Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (37)

“You are never too old to set another goal or dream another dream.”
~C. S. Lewis

“Those who seek for and follow the Tao are strong of body, clear of mind, and sharp of sight and hearing. They do not load their mind with anxieties, and are flexible in their adjustment to external conditions.”
~Zhuang Zhou

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.”
~Aldous Huxley

“Peace is at once the mother and the nurse of all that is good for man; war, on a sudden and at one stroke, overwhelms, extinguishes, abolishes, whatever is cheerful, whatever is happy and beautiful, and pours a foul torrent of disasters on the life of mortals.”
~Erasmus

“My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself.”
~Joyce Carol Oates

“Work is more fun than fun.”
~Noel Coward

“In a PC world, humor is a capital offense. ”
~Taki

“If you don’t know what else to do, drink beer.”
~Wally Byam

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

You can say a lot in only 100 words (7)

Another writer who does a lot with 100 words is the former technology columnist and police reporter Fred Reed (pictured). In an article about why so many US citizens (plus legal and illegal immigrants living in the US) are thinking about secession, he begins with a remarkably concise statement of his diagnosis:

“The country is not a happy place. Today it is more consciously and resentfully divided, politically, regionally, racially and by sex and class than perhaps ever before. The rich prosper and the middle class sink. Three major racial blocs eye each other with fear and hostility. The hard left controls the media and government against the desires of much of the country, enforcing social engineering that is deeply disliked. Feminists make war on men, and destroy the schools and universities. Washington is widely loathed. Rules, laws, and regulations never voted on grow ever more burdensome and intrusive. Many quietly want out. The question is how to get there.” (108 words)

Mr. Reed’s grammar here is a little off kilter, but his meaning is clear, hard-hitting and unapologetic. This is the kind of writing that’s so clear and concise that it fools many beginners into thinking it’s easy. It isn’t; I know professors, business consultants and business executives who say less with 500 words,  even 1,000.

The Takeaway:  If you want to make your writing more concise, keep reading writers who are good at writing concisely. To see the earlier pieces in this series, search on “Mr. Clarity” and “You can say a lot in only 100 words.” For even more examples of good concision, search on “Mr. Clarity” and “Concise writing is usually clear writing.”

See disclaimer.

You can say a lot in only 100 words (6)

Last week I showed you a 76-word blog post from Seth Godin, an author and entrepreneur who turns out concise blog posts using only 100 words, more or less.

Another writer who does a lot with 100 words is the retired prison doctor and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple. In an article titled “This Can’t Last,” Mr. Dalrymple discusses signs of societal decline; his second paragraph is:

“A story is told by the British writer Christopher Booker in his account of the Moscow Olympics of 1980. A sports journalist of one of Britain’s less cerebral newspapers, than which no newspapers in the world are less cerebral, took one look around the Moscow airport on arrival, never having given the matter a moment’s thought before, and said something to the effect that ‘This system can’t last.’ This was not the opinion of almost all the learned Sovietologists of the day; but he had grasped in a matter of seconds a reality that they had not perceived in many years of close and devoted study.” (106 words)

Trusting that his readers know that the Soviet Union was dissolved a decade later, Mr. Dalrymple continues, turning his attention to his native Britain:

“Tiny details can, in my opinion, be very revealing of a society, as are those on a scan to a skilled radiologist. Here is one such, to which I referred recently in a public lecture. I had noticed on the website of the Guardian, Britain’s liberal newspaper, the self-description of a young woman, calling herself curlygirl24, who was looking for ‘soulmate’ (the name of the Guardian’s lonelyhearts service, though most readers of the paper would probably be horrified at the notion of a soul).” (84 words)

He quotes the young woman, in part:

“I have been told that I am a bit of a paradox: I seem to have the emotional fuzziness that comes with being a girl along with the capacity to drink copious amounts, still stand up and take the p*ss out of my friends and possibly random strangers.”

He comments:

“I said in my lecture that it seemed to me remarkable, and not altogether reassuring, that an educated young woman, a financial journalist according to her own report, who was on the lookout for, presumably, an equally educated young man, a member of our society’s intellectual and social elite, should think that drinking to excess and then being impolite to complete strangers would be an attractive quality. What did this tell us about our society, of its cultural level? I left it at that.” (84 words)

His article continues. It is worth reading in full.

The Takeaway: If you want to make your writing more concise, keep reading writers who are good at writing concisely. To see the earlier pieces in this series, search on “Mr. Clarity” and “You can say a lot in only 100 words.” For even more examples of good concision, search on “Mr. Clarity” and “Concise writing is usually clear writing.” My best wishes to you.

See disclaimer.

You can say a lot in only 100 words (5) - a master

In this series, “You can say a lot in only 100 words,” I’ve been showing you especially concise passages from longer works (journals, essays and books).

Today, I introduce you to (if you don’t know him already) a man who writes especially concise items all the time: Seth Godin (pictured). For example, his blog consists almost entirely of remarkably concise posts with an average length of about 130 words.

Here’s a recent post (76 words):

Like the pilot says, “sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.”

When you’re on one of those Disneyland boats, it takes you where Disney wants you to go. That’s why you got on. And so you are lulled, a spectator, merely a tourist.

So different, isn’t it, from driving yourself, choosing your own route and owning what comes of it?

How long have you been along for the ride? When is your turn to actually drive?

Seth Godin is a master. His posts are pithy and thought-provoking, and often inspiring.

The Takeaway: If you are striving to make your writing more concise, you should regularly read Seth Godin’s blog to watch how he does it. I read it for that reason, even though I’ve been a professional writer for 47 years. We should never stop learning.

See disclaimer.

Random thoughts (9)

Diction: annoying affectations

I’m sure you have your pet-peeve examples of annoying affected diction. Here are three of mine:

Using genius as an adjective: a genius idea.

Following because with only a noun and a period (or exclamation point): I’m late because YouTube.

Combining a carelessly used issues with a carelessly used around: “Someone phoned me earlier to ask me to do some media training ‘around issues around teenagers.’ ”

Be careful with spell-checking software!

A journalist meant to write “back in the black” (i.e., profitable again), but in the published article the phrase was “back in the African American.” (Source)

Am I the only reader in the world…

…who thinks Don Quixote is boring? Three times I’ve tried and failed to read the whole novel. I’m giving up on it; I’m 71 and I have many more classics to read than time to read them. All due respect to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. I’m sure the failure is mine.

Slippage: commercial photography

About 40 years ago, I learned that food photographers are paid more than glamour photographers, in part because food photographers have to work very fast. During photo shoots, cool salads can go limp. Hot soup can cool and congeal. Hot coffee and grilled steaks can stop giving off steam. For decades, I admired food photographers for shooting hot foods and drinks while they were still hot and cool ones while they were still cool.

However, somewhere during the 1970s or 1980s, photography began to degrade, along with almost every other profession and activity in America. (Stephen King calls the phenomenon “slippage.”) Nowadays, food photos rarely look right. Dunkin’ Donuts shows you mugs of obviously cold coffee. McDonald’s shamelessly displays a poster showing a cold, congealing burger patty above the caption “Fresh off our grill.” I am afraid to even think about the professions of civil engineering and surgery.

My favorite proverb

I have always loved the Chinese proverb “He who treads softly goes far.” In my thirties I belatedly recognized that it was an apt summary of my own temperament. I usually quote the proverb as “He who treads softly travels far,” which seems to have better meter.

Blocking the distractions as you write

I recently read that Marcel Proust wrote in a cork-lined bedroom while wearing ear plugs. Now there was a writer who valued his concentration! Also, I understand he wrote pretty fast.

The Takeaway: Be here now.

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Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (36)

“Comics are a gateway drug to literacy.”
~Art Spiegelman

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.”
~Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian

“The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one’s peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad.”
~Lynne Truss (pictured), in Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door*

“Washington and its fawning presstitutes branded the elected Ukrainian government that was a victim of Washington’s coup, ‘a corrupt dictatorship.’ The replacement government consists of a combination of Washington puppets and neo-nazis with their own military forces sporting Nazi insignias. The American presstitutes have been careful not to notice the Nazi insignias.”
~Paul Craig Roberts

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
~Alvin Toffler

“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle.”
~Ludwig von Mises

“I’ve finally gotten to the bottom of things.”
~Ilka Chase (her epitaph)

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

________________
*Burt Shavitz seems to be of a similar mind.


See disclaimer.

Inspiration from W. C. Heinz, sportswriter

W. C. Heinz (pictured), who died in 2008 at the age of 93, was an impressive and influential sportswriter. He is especially remembered for the column “Death of a Racehorse,” which he wrote on deadline, in “about an hour, one draft, on a manual typewriter, in the rain,” at the racetrack.

The Takeaway: If you are a budding writer, you will be inspired by “Death of a Racehorse.” It has been called the “Gettysburg Address of sportswriting.” Read the full text, plus commentary, here.

Thanks to Paul G. Henning for pointing me to this gem.

 See disclaimer.

You can say a lot in only 100 words (3)

If you write concisely, you can say a lot in only 100 words or so. Needless to say, you need intelligence, discipline and the courage of your convictions. Here are three examples, ranging from 120 words to 245 words:

Paul Craig Roberts: 120 words about US foreign policy

Putting aside their brainwashing, their defensiveness and patriotic support of the regime in Washington, Americans need to ask themselves: How is it possible that the government of the United States, an alleged Superpower, is so unaware of its true vulnerabilities that Washington is capable of pushing two real powers [Russia and China] until they have had enough and play the cards that they hold?

Americans need to understand that the only thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity of the government.

What other country would let a handful of Wall Street crooks control its economic and foreign policy, run its central bank and Treasury, and subordinate citizens’ interests to the interests of the one percent’s pocketbook? (Source)

Theodore Dalrymple: 184 words about Peshawar

We experienced no hostility toward us; on the contrary. Perhaps, being so young, we were callow or naïve enough not to recognize hostility when we encountered it. My letters home at the time make it clear to me now that I was not then an acute observer or, if I was, had no descriptive powers. What appeared to concern me mostly was my own comfort rather than the world about me: the past is not only another country where they do things differently, but also where one was oneself a different person. When I read my letters of that time, I feel as if I have no connection to, or even sympathy for, the writer of them (though my handwriting has not changed in the meantime). I understand the impulse of many people to burn the letters of the past. One day, those who are now young will hope that the electronic messages of their youth will suffer the degradation of entropy and go the way of all flesh, for there is nothing more to be feared than the perfect record of a life. (Source)

Lysander Spooner (pictured): 245 words about the US Constitution

The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now [1870] existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but “the people” then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves. (Source)

The Takeaway: When we write concisely and don’t waste words on circumlocutions, equivocations, evasions or tangents, we can say a lot in 100 words or so. One technique for writing concisely is to deliberately write an overlong first draft and then keep reducing it. For example, to write a 2000-word article, I typically write a 3000-word first draft. In successive drafts, I cut 500 words, 300 words, 150 words, and 50 words, leaving a concise, 2000-word fifth draft that connects like a sledge hammer. This technique is quicker and easier than it sounds. Try it.

See disclaimer.

Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (35)

“If it’s been officially denied, then it’s probably true.” (“Pilger’s Law”)
~John Pilger

“Unmarried women vote [Democrat] to take away the money of married women’s husbands.”
~Stefan Molyneux, Wednesday Call In Show, January 21, 2015

“I used to be scared stiff of the nuns… They’re sipping gin and tonic in the Dublin pubs now, and a couple of them flashed their pretty ankles at me just the other day.”
~Peter O’Toole

“Pay the soldiers well.”
~Emperor Septimius Severus, famously, in his deathbed advice to his two sons

“[I am astonished that my country could] puke up its ancient soul… in five minutes…. God damn the United States for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles!”
~William James, on the invasion of the Philippines

“News is something someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.”
~Lord Northcliffe

“If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn’t have to advertise them.”
~Will Rogers (pictured)

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

Concise advice to writers (1) – Thomas Woods

The historian and prolific author Thomas Woods (pictured) recorded a 20-minute podcast titled “On Becoming a Better Writer” and published it December 23.

You will never hear better advice.

Mr. Woods offers bluntly stated encouragement: if you keep reading good writers, keep writing diligently, and keep comparing your work to the work of good writers, you will become a better writer. But along the way, the comparisons will embarrass you.

Mr. Woods has, besides his bluntness, two other traits that I like: he is sincerely, charmingly self-deprecating and he is an admirer of Thomas Sowell, my favorite columnist.

The Takeaway: Listen to Mr. Woods’ podcast. If you are serious, it will encourage you – maybe even thrill you. But if you have romanticized and trivialized the craft of writing, his podcast may offend and discourage you. If you want to try a sample, start listening at 3:58.

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Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (34)

“All men are rapists and that’s all they are.”

~Marilyn French

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for [Obamacare] to pass…”

~Jonathan Gruber, MIT professor and co-architect of Obamacare, boasting

“To be able to glide through life in the knowledge that one is bogus is a great achievement, far greater than that of the majority of genuinely earnest people.” 

~Slavoj Žižek

“Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as ‘heroes.’ ”

~David Masciotra 

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” 

~George Eliot, Middlemarch 

“We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women [and their] trivial bullsh*t.”

~Ayaan Hirsi Ali (pictured), commenting on this

“The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be.”

~Abba Eban

“It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

~Marilyn Monroe

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

Concise writing is usually clear writing (40) – Christopher Hitchens

The late writer Christopher Hitchens (pictured), a man of rough edges, could be exquisitely moving at times. My favorite passage is this one:

When my father died and was buried in a chapel overlooking Portsmouth—the same chapel in which General Eisenhower had prayed for success the night before D-Day in 1944—I gave the address from the pulpit and selected as my text a verse from the epistle of Saul of Tarsus, later to be claimed as “Saint Paul,” to the Philippians (chapter 4, verse 8):

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

I chose this because of its haunting and elusive character, which will be with me at the last hour, and for its essentially secular injunction, and because it shone out from the wasteland of rant and complaint and nonsense and bullying which surrounds it. (Source)

The Takeaway: To improve the clarity of your writing, spend at least 10 minutes a day reading aloud from writers who write clearly. You will see, hear and feel the stark contrast between careful diction and the scatterbrain diction (sample here) that besets us every day. The topic you select for your reading doesn’t matter, because you’re reading for style not content. If you would like a list of recommended writers and works, please email me at joeroy(at)joeroy(dot)com. Ask for my “List of Writers to Absorb.” I will respond via email.

Have a healthy and prosperous new year!

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You can say a lot in only 100 words (2)

If you write concisely, you can say a lot in only 100 words or so. Needless to say, you need intelligence, discipline and the courage of your convictions. Here are three examples:

Kathy Shaidle (pictured) on third wave feminists 

“When 20-year-old Playboy centerfold Dorothy Stratten was raped, murdered, and mutilated by her estranged husband in 1980, she was adopted as a symbol of man’s inhumanity to woman by germinal third wave feminists (who would have cut her dead when she was alive).

“Conveniently mute, impossible to libel, and as easy to configure as Barbies, deceased women—from Emily Davison to the Montreal Massacre’s 14 engineering students—make the best feminist icons. (Unless they’re Muslim.) The third wave’s anti-porn wing inflated Stratten into an ideological sex doll, into which they poured their loathing of Hugh Hefner and lesser spank-mag deities.” (Precisely 100 words) (Links in original omitted here.) (Source)

Jim Goad on rape hoaxes 

“Despite what basic common sense would dictate, we are repeatedly spoon-fed the mantra that we live in a ‘rape culture.’ And despite ample evidence to the contrary, we are told that women never lie about rape.

“Despite the Tawana Brawley rape hoax and the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax and the fact that on any given day you can search the phrase ‘false rape’ on Google News and dredge up countless stories of bitter, scorned, vindictive, psychotic women falsely accusing men of rape, the howling harpies of latter-day feminism and their gelded male worker elves continue to insist that false rape accusations are a patriarchal fiction.

“That’s why the nuclear-reactor-level meltdown of that mossy old rancidly flatulent hippie rag Rolling Stone over an at least partially—and perhaps entirely—fraudulent gang-rape story at the University of Virginia is so exquisitely delicious.” (140 words) (Links in original omitted here.) (Source)

Christopher Hitchens on the origin of religion

“One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.” (120 words) (Source)

The Takeaway: When we write concisely and don’t waste words on circumlocutions, equivocations or evasions, we can say a lot in 100 words or so. One technique for writing concisely is to deliberately write an overlong first draft and then keep reducing it. For example, to write a 2000-word article, I typically write a 3000-word first draft. In successive drafts, I cut 500 words, 300 words, 150 words, and 50 words, leaving a concise, compelling, 2000-word fifth draft. This technique is quicker and easier than it sounds. Try it.

See disclaimer.

Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (33)

On Truth and Delusion

“It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
~Carl Sagan

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called a Religion.”
~Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
~Edmund Burke (pictured)

“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”
~Ambrose Bierce

“It’s not that girls are delusional, per se. It’s just that they have this subtle ability to warp actual circumstances into something different.”
~Rebecca Serle

“[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.”
~Sam Harris

“To join adult human society, you must either become mad or fake it really well, because adult human society is an asylum.”
~Stefan Molyneux

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (32)

On Sanity and Insanity

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
~Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Social psychologists have found that we are overconfident, sometimes to the point of delusion, about our ability to infer what other people think, even the people who are closest to us.”
~Steven Pinker

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
~Voltaire

“…the social sciences have been in the grip of a political orthodoxy that has had only the most tenuous connection with empirical reality, and too many social scientists think that threats to the orthodoxy should be suppressed by any means necessary. Corruption is the only word for it.”
~Charles Murray

“Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.”
~Jim Morrison (pictured)

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
~Aldous Huxley

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where’s the harm? September 11th changed all that.”

~Richard Dawkins

“No matter how cynical you are, it’s never enough.”
~Lily Tomlin

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

How Donald E. Westlake wrote 100 books

The late Donald E. Westlake (pictured), who wrote (and sold!) more than 100 books and screenplays (including The Grifters), and who was one of Stephen King’s favorite writers, described his routine this way:

“If I work every day from the beginning of a book till the end, my production rate is probably three to five thousand words a day–unless I hit a snag, which can throw me off for a week or two. But if I work every day I don’t do anything else, because everything else involves alcohol; and I don’t try to work with any drink in me, so in the last few years I’ve tended to work four or five days a week. But that louses up the production two ways; first in the days I don’t work, and second, because I do almost nothing the first day back on the job. This week, for instance, I did one or two pages Monday, five pages Tuesday, five Wednesday, fourteen Thursday, and three so far today.” He went on to say that he used to complain to his second wife, “I’m sick of working one day in a row!”

His wife described his tools and how he kept them:

“His desk is as organized as a professional carpenter’s workshop. No matter where it is, it must be set up according to the same unbending pattern. Two typewriters (Smith Corona Silent-Super manual) sit on the desk with a lamp and a telephone and a radio, and a number of black ball-point pens for corrections (seldom needed!). On a shelf just above the desk, five manuscript boxes hold three kinds of paper (white bond first sheets, white second sheets and yellow work sheets) plus originals and carbon of whatever he’s currently working on. (Frequently one of these boxes also holds a sleeping cat.) Also on this shelf are reference books (Thesaurus, Bartlett’s, 1000 Names for Baby, etc.) and cups containing small necessities such as tape, rubber bands (I don’t know what he uses them for) and paper clips. Above this shelf is a bulletin board displaying various things that Timothy Culver likes to look at when he’s trying to think of the next sentence. Currently, among others, there are: a newspaper photo showing Nelson Rockefeller giving someone the finger; two post cards from the Louvre, one obscene; a photo of me in our garden in Hope, New Jersey; a Christmas card from his Los Angeles divorce attorney showing himself and his wife in their Bicentennial costumes; and a small hand-lettered sign that says ‘weird villain.’ This last is an invariable part of his desk bulletin board: ‘weird’ and ‘villain’ are the two words he most frequently misspells. There used to be a third—’liaison’—but since I taught him how to pronounce it (not lay-ee-son but lee-ay-son) he no longer has trouble with it.”

(Thanks to my friend Paul G. Henning for pointing out the above passages.)

Mr. Westlake was not the only one

Successful writers share five important traits:

They read a lot.

They are well organized.

They are particular about the tools they use and how they use them.*

They don’t “wait for inspiration” – they have a routine.

They work long hours.

The Takeaway: If you are a beginning writer and are ambitious, get in the habit of reading how successful writers work. This reading will inspire you. It will also teach you many practical and proven techniques that you can immediately apply to your own work. If you don’t know where to start your reading, I suggest Stephen King’s On Writing (exceptionally down-to-earth) and Jacques Barzun’s On Writing, Editing, and Publishing (dated but still inspiring).

_____________
*For example, Mr. Westlake really did type his manuscripts on the Smith Corona Silent Super manual typewriters mentioned by his wife and shown in the picture above. Because that model was obsolete, he hoarded several of them for parts, so that he would never have to switch to a newer model.

See disclaimer.

Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (31)

On fools and folly

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
~Mark Twain

“One of the reasons it has taken so long for some people to finally see through Barack Obama is that people do not like to admit, even to themselves, that they have been played for fools by a slick-talking politician.”
~Thomas Sowell (pictured)

“You’re so handsome that I can’t speak properly!”
~Gwyneth Paltrow, to Barack Obama (Source)

“In university they don’t tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.”
~Doris Lessing, in the novel Martha Quest

“We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren’t perhaps we should be less wise at fifty.”
~W. Somerset Maugham, in the moving short story “Red”

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.”
~Benjamin Franklin

“The fool who knows that he is a fool is for that very reason a wise man;
the fool who thinks that he is wise is called a fool indeed.”
~Buddha

The Takeaway: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~Robert Frost

See disclaimer.

Steven Pinker on bad writing by good people

Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker (pictured), a compelling and entertaining writer, recently published an article, “The Source of Bad Writing,”* in which he says that “the single best explanation of why good people write bad prose” is “the Curse of Knowledge.” The Curse is “a difficulty in imagining what it is like for someone else not to know something that you know.” He includes illustrative examples and sound advice on how to lessen or work around that difficulty.

I salute Mr. Pinker for calling attention to the difficulty. During 47 years as a writer and editor, I have seen many knowledgeable people struggle to write clearly for readers who have less knowledge than they do. I struggle, too. Perhaps you do, too.

The Takeaway: I urge you to read Mr. Pinker’s article, “The Source of Bad Writing.” As he says, “Always try to lift yourself out of your parochial mind-set and find out how other people think and feel. It may not make you a better person in all spheres of life, but it will be a source of continuing kindness to your readers.” Read the article, follow the specific advice in it, and you will improve your ability to connect with readers and audiences.
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International Plain Language Day

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You can say a lot in only 100 words

Elizabeth Warren

If you write concisely, you can say a lot in only 100 words. Here are three examples:

Henry Hazlitt on Karl Marx

“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.” (104 words) (Source)

Karin McQuillan on Barack Obama

“He pretended he would set new records for bipartisanship, and he set new records for partisanship. He promised to heal race relations but intervened to inflame them.  He promised to help the economy, and he harmed it.  He promised to care about the poor, and he abandoned them.  He promised to make us safer from the jihadis than the cowboy Bush, and he has brought the entire Middle East to flames, while throwing open our border to terrorists.  He promised he would act like a pragmatic, conciliatory centrist, and he has been the opposite.” (94 words) (Source)

Elizabeth Warren on Barack Obama

“He believes in a country where everyone is held accountable. Where no one can steal your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street. President Obama believes in a country where we invest in education, in roads and bridges, in science, and in the future, so we can create new opportunities, so the next kid can make it big, and the kid after that, and the kid after that. That's what president Obama believes. And that's how we build the economy of the future. An economy with more jobs and less debt. We root it in fairness. We grow it with opportunity. And we build it together.” (109 words) (Source)

The Takeaway: Always strive to write concisely. One technique for writing concisely is to deliberately write an overlong first draft and then keep reducing it. For example, to write a 2000-word article, I typically write a 3000-word first draft. In successive drafts, I cut 500 words, 300 words, 150 words, and 50 words, leaving a concise, compelling, 2000-word fifth draft. This technique is quicker and easier than it sounds. Try it.

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Roger Angell on E. B. White

I love to read great writers discussing other great writers. Recently, my friend Paul Henning sent me a copy of a passage in which Roger Angell (pictured) discusses how E. B. White worked. Mr. White was Mr. Angell’s stepfather.

Be sure to read the last line. If you understand it, you are probably an accomplished writer.

White’s gift to writers is clarity, which he demonstrates so easily in setting down the daily details of his farm chores: the need to pack the sides of his woodshed with sprucebrush against winter; counterweighting the cold-frame windows, for easier operation; the way the wind is ruffling the surface of the hens’ water fountain. Clarity is the message of “The Elements of Style,” the handbook he based on an early model written by Will Strunk, a professor of his at Cornell, which has helped more than ten million writers—the senior honors candidate, the rewriting lover, the overburdened historian—through the whichy thicket. “Write in a way that comes naturally,” it pleads. “Do not explain too much.” Write like White, in short, and his readers, finding him again and perhaps absorbing in the process something of that steely modesty, may sense as well the uses of patience in waiting to discover what kind of writer will turn up on their page, and finding contentment with that writer’s life.

He was a demanding worker. He rewrote the first page of “Charlotte’s Web” eight times, and put the early manuscript away for several months, “to let the body heat out of it.” Then he wrote the book again, enlarging the role of the eight-year-old girl, Fern, at the center of its proceedings. He was the first writer I observed at work, back in my early teens. Each Tuesday morning, he disappeared into his study after breakfast to write his weekly Comment page for The New Yorker—a slow process, with many pauses between the brief thrashings of his Underwood. He was silent at lunch and quickly went back to his room to finish the piece before it went off to New York in the afternoon mailbag, left out in the box by the road. “It’s no good,” he often said morosely afterward. But when the new issue turned up the next week the piece was good—unstrained and joyful, a snap to read. Writing almost killed you, and the hard part was making it look easy. (Source)

The Takeaway: Whatever your aptitude, and whatever your current ability, you can become a vastly better writer if you: (1) keep writing, (2) demand the best from yourself, and (3) ask for criticism. Do those three things and you will improve; there is no doubt whatsoever.

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