Longtime readers know that, while I’m a man who gives a lot of advice about being a writer (and put together a little ebook of such advice), I am generally against writing advice. By that I mean that while I think there are many ways to write better or worse, static lists of writing advice are often unhelpful when they are broken down into particulars - avoid the passive voice, no adverbs, shorter is always better, etc. I could share many specifics about why I think these things are unhelpful, such as the endless number of exceptions that always attach to such advice. (Ask someone when they were born and see if you really want people to avoid the passive voice at all times.) We’d be here all day.
“The point is that you cannot take recourse in simplicity while you’re young and inexperienced, hoping to hide there, until you become a good writer. It’s like trying to hide out on land until you become a good swimmer.”
Of course! It takes an experienced swimmer to swim on land. Hemingway swam on land from early on, of course, but he was quite an athlete and outdoorsman.
I do think there’s a difference in what constitutes writing advice depending on who your audience is, speaking as someone who has edited high schoolers’ writing. Young writers simply don’t understand what good writing is, so they often mistake complicated writing for complicated thought. But once you reach a certain level of competency you need new advice to get to the next level.
This is a similar phenomenon to grammatical advice. For example, it’s not grammatically incorrect to start a sentence with “and” or “because”, but it’s good advice to give young writers or else they’ll start every other sentence with them (I did this. And then I did that. And then I did that. Because it was fun.) But once you gain a certain level of understanding about clause structure you need to move on from this simplistic advice.
It always struck me as suspicious that the style that's the easiest to hide behind (minimalism) is the most popular. After all, if you write in a maximalist style, and you fail, you fail very obviously. But everyone appears smart when they're terse. So as a style minimalism is most amenable to academia, like in an MFA, which is all about creating a sort of package takeway for students, and minimalism is the easiest box to fit your prose into.
Freddie, as usual, gets it right, which is unusual in the writing world. (Great commentary about Lincoln btw.) And, oh, my, this section is just delicious: “The beauty lies in setting the rules as you go and seeing how far you can take them. Sometimes, when called for, I will reach into an archaic vocabulary and stay there awhile, try out the furniture, decorating my sentences with ancient constructions so recklessly that they take the shape of rusted cities, antique and corroded . . . Sometimes I work the words until they’re as brown as Winston Churchill’s scotch and as supple as a grandmother’s couch, beating them relentlessly until they yield to my inscrutable desires.” And that last paragraph, yes. Wonderful.
As a writer of 35 years who actually lives on his royalties, here are what I have found to be the best writing books to begin with: John Gardner, On Moral Fiction; William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl; Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer; Ray Bradbury, Zen In the Art of Writing; William Gass, Reading Rilke; Ensouling Language, Stephen Harrod Buhner. (Yes, I believe in my own work.)
The Iowa writers workshop and all the MFA programs have nearly ruined writing in this country. As Elif Batuman once put it (from memory): Never in the history of writing have so many books been so well written that no one in their right mind would want to read. Or as a senior editor in NY once put it: All the MFA graduate submissions, they are all the same. There’s no unique personality or style to any of them.
This is because it is easy to teach technique, hard to teach the essence of the craft, which is why it is rarely taught. The books I have listed are focused on the essence of the craft and the state of mind that allows the fictional dream, as Gardner calls it (the nonfictional dream as well) to flow through the writer and onto the page. Writing is a communication, not a technique. Done well, something comes in from somewhere else and the words come alive. Good writing can’t be done with the brain but happens with some other part of the self, the brain/mind edits later on. But for true writing to occur the watcher must be absent from the gates. Unfortunately, most writing books and programs teach technique to the brain/mind. They have nothing to say to the part that dreams story into being. And dreaming story into being is an art form, a skill. It can be intentionally developed until the writer can drop into that state at will. That is when the magic happens, when typing becomes writing.
Freddie, since you've been sharing a bit about your writing process lately, I'll take the opportunity to ask a question that's occurred to me a few times: how (if it does) does iterative drafting factor in to your approach? Are you a "writing is re-writing" person, or does your work come together in some other way? I'm always fascinated to chat with others who write a lot (I'm an academic—for now) about their methods and habits, and this strikes me as one of the broadest divides in how people work.
I have trouble jumping the hurdle of importance: I feel that what’s important to me won’t be important to anyone else. So insecurity or maybe fear of derision keeps me on the ground.
Your first point about writing simple struck a chord with me due a recent incident. My son, a freshman at a STEM college, received a failing grade on a paper because his vocabulary in the assignment was not sophisticated enough.
No discussion of whether his points were valid. This was a biology class. I was happy with his school right up to the moment I heard this and realized that college is broken everywhere and is doing little to prepare it’s students for the world after they graduate.
I was tempted to request an explanation for how — by working the words — you increase their brown-ness and suppleness, but I think I won’t. Some inscrutable mysteries are best left unsolved.
Style and personality are very hard to universalize or encapsulate in a list of rules or tips (beyond a generic "develop your personal voice and style"). But when someone like yourself writes "that's why they pay me the big bucks," it's both a beautiful illustration of the principle of using self-deprecating irony to make a point that's still just true enough, and an expression of your particular way of doing self-deprecating irony well. "Supple as a grandmother's couch" really does sound as supple as a grandmother's couch. And probably only you would have come up with that. So it's not just that our language has too many exceptions; it's writers themselves who are exceptions, allow themselves to be exceptions.
I don't know about the brown whiskey though, that's a tough one.
I enjoy the style of writing I learned from analytics philosophy courses. I've never thought of this as "minimalism," just a focus on clarity. I find that a lot of writing meanders without any noticeable premises and conclusions, which just ends up making me more confused.
And write with intellectual honesty. Man, that gets me every time. In an age where everyone is an activist simply saying what you think is the refreshing new subversive...
“To me trying to write with self-conscious simplicity is like going from playing the guitar with an immense amount of distortion to playing with nothing but the barest unaltered tone: you find there is nowhere to hide.”
I tend to bristle at music metaphors bc they often feel forced but this was a gem. Exactly right.
“The point is that you cannot take recourse in simplicity while you’re young and inexperienced, hoping to hide there, until you become a good writer. It’s like trying to hide out on land until you become a good swimmer.”
Of course! It takes an experienced swimmer to swim on land. Hemingway swam on land from early on, of course, but he was quite an athlete and outdoorsman.
I do think there’s a difference in what constitutes writing advice depending on who your audience is, speaking as someone who has edited high schoolers’ writing. Young writers simply don’t understand what good writing is, so they often mistake complicated writing for complicated thought. But once you reach a certain level of competency you need new advice to get to the next level.
This is a similar phenomenon to grammatical advice. For example, it’s not grammatically incorrect to start a sentence with “and” or “because”, but it’s good advice to give young writers or else they’ll start every other sentence with them (I did this. And then I did that. And then I did that. Because it was fun.) But once you gain a certain level of understanding about clause structure you need to move on from this simplistic advice.
It always struck me as suspicious that the style that's the easiest to hide behind (minimalism) is the most popular. After all, if you write in a maximalist style, and you fail, you fail very obviously. But everyone appears smart when they're terse. So as a style minimalism is most amenable to academia, like in an MFA, which is all about creating a sort of package takeway for students, and minimalism is the easiest box to fit your prose into.
Freddie, as usual, gets it right, which is unusual in the writing world. (Great commentary about Lincoln btw.) And, oh, my, this section is just delicious: “The beauty lies in setting the rules as you go and seeing how far you can take them. Sometimes, when called for, I will reach into an archaic vocabulary and stay there awhile, try out the furniture, decorating my sentences with ancient constructions so recklessly that they take the shape of rusted cities, antique and corroded . . . Sometimes I work the words until they’re as brown as Winston Churchill’s scotch and as supple as a grandmother’s couch, beating them relentlessly until they yield to my inscrutable desires.” And that last paragraph, yes. Wonderful.
As a writer of 35 years who actually lives on his royalties, here are what I have found to be the best writing books to begin with: John Gardner, On Moral Fiction; William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl; Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer; Ray Bradbury, Zen In the Art of Writing; William Gass, Reading Rilke; Ensouling Language, Stephen Harrod Buhner. (Yes, I believe in my own work.)
The Iowa writers workshop and all the MFA programs have nearly ruined writing in this country. As Elif Batuman once put it (from memory): Never in the history of writing have so many books been so well written that no one in their right mind would want to read. Or as a senior editor in NY once put it: All the MFA graduate submissions, they are all the same. There’s no unique personality or style to any of them.
This is because it is easy to teach technique, hard to teach the essence of the craft, which is why it is rarely taught. The books I have listed are focused on the essence of the craft and the state of mind that allows the fictional dream, as Gardner calls it (the nonfictional dream as well) to flow through the writer and onto the page. Writing is a communication, not a technique. Done well, something comes in from somewhere else and the words come alive. Good writing can’t be done with the brain but happens with some other part of the self, the brain/mind edits later on. But for true writing to occur the watcher must be absent from the gates. Unfortunately, most writing books and programs teach technique to the brain/mind. They have nothing to say to the part that dreams story into being. And dreaming story into being is an art form, a skill. It can be intentionally developed until the writer can drop into that state at will. That is when the magic happens, when typing becomes writing.
Thank you Freddie, great column.
Freddie, since you've been sharing a bit about your writing process lately, I'll take the opportunity to ask a question that's occurred to me a few times: how (if it does) does iterative drafting factor in to your approach? Are you a "writing is re-writing" person, or does your work come together in some other way? I'm always fascinated to chat with others who write a lot (I'm an academic—for now) about their methods and habits, and this strikes me as one of the broadest divides in how people work.
I birthed several decades ago? Not even sure how to make that active. My mother birthed me several decades ago?
I have trouble jumping the hurdle of importance: I feel that what’s important to me won’t be important to anyone else. So insecurity or maybe fear of derision keeps me on the ground.
Your first point about writing simple struck a chord with me due a recent incident. My son, a freshman at a STEM college, received a failing grade on a paper because his vocabulary in the assignment was not sophisticated enough.
No discussion of whether his points were valid. This was a biology class. I was happy with his school right up to the moment I heard this and realized that college is broken everywhere and is doing little to prepare it’s students for the world after they graduate.
Wonderful!
I was tempted to request an explanation for how — by working the words — you increase their brown-ness and suppleness, but I think I won’t. Some inscrutable mysteries are best left unsolved.
Style and personality are very hard to universalize or encapsulate in a list of rules or tips (beyond a generic "develop your personal voice and style"). But when someone like yourself writes "that's why they pay me the big bucks," it's both a beautiful illustration of the principle of using self-deprecating irony to make a point that's still just true enough, and an expression of your particular way of doing self-deprecating irony well. "Supple as a grandmother's couch" really does sound as supple as a grandmother's couch. And probably only you would have come up with that. So it's not just that our language has too many exceptions; it's writers themselves who are exceptions, allow themselves to be exceptions.
I don't know about the brown whiskey though, that's a tough one.
The first time I read it I thought you said "...as supple as my grandmother's crotch."
I enjoy the style of writing I learned from analytics philosophy courses. I've never thought of this as "minimalism," just a focus on clarity. I find that a lot of writing meanders without any noticeable premises and conclusions, which just ends up making me more confused.
And write with intellectual honesty. Man, that gets me every time. In an age where everyone is an activist simply saying what you think is the refreshing new subversive...
“To me trying to write with self-conscious simplicity is like going from playing the guitar with an immense amount of distortion to playing with nothing but the barest unaltered tone: you find there is nowhere to hide.”
I tend to bristle at music metaphors bc they often feel forced but this was a gem. Exactly right.
A. Beautiful
B. I think a third requirement is due: developing a compelling voice.
As a segue, it appears that President Lincoln may have heard the phrase “four score and seven years ago …” from a rabbi’s (who he apparently knew) sermon given and published three months earlier https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gettysburg-address-jewish-connection_b_3539959