Alaskan Range: Word Smithing
...H.L. Mencken, one of America’s preeminent wordsmiths, claimed that creating beauty was way down the list of reasons why writers write. “Far ahead of it,” Mencken wrote, “comes the yearning to make money. And after the yearning to make money comes the yearning to make a noise.”..,
Columnist Greg Hill, who never fails to entertain and amuse, brings the two key secrets of how to write well.
H.L. Mencken, one of America’s preeminent wordsmiths, claimed that creating beauty was way down the list of reasons why writers write. “Far ahead of it,” Mencken wrote, “comes the yearning to make money. And after the yearning to make money comes the yearning to make a noise.” I may fall into that latter category, but drawing even oblique attention to that most worthy of institutions, the American free public library, provides some justification.
I strive to amuse as I share the fascinating intellectual flotsam that washes up at the library, and any success realized in that regard comes not from any genetic predisposition, but from that foremost Secret of How To Write: reading well and widely. Secret number two is equally well known: write often and regularly. I’ve written columns for over a quarter-century, and reading those early compositions today is an awful form of emotional flagellations: the herky-jerky flow and dense undergrowth of unnecessary verbiage. Fortunately for us both, some rough edges have been eroded by millions of succeeding words and phrases.
The weekly library column was inherited along with my first library director’s job, and producing a new column every seven days proved a valuable experience. It saved me thousands in tuition fees for private online writing schools who primarily require regular regimens of writing. I’ve found that writing frequently is easier, since the shorter timetable forces a small part of my mind to constantly noodle away at the next edition. Getting one’s creative juices fired up for writing every four weeks is a longer, more involved process. In fact, I avoid taking a break without leaving the next sentence or thought I’m composing hanging, even if it’s for a night or a few days. When I get around to completing the line, I invariably get right back into the flow.
Schools for aspiring writers have abounded for decades, but like all distance education, they’re experiencing a new resurgence with the advent of the Internet. For example, $200-300 per month buys wannabe screenwriters instruction and counseling from the Writers Boot Camp (www.writersbootcamp.com). Besides online courses, clients receive weekly “office hours support,” two script evaluations annually, and admission to their job bank. On the other hand, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Writer’s Bootcamp” (go to http://chronicle.com/ and type “writer’s boot camp” in the search box) is aimed at academic writers and is free, but they only offer advice: no critical reviews or online handholding. Still, both bootcamps’ messages are the same: make a commitment to write a set number of words every day, regardless of their quality, by setting aside a specific time each day to devote to the task.
Some excellent writing guidebooks exist, like Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, which I still glance through regularly to hone my serious writing. Their admonition to “avoid needless words” is my foremost consideration when editing myself. Pruning away warrantless verbiage makes my writing clearer, and the newspaper’s 700-word limit on the column’s length provides the necessary incentive to ruthlessly narrow down all the wonderful things I want to share with readers.
Getting started in the first place is the writers’ most pervasive dilemma. Scads of websites offer versions of “quick writing prompts” lists that include idea-starters like, “A place I pass every day,” or “If I could do it all over again.” Others suggest opening good books at random and writing down the first line you see. I prefer finding inspiration in quotation books organized by subjects and reading therein what better writers than I have to say. However, it all depends upon having a decent vocabulary and ready facility with putting words together. That comes only from practicing reading and writing regularly, and that comes easier if you write mainly to please yourself.
Take Emily Dickinson, a poet who wrote mostly only for herself. When she died in 1886 at age 55, she left 40 notebooks filled with nearly 1,800 poems. Many are among the finest in our language, but they weren’t completely published until 1955, and aren’t we glad she persevered. “Because I could not stop for Death,” she wrote, “He kindly stopped for me/ The carriage held but just ourselves/ And immortality.”
