Several Short Sentences About Writing

by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Part of the struggle in learning to write is learning to ignore what isn’t useful to you and pay attention to what

Knowing what you’re trying to say is always important. But knowing what you’ve actually said is crucial.

The things you feel you must or mustn’t do, without really knowing why. The things that make you wonder, “Am I allowed to …?” (Yes, you’re allowed to. Not forever and always, but until you decide for yourself what works and what doesn’t.)

Free yourself from the constraints of others, then impose your own.

The other model is its antithesis—the way poets and novelists are often thought to write. Words used to describe this second model include “genius,” “inspiration,” “flow,” and “natural,” sometimes even “organic.” Both models are useless. I should qualify that sentence. Both models are completely useless.

But why?

Every word is optional until it proves to be essential, Something you can only determine by removing words one by one

The longer the sentence, the less it’s able to imply, And writing by implication should be one of your goals.

Most of the sentences you make will need to be killed. The rest will need to be fixed. This will be true for a long time. The hard part now is deciding which to kill and which to fix and how to fix them.

A writer’s real work is the endless winnowing of sentences, The relentless exploration of possibilities, The effort, over and over again, to see in what you started out to say The possibility of saying something you didn’t know you could.

We take for granted, as a premise barely worth examining, that changing the words in a sentence—even the order of words—must have an effect on its meaning. And yet we think and read and write as if the fit between language and meaning were approximate, As though many different sentences were capable of meaning the same thing.

Veey interesting. How often do we notice the specific, intentional order of a sentence?

But first, what if meaning isn’t the sole purpose of the sentence?

What if you wrote as though sentences can’t be summarized? What if you value every one of a sentence’s attributes and not merely its meaning?

Learning to write begins anywhere, at any time in life.

Prose isn’t validated by a terminal meaning. If you love to read—as surely you must—you love being wherever you find yourself in the book you’re reading, Happy to be in the presence of every sentence as it passes by, Not biding your time until the meaning comes along. Writing isn’t a conveyer belt bearing the reader to “the point” at the end of the piece, where the meaning will be revealed. Good writing is significant everywhere, Delightful everywhere.

Were you asked to write in order to be heard, to be listened to? Asked to write a piece that mattered to you? Was there ever a satisfactory answer to the question, “Why am I telling you this?” Besides “It’s due on Monday”?

It was all change until the very last second.

But everything you notice is important. Let me say that a different way: If you notice something, it’s because it’s important.

Start by learning to recognize what interests you. Most people have been taught that what they notice doesn’t matter, So they never learn how to notice, Not even what interests them. Or they assume that the world has been completely pre-noticed,

Is it possible to practice noticing? I think so. But I also think it requires a suspension of yearning

There’s always an urge among writers To turn fleeting observations and momentary glimpses Into metaphors and “material” as quickly as possible, As if every perception ended in a trope, As if the writer were a dynamo Turning the world into words.

Cultivate observation, not content

Rushing to notice never works, Nor does trying to notice. Attention requires a cunning passivity.

Don’t neglect such a rich linguistic inheritance. It’s your business to know the names of things, To recover them if necessary and use them.

A true metaphor is a swift and violent twisting of language, A renaming of the already named. It’s meant to expire in a sudden flash of light

A cliché isn’t just a familiar, overused saying. It’s the debris of someone else’s thinking,

write your own thoughts

When the work is really complete, the writer knows how each sentence got that way, What choices were made.

I feel this with programming - but writing feels "natural"

One basic strategy for revision is becoming a stranger to what you’ve written. Try reading your work aloud. The ear is much smarter than the eye, If only because it’s also slower And because the eye can’t see rhythm or hear unwanted repetition.

Good advice

Turn every sentence into its own paragraph. (Hit Return after every period. If writing by hand, begin each new sentence at the left margin.) What happens? A sudden, graphic display of the length of your sentences

Many people assume there’s an inherent conflict between creativity and a critical, analytic awareness of the medium you work in. They assume that the creative artist works unconsciously And that knowing too much about matters like grammar and syntax diminishes or blunts creativity. This is nonsense. You don’t need to be an expert in grammar and syntax to write well. But you do need to know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. Between active and passive constructions. The relation between a pronoun and its antecedent. All the parts of speech. The different verb tenses. The nature of participles and their role as modifiers. The subtleties of prepositions—the hardest part of speech even for native speakers of English. You need a toolbox of rhetorical devices, like irony, hyperbole, And the various kinds of analogy. You need an ever-growing vocabulary—and with it the awareness that most words carry several meanings.

Things to learn :p

Now try a slightly harder version of this experiment on a separate copy. Circle the direct objects. The indirect objects. The participles. The relative pronouns.

Now perform the same experiment with an author whose work has a different feel. (Try Joan Didion’s essay “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.)

Ask the same question about verbs and sentence structures. Ask yourself too how present the writer feels to the reader. How strong is your sense of the speaker or narrator? How is that sense created, and where do you detect it?

If a sentence offers an ambiguous path—two ways of being read—this reader will always take the wrong one.

So why not give up the idea of “flow” and accept the basic truth about writing? It’s hard work, and it’s been hard work for everyone all along.

If you think that writing—the act of composition—should flow, and it doesn’t, what are you likely to feel? Obstructed, defeated, inadequate, blocked, perhaps even stupid. The idea of writer’s block, in its ordinary sense, Exists largely because of the notion that writing should flow.

And yet good prose often sounds spoken, As if the writer—or the reader reading aloud—were saying the sentences. (This isn’t the same as sounding colloquial.)

Writing is not natural, but good writing sounds natural.

You can make any piece feel like an informal letter By using the generic characteristics of an informal letter. But it’s far easier to get that feel By writing to the reader you imagine reading it.

Write consciously, deliberately. Learn how to get out of trouble. Learn how to free yourself when you’re stuck.

Good advice-generally

Sooner or later the need for any one of these will prevent you from writing. Anything you think you need in order to write— Or be “inspired” to write or “get in the mood” to write— Becomes a prohibition when it’s lacking. Learn to write anywhere, at any time, in any conditions, With anything, starting from nowhere.

Good advice for programming too

If you want the reader to feel your sincerity, your sentences have to enact sincerity—verbally, syntactically, even rhythmically. They have to reveal the signs of sincerity—a modesty and directness— Just as you do when you’re talking sincerely.

All writing is revision. That’s not what you learned in school. In school you learned to write a draft and then revise.

Writers at every level of skill experience the tyranny of what exists. It can be overwhelming—the inertia of the paragraphs and pages you’ve already composed, the sentences you’ve already written, No matter how rough they

Whether you love what you’ve written or not, Those sentences have the virtue of already existing, Which makes them better than sentences that don’t exist. Or so it seems.

So let’s change things. Try this instead: Revise at the point of composition. Compose at the point of revision. Accept no provisional sentences. Make no drafts And no draft sentences.

Sometimes you know just what you want to say, And you find the words to say exactly that. But just as often what you want to say emerges as the sentence takes shape. The thought isn’t primary or absolute. The thought is only a hint. Language offers guidance and resistance both.

I feel this often