Models for Writing

Randall Stephens

When I teach writing I use a short piece by William Zinsser from the American Scholar: "Writing English as a Second Language" (Winter 2010). Yes, my students are native speakers.  Regardless, this essay is spot on for college students. (I've blogged about it before here.)

A WPA poster from 1937. Courtesy
of the Library of Congress.

Zinsser offers up a host of great tips:

Cut horrible, long Latin-origin words: "communicated, conversion, reconciliation, enhancements, verification."  When these are used/overused they lead to stilted or stuffy prose.

Use good, short, simple nouns: "infinitely old Anglo-Saxon nouns that express the fundamentals of everyday life: house, home, child, chair, bread, milk, sea, sky, earth, field, grass, road."

"I have four principles of writing good English. They are Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity."

"So remember: Simple is good. Writing is not something you have to embroider with fancy stitches to make yourself look smart."

Undegrads and grad students need to hear that advice over and over again.

Globalizing the Nineteenth Century

Joseph L. Yannielli

This is cross-posted from the blog Digital Histories at Yale.

Nineteenth-century Americans viewed themselves through an international lens. Among the most important artifacts of this global consciousness is William Channing Woodbridge’s “Moral and Political Chart of the Inhabited World.” First published in 1821 and reproduced in various shapes and sizes in the decades prior to the Civil War, Woodbridge’s chart was a central and popular component of classroom instruction. I use it in my research and teaching. It forms a key part of my argument about the abolitionist encounter with Africa. And every time I look at it, I see something new or unexpected.

Chart of the Inhabited World:
Exhibiting the Prevailing
Religion, Form Of Government, 1821

Like basketball and jazz, the moral chart is an innovation unique to the United States. The earliest iterations depart from the Eurocentric and Atlantic focus with which modern readers are most familiar. Reflecting the early American obsession with westward expansion, they gaze out over the Pacific Ocean to East Asia and the Polynesian Islands. The chart features a plethora of statistical and critical data. Nations and territories are ranked according to their “Degrees of Civilisation,” form of government, and religion. Darker colored regions are “savage” or “barbarous” while rays of bright light pour out from the Eastern United States and Northern Europe.

Standing Desks: Jefferson, Disraeli, Churchill and, Err, Dwight K. Schrute

Philip White

Stand up desks are becoming quite hip, even making it onto an episode of The Office. And speaking of hips (and, indeed, lower backs), I cured a persistent pain issue by standing to type for 2/3 of my day/night work hours. The evidence seems conclusive that sitting all day is terrible for your lumbar spine, increases the risk of heart disease and piles on the pounds like you’ve done on a Kansas City barbecue-only diet.  

One thing that’s also for sure, although often overlooked, is that standing to write is nothing new. Thomas Jefferson designed a six-legged standing desk, the extra pegs adding stability. The great British statesman Benjamin Disraeli, like many of his Victorian age, preferred to be on his feet when writing. And, though he far preferred dictation as his primary composition method, Disraeli’s countryman and fellow prime minister, Winston Churchill, followed suit when he picked up his fountain pen.

And elevated desks have not been confined to the offices of heads of state. Ernest Hemingway considered it soft to sit (OK, I have NO basis for that, but I can imagine him growling something similar) and, before him, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf scrawled away at a standing desk. More recent proponents include Philip Roth.

Personally, I believe that beyond banishing my lower back/hip misery, standing to write has enabled me to work late into the night without feeling fatigued or needing the dubious pleasure of a late-night double espresso, a Faustian bargain if ever there was one. It is only in the past 100 years that we’ve been taught that if you’re writing, you should be sitting. Many older British and American universities still have standing desks in their libraries, and pictures of 19th century offices show sit/stand combo desks. Apparently we don’t get smarter over time, at least in this case. 

I’m interested to find out more about the sociological and workplace culture factors behind the move away from standing in the years between then and now. Why has it taken so long to rediscover the truth that hunching over at a desk for 40 hours a week (or, in the case of we few who toil into the wee hours on our books and articles, a lot more) is far from a good idea, and that standing can boost productivity and, arguably, longevity.

Real-time

Dan Allosso

Boy oh boy, there are a lot of stories out there! It continues to amaze me, how everyplace I look, there's interesting, compelling history that could potentially turn into serious projects. Yes, okay, maybe I have a short attention span and maybe I need to complete some things (like my dissertation) before taking on any new projects. I’ll give you that.

So what I’m trying to do is get a little bit of info, when I find these topics, so I can get back to them later. In a sense, maybe this is how authors worked in the days when they were doing the final edits on one manuscript while writing the next, proposing the one after that, and looking for the projects after those. In the world of self-publishing, the steps are a little different, but maybe the principal is the same.

The one thing that has really struck me, as I’ve been getting down to writing one project that I’ve been thinking about for a couple years, is how wasteful it is to go over the same ground again and again simply because I didn’t complete the job earlier. I have file folders, backup hard drives, and memory sticks filled with documents. I’ve downloaded hundreds of pdfs from Google or the Internet Archive. I have a stack of index cards nearly four inches high, two partial bibliographies in Endnote and one in Sente. And I have a half dozen outlines and drafts.

It’s good that I’ve been thinking about this project as long as I have been, and it will probably be a better end product because of it. But next time, I’m going to try to be a little more careful about identifying the material I’m collecting, and writing about it as I’m collecting it. In real-time.

Maybe I thought I wasn’t ready to actually start writing this, or maybe I was just lazy – or too excited about the research. You know how it is: one link leads to another, and soon you’ve got gigabytes of great material. But now that it’s writing time, I need to go back over all this material, rediscovering the paths I followed that led me to these records and relearning how they all fit together. Makes me think if I could have been a little more detail-oriented on the front end.

So I’m trying to build a single bibliography for this new, potential project I’ve just discovered. I’m connecting the documents to the entries in Endnote, so I’ll know where they are (and I won’t have to wonder where the most recent ones are!) I’m writing little abstracts and synopses now, so when the time comes I’ll understand how it all fits together and where each record fits in the story. I’ve even got a timeline and a cast of characters, that I can add to anytime between now and whenever I really start this project.

Wish I would’ve started this sooner! The original project I came to grad school thinking about is still out there on a back burner. That folder on the backup drive measures about 29 gigabytes, and some of the files date back to 2006. It will be fun revisiting all that stuff someday. But very expensive.

Writers and Writing Roundup

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Elise Blackwell, "Is Everyone a Writer?" Chronicle, March 3, 2012

The only aspect of my job as an MFA director and creative writing professor that I dislike—aside from those “and then I woke up” stories freshmen sometimes write—is gatekeeping.>>>

Patricia Hampl, "F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Essays From the Edge," American Scholar (Spring 2012)

The first readers to comment on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Crack-Up” essays made no pretense to literary criticism. They just wanted to dish—and diss. The dismay of old or former or soon-to-be-former friends came at Fitzgerald fast and furious, along with smack-downs from those critics who bothered to remark on the essays as they appeared in three successive issues of Esquire, in February, March, and April 1936.>>>

Rob Latham, "The Exegete: On the career of Philip K. Dick, up to and including The Exegesis," Los Angeles Review of Books, February 24, 2012

When Philip K. Dick died in 1982 of a series of strokes brought on by years of overwork and amphetamine abuse, he was seen within the science fiction genre as a cult author of idiosyncratic works treating themes of synthetic selfhood and near-future dystopia, an intriguing if essentially second-rank talent.>>>

"Five Female Writers Who Changed The Course Of Chicago Literary History," Chicagoist, March 8, 2012

March is Women's History Month; for 31 days we celebrate the women who have made our employment, the oration of our opinions, and our lifestyles possible. When it comes to contemporary authors, there's plenty of strong female voices in Chicago.>>>

Scott Martelle, "Book review: 'Watergate,'" Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2012

A few months ago I attended a book launch party for Adam Hochschild's World War I history, "To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918," where he offered a concise dissection of the difference between writing novels and writing history. To write history, he said, the story needs only to be true. To write a novel, the story must be plausible — an often much more difficult thing to accomplish.>>>

Notes from Grad School: Teaching Writing

Dan Allosso

As I prepared this summer to resume my role as a teaching assistant at a large, public, East-Coast research university, I’ve been reflecting on the responsibility that goes with that assignment. Most of the lower level courses offered to undergraduates by my department fill the university’s “general education” requirement, which means that in addition to the historical or diversity outcomes these classes are designed to achieve, many of them also satisfy the university’s writing requirement. So as well as leading discussions on the readings and answering questions arising from lectures, I am a writing teacher.

I happen to like writing, and I’ve had some experience with writing and teaching prior to becoming a grad student. This experience isn’t completely unique (the grad student in the next office was a journalist), but for those of us who didn’t come with these skills, the university doesn’t really do much to prepare us as writing teachers.

I don’t say this to criticize my particular school. Twenty years ago, when my father was earning his PhD in Comparative Literature at a major West-Coast university, the situation was similar. My Dad, whose main interest was teaching literature to young people, made a career there (following his earlier career as a high school English teacher) and wrote A Short Handbook for Writing Essays about Literature, which has been in constant use there ever since.

Looking at the resources available for people like me, who teach writing outside of English departments, it was clear to me that a concise, practical, nuts-and-bolts writing handbook was as needed today in History as it had been twenty years ago in Comp. Lit. So I started with my father’s manuscript, and tried to expand it for use by social science as well as humanities students. It was a fun opportunity to reflect on the thought process he had gone through in writing his handbook, and then to engage in a sort-of dialog across the years. The advantage for me was, I was also able to email my revisions and expansions to my dad in California and get his reactions.

The result of this summer project is A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences. At 80 pages, it’s about twice as long as the earlier handbook, and it includes topics and examples geared for history students as well as readers of literature (although I’m hoping that exposure to examples from outside their specific fields will help make some of these ideas clearer for readers). I hope to use this in the fall, if I can convince the professor and the other TAs I’m working with to let me test it on our students. I’m also thinking of posting some short YouTube videos covering the main ideas of each chapter. One of my Dad’s original motivations was to get all the basics down, so that he wouldn’t have to repeat himself every time a student came to his office with questions. As I’ve mentioned once or twice before, I think the web offers us an incredible opportunity to reach out to people both inside and outside our classrooms with material they can use in whatever field they pursue.

Acknowledging Shortcomings as a Writer

Philip White

As a writer, you get to know pretty quickly what you’re naturally good at. My good lady wife is the best, untrained copy editor I’ve come across and, as Erik Larson says about his other half, my “secret weapon” in writing my next book. A good friend is a grammar wizard, and what’s more (unlike me) he actually enjoys wielding his Chicago Manual of Style and Gregg Reference Manual. Another longtime buddy is the master at describing people and places, and holy crap I hate him for it!

Perhaps you also, in times of honest self-appraisal, realize what your weaknesses are. I lack the skills of the three mentioned above, and wonder how on Earth they acquired such gifts. The answer is obvious – a combination of acquired knowledge and God-given talent. It’s easy to get down on your inadequacies, to despair when staring your shortcomings in the eye, and to covet your neighbor’s grasp of the past participle!

But I’ve found that embracing what I lack and seeking assistance is actually quite a formative experience. By involving the aforementioned people in my writing and editing processes I’m submitting myself to an ongoing skills development program. And if you can check your ego enough to take constructive criticism from your spouse, you can certainly take it from any editor.

Next is to seek people who are willing to provide mentoring. I’m lucky enough to be related to one such person and seek regular guidance from my former college adviser on all matters regarding the written word. Another professor (and author of 15+ books) who’s based on the West Coast has guided me through the tangled web of the publishing industry. The keys to learning from these people? Humility, receptiveness to the opinions of people who know more than me, and a willingness to share my weaknesses openly.

Another way I am constantly trying to improve is by reading the work of writers I admire. This involves poring over all forms of books – history (Rick Atkinson, David McCullough), nonfiction (Larson, John Berendt) and historical fiction (Robert Harris, Juliet Barker), as well as keeping up on the latest features from the WSJ and magazines such as The Atlantic. The third individual I mentioned is the executive editor of a prominent culture magazine, and as he’s kindly put me on the mailing list (thanks again, Luke!), I am confronted by his brilliance once a month.

The idea here is that you become what you behold. So by focusing on those who are skilled writers, I’m hoping that I assimilate some of their powers of description, mastery of pacing, and brevity (hmmm, still working on that one, for sure).

I admit to have not having arrived at a place where I can be satisfied with my writing, nor do I ever want to get to such a place. But by surrounding myself with talented people who can teach me something and reading the best work in the genres I dabble in means I’m better than I was yesterday, and tomorrow will be another step along the road to “writing well.”

The Writer’s Toolkit

Philip White

What makes a successful writer? Talent? Certainly. Knowledge of and passion for one’s subject? Absolutely. The ability to find a market for your wares? No doubt.

Yet without the proper tools, a writer, like any craftsperson, will face serious difficulties.

The best communicators through the ages have turned to the latest innovations to help them eke out words and a living. The Roman orator and statesman Cicero relied on his Tiro’s invention of tablet-based shorthand (no, not an iPad 2!), a Royal Quiet Deluxe portable typewriter was Hemingway’s weapon of choice, and Raymond Chandler used a Dictaphone for the first drafts of his screenplays.

In the past few years I—a Twitter-averse, text message-avoiding, Facebook-shunning curmudgeon—have forced myself to find tools that eliminate paper-shuffling inefficiency and allow me to record late night thoughts that invariably evade me the next morning. (Putting such things out of reach of my four-year-old son, Johnny, and his two-year-old brother, Harry, was also a good move). So, here goes with my list of treasured tech tools, which see a lot more use than my dust-collecting hammer, screwdriver or pliers.

Speech Recognition Software + Mic Winston Churchill tormented many a secretary with late-night transcribing duties and, while she’d make a fine scribe, I doubt my good lady wife, Nicole, would care to record my nocturnal babble. So, I turned to technology—namely, a wireless, Bluetooth-compatible microphone and a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking. When my mother first purchased its predecessor, Dragon Dictate (complete with a very poorly designed dragon logo), some 15 years ago, this was a crude, ineffective technology that required more coaching than a preening, high-strung NFL wide receiver. Now, it’s quick, user-friendly, and mostly accurate. Although you can’t eliminate the occasional hilarious gaffe—I don’t think Joe Stalin would’ve cared for what my speech recognition software calls him.

Tablet + Stylus We’ve moved on a little since the aforementioned Tironian notes were in their heyday, but the concept is similar—take a stylus and mark semi-intelligible scribble on a tablet. Now, I know there are a lot of Apple fanboys and girls who will want to string me up for saying this, but, despite its numerous merits, the iPad is not the best thing for the job. That honor goes to the HTC Flyer, whose seven-inch form and handy “Magic Pen” make on-the-go note taking a cinch. The real power is the wireless synch with Evernote, which runs OCR on your notes so you can find certain words later with a full content search from any device. And if it can read my scrawl, it can read anything. Another bonus is the ability to highlight and annotate within e-books downloaded from the Kobo store—as close to marking up a real paper and glue copy as you can get on a slab of aluminum and plastic. Yes, having to pay extra for the stylus at Best Buy is a fine example of tech company money grabbing, but to me, at least, it was worth it.

Olympus Phone Call Recording Thingy OK, before you think I’m going all 1984 here, I try to tell interviewees that I am going to record our conversation lest they outpace my makeshift shorthand. The technology here is simple: a tiny microphone that sits in my ear and records both sides of any phone conversation on my voice recorder. Just like the NSA (totally kidding, noble overlords). I then connect the recorder via a USB cable and rip the file right into iTunes. Love this gizmo, except the droning of my own voice. (Who, except talk show hosts, politicians, and Charlie Sheen actually likes to hear themselves talk?) There has to be something similar for the iPhone, iPad, iWhatever, too, Applenistas.

How about you, dear readers? Do you have any tech toys/tools that you’d find it hard to live and write without?