writelife

I’m not big on rules or posts that say “do this” and “do that,” so this post is to simply describe how I approach writing. It might be better to say it describes what writing feels like to me.

What is that approach?

Exactly what the title says: writing is acting. This isn’t an idea I picked up in a book, or in a class, or found online, though there may be people out there who have professed or do profess this approach. It is simply something I found myself doing as I wrote.

What I mean by “acting”

When I refer to writing as being acting I mean every word is delivered by a particular character, or “voice,” even if it is a third person omniscient narrator. It could be the voice found in a business letter, some web copy, a newsletter or poem – anything that involves writing. No matter how objective and dry the text may want to be, it is still a character delivering it – in some cases a very objective and dry one. It always has a voice. The question is, who is that voice?

I’m not talking about going into some great psychological-emotional examination of character as if you were an actor getting into a role (unless what you are writing is fiction and you’re developing a character). For the most part, it’s a kind of variation on the kid’s game, “let’s pretend.”

For whatever you are writing, you put on some kind of persona. I suppose we all do it in our daily lives behaving one way at work, another in a meeting with a client, another at home, another at a party. But it’s the persona that gives you the voice and the voice dictates the style – even the language. And for me, it all becomes much more easy when I’m “in character.”

Mimicry

I think what lies behind it is mimicry. As with many, if not most, writers, I began as a reader. Once started, soon I was reading just about everything I could find – old novels, new novels, science fiction, crime, mysteries, classic literature, books in translation and on and on. Also, when I turned on the radio or watched television, I listened. I also listened to the world around me — immediate family, relatives, friends, neighbours and on and on.

What I heard was a myriad of voices, some with puzzling syntax, unexpected contractions, emphases put in places that were strange (to me).

When I started writing, almost all of it was mimicry, a channeling and regurgitation of all these voices found in words on the page or heard spoken.

Of course, all of the writing I did was utterly wretched. But I was learning and, even better, I was having fun. The best learning is about discovery and the more you discover the more curious you become.

I kept doing it because, for me, it was fun and after a while it ceased to be mimicry. Somehow, it had become mine. I couldn’t tell you how but all of those styles I had come across, all the characters I had found and all the voices I had heard were mysteriously filed away so they could be called upon as persona templates, in a sense. They were starting places, if nothing else.

When I write something like a business letter I become a businessman with his own or her own voice. I write in a business-like fashion less because there are certain expectations and styles associated with a business letter than because that is how the character I become would write – a business person would write in a business-like way.

When I did editing work on some legal documents, I became a lawyer. I was anything but an actual lawyer but I employed his or her voice and his or her way of looking at text because in a sense I was playing a lawyer as an actor would. I was also trying to approximate how a lawyer might think as he or she looked at the text.

In fiction, if I‘m telling a story in the third person I might become my grandfather. He was great at telling stories. He was a natural raconteur (of course, he was Irish). Or I might assume another persona. But all writing comes from someone and I have to become that someone in order to write.

You might say, “Why not be yourself?” The answer is I do. But I emerge from the totality of the writing, the sum and not the parts. To take an example from fiction, ask yourself if you think the narrative voice found in the novels of Cormac McCarthy is the same voice of he uses in the world, the one you would hear him use in a casual conversation or while in a grocery store. His narrative voice comes, I believe, from a persona or character he assumes as he writes. It is both him and not him.

It’s just “let’s pretend”

All writing is acting. Even a narrator is a character – even if he or she is passively objective. A classified ad requires writing and that means it, too, requires a persona/character. For your wallet’s sake, that character will practice brevity. Business writing requires a business person’s approach and their language, unless they are speaking to customers when what they need is a customer’s voice and point of view.

You don’t need to go to acting school. You just have to remember what it was to be a child and playing “let’s pretend.” You need to be the voice you’re using.

A question often asked in marketing about companies, products and services is, “What’s your story?” The other question you need to ask is, “Who’s telling my story?” This second question is often taken to mean whether the teller is you, your customers or your competition. The other way to look at it is, if the answer is that you are telling your story, who are you and do you sound like who you think you are?

It may be that, if there is any trick to writing, it’s in not writing like a writer. That may be the one persona you can’t put on. Unless, I suppose, you’re writing for other writers. But that would be kind of boring, don’t you think?

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Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things.
- Okakura Kazuko -

Why is a certain kind of writing always assumed to be for children? I’m thinking about writing that would include writers like Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein. It’s writing characterized by silliness and humour.

I write quite a bit of it and whenever I show it to someone they invariably say, “Oh, kids would love this! You should write a childrens’ book.” Why?

I can honestly say that whenever I have written something of this kind – something silly – children have never entered my mind. I’ve written for myself. I love this stuff. (Note: in excess, it can get annoying and very quickly.)

A lot of other adults appear to love it too. But it isn’t serious or “adult” enough so, in order to justify liking it, we say it’s for children. I don’t have children so I don’t know if I even could write a book for an audience of children. On the other hand, I have been a child so I do have first hand experience.

When we enjoy something but it doesn’t have the serious aspect we think we, as adults, should carry, we choose to see it as something “for children.” I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of childrens’ books sold appealed to adults first, adults who then figured their kids would love it. It may well be that children will like them but it’s the adults who really love them. It’s adults deciding what their children will or won’t like based on what they, the adults, do or don’t like.

What’s wrong with being silly? If the issues we deal with in our lives and in the world can be considered heavy (poverty, income, relationships) it is humour, including silliness, that leavens it and makes it light enough to make a start and continue with those tasks.

You can’t always be silly. It would be irresponsible and irritating as hell. But sequestering it as something that “children will love” is a kind of denial that misreads who we are. And on the subject of silliness:

Cinnamon cat

Cinnamon Cat follows the scent
of cinnamon dust and that
is the only concern of the cinnamon kitty
known as the Cinnamon Cat.

She loves a bun, honeyed and swirled,
swirled with her favourite taste.
She’ll sticker her nose with honey and spice,
and no crumb goes to waste.

But taste isn’t what the Cinnamon Cat
finds precious in a bun,
and it isn’t honey that sticks her there;
it’s the scent of cinnamon.

Beware how you dress and perfume your wrist
and how you cologne your cravat.
If you’ve even a hint of a cinnamon stick,
you’ll be stuck with a Cinnamon Cat.

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The way words sound is critical to their effectiveness. How they are arranged is also critical. Language is musical; sentences are rhythmic. We don’t usually think in these terms though. But poets know it. Rappers know it. And writers of prose, if they’re good, they know it too.

I’m currently reading Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin, and it’s clear he knows it. You’ll see longer, sometimes clausal sentences followed by one or two short, punctuation-like sentences. Writers often do this. (I just did it there.) It’s like a joke: set up followed by a quick punchline. Doing this emphasizes your key point. Hopefully, it makes it memorable.

Words acquire their music by an arrangement of consonants and vowels and accents, some hard (“eat”) and some soft (“where”). A word itself has a certain rhythm, a beat or combination of them, and in a sentence can help create a more complex rhythm as it sits side by side with other words and their rhythm(s).

It all combines to create the music of words.

French is an interesting language (sometimes called one of the romance languages). We associate it with softness, I think, and even elegance – especially when we don’t actually speak it. We don’t understand the meaning but we hear how it sounds and the sound alone carries a meaning, though it’s often wrongly interpreted.

For example, let’s suppose a restaurant is opening. We’re going to call the restaurant, La merde de chien. Now, if we don’t speak French and are utterly unfamiliar with it, we don’t know what that means. But it sounds as if it might be elegant. Knowing nothing about the restaurant, we might assume it’s a fine dining establishment. Maybe it specializes in French cuisine.

We just don’t know but we do know that La merde de chien sounds as if it could be a top drawer place. There are so many soft sounds in La merde de chien. We might picture soft lighting. We might imagine a piano or a string quartet playing quietly in a corner.

We would imagine something altogether different if we knew it meant Dog Poop.

If we know what La merde de chien means it will strike us that the sound and the meaning are at cross-purposes. (I’m assuming an English speaking person’s perspective here.) Sometimes that is the effect we want. It’s an effect I wanted here. I wanted sound and meaning to disagree as a way to illustrate how the sound of words works.

The words we choose are guided by our purpose. What do we want them to do? What message are they meant to convey? This should determine the words we choose – not simply for their dictionary meaning but also for how the sound of the words also conveys the meaning.

Two more examples … Why do we usually call them PCs and not personal computers? Because personal computer is six syllables with really only one hard sound (the u in computer). It’s a bit soft and clunky. PC is two syllables, both accented and rolls off the tongue with ease. It has a catchier rhythm, like a jingle or pop song.

Why call a Macintosh a Mac? Why Mac and not Tosh? Mac is one syllable, one beat. Tosh is also one syllable, one beat but Mac ends with a hard sound, Tosh with a soft sound. Macintosh has a better rhythm than personal computer but, like Tosh, ends softly. Mac doesn’t. It is hard and it sounds like what Apple would like us to think about their computers: tough and efficient and effective. It’s a period. All those other words are commas.

A final, perfect example of the music of words, is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. If you read the text you’ll hear how, while called a speech, it is really a poem. And a poem is really just a fancy word for song.

Why would Lincoln say, “Four score and seven years ago …” and not simply, “Eighty-seven years ago …?” Why would he conclude with the repetition of, “… government of the people, by the people, for the people …?”

It was for the music of it. It was for the sound. When sound and meaning intersect and are one, words resonate. They stick in the mind and they’re remembered.

They work like all get out.

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Tone is an expression of attitude. It tells people how we feel about something. In writing, it tells the reader how we feel about our subject.

Or does it?

We usually have two or more feelings about a topic though not simultaneously. There is an initial gut response. Then there is a more reasoned response. It’s often unchanged but perhaps not as extreme as the first. It’s a “toned down” response. Since discussions progress, our attitude may change further as we get more information and see other perspectives.

I began thinking about tone after my post Ten off-the-cuff writing rules which included a link to Ten rules for writing fiction (lists made by other writers). In my list and in many of those other lists, there was a common tone.

There is something about making a list of rules, especially writing rules, that seems to shoehorn people into a particular tonal stance: somewhat dogmatic, a bit pontificating. There is an air of absolutism in the rules though I don’t think anyone actually feels any rules about writing are absolute or even close to that.

I think it may have something to do with the conflict between feeling rules for writing are silly and knowing that for each of us, individually, there actually are rules we follow (though it may be more true to say there are particular techniques we use). So when we present “ten rules for writing” or something similar there is an element of the facetious, or self-mockery. However, that element is so buried it comes out as dogmatism. “Do this and do that.”

The rules we present are really descriptions of ourselves as writers. Put more accurately, each of our rules would read, “To write like me, do this.”

It may have something to do with the brevity we feel something like a rule requires. Who ever heard of a rule that went on for several pages with a really full description, clauses, exceptions and addenda? We expect rules to be short. Thus, when we set down a rule we generally keep it brief but, because we know nothing is as simple as that, we’re a bit frustrated and that mocking element slips in.

We know rules are nonsense so we can’t help feeling a kind of conflict in saying, “This is what you must do.” If you read Elmore Leonard’s list (“Using adverbs is a mortal sin”) you know they are great rules – if you want to write like Elmore Leonard. But if you’re another kind of writer, it might simply be a helpful guideline that, if applied too rigidly, makes your work stilted or gives it a feel that is inappropriate to its theme.

But if we equivocate, we undercut our rule. So we have an inner conflict because the rule is true but not necessarily everywhere, for everyone. This conflict makes itself manifest in a tone that is dogmatic. Yet when you look at it closely, it isn’t really dogmatism but a kind struggle between helpful advice and facetiousness. We know that what we’re really doing is describing ourselves and pretending it’s a rule for writing. So deep down we’re a little uncomfortable because we feel we’re a little bit like flim-flam artists. We try to mask that discomfort with a bit of bravado.

Still, the “rules” we present are usually good ones for someone who wants to improve their writing. They can try them out to see if they work for them. They just have to keep in mind that of they don’t work, junk them.

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Well, I briefly made a schmozzle by changing the published date of an older post because I wanted to highlight it again. Dummy that I was, I forgot it would alter the link and make the original URL a “non-existent” post. So I changed it back. The post was this one: Does blogging need a reason?

I wanted to highlight as a way of tossing in my two cents on Mark Dykeman’s discussion, Why do you blog if not for money?

So now that my snafu is corrected and my purpose achieved, I’ll get back to doing whatever it is I was doing.

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There are loads of books and gazillions of web sites and blogs on social media. You could spend the rest of your life reading about it – the data, the theories, the what-have-you.

But if you really want to understand social media you can cut to the chase and read just one guy: Kurt Vonnegut.

I recommend Slapstick. He defines and explains it there.

I’m sure Vonnegut had no idea he was writing about social media but, as it turns out, that is what he was doing. The story he was telling in Slapstick explains why social media is so popular. He speaks of the need it fills.

Much of the discussion about social media focuses on utility. It allows us to do this or that. It can be leveraged in a certain way. We can exchange information, relate and develop it, expand and share ideas, promote brands and so on.

A lot of this assumes a base of users – often a consumer base. Because we see a usefulness to it in terms of business and other organizations, we tend to neglect the most fundamental reason people are on the various social media platforms. It fills a need, especially for that large consumer base. Connection.

Vonnegut talks about this directly.

One of themes Vonnegut kept going back to in his books, and especially in Slapstick, was the idea of extended families. The reason is expressed in the book’s subtitle, “Lonesome No More!” In the book, through a kind of lottery system, people are given additional names. For example, my name might be Bill Diamond-10 Wren. I’m arbitrarily connected to everyone else named Diamond, and particularly those named Diamond-10. We’re an extended family.

Yes, it’s very silly but Vonnegut’s books usually were silly. But they were serious too. (They were also very funny. I remember coming home years ago and finding my father, who had stayed home with the flu and picked up the book to pass the time, laughing so hard he was crying. He yelled at me, “This is the craziest damned thing I’ve ever read!”)

But what has that got to do with social media? Well, it lies in the reason for giving people those names, which was to create extended families – create more people to connect with, more groups to feel a part of.

They were excuses for people to get together and feel they had something in common, something to share with each other. People are crazy for it – perhaps now more than ever given the huge numbers concentrated in cities and the tremendous anonymity we feel exists. People want a sense of connection.

We tend to speak of communication quite a bit but connection precedes communication and is often the only reason people communicate. Hence, we often see tweets we consider noise, status updates that seem irrelevant. The point isn’t what is communicated; it is simply that something is communicated in order to establish connection.

While we discuss the technology, the apps and speculate on the marketing potential and how best to use social media, it’s a good idea to keep in mind what Vonnegut describes, the raison d’être of social media. (I want to say as far as consumers go but while the business world often wears a more serious, practical face, this is often the same reason for their use.)

Connection. Community. Shared values and beliefs, ideas and debates. Groups of people we belong with.

It’s extended families we connect with online, a world described and defined by Kurt Vonnegut.

(*Strictly speaking, you could say connection is a form of communication. But it’s of a particular and limited – though necessary – kind.)

Note: I found a name-generator online based on Vonnegut’s Slapstick. It’s a site called The Surrealist. I know nothing about this site, so I can’t recommend it one way or another. I can’t say whether it is safe or not. It is, however, where I got the name Bill Diamond-10 Wren.

Related posts:

• After 30 years: Kurt Vonnegut and Slapstick
• Impressions: who exactly are you?
• So it goes: Kurt Vonnegut exits

(Some of the older posts have some character (as in text) flaws due to one of the many software updates a few years and those errors have yet to be fully corrected.)

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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’ve just quickly created a page of books that have influenced me. In fact, while it’s page name is “Books” the secondary headline is Books that have influenced me.

It’s a short list — just five. I think of all of them as related to writing though only one is specifically about writing. Most are web/social media related. But I see their messages as applicable to writing.

And a couple may strike you as peculiar. You may ask, “What the hell has that to do with social media?” or something similar. You may think they are old and no longer relevant.

As mentioned, I threw it together quickly and I hope to explain soon what it is about each of them that I think is important. If the stars are properly aligned and I can write well, you’ll understand what it is about each I find of value and why I’ve picked them.

You can see the list here.

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As I mentioned yesterday Writelife will, “… be a bit of a schmozzle for the next day or two.” I’m experimenting with a few things, such as:

• trying Disqus for comments — just to see if there is any value in it
• setting up Google for site search — because I’m not thrilled with the current search
• trying a few different plugins and what not in the sidebars

The concern I’ve always had with Disqus for comments was simply that it might add a new step for anyone leaving a comment. I’m not sure that it does, but I believe everything should be as simple as possible for users — and they shouldn’t have to stop and figure out what to do. That is simply a barrier to using something.

I have the Google search way at the bottom of the far right column for now. It’s obviously not set up correctly since no matter what you enter it shows zero results. It’s one of those head scratching things that people like me encounter, people who are primarily something other than technology guys.

I’ve added a few Google ads in the sidebars mainly because I can and I’d like to see how they set up and, once in place, whether they are anything more than clutter. I’m looking at a few other things with “revenue generating potential,” as some might put it. I’m also considering going through those sidebars and whittling them down. Is there any value to some of them? (In some cases, the answer is yes but only to me.)

To sum it up, I’m in a revisionist frame of mind these days and thus I’m rethinking. I rethink best visually: I often have to see and use something to really get a sense for its worth.

From a visitor’s point of view, this means disruptions. Think of it as summer on Writelife and the city has road construction going on almost everywhere.

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