The Project

Dear Reader,

As you read past this post, you will be reading a project I completed for my senior spring semester of college (though not to be confused with the equivalent of a ‘Senior Thesis’). Here was the goal: practice voice and style by reading essays from people who know how to write with voice and style. The next few posts are my responses to their essays – sometimes written analytically, sometimes imitatively.

 

I took the essays from Writers on Writing published by the New York Times. I found them engaging and inspirational and I regret that I did not have time to study more of them; perhaps that will happen sometime in the future.

 

Enjoy!

She Was Blond. She Was in Trouble. And She Paid 3 Cents a Word ~ Ed McBain

Mr. McBain takes you back to something of yesteryear with this essay of his, back when exciting stories did not require an unstoppable corporation, a corrupt government, and steamy sex between the well-intentioned government official and the misguided corporate intern. No, man, back then it was all about the bad guys versus the good guys. The bad guys were always bad. McBain agrees. He didn’t even talk about them once. The good guys made for all the excitement. This essay is all about writing stories about the cool characters, the ones with the smooth hats and smooth coats, even though it never rained. Private Eyes, man. Regular old PI’s. And you can’t just talk about the PI like he’s another guy on the street or the guy who checks out your groceries. Didn’t you catch the  word “Private?” Then again, the PI knows too much and never seems to break a sweat beneath that big, smooth coat. So if you want excitement, you hafta look at the Amateur Detective. He’s the guy who was about to be a PI but got stuck in traffic the day of the test, he’s the guy that read that one detective book by that one detective whose motto was “Everyone can solve a crime.” McBain says he’s “smarter than either the PI or the cops because solving crimes wasn’t his usual line of work, you see, but boy, was he good at it! It was fun writing Am Eye stories because you didn’t have to know anything about criminal investigation. You just had to know all the station stops on the Delaware Lackawanna.” But even that’s not even the funnest kind of crime story to write; if you wanna have some real fun you’re gonna hafta write about the Innocent Bystander. His name is usually Jimmy. See he’s just there at the scene of the crime minding his own business being innocent when outa nowhere all these cops show up and start chasing him. That’s when the run really starts gettin fun. Because he didn’t do it. Get it? Man, how can you get more exciting than that? Ah shucks, I guess there’s gotta be a girl. Why does there always have to be a girl? They mess up everything. Well, I guess this one doesn’t, unless her hair is blonde, “there were no innocent blondes in crime fiction.” Nevermind. The Innocent Bystander still hasn’t been cleared and the cops are pretty dumb because they’re still chasing him. Good thing he knows all the back alleys because he grew up around here, see. They’ll never catch him, at least not before he can prove that he didn’t do it. And I guess we shouldn’t keep talking about the cops like they’re bullies with badges or, well, dumb. I mean, they kinda are because they totally just ran past the culprit. But they’re nice too. How do you get to know them? “Give them head colds. And first names. And keep their dialogue homey and conversational. Natural-sounding people with runny noses and first names had to be at least as human as you and I were.” And then there’s the time where the guy whose about to kill the other guy gets shot by that guy. I bet that was tough to write. “I know.” says ol McBain “It needs work”

But no matter, because now I know how to make my characters as human as I want.

___________

McBain, Ed. “She Was Blond. She Was in Trouble. And She Paid 3 Cents a Word .” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 149-155. New York: Times Books, 2001

 

Once Upon a Time, Literature. Now What? ~ James Salter

What a pessimist. This man Salter has a most unfortunate outlook on life. Listen to him: “Junk like George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy.” See? Jimmy Raincloud just cannot see what’s going on here. His essay is all about the end of the world as we know it, or at least the end of literature. We seem to be losing its value in his mind. People do not appreciate good art or language, they have lost sight of history, and surely do not respect custom. We seem to be okay with a new style of culture: movies, comic books, movies, rock n roll, more movies. Salter sees that people can be successful “in every visible way and…have no sensitivity to art, no interest in history, and are essentially indifferent to language.” And it surely cannot be fair that spoken language gets to keep on keeping on while written language flounders just because the former is easier to use than the latter, can it? What is the use anymore of writing if no one will understand it? “The first great task in life, by far the most important one, the one on which everything else depends,” writes Salter, “can be described in three words. Very simply it is learning to speak.” But it is this language that we are losing, according to this cloudy-with-a-strong-chance-of-rain essay. Salter was a movie writer too, you know, not just a regular writer who writes essays about writing. But that did not seem to affect the way his scholarship was accepted in the cinematic world. The highest quality scripts were routinely thrown away in favor of what would be more popular. We push against the walls of culture? Salter seems to be asking, and yet we are systematically destroying culture in favor of cult . . . and ure just going to have to do the best you can. Why practice writing if the better you get, the less people pay attention? No one cares about Homor and the Iliad when Flash Gordon flashes across the screen. We seem to appreciate comic books more than the Brothers Karamozov even though we do not know how to appreciate comic books because we wont read the Brothers Karamozov. Why write well if no one will appreciate you for it? This thing I am doing, I think, might not actually mean anything to anyone except me and what is the point in that? So what if I want to be “connected to the life that has gone before, to stand in the ancient places, to hear the undying stories”? What if no one will think much of it?

Well, if the result of this project is to learn how to write a depressing few hundred words, I guess I won’t even try to end on a hopeful note. There is not much I can do in the way of providing a helpful substitute for the fall of culture.  It’s not like Dante came out of the Inferno and saw the sun.

 

Key Words:

• Literature – Writing that never stops being read
• Transcendent – Ecstasy that goes beyond a purely physical meaning
• Language – Requisite for the human condition; necessary for expressing beauty and sorrow

 

__________

Salter, James. “Once Upon a Time, Literature. Now What?” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 198-203. New York: Times Books, 2001

 

Directions: Write, Read, Rewrite. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as Needed ~ Susan Sontag

It makes sense to me why I have spent my undergraduate career reading books. Besides the ideas that I have grown accustomed to, the art and skill of reading has been its own boon. Strangely the ability to write never showed up. Perhaps I should not be surprised by this. Sontag says that “the reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.” But dreams are not reality. This project is a fulfillment of a dream born out of reading good writing, but the willingness to begin that process has been a long time in coming because of the fear that Sontag also talks about, the fact that I am my own worst critic and if one single sentence cannot get past the grand inquisitor, how much less a paragraph or more? But her purpose in crafting this essay is not to berate the fearful writer but rather to champion the cause of analyzing, editing, and rewriting. If it is bad to begin with, make it better. If it was a good first attempt, even better will it become. Writing is a “series of permissions you give yourself” she says, addressing the problem of perfection in composition. Her heart is in her words; her is calling for writers to learn to love their writing like they love a person. Keep working on it. Keep working on it. Keep trying. Don’t try, do. Remember that we do not write for ourselves exclusively; we may so choose to write for self expression, but we also write for others to read and learn from. That must  matter to us who write. Sontag’s final argument for the rewrite is a surprising one: “What I write about is other than me. AS what I write is smarter than I am. Because I can rewrite it. My books know what I once knew—fitfully, intermittently. And getting the best words on the page does not seem any easier, even after so many years of writing.” If the rough draft, done well, represents the heart of me, then the rewrite represents the loving, coming-alongside-of of the mind, guiding the passion into its best forms.

Write, Read, Rewrite encourages me to review what I have written and willingly, gladly, hungrily make changes to what could always be better. I can safely say that not a single word of Sontag’s essay feels out of place. She must have rewritten it many times before submitting it for this publication. And yet that is the craft of writing that I compare my first attempts to and walk away with more “uncertainties and anxieties.” I am in desperate need of freedom from the task master of myself as it pertains to the page; as she puts it, “the rewriting—and the rereading—sound like effort, they are actually the most pleasurable parts of writing.” Those words are foreign to me. I need to repeat steps two and three.

 

___________

 

Sontag, Susan. “Directions: Write, Read, Rewrite. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as Needed” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 223-229. New York: Times Books, 2001

Summoning the Mystery and Tragedy, but in a Subterranean Way ~ Hans Koning

I am chuckling to myself because I just realized what Koning was about in this essay of his. There was no subtle agenda or underhanded attempt at persuasion . . . until there was. He introduces himself by his intention to write a novel, one where the reader “would learn about its protagonist only from his almost abstract thoughts about the human condition and his own life within it.” And then he is off to talk about how his novel The Affair had a strange rise to notoriety. Koning sought to point out where his experience with English as a native Dutchman was different and difficult. In general, he describes his novel as European in nature, a reason why it was not received well in America. Nonetheless, he believed in his message, that “if you want to write a serious novel, you should not only be out to entertain but you should also, in a hidden way, reflect on the world’s justice and injustice, hope and illusion.”  The critics will say that to add in serious societal analysis is to risk turning away an audience because they will feel “commercialized” and “politicized.” Koning rejects that notion saying instead that it is a irresponsible to be disengaged from politicians as a writer; the reality is one can never be completely disengaged even if they try. His final conclusion is that every writer should engage with the issues of their day and time rather than trying to borrow from the past to achieve popularity. Koning seeks to write a novel like that, a “novel for our time, dealing with an essential theme and an essential message in a subterranean, carefully hidden way, a message like a snake in the grass.” The audience should learn about author’s attitude through the choices of the characters. The reader will walk away comfortable with what they have learned and understood. But eventually the snake will rear its head and the author’s job will be complete. That’s when I caught the trick and chuckled to myself. Koning makes explicit judgments about many groups; he does not make any explicit judgments about the particular ones reading it. But he tells us precisely what choices he is making and why—I have been bitten by the snake in the grass even as my mind begins to wrestle with the choices and positions that Koning holds even though he never asked nor told me to do so. “Perhaps the essence of our time,” he says, “is that we have to learn to look beyond our own individual lives.”

Perhaps? Throughout his essay, Koning adopts precisely this alarming “possible” tone which keeps things being thought until the end when the trap is finally sprung. No one likes to talk about anything quite as much as themselves. He makes it easy to do so until the snake rears its head. So we’d best pay attention to the rest as well.

 

___________

 

Koning, Hans. “Summing the Mystery and Tragedy but in a Subterranean Way” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 136-140. New York: Times Books, 2001

 

To See Your Story Clearly, Start by Pulling the Wool over Your Own Eyes ~ Kent Haruf

This essay’s author does precisely that; writing blind, as he describes it. I mean, he takes his wool cap and pulls it down over his eyes in the middle of a dark coal cellar typing away on an Typewriter using old yellow paper. This experience that he creates for himself is the quirk that he employs to craft his composition. Granted he does not write perfectly while blindly typing, but later, when he comes to the computer, he is able to edit out any mistakes and fill any gaping holes while retaining much of the original voice that went into the “blind draft.” Moreover, he has found certain benefits to limiting himself in this way. Only using a certain kind of special, valuable paper has made him delicate in how he treats his writing implement. Because a Typewriter opens up the risk of going off the page to one side or the other, or too high/low, it also results in many side benefits. Haruf himself describes the fact that he had to work on concision and clarity in order to operate within the physical boundaries of the Typewriter, elements that only improved his writing. His intention is to delve into the texture of his stories, as a novelist, and really get at the heart of it. Yes, it is a mess when the paper pops out of the writer ready to be copied over onto the computer, but what he has got he has really got. 

This being a persuasive essay on the merits of his approach, Haruf chooses to employ a variety of relevant strategies. He starts out with an extensive list of excellent authors who had their own special quirks. Flannery O’Conner wrote in a closet for goodness sake. So why should his coal cellar be out of the ordinary? Next he describes the use of a typewriter and his “yellowing paper” that he must use sparingly. Not until halfway through the essay does he drop the “bomb” that is his choice to actually cover his eyes and turn off the lights. This is not just physical blindness, mind you, but metaphorical darkness as well. He has no distractions from without, and few and fading distractions from within. He reasons that he is “trying to avoid allowing the analytical part of my mind into the process too soon. Instead, I’m trying to stay in touch with subliminal, subconscious impulses and to get the story down in some spontaneous way.” After this intriguing explanation of his habits, Haruf “settles down” again and talks about the process of editing on a computer like “normal” authors. But soon he is running up to the conclusion where he reasons that the creation of a story on paper is such a bizarre process that “writers have to find bizarre ways to make it possible even consider doing it.” From my own personal experience, I can certainly attest to the powerful effect that darkness and blindness has on playing the piano—I imagine that writing is no different.

 

Key Words:

• Spontaneity – “A sense of freshness and vividness. Perhaps at times even a suggestion of awkwardness.”
• Blindness – “Actual and metaphorical darkness behind my closed eyes, trying to avoid being distracted.”

___________

 

Haruf, Kent. “To See Your Story Clearly, Start by Pulling the Wool over Your Own Eyes” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 84-85. New York: Times Books, 2001

 

Those Words That Echo . . . Echo . . . Echo Through Life ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid wrote a strange essay, a pretty strange essay. Not that strange is a bad thing but it was different. She talked about Mr. Potter, her father, but since she never stopped talking about Mr. Potter I wondered if she was telling the truth or just writing a story so I went and looked it up and she is telling the truth . . . and she is certainly writing a story. It just isn’t like any of the other essays I’ve written so far. She introduces us to herself by what she is writing and continues writing as if we walked in and she told us to have a seat and “I’ll be with you in a moment.” What’s the point? Where’s the objective instruction on how to write? Isn’t it selfish that she won’t pause long enough to help me out? But wait, she has just decided to give me a front row seat to her processing and though process. She is writing about Mr. Potter, her father. So far she has his name and his next of kin, her, his daughter because he is her father this Mr. Potter. It is not until half way through the essay that something happens after this introduction. Nothing important happens in point of fact. But something happened and that is important. That something having happened “and one day”, Mrs. Kincaid says that “that “and one day” left me bereft and exhausted and feeling empty; and that “and one day” is just what I want when in the process of encountering a certain aspect of my world.” And I think what she means is that that one day happened after long days of nothing happening. First it was just Mr. Potter: father. Now it is Mr. Potter: father, “driving a motorcar and dressing in a way imitative of men who had enormous amounts of money.” But by the very next sentence, Mrs. Kincaid is back to talking about herself. She is talking about a skirt. So how’s this teaching me how to write? What’m I learning? Mrs. Kincaid is teaching me to be patient as she painstakingly lives each moment of her life patiently in the moment. She did not foresee Mr. Potter’s life was about to “advance and explode on the page” because she was talking to Mr. Sweet about the trash.

Her essay ends with no closure on the title of it, Those Words that Echo…, but she echoed a lot. In fact, she echoed most things. Most things happened more than once in the space of a few pages. She answered the question “How do I write? Why do I write?” with the answer “this is what I’m writing.” How does she write? She echoes a lot. Why does she write? When she has something to say. Her garbage man, her exercise partner, her children, her nice blue “tilting to lavender” silk taffeta skirt, a skirt that has box pleats, those are the things that she really cares about. “And one day” the next sentence is what she will be writing.

 

__________

 

Kincaid, Jamaica. “Those Words That Echo . . . Echo . . . Echo Through Life” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 65-70. New York: Times Books, 2001

 

Goofing Off While the Muse Recharges ~ Richard Ford

“It’s hard to write just enough.” I bet you’ve never heard that phrase before. I hadn’t. But Richard Ford seems to have meant it when he said it. His essay, the title of which appears a few lanes back, amounts to an argument for the pause button. Or perhaps clean forgetting that you left the tape in the player? His ritual, ”cease in order to resume,” is something that he describes at the beginning of the essay and continues to reference throughout. But rather than justify his choice with good reasons, he talks through the reality of the writer’s process: Writing endlessly without pause, thinking that an unwritten minute is a lost moment, writing too much. Ford doesn’t even think writing is that difficult. In fact, “beware of writers who tell you how hard they work. Writing is indeed often dark and lonely, but no one really has to do it.” And that’s really what this essay is all about it. Don’t write if you don’t have to. Write if you want to. And definitely don’t want to write more than other things you should want to do. In Ford’s case, it’s Sports Center and the World Series. Only write when you get bored with what’s out there and want to create something new; that way you won’t be missing anything more important than your writing when you write. That’s how you “pay reverence to art’s sacred incentive—that the whole self, the complete will, be engaged.” And as I check Facebook for the tenth time in as many minutes and prepare a new Spotify playlist for when The Killers finishes up, I suspect he may be on to something. Disagree with taking such a lengthy break between writings. I probably do. But surely we can settle with Ford on his description of art’s worthy goal; breaks might not be such a bad idea after all.

Now as it pertains to style and voice, Goofing Off feels like it was written…like that: goofing off. Ford’s voice is precise—precisely lazy. In one paragraph, one that follows another one containing some rhetorical questions about the worth of trying to write something worthwhile, Ford starts out three sentences in a row with a contracted question. Aren’t. Isn’t. Isn’t? I mean, “come on, guys…really?” he seems to say. No interest in aggressively persuading anyone, only interested in not being persuaded by anyone, Ford writes calmly. As I write this blog post and many others like, as I (hopefully) start to slowly learn how to write better, I tempt myself with the thought that, sooner than I think, I’m going to be good enough to find in my writing the sort of holistic satisfaction that good art is supposed to bring and then I’ll not want to stop writing because of how much fun I will have compared to the muddle mess and confusion I used to experience every time I sat down to a blank page and pulsing cursor. Though perhaps something just happened on Facebook. I’d better check. Man.

 

Key Words:

• Interval – The time in between impulses to create what will not otherwise exist
• Art – That which engages the whole self

 

___________

 

Ford, Richard. “Goofing Off While the Muse Recharges” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 65-70. New York: Times Books, 2001

 

Putting Pen to Paper, but Not Just Any Pen or Just Any Paper ~ Mary Gordon

Failure is inevitable. I will fail before I have finished writing this post. In fact, I’ve probably already done so. Mary Gordon gets it. In Putting Pen to Paper, she starts and finishes with the concept of failure. “There may be some writers who contemplate a day’s work without dread,” she writes, “but I don’t know them.” Truer words could not be spoken, if the speaker is a writer, an aspiring one or one who has arrived. Neither can avoid the disconnect between the words that form in the mind and the words that come out on the page, though now I am intrigued about which one should get to define “success.” The meat of the essay lies in a frank discussion of her pens and papers. Like the title says, she does not use just any pen or any paper. In fact, down to the brand of the pen, the size of the nib, the color of the ink, and what she experiences when the tip touches down, Gordon is sure of what she likes. And not just the pen, but the paper as well. She affectionately describes how she came across this notebook or that bundle of hand-made parchment and each one signifies in its purchase and purpose. But there is more to it than just a thoughtful purchase. They represent a process of living life. She tells us how each day begins with a time of reading followed by writing, but not writing in a creative sense, but writing in an imitative sense. She uses her carefully selected pen and paper to copy down carefully selected passages from reading. The satisfying “thingness” of the pen scratching over the page as she perfectly copies some else’s words, not having to worry about creating her own “perfectness,” brings with it a sense of peace. “It is remarkably pleasant, before the failure starts,” says Gordon, to use one’s hand and wrist, to hold and savor pleasant objects, for the purpose of copying in one’s own delightful penmanship the marks of those who have gone before.” With such powerful language she makes the case for writing by hand instead of on a computer, even if it isn’t an original composition. Writing is, after all, not solely an act of creation, just like running results in more than just getting from here to there. The matter of the exercise, the motion itself, and what it accomplishes, remains eminently valuable.

Looking past the mild irony of a typed and printed piece describing the virtues of pen and paper, Mary Gordon’s style still comes out. She introduces herself into the work not only with the “I” pronoun, but also through several moments of pause-for-reflection, now that I think of it, like that last phrase between the commas. In her mind and ours, the writing implements take on relational qualities that further emphasis the intentional way in which she has added ink into her writing routine. Though she fail any attempt to create on the page what is in her mind, she has taken care to make up for that reality with another one.

 

Key Words:

• Failure – When the results do not match the intention causing fear of repeated cases
• Handwriting – When “the desire to make marks and to communicate thoughts” combine

___________

 

Gordon, Mary. “Putting Pen to Paper, but Not Just Any Pen or Just Any Paper” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 78-83. New York: Times Books, 2001

 

Two Languages in Mind but Just One in the Heart ~ Louise Erdrich

Erdrich’s essay tells the story of heartfelt journey into the realm of another language. She is a native English speaker, but her heritage is Chippewa Indian. She is attempting to learn the language of her grandfather’s prayers. I’ll be honest and say that I did not initially see a lesson for me in this essay, nothing about how to write well. After a few more read-throughs, however, I recognized that her point in writing this essay was not to talk about English, but to talk about the process of working with language. Bingo. She brings us into this process somewhere after a worthwhile beginning attempt at Ojibwe. First it is some history about the language’s background described alongside her own personal history and relationship to the language. One striking element of her approach is the way she personifies language; that is, she talks about her relationship with English as if she were an unfaithful lover seeking after a new fling. “My English is jealous, my Objibwe elusive,” she says; “like a besieged unfaithful lover, I’m trying to appease them both.” Erdrich keeps using the relationship language for the entirety of the essay, a stylistic element that keeps her writing interesting. But it is more than that. Casting both Ojibwe and English as living breathing elements takes us far deeper into the essence of language. We almost catch a taste of the experience of discovery that Erdrich is sharing with us. Language is not just a tool, it has deeper implications than mere conversation. “What the Lakota call the Great Mystery, is associated for me with the flow of Ojibwemowin. My Catholic training touched me intellectually and symbolically but apparently never engaged my heart.” With statements like these, Erdrich describes both the unique way that the language speaks to her and the innate motivation she has for learning it. Moreover, another effective element of her essay is the way that she incorporates the actual language she is describing. She does not just describe it, she speaks it in her sentences. Even as she describes incorporating words and phrases more and more into her every day life, she incorporates it into this very essay, lending weight to her testimony. There is a lesson here: the slow but determined process by which Erdrich approaches her family’s language should inform the level of intention that we put into our own language. This may not necessitate carrying a notebook everywhere writing down verbs and nouns as they come to mind like she does, but if language is so important, which it is, then the lingering remains of a ninth grade English class might not be enough to satisfy its potential or importance. As a poor linguist trying to learn the finer points of English usage, I welcome Erdrich’s humble determination to take her process steps at a time. She knows she will fail. But, “however awkward my nouns, unstable my verbs, however stumbling my delivery, to engage in the language is to engage the spirit. Perhaps that is what my teachers know, and what my English will forgive.”

__________

Erdrich, Louise. “Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart” In Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times, comp. New York Times, 54-59. New York: Times Books, 2001