On Writing

I read a great interview with the author Ann Beattie today from the Paris Review.  One of the thoughts on writing that really stuck out for me was the following:

My students make fun of me for saying, I’ve read this carefully now, and you’ve written it carefully—too carefully. The phone never rings, people get to talk for four pages without interruption. We’re used to daily life ­being the fire truck coming by with its deafening siren. To put that siren in fiction—and not at the convenient moment, but maybe a minute before the convenient moment, or way after the convenient moment—is a kind of ­acknowledgment to the reader that you’re aware there’s another life out there that’s out of control. As a writer, it’s an advantage to work within open-ended, messy moments.

It's a very good piece of advice for storytelling. Too often things wrap up neatly at the end of the half hour. Roles are clearly defined. People give big speeches that are perfect. When was the last time any of those things happened in life? More often the resolution never happens, ethics and morals are blurred, and people talk a lot but nothing is ever really said. The mess is what makes good writing compelling. 

The Need for Content and the New Plagiarism

This is nothing that new or shocking. It is, however, semi-original. Earlier today I read a piece by Douglas Coupland in the New York Times. I enjoyed it and my first instinct was to share it, here on this blog. Hooray for content! I do this from time to time and I see it all the time on other sites, blogs, etc. While it seems harmless enough, it's cheap. 

Too often blogs (including this one) reshare a piece of writing in the interest of generating more content. More content means more hits, more readers. More, more, more. What it does not mean is original thought or commentary. It does not mean a new piece of writing that encourages a laugh or a thought or an emotion. It's not that every original piece does that (and again, I'll raise my hand and accept some guilt), but it might.

I read a quote recently about writing (and I've seen it more times than I can count from other writers) that writing is made up of hard work and discipline. It takes place when the house is quiet and dark. When done properly,it can make the writer wish they were doing almost anything else. It spurs the creation of rationalization and excuses. It causes a tightness in the chest that makes one wonder why they're sitting there, trying to breathe life into a word, a phrase, a paragraph. In a sense, despite many not being paid for it, writing is not for amateurs. 

With blogs writing has morphed into this thing for amateurs. Worse yet, a new crop of professional writers has emerged. A new plagiarism has emerged. It's not what you might remember from college where a student lifts a passage from an obscure book to supplement their paper without citing it. It's an idea that all writing and thought is content or raw materials to be used to beef up your site. It exists for your commentary. While most writers I've known are happy their work is read and mentioned, this new plagiarism saps the discourse of new ideas. It makes us lazy.

Television news seems to be especially bad at this. Their experts are personalities who generate sound bites from multiple sources and then parrot it out on show after show. The television news media then picks it up and runs it over and over as news. The cycle then continues when the information is taken back to the blogs, recycled again for the talking heads to harvest and take back to the television news panels.

Original thought and analysis are hard. Sometimes it's appropriate to use a piece to springboard into another thought piece. Sometimes it's not.  When it's not, I'm going to try to share things more often via my Google Reader feed, at least then it's just called promotion.

The Labor of Writing

Pencil_and_paper

Writing is cheap. It's been cheapened lately by the onslaught of quick, sloppy writing afforded by technology and the internet (and I understand the irony of blogging about this). Being Labor Day, there has been a lot of talk about work and labor today. Stories of first jobs, the plight of workers around the world, problems with the economy. John Grisham wrote a short op-ed in today's New York Times that highlights what many have forgotten about writing: it's hard work.

I had never worked so hard in my life, nor imagined that writing could be such an effort. It was more difficult than laying asphalt, and at times more frustrating than selling underwear.

 

Writing

Pencils

I've been thinking about writing more. When I say that, I don't mean that I'm considering putting the pen to page more. I mean that I've been thinking about the act of writing more, about writers, about books and magazines and blogs and words. Surprisingly, as part of all of this I noticed that I'm using pens less. I don't know if I can chalk it up to anything but I've been using pencils more and more on a daily basis. I'm not erasing more, I'm enjoying how they feel in my hand. I've liked how they mark a page and change as you use them more. Yesterday I wrote about media moving to new delivery channels, residing online. Yet today I'm feeling romantic about the pencil.