words

I had a bonus rule, number #11, included in yesterday’s post, Ten off-the-cuff writing rules. I deleted it because I started trying to explain my meaning and realized it should be a separate post.

Here is that rule:

#11 For marketing purposes, you may wish to refer to yourself as a business writer, a fiction writer, a web writer, SEO writer, technical writer and so on. There are many kinds of writer you can choose to be. However, that is just marketing. Writers write. Everything. You only describe yourself as a particular kind of writer because that is what someone willing to pay you wants to hear. When that person wants a copywriter, you’re a copywriter. When they want a web writer, you’re a web writer. But you are a writer. Period.

To clarify: Don’t confuse interest and knowledge with writing. You may have no interest in technical writing (it can be pretty dull). You may feel ill-qualified to write it because the subject matter is one you know little of (though keep in mind, there are subject matter experts with whom you consult). A certain kind of writing may have certain requirements and constraints that you need to keep in mind while writing, but writing is still writing.

For a certain job you may need to describe yourself as a “kind” of writer – technical, copy, web and so on. But writing is writing. You are a writer.

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I began this list last Thursday. I finished it off Saturday morning. Surprisingly, on Saturday I also came across Ten rules for writing fiction. It seems I wasn’t alone in putting together a list. (Those writers, by the way, are much better than I am so their lists should carry a good deal more weight than mine.) There is no order to my list. They are “off-the-cuff,” jotted down as they popped into my head. They read as follows:

#1 If you’re the kind of writer so very good that only modesty withholds the modifier “great,” you can ignore rules. By the way, if you’re that kind of writer you’re probably dead and have been for some time.

#2 Writing correctly is not the same as writing well. A sentence can be perfectly grammatical yet fail to communicate its message. Some sentences are ungrammatical yet communicate their meaning immediately and clearly.

#3 Writing isn’t about words, it is about communicating. Words are just the tool. Don’t fall in love with language.

#4 Few things are as discouraging to readers as very long paragraphs. Break it up. Better still, brutally look at what you’ve written and ask if it is really necessary. The answer is usually no.

#5 Get to the point. Immediately. Don’t write long paragraphs to set things up (referred to as exposition or back story). If that material is truly necessary, you can toss it in later (however, see rule #8).

#6 Read everything you write out loud. If you can’t read it out loud easily and fluidly, something is wrong with it. Rewrite it or drop it. (Additionally, read material that is not your own out loud. It will help convey to you how things should read and sound – or the opposite.)

#7 Listen. Everyone has their own way of speaking. They use particular words, phrasing and syntax. By listening, you’ll find new ways of constructing sentences and hear how language can communicate character (among other things). You’ll also notice that people rarely use long, clause-filled sentences.

#8 Edit. Rewrite. Edit. Rewrite. Edit. Rewrite. Repeat until doctors start suggesting Prozac.

#9 Your favourite writing is usually your worst, pretty as it may be. It’s the stuff that needs to be junked. It’s sad but true. On the other hand, it’s a great way to flag material that should be dropped. If you love it, that’s a sign something is wrong.

#10 Getting paid beats compliments every time.

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Communications is made up of two halves, something like yin and yang. I call them the positive side and the negative side. In using a word like “negative” we immediately think it is something bad. But it isn’t. Both sides can be done well or poorly so the positive side, done wrong, can be very bad. The negative side, done very well, can be very good. Let’s see if I can explain what I mean.

What I call the positive side is essentially the message we want to get across. Sometimes this is referred to as marketing “happy talk” but that isn’t what it is unless it is done badly. Happy talk is empty. It lacks substance. It’s the kind of communication that tells potential customers your product is “cool” or “awesome” or “great” without ever saying why. In other words, it doesn’t explain the benefits – why a customer would want it. It’s actually negative communication because it’s characterized my absence.

Negative communication is a bit dodgy but it can be summed up this way: it’s all the material we don’t provide because it isn’t overtly about promoting the product or service. In terms of the positive side, it’s all the material that would have made the marketing communications you did substantive – it’s the material that would have explained why something was “awesome.”

Put another way, everything is communications – sometimes good, sometimes bad. Even no communication is a kind of communication. It tells customers you don’t care, or don’t know, or don’t have the courage to say, or that you are so slap-dash you forgot.

A good question to ask is, “What am I not saying?” One of the hardest things to figure out is what is missing in our communications. Are all the I’s dotted, the T’s crossed?

I came across an example the other day where a TV ad for a site made reference to something very specific (amongst several specifics). When I went to the site, however, I couldn’t find it, despite my searching. Eventually I found it – using Google. What do you imagine my impression of the company was?

This is what I mean by negative communication. It’s everything we neglect or choose not to say.

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I’ve been following Seth Godin’s blog for years. I’ve been reading his books for years. (I think I started with Permission Marketing.) However, as he himself describes in a different context, we often experience a dip and so, as with anything that goes on over a long period of time, it waxes and wanes. Thus I read his blog almost daily for a while then other things get my attention or I get too busy and I go through a period of not following his posts, or seeing them only occasionally.

And then my interest renews and I start following daily again. I get past my “dip.”

Why do I read I him? I asked myself this question today while drinking coffee and freezing my butt off as I paced around my deck. (The pacing was about keeping warm; being outside was about waking myself up.)

I think I know the answer. Although often referred to as a “marketing guru,” and strictly speaking I suppose that is what he is, I don’t think that is what he is or does. What he does is observe and describe human behaviour – and that’s why I find him interesting.

You could probably say all marketing is about this, as well as using what we learn from it to create interest in products or services and ultimately stimulate sales. But it’s often at a distance, as if we’re speaking of something that is “other,” of which we aren’t a part.

From what I’ve seen, when the various aspects of marketing are discussed there is a degree of detachment. Maybe it’s the way we speak of it, maybe it’s because there is a heavy focus on numbers and charts. It’s a cerebral way of seeing it.

With Seth Godin, I sense the visceral. While the head may agree or disagree, it is the agreement or disagreement in the gut that is strongest. I’ll read something that he is describing, such as The Dip, and I know it’s true because I’ve experienced it or seen it in others. Often, he’ll describe something we’re already aware of, if only intuitively, but we’ve yet to formulate or articulate it. But there is an element of recognition we experience in what he says.

I came across one of his posts today, Random rules for ideas worth spreading, and it was the same thing. There is a list and much of it might be called common sense, even obvious in some cases, but each item resonates in one way or another with what we observe either in ourselves, in others or both. My favourite was this one: “Are you a serial idea-starting person? If so, what can you change to end that cycle? The goal is to be an idea-shipping person.” Yes, I know that one.

In his books Seth speaks of being remarkable, of tribes and now, in his latest book, of being a linchpin (Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?). Regardless of the words used, each term (and the ideas contained in the books in which they’re found) are born out of the observation and understanding of human behaviour, something we recognize as true in our guts.

I think that is the key to his success and, while I don’t know this to be true, I’d suggest at the core of what he does is a love of and fascination with people. I suppose someone could achieve success without this but I can’t help feeling that to do so would require so much more effort.

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It’s good to repeat yourself. By default I think we believe to repeat ourselves is a bad thing. However, if we’re trying to communicate it’s through repetition that it gets across. The trick is to do this without becoming redundant  — in other words, knowing when enough is enough.

The other trick is to repeat ourselves but not in exactly the same way. While this post’s headline may not be the best example, it is an example of sorts. Put a better, more lengthy way, we might answer a question with, “Repetition is good. When we say something once only, it is easy for its essence to be lost in all the other communication that goes on between people. Thus, to say it two or three times helps to break through the clutter and make it more memorable. The lesson, then, is that it is good to repeat ourselves.”

Okay. That may be a bit too long, too wordy and too tedious but I think you get the idea.

Repetition is one of the ways we remember. Why do football teams in practice run the same play over and over? It’s to work out the weaknesses, get everyone on the same page and also to ensure every knows it, learns it and understands what to do almost without thinking when the play is called in a game situation.

I went off on this topic after reading Why Twitter was inevitable? over on Julien Smith’s blog. He begins by talking about recalling things he had forgotten about radio culture, such as the necessity to, “… constantly repeat the thing we’re talking about …”

I worked in radio as well, years ago. It was in commercial radio. I remember coming up with my own rule about ads which was, if you’re forced to choose between creativity and frequency, always go with frequency.

Ideally, you wouldn’t have to make this choice. You could have a creative ad plus frequency – meaning it got played a lot, hopefully throughout the day, particularly at the high listening periods (morning and drive). One of the reasons you hear and remember those awful local car dealership ads is because they forego creativity (well, maybe they think their ads are creative) and go with frequency – ads that are run a lot, often concentrated toward the end of the week and weekends when it was assumed anyone buying a car might be out shopping for one.

The theory was simple and, I think, true: an ad heard once would not be remembered, no matter how good it was. There is simply too much noise to break through. Our minds recall the things we hear, see and do frequently.

Repetition is how we learn and that is because it is how we remember. That is what makes repetition a good thing. It requires some skill to avoid becoming obvious and annoying but the bottom line remains: it’s good to repeat yourself.

Roll credits …

I went off on this topic by reading an interview with Julien Smith over on Mark Dykeman’s blog (Broadcasting Brain). That lead me to Julien’s blog and the post I referred to above.

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Friends of mine are often surprised at how little I know about the mechanics of writing. It’s true, however. On the subject of grammar, I’m largely an ignoramus. Years ago, in school, it was one of the subjects I did worst in and I hated, hated, hated it.

I have a somewhat lengthy post on the sidelines, unpublished, that explains this to a degree. As I put it to a friend last night, in my mind it’s something like music. Some people can read and write music, some play by ear. Sheet music is all gibberish for the latter. I think I’m like those people when it comes to writing and grammar.

Whatever writing skills I have come from listening to how people talk and from reading a lot and from a broad spectrum. It is the result of imitation – mimicry, I suppose. From usage, I know what certain words mean in a kind of intuitive sense. I know how to structure a sentence and sometimes mix up the structure (or syntax) to achieve a certain effect or voice.

But I couldn’t tell you why they are correctly formatted or why they are incorrect when that is the case. I get headaches and depressed just thinking about it.

I like the idea of grammar. I’m just a bumbler when it comes to it.

My mother, were she still around to read this, would have her head bowed and be weeping in despair.

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Yes, writers write way too much (including me). There are a number of reasons why. I’ll outline some below but first, how can I make such a claim? I can because I am a writer and a reader. It’s the reader that tells me we write too much. It’s the writer that tries to figure out why.

Love of it: Writers love to write. That’s why they write. This becomes a problem because we’re often self indulgent and very much enthralled with our own opinions. It is exacerbated by the web (where you write as much as you want for as long as you want) and the reality that there are few editors going over what is written and even fewer good editors.

Word count: In many cases, particularly with professional writing such as magazines, newspapers and so on, there is a word count imposed. One thousand words on a topic. It may well be, however, that what you have to say can be stated in a simple five word sentence. Word count demands that you dribble on for another 995 words.

This isn’t to say there shouldn’t be a word count. More often than not it prevents us from going on and on and on (because we love writing). It’s also a necessity because of how people read and the publishing format. It can simply be too labour intensive and costly to constantly design due to varying lengths.

Process: This is the interesting one and the one where an absence of a good editor really shows. More often than not writers preface what they actually have to say because that is how we get into what we are writing about. “I had been living in New York for ten years and had witnessed the seasons change in the pulsating city … blah blah blah.” After several paragraphs, even pages, you get to the point: you moved from New York to L.A.

The preface itself may not necessarily be superfluous (though it usually is), but it represents a writer’s viewpoint, not a reader’s. For the reader it’s a case of, “Why in the world am I reading this? What’s the point?” You have to keep reading before you ever get to the point, the one that may make the preface understandable.

I’ve seen this over and over and especially in my own writing. Before we get into the writing groove of our topic, we ramble on looking for our way in. That’s fine – it’s the process. But it isn’t fine if you make the reader go through it too.

The reason I’ve written this post, by the way, is because I came across a really good post yesterday that I never finished because the writer went on and on. What he had written could have been written in half the number of words or less.

This problem is evident in my own posts. I’ve written oodles. But how much of it was unnecessary? Quite a bit, I think.

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Last week I came across a discussion over on LinkedIn about “real” writers. It began with a post about how sometimes you can come across a bully type in writing discussions, someone asserting that to be a “real” writer a person had to meet certain requirements. Often these assertions are followed by litanies of the person’s professional credentials, thus proving that they are real.

I find the whole business annoying, so I wrote my own comment, which reads as follows:

My own view, which is admittedly personal, limited and not necessarily a view someone else would take, is that I don’t really care if someone is a “real” writer. I’ve been doing what I do long enough that I don’t need someone else deciding whether I exist as a writer or not. More to the point, I want to spend as little time as possible with disagreeable people so, even if you are a “real” writer, if you’re an unpleasant person please go away. Besides, as my mother pointed out to me a long, long time ago, the best way to deal with bullies is to ignore them.

Too many people have romanticized ideas of what writers are and what writing is. Rather than focusing on the writing, they are focused on writer as social status. Even for poets, it is work and in that sense no different than accounting or plumbing. And if you like plumbing, it will be as rewarding as writing is to a writer.

I’m sounding more cranky here than I like to sound but this is a theme that irks me quite a bit (rather obvious, I suppose).

Finally, I have to admit that every so often I fall into that “real” writer nonsense, I think because I get the impression some people are bamboozled by romantic ideas of writing. When I do fall into this, I tend to say, “Anyone can write. Real writers rewrite.”

I don’t like that “real” business, but I think there is truth in it. I’ve seen too many people think that once it’s down, it’s finished. I think it has just begun.

And that’s my pontificating nonsense for the day!

To me, it seems really simple. If you write, you are a writer. Of course, differences occur when you start adding modifiers. For example, you may be a good writer or you may be a bad writer. Either way, you are a writer if you’re writing. If you are the latter of those two modifiers, however, you may want to work on it with a bit more diligence.

In my experience, everyone who is a writer is also a reader. Compared to the average person, they read a lot. Why they read so much is obvious to me: 1) they love it, 2) they encounter new styles and words, 3) it feeds their own writing with ideas and perspectives. Also, at least in my case, when I started writing it was largely imitative. I was like a bad version of many really good writers. Eventually, however, through constant writing, my own style, voice or whatever you want to call it emerged.

I guess if I had to make some grand claim on the subject I’d say writers write. And good writers rewrite. And everyone is as real as anyone else. (Aren’t there a number of famous writers through history who couldn’t give their work away? What kind of professional writer resume did they have? How real were they?)

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On the weekend I was going through some very old files. I bought a floppy drive for 3.5″ discs about two years ago with the intention of locating and moving files I considered important to my other hard drive, or burn them to a CD or DVD. Well, two years later I finally opened up the box with the floppy drive and went through some of my discs. (And believe me, it took a while going through the house and searching for where I had put them.)

The first thing that struck me was just how many of them there were. The second thing was just how much writing I had done over the years. They contained files from a number of different jobs I’ve had (as a writer) as well as a lot of personal writing such as fiction and poetry.

Good grief! I wrote a lot!

I was mainly interested in the fiction and poetry material. Or maybe I should say I was sidetracked by it.

Three things characterized the material: 1) the quantity, 2) how dreadful most of it was, 3) how good a very small amount of it was.

I think I knew even at the time that most of it was rubbish. But it was interesting to see what mistakes I was making (primarily three) and how, over time, I eventually began to eliminate those mistakes. In other words, there was progression in the quality. That has always been one of the aspects of writing I like most: seeing it improve.

And what were the three main mistakes I was making? First, there was too much telling and little showing, at least in the early stories. Second, there was a great deal of over-writing which could also be rephrased as pretentious writing. Thirdly, and related to the second, much of it tried too hard to be cute or clever.

But that was the negative side of things. From the positive perspective, a good deal of it was damn funny! I could also see I write fiction best when I begin with an absurdity. For some reason, that triggers my creativity. For instance, I had a very, very short story called The Itinerant Town. It was about a town that every day was in a different part of Canada. It was, as you can imagine, very difficult to find.

It was a fascinating exercise and, in some sense, gratifying because while I saw how utterly awful most of the material was, I saw the few that were pretty good. And even many of the bad stories and poems in those files have some good ideas at their core. It reminded me of Horace (I think it was Horace) who wrote somewhere that you should take what you write and bury it for a number of years. Then, when you finally go back and look at it, you’ll truly know if it was any good. In other words, it’s difficult to judge truly in the moment. Time gives you a more objective perspective.

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