This morning, my daughter was talking about how one of her friends says words. He’s about two, and words are emerging from his little being. My daughter said, “He says ‘apple’ how it needs to be said!” Apple, that powerful and delicious word, its expression with rewarding payoff in fruit.
I love the phrase “how it needs to be said.” I wish I knew better how things I need to say need to be said. All I can say is I’m working on it, working toward it, meanwhile watching the delectable round red fruit of finding the right word, often out of reach…
Oh, where to break the paragraphs, how to expunge some one sentence paragraphs, justify some two sentence paragraphs, avoid too many short paragraphs, how not to be jarring, or coy, and how to trust the reader to know where I mean to place emphasis, how to trust my intuition, the flow of the words, the lightning bolt that tells me to end or begin a paragraph…
Understanding, maybe a little bit, how poets work.
I just reread Elements of Style, and several bits of wisdom have taken residence in my mind. This was the first time I’ve read the fourth edition. I found the updates to this edition helpful, in particular, some of the tidbits in the final section on style. If you haven’t read it, do.
I’ve been working through a novel, editing, pruning, and rearranging. Strunk and White remind me of point 22, on p. 32 of this edition: “Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.” This can apply to sentences, paragraphs, lines of poetry, and even words: the beginning and end of these units carry the most power, the most weight. The middle can be incidental, or worse, ignored. Here’s a clever example (possibly urban legend, but interesting anyway) of how words can work with mixed up middles becoming invisible, and yet the content is still clear. (Thanks to my friend Lara for digging this up when my human memory failed.):
“Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”
Beginnings and ends of these words are stable, are what we expect, and therefore they guide in reading through the garble.
Another thing that Elements of Style illustrates is more visual than literal. Writers have to learn the twin arts of making a mess (making a creation, a draft) and then cleaning it up (editing, revising). If you look at the layout of the examples in Strunk and White, you could consider the left column (before the makeover) as the making of the mess, and the right column (after the makeover) as cleaning it up. I’m going to use this idea when I talk to students. I think it helps to put the implicit and explicit judgment of Strunk and White into a context: all writing is a process, a walking through and then away from the muddy, toward the clear. Start somewhere. Edit as needed, strive to improve the mess, to communicate better.
Maybe the most important advice is point 17, on p. 23, “Omit needless words.” An anthem for some people who write, an ideal to strive toward. I’ve been polishing, weeding the needless, plucking extraneous words from overburdened sentences. Sometimes it takes years to realize a word is needless. Omit needless words is a noble mantra and practice. With time, I could whittle this paragraph down even more than I have, but in the battle between how the blogosphere measures time and my tendency toward perfectionism, I go for speed and risk flaws. This time, for the first time, I found (or noticed) the sub-mantra of Omit needless words on p. 19, under point 14. “Note, in the examples above, that when a sentence if made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a by-product of vigor.”
It’s worth repeating: “…brevity is a by-product of vigor.”
That is such a beautiful fact, and beautifully put. No wonder I am tired, this revision has been vigorous. The novel is shorter. And, I hope, stronger.
Peggy Lee. That lady must have had some darn fine warshing gloves.
One excellent reason to have Peggy Lee’s “Fever & Other Hits” lying around:
Say one morning you find cat barf in your kid’s bin of wooden food (each piece with velcro dots to let the child mimic chopping) because it was left on the floor (lesson: if you leave your toys on the floor, Dante, aka “Big Tiny” the cat might barf on them), you can turn a frown upside down!
Here’s how:
1) Assess which turnips, carrots, and tomatoes need warshed. Remove the big chunks first. Get a clean bag and stash the unsullied food.
2) Get a used toothbrush (that you won’t reuse for your mouth), some good soap, and the sullied wooden food.
3) Start scrubbing.
4) Realize, through your disgust and crankiness, that this is an opportunity to teach your toddler the word “REPULSIVE.”
5) Realize still further, through this repulsive task, which song has popped into your head. And laugh.
6) Put down the half-clean wooden carrot top. Wash and dry your hands.
7) Put on Peggy Lee, risk blasphemy by skipping over the song “Fever,” which always reminds you of the good old college days, and watching Pee Wee Herman lip synching in platform shoes; pine momentarily for the careless 1980s. (Anyone remember that?) Skip directly to song number two.
8) Sing along, “‘Cause I’m a woman,” and make sure your daughter hears you spelling that glorious word.
(To the gentlemen: Before you get your boxers in a twist, yes, I know you can clean cat barf too. Sure can! And plenty else. But you’ll need to find your own song, darlings. This one is ours.)
Rebecca Kuder 