragment from my Black Bottle Man manuscript
- “when the moon was not at her post to see the things that Aunt Annie (and Aunt Emma) had done” -
and asked me to write a chapter exploring what happened to Rembrandt that night.
The result was Chapter Four and I learned that authors sometimes hide important scenes from themselves. (Thanks David!)
The best general rule David gave us was to think like Earnest Hemmingway and cut adverbs.
Take a sentence like this: "Sam was equally furious and privately believed that the clerk was slightly jealous of the magistrate."
Kill the adverbs (in this case cut the “ly” words - equally, privately, slightly - and you've improved your writing.
Now do the same with your whole book!
David also picked a sentence fragment from my Black Bottle Man manuscript
- “when the moon was not at her post to see the things that Aunt Annie (and Aunt Emma) had done” -
and asked me to write a chapter exploring what happened to Rembrandt that night.
The result was Chapter Four and I learned that authors sometimes hide important scenes from themselves. (Thanks David!)
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Black Bottle Man
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