island94.org

Peter Elbow on the editorial act, from Writing without teachers (1973):

The essence of editing is easy come easy go. Unless you can really say to yourself, “What the hell. There’s plenty more where that came from, let’s throw it away,” you can’t really edit. You have to be a big spender. Not tightass.

More…

You can’t be a good, ruthless editor unless you are a messy, rich producer. But you can’t be really fecund as a producer unless you know you’ll be able to go at it with a ruthless knife.

More…

Editing must be cut-throat. You must wade in with teeth gritted. Cut away flesh and leave only bone. Learn to say things with a relationship instead of words. If you have to make introductions or transitions, you have things in the wrong order. If they were in the right order they wouldn’t need introductions or transitions. Force yourself to leave out all subsidiaries and then, by brute force, you will have to rearrange the essentials into their proper order.

Every word omitted keeps another reader with you. Every word retained saps strength from the others. Think of throwing away not as negative—not as crumpling up sheets of paper in helplessness and rage—but as a positive, creative, generative act. Learn to play the role of the sculptor pulling off layers of stone with his chisel to reveal the figure beneath. Leaving things out makes the backbone or structure show better.

Try to feel the act of strength in the act of cutting: as you draw the pencil through the line or paragraph or whole page, it is a clenching of teeth to make a point stick out more, hit home harder. Conversely, try to feel that when you write in a mush, foggy, wordy way, you must be trying to cover something up: message-emasculation or self-emasculation. You must be afraid of your strength. Taking away words lets a loud voice stick out. Does it scare you? More words will cover it up with static. It is no accident that timid people are often wordy. Saying nothing takes guts. If you want to say nothing and not be noticed, you have to be wordy.

Peter Elbow on free writing, from the book Writing without teachers (1973):

There is a paradox about control which this kind of writing brings into the open. The common model of writing I grew up with preaches control. It tells me to think first, make up my mind what I really mean, figure out ahead of time where I am going, have a plan, an outline, don’t dither, don’t be ambiguous, be stern with myself, don’t let things out of hand. As I begin to try to follow this advice, I experience a sense of satisfaction and control: “I’m going to be in charge of this thing and keep it out of any swamps!” Yet almost always my main experience ends up one of not being in control, feeling stuck, feeling lost, trying to write something and never succeeding. Helplessness and passivity.

The developmental model, on the other hand, preaches, in a sense, lack of control: don’t worry about not knowing what you mean or what you intend ahead of time; you don’t need a plan or an outline, let things get out of hand, let things wander and digress. Though this approach makes for initial panic, my overall experience with it is increased control. Not that I always know what I am doing, not that I don’t feel lost, baffled, and frustrated. But the overall process is one that doesn’t leave me so helpless. I can get something written when I want to. There isn’t such a sense of mystery, of randomness.

This paradox of increased overall control through letting go a bit seems paradoxical only because our normal way of thinking about control is mistakenly static: it is not development or process-oriented because it leaves out the dimension of time. Our static way of thinking makes us feel we must make a single choice as to whether to be a controlled person or an out-of-control person. The feeling goes like this: “Ugh. If I just write words as they come, allow myself to write without a pan or an outline, allow myself to digress or wander, I’ve turned into a blithering idiot. I’ll degenerate. I’ll lose the control I’ve struggled so hard to get. First I’ll dangle participles, then I’ll split infinitives, then I’ll misspell words, then I’evidenced slide into disagreement of subject and verb. Soon I’ll be unable to think straight. Unable to find flaws in an argument. Unable to tell a good argument from a bad one. Unable to tell sound evidence from phony evidence. My mind will grow soft and limp, it will atrophy; it will finally fall off. No!  I’ll be tough. I won’t be wishy-washy. I’ll have high standards. I’ll be rigorous. I’ll make every argument really stand up. I won’t be a second-rate mind. I’m going to be a discriminating person. I’m going to keep my mind sharp at all times.

But this static model isn’t accurate. Most processes engaged in by live organisms are cyclic, developmental processes that run through time and end up different from how they began. The fact is that most people find they improve their ability to think carefully and discriminatingly if they allow themselves to be sloppy and relinquish control at other times. You usually cannot excel at being tough-minded and discriminating unless it is the final stage in an organic process that allowed you to be truly open, accepting—even at times blithering.

You can encourage richness and chaos by encouraging digressions. We often see digressions as a waste of time and break them off when we catch ourselves starting one. But do the opposite. Give it its head. It may turn out to be an integral part of what you are trying to write. Even if it turns out to be an excrescence to be gotten rid of, if it came to you while you were thinking about X it must be related and a source of leverage. And you may not be able to get rid of it completely unless you see more of it. Almost always you cannot disentangle the good insight from the excrescence until after you have allowed the digression to develop. At the early stage the two are so intertwined that you can’t tell one from the other. That’s why it feels both interesting and wrong. There are concepts in there that you haven’t yet learned to discriminate.

At the Grassroots Use of Technology Conference / National Writers Union Digital Media Conference I got to hear a lot of people bemoan how hard it is to make a buck as a creator in the digital age.

A comparison was made to the Open Source Software movement and I made a very quotable statement (by Twitter standards): “Journalism is the software upon which democracy runs”.

Other than the awful mixed metaphors, I think I made a good statement: coding software has a very clear correlation between the work itself and the measurement of the final product at the end. Journalism: not so much. Of course some people do talk about how access to information and analysis from diverse viewpoints is vital to the continued health of our Democracy, but they get shouted down by Glen Beck. Newspapers themselves (or Cable Access TV or whatever is going town the toilet today) are usually discussed as some impalpable, circularly-reasoned necessity rather than put into context as providers of a what is necessary for the kind of society we want to live in.

Call me progressive, but let’s talk about what we need to build tomorrow, not reinforce today.

Here’s a quote I have trouble disagreeing with from Mark Lloyd’s Communications Policy is a Civil Rights Issue:

…to argue that getting out of the business of regulation is the only constructive role for government to play is as blind as it is disingenuous. The challenge is to create a set of rules that reflects the best nature of our society. As Newton Minow makes clear in Abandoned in the Wasteland, the issue is not really whether the market provides good choices, but whether citizens have a real say in what those choices are. The issue is whether the parent must let his child be a consumer, or, more to the point, a product to be sold to advertisers, or whether the parent has a right as a citizen to demand more.

I have been reflecting on self-deceptions in my writing. A fine analysis can be found in Noah Lukeman’s excellent A Dash of Style: The art and mastery of punctuation under the subheading “What your use of the comma reveals about you”:

The writer who overuses commas tends to also overuse adjectives and adverbs. He tends to be repetitive, won’t be subtle, and often gives too much information. He grasps for multiple word choices instead of one strong choice, and thus the choices he makes won’t be strong. His langugae won’t be unique. Commas are also used to qualify, offset, or pase, and the writer who frequently resorts to this tends to be reluctant to take a definitive stance. He will be hesitant. His characters, too, might not take a stand; is plot might be ambiguous. It will be harder for him to deliver dramatic punches when need be, and indeed he is less likely to be dramatic. He is interested in fine distinctions, more so than pacing, and is likely to write an overly long book. He writes with critics in mind, with the fear of being criticized for omission, and is more likely to have a scholarly background (or at least be well read) and to consider too many angles. This writer will need to simplify, to take a stronger stance, and to understand that less is more.

In my defense, an Amazon reviewer says these sections are “presumptuous and insulting”.

Previously posting on writing authentically, I wanted to find some other criticisms/observations on the topic.  The following is from Can’t You Get Along with Anyone by Allan C. Weisbecker, one of my favorite how-to books on writing that is not explicitly a how-to book on writing [Part 1, Ch. 12: p. 64]:

Nonfiction writers, of which I am one at this moment, routinely lie like slugs in their narratives. Often they’ll lie like like slugs about facts, which, as you already know, I sometimes do. Sometimes lying about facts is okay, sometimes not. But what’s never okay is to lie in subtext, purposely cause the reader to have a rush of insight about the workings of the world which the writer knows to be false. Lying in subtext is sin. Writers who do this, of which there are a bunch, will rot in Writer Hell. My theory is that this worse case lying-in-writing scenario is invariably caused by the same condition that cases bad behavior of any sort: a failure in self-reflection.*

If you’re going to write a book (but not someday): The key to writing, good writing, is self-reflection. In  a sense, it’s a writer’s job, his only job. Take that to the bank and put it in an interest-bearing account.†

*     My view is that lying about facts is sometimes “okay” when the writer’s sole motive is to keep the story moving, or to foster unity (symmetry), or to ease the narrative onto another subject (a segue), with not deceitful implications about ho the world works.

†    Aside from self-reflecting in his work, a writer has to keep the reader wanting to know What Happens Next. So, regarding jobs, writers actually have two.

Later on in the book, Weisbecker shows some explicit examples, as well as makes (to me) a damning statement for media literacy [Part 5, Ch. 7: p. 336]:

Woodward sees fit to end Veil, the Secret Wars of the CIA with a lie on every level you can lie in a nonfiction book. He ends with a chapter describing a personal visit with CIA director William Casey on his deathbed (from the brain tumor).

About two sentences into this, I knew Woodward had made up the scene …. (Others have opined the same regarding that scene, based on looking into dates and hospital records and the like.)

But I could have forgiven that lie, which was only about facts, i.e., Woodward’s deathbed visit to Casey having never happened. … What Woodward does, however in the deathbed scene he made up, is to lie in the subtext as well —in what is really going on —which kind of lying is a sin, for the commission of which writers will rot in Writer Hell.

Here’s the scene: Casey, on his deathbed, admits to having known about the diversion of Iran arms sales funds to the contras. The subtext here is that Casey didn’t have anything to do with the diversion. He knew about it.

Technically, Woodward wasn’t outright lying. But what he left out of his fucking narrative is that Casey knew about the diversion because he had been instrumental in planning and executing it.

A whopper of a lie by omission, no?

…

But my favorite lie by omission, one near and dear to my heart, comes in Woodward’s Plan of Attack – his definitive history of our conflict with Saddam Hussein. Woodward does better, wordage-wise, in this one, devoting one whole page (out of 450) to U.S. history with “The Beast of Baghdad.” One little problem though: In his one page history Woodward skips from the 1970s to the 1990s, leaving out the 1980s. Not a word about the decade of the 1980s. Right: The decade during which the U.S. and The Beast of Baghdad were close allies and the U.S., under Reagan then Bush I, was actively and knowingly aiding and abetting The Beast of Baghdad in his crimes against humanity.

Thing is, Bob Woodward himself classifies his books, his nonfiction books, as being “somewhere between the news and the history books.”

Let’s take him at his word on that.

See if you concur: People who provide a democratic society (like what the United States is purported to be) with news (meaning journalists) should maybe question what the shitball motherfuckers in power tell them about their antics. Same goes for the writers of history books, which mold the minds of our children.

Bob Woodward does not question anything the shitball motherfuckers tell him. Woodward just parrots their lies and perception management as facts. Bob Woodward’s books, his nonfiction books, which are something “between the news and the history books,” are lies.

That I had this rush of insight about the journalist who in the 1970s questioned everything and in doing so uncovered the truth, then followed the truth wherever it led, even to the toppling of a president, and who was a hero of mine, and who was now the personification of why Orwell was an optimist and hence of why the world is so fucked-up, slightly exacerbated my terminal loneliness.*

*    If the rewriting (or erasing) of history, which is what Woodward does in his books, sounds vaguely familiar, this was the protagonist Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984. Smith, along with the rest of the world of that story, was intimidated, threatened, bullied, into denial/lying via “jackboots on human faces.” That the jackboots are unnecessary in the world of today to get Woodward (and the rest of the mainstream media) to rewrite history is the basis of my observation that Orwell was an optimist.

I go back and forth with my mom—a library media teacher—about information literacy: for me, the future of communications is not about authority, but authenticity. Below is a list of self-deceptions writers put into their writing from Writing to Be Read by Ken Macrorie (also author of Telling Writing) :

No writer knows how often he deceives himself and his reader until he becomes a professional and listens to the complaints of editors and readers. Then he often sees that he has unconsciously

1. not written what really motivated him to put pen to paper, or
2. not spoken truly when he thought he was being faithful to the world he experienced, or
3. told only a small part of the truth, or
4. forgotten to tell the reader the facts that make convincing what he insists the reader must be overwhelmed by, or
5. grandly asks questions that everyone knows the answer to, or
6. apologized for not being an expert on what he writes pages and pages about, or
7. uses awkward and phony language that does not belong to him, or
8. used six words where his reader needed only two.

The best writers commit these sins. You cannot rid your writing of them, but you can learn the identifying marks of the snakes and where they are likely to slither into your paragraphs.

Download this as a PDF

I have now had a couple friends ask me to help them prepare job applications, so I pulled together some personal advice on what I feel is the most important part of applying for a job: the cover letter.

As someone who has applied for many jobs, and also reviews about 200-300 job applications every year, I believe that crafting a strong and compelling cover letter—having researched positions you have a fair chance (or a strong argument) of filling, of course—gives the best return on investment; more so than agonizing over your resume itself!

Knowing

Here’s why:

When I review applications, my primary job is to weed applicants out of the process as quickly as possible. I’m quickly scanning. At this level, the resume matters, but that’s only because I’m checking to see if you are severely under (or over, which will draw scrutiny) qualified, have any gaps (no job experience) and if there is any glaring deficiencies like misspelled words (they jump out at you) or just poor aesthetics (this is supposed to be a synthesis of your professional experience boiled down to just 2 pages; it had better be vertically balanced—not as an aesthetic judgement, but as evidence of your attention to detail and level of perfectionism).

This cursory scan is also seeking out things I recognize: names of schools or businesses, places, specific brand names or techniques, turns of phrase. These will raise my interest, but not necessarily make me weight your resume any better. These mostly are due to chance, so unless you know something that wasn’t mentioned in the ad (maybe you know from a friend who is also an employee that the company loves a specific management technique), don’t worry about this.

You should not worry about being weeded out if you’ve done your homework: at this point, I’m not looking for the best applicant, I’m getting rid of the applicants who clearly are not even in the top 50% (or better, depending on what I’m filling). I’m looking for an applicant that “looks” like the best applicant

So now that I’ve judged appearances, I judge personality and character, and that’s where the cover letter comes in.

The cover letter does more than demonstrate you can competently communicate; it shows you know what you are applying for (I don’t want to receive your scattergun blast); that you have critical thinking skills and can synthesize important details from the posted ad and relate them to your own self; and that you are a human being who is confident in their abilities and wants me to benefit from them (I receive a surprising amount of whining).

The cover letter is your chance to make a compelling argument as to why I should hire you (or at least give you an interview). The fact is, you will probably have worked hardest—throughout your entire potential employment—on getting the job in the first place. So if this is your best, it had better be good.

So that’s my spiel on why you should agonize over your cover letter, not your resume. Your cover letter is your thesis, the resume is just the primary source.

A great list of functional verbs for writing resumes or their reverse situational equivalent: job descriptions. (via Google)

ADMINISTRATIVE ACTION VERBS

advise	Offer an informed opinion or give specialized information to others.
adapt	Modify or change to fit specific or new situations.
administer	Manage or direct. (Generally requires some additional explanation to show specific detail.) See manage.
appoint	To set officially, arrange.
approve	Exercise final and decisive authority, causing action to use money, manpower, materials, or equipment.
arrange	To make preparations for, to plan.
authorize	Approve or commit an act implying subsequent action by others.
consult	Consider, asking advice or requesting opinion of.
control	Direct, regulate, or guide the use of money, methods, equipment, and materials. Also, the process of monitoring activities to ensure conformance with planned results.
coordinate	Regulate, adjust or direct the related actions of others in order to attain desired results.
decide	To select a course of action.
delegate	Entrust to another person tasks or duties which require exercise of some of the authority of the person originally responsible, as “To delegate an administrative assistant to represent the department at conferences.”
determine	To fix conclusively, regulate. To decide by choice of alternatives.
direct	Govern or control work operations by establishing the implementing objectives, practices and methods.
enforce	To effect or gain by force. To carry out effectively.
establish	To institute permanently by enactment or agreement.
execute	Put into effect or carry out methods, plans, etc.
initiate	Set going or introduce.
manage	Plan, organize, direct, control, and evaluate operation of an organizational unit, with responsibility for the output.
order	Arrange or command to come to a specified place or decision.
organize	To set up an administrative structure for. To arrange by systematic planning and united effort.
plan	To design or plot a scheme or project by means or method devised for doing something to achieve an end.
reject	To refuse to accept, consider or submit to.
require	To ask for by right and authority, request.
review	Consider or examine facts or results for accuracy, completeness and suitability.
supervise	Personally oversee or control work performance and conduct of others, where there is opportunity for control or inspection of work performed.
train	Teach, demonstrate, or guide others in the performance of assigned work.

PUSH ALONG VERBS

activate	Set up or formally introduce with necessary personnel or equipment.
encourage	Give help, inspire or pay patronage to.
expediate	Accelerate the process or progress of a plan, idea.
further	Promote or advance.
implement	Carry out or fulfill by taking action.
maintain	Keep in satisfactory condition.
motivate	Provide incentive or drive.

STOP VERBS

check	To proof or review for errors.
delete	Eliminate or wipe out.
prevent	Keep from happening or holding back.
return	Go back in thought or action. Give an official account to a superior.
stop	Keep from carrying out a proposed action.

HELPER VERBS

advise	Offer an informed opinion or give specialized information to others.
aid	Provide with what is useful or necessary for achieving an end.
cooperate	Act jointly with others. Act or work with others to obtain a mutual benefit.
counsel	Advise or consult.
explain	Make plain or understandable.
guide	Direct, supervise, influence or superintend the training of people.
instruct	Teach, demonstrate, or by other methods impart knowledge to others. Direct that a specific activity be performed, may include directing how it is to be performed.
participate	To take part or have a share in a project, group.
protect	Maintain status or integrity of project, idea.
serve	Comply with the commands and demands of a boss, group.
show	Propose or mention an idea as workable or desirable.
suggest	?

GET & GIVE VERBS

accept	Give admittance or approval to.
accumulate	Increase gradually in quantity or number.
acquire	Come into possession or control of an item or items.
arrange for	To make preparations for, to plan.
buy	Acquire possession, ownership or rights to the use of services, items.
collect	Gather or exact information or materials from a number of persons or sources.
compile	Put together information or assemble data in a new form.
deliver	Send or bring a desired object.
distribute	Deliver or hand out to several or many.
exchange	Give and receive reciprocally.
forward	Send goods or information onward.
furnish	Provide or equip with what is needed.
gather	Bring together or collect parts of a group.
get	Obtain or receive.
give	Grant or yield to another.
inform	Communicate knowledge to others.
inquire	Ask or search into.
issue	Make available through distribution.
keep	Preserve or maintain in a good and orderly condition.
mail	To send by the postal service.
notify	Give notice or a report on an occurrence or information.
obtain	Gain or possess.
pick up	?
procure	Get possession or obtain by particular care and effort.
provide	To supply support to meet a need, make available.
pull	Demand or obtain advantage by use of exertion or influence.
purchase	Gain or acquire by labor, money.
recall	Call back or cancel.
receive	Come into possession of or acquire an item, idea.
recruit	Increase numbers of a group or bring in new members.
render	Deliver or hand down.
report	Give an account or make a written summary or statement.
secure	Put beyond hazard or receive lasting control.
sell	Give up property in exchange for money.
send	Deliver or dispatch as means of communication or delivery.
solicit	To make a petition or request for services, money.
submit	Yield or surrender to authority.
supply	Make materials available for use.
take	Get or seize into possession.
transfer	Pass over from one person to another.
withdraw	Back away or remove.

CREATIVE VERBS

create	Produce through imaginative skill.
design	Create or fashion a plan or idea.
develop	Disclose, discover, perfect, or unfold a plan or idea, in detail, gradually. Implies study and/or experiment unless otherwise stated. When used as “to develop subordinates”, see train.
devise	Form in the mind by combinations of ideas, new applications of principles, or new arrangement of parts.
establish	To institute permanently by enactment or agreement.
estimate	Forecast future quantities, values, sizes, extents, etc., either on the basis of judgment or calculations. Frequently, estimating is shared with others, in which case it is more precise to use “estimate” as a noun, and to state the job’s function in relation thereto, i.e., originates, analyzes, endorses, approves, etc., estimates of…
forecast	Predict future events based on specified assumptions.
formulate	Put into a systemized expression or statement.
iniyiate	Set going or introduce.
install	To set up for use.
originate	Begin or initiate.
plan	To design or plot a scheme or project by means or method devised for doing something to achieve an end.
project	Plan, figure, or estimate for the future.
schedule	Appoint a fixed time.

APPRAISE/STUDY VERBS

analyze	Identify the elements of a whole and critically examine and relate these component parts separately and/or in relation to the whole.
appraise	Judge as to quality; compare critically with established standards.
ascertain	Find out or learn with certainty.
check	To proof or review for errors.
compare	To examine characteristics to discover similarities or differences.
consider	To observe or think about with regard to taking some action.
criticize	To evaluate and judge merits or faults.
develop	Disclose, discover, perfect, or unfold a plan or idea, in detail, gradually. Implies study and/or experiment unless otherwise stated. When used as “to develop subordinates”, see train.
evaluate	Appraise, to determine value, condition, significance or worth.
examine	Investigate in order to determine progress, fitness or knowledge.
forecast	Predict future events based on specified assumptions.
identify	The act of proving identity.
inspect	Examine materials, equipment, reports, work, etc., to determine quality, suitability for use, etc.
interpret	Explain to others (orally or in writing) the meaning or significance of something.
interview	Obtain information through questioning.
investigate	Uncover facts by systematically finding them, conducting a search, and examining various sources.
measure	Control or regulate by a standard or in measured amounts.
plan	To design or plot a scheme or project by means or method devised for doing something to achieve an end.
rate	Estimate or determine the relative value, rank, or amount of an item.
research	Specific inquiry involving prolonged and critical investigation, having for its aim the study of new facts and their interpretation, the revision of accepted conclusions or theories that may be affected by newly discovered factors, or the practical application of such new or revised conclusions. Example: Technical research to develop new products for the company.
resolve	Deal with a problem, dilemma successfully.
review	Consider or examine facts or results for accuracy, completeness and suitability.
solve	Find a solution, answer, or explanation for a question or problem.
study	Apply thought to any subject of investigation in order to arrive at the most suitable conclusion.
summarize	To tell and reduce a story, idea.
survey	Examine a condition, situation or value.
test	Assign a value or evaluate an item by a given test.
weigh	Merit consideration as to importance.

CONTROL VERBS

allocate	Assign or apportion for a specific purpose or to a particular person.
audit	Perform a formal examination into a company’s formal accounts.
check	To proof or review for errors.
conserve	Slow or block the progress of something
control	Direct, regulate, or guide the use of money, methods, equipment, and materials. Also, the process of monitoring activities to ensure conformance with planned results.
edit	Alter, adapt or refine a written text, concept, or idea.
enforce	To effect or gain by force. To carry out effectively.
ensure	Make sure, certain, or safe.
guarantee	Undertake to answer for debt and default or promise security.
inspect	Examine materials, equipment, reports, work, etc., to determine quality, suitability for use, etc.
regulate	Fix or adjust the time, amount, degree, or rate.
restrict	Place under restriction as to use or distribution.
review	Consider or examine facts or results for accuracy, completeness and suitability.
verify	Confirm or substantiate by oath, law, or other documentation.

back to top

Monday was Saul and my’s first Monday Night Write (MNW); a time to get together, eat, talk, laugh, wander around, talk some more and finally, eventually, work on our writing. We met at Saul’s house, where he first treated me to a delicious salad and some refreshing lemonade. Then we were off to the 1369 Coffee House to write and practice another key authorial skill: not paying for anything.

Perhaps the longest novel in the English language is The Story of the Vivian Girls written by Harvey Darger; it runs to 15,143 pages. Also, the letters MNW, if rotated upside down, spell MNW.