"As a man lives and thinks, so will he write."
John Galsworthy (1867-1933).
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Introduction:-
I like to think that there are great advantages to writing, as opposed to speaking. By writing, one, before letting thoughts loose, is able to take time to reflect and to revise; also, one is able to avoid the usual ornaments or irritants of conversation. Have you noticed that often a person who can write well, is not one who can speak well. It is rare, I think, that a writer can make a speech, and a speecher write.
"Mount them on a dinner-table, and they have nothing to say; shut them up in a room by themselves, and they are inspired. They are 'made fierce with dark keeping'. In revenge for being tongue-tied, a torrent of words flows from their pens, and the storm which was so long collecting comes down apace. It never rains but it pours. Is not this strange, unaccountable? Not at all so. They have a real interest, a real knowledge of the subject, and they cannot summon up all that interest, or bring all that knowledge to bear, while they have anything else to attend to. Till they can do justice to the feeling they have, they can do nothing. For this they look into their own minds, not in the faces of a gaping multitude. What they would say (if they could) does not lie at the orifices of the mouth ready for delivery, but is wrapped in the folds of the heart and registered in the chambers of the brain. In the sacred cause of truth that stirs them, they would put their whole strength, their whole being, into requisition; and as it implies a greater effort to drag their words and ideas from their lurking-places, so there is no end when they are once set in motion. The whole of a man's thoughts and feelings cannot lie on the surface, made up for use; but the whole must be a greater quantity, a mightier power, if they could be got at, layer under layer, and brought into play by the levers of imagination and reflection. Such a person then sees farther and feels deeper than most others. He plucks up an argument by the roots, he tears out the very heart of his subject. He has more pride in conquering the difficulties of a question, than vanity in courting the favour of an audience. He wishes to satisfy himself before he pretends to enlighten the public. He takes an interest in things in the abstract more than by common consent. Nature is his mistress, truth his idol. The contemplation of a pure idea is the ruling passion of his breast." (William Hazlitt, "On the Difference between Writing and Speaking.")
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Why Write:-
By writing, one is able to store his or her thoughts, so to speak; to be read and to be had once again, in the future, by the author or another. When an author's thoughts are "uncanned" through reading, they will only be truly duplicated in the reader's mind, if, in the first place, the author had properly expressed his thoughts in his writings.
Scribere est agere, fancy Latin words, a legal maxim, "To write is to act." "... the author who is bound to write is the man or woman who has acquired, by the continual study of years, exceptional sources of knowledge. If that knowledge is not bequeathed, posterity is a heavy loser." These are fine words,2 however, people usually write for lesser reasons. George Orwell in his book, Why I Write (1947) thought there are four great motives for writing: first, sheer egoism, a desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death; second, aesthetic enthusiasm; Third, historical impulse, the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity; and fourth, for a political purpose, and in the use of the word "political," Orwell meant to use the word in its widest possible sense, viz., a desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.
If the memory of a person gets installed in another person's mind (forgeting for the moment its accuracy), it does not last much beyond the death of the person being remembered. This, -- addressing George Orwell first great motive for writing -- is not so much the case if the person being remembered is an author.
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"Unless an English author has had his portrait painted by Reynolds or his life written by Boswell, he has small chance of being remembered (apart from the recollections of a small and every-dwindling group of friends), save by his books. They are, indeed, his only chance. I do not say it is a good chance. I have fallen asleep over too many books to say that. What I do say is, it is his only chance.
You can know a man from his books, and if he is a writer of good faith and has the knack, you may know him very well; better it well may be than did his co-directors or his partners in business, or even - for I am here to tell the truth - his own flesh and blood." (Augustine Birrell).3
How and What to Write:-
"A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites them to think otherwise." (Ambrose Bierce.)
One of the fundamental rules in writing, is this -- "be interesting." A piece of writing is always more interesting to the reader, if the reader can connect with it, it is more interesting if the writing has a direct bearing on what the reader is up to. Of course, if the piece is about the reader, himself; why then the writing will become, to the reader, immensely interesting: I am reminded of what Samuel Butler (1835-1902) wrote:
"I met a lady one year in Switzerland who had some parrots that always travelled with her and were the idols of her life. These parrots would not let anyone read aloud in their presence, unless they heard their own names introduced from time to time. If these were freely interpolated into the text they would remain as still as stones, for they thought the reading was about themselves. If it was not about them it could not be allowed. The leaders of literature are like these parrots; they do not look at what a man writes, nor if they did would they understand it much better them the parrots do; but they like the sound of their own names, and if these are freely interpolated in a tone they take as friendly, they may even give ear to an outsider. Otherwise they will scream him off if they can."4
In a more serious vein, Nicoll observes how the writings of an author are reflections of the author, himself; if he is an interesting character, then likely his writings will be interesting.
"To have a style that is not derived, that is noble and new, you must have a powerful and lonely personality; you must have an individuality that is distinct, presentable, and impressive. Style is the expression of a temperament, and no matter how the artist may strive, in the end he will reveal himself.
The great American jurist, Benjamin Cardozo (1870-1938) expressed the thought, in his book Law and Literature (1931), that there was six types or methods of writing: magisterial, (lofty, or high style), laconic (short and pithy), conversational, refined (meticulous, smelling of the lamp), demonstrative or persuasive, and tonsorial (extensive use of the shears and the pastepot, overly worked).
". . .
"There are great days coming for the true leader writer, the man who can make people read him and believe in him, the man who speaks out of influence and knowledge.
". . .
"Write what you do not have to search your memory or your cupboards for; write the things that are vivid and burning in your heart; the things you think about when you are alone or awake at night."5
William Hazlitt:
"There are two sorts of writing. The first is compilation; and consists in collecting and stating all that is already known of any question in the best possible manner, for the benefit of the uninformed reader. An author of this class is a very learned amanuensis of other peoples thoughts. The second sort proceeds on an entirely different principle. Instead of bringing down the account of knowledge to the point at which it has already arrived, it professes to start from that point on the strength of the writer's individual reflections; and supposing the reader in possession of what is already known, supplies deficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the beaten road in search of new tracts of observation or sources of feeling. It is in vain to object to this last style that it is disjointed, disproportioned, and irregular. It is merely a set of additions and corrections to other men's works, or to the common stock of human knowledge, printed separately. You might as well expect a continued chain of reasoning in the notes to a book. It skips all the tripe, intermediate, level common-places of the subject, and only stops at the difficult passages of the human mind, or touches on some striking point that has been overlooked in previous editions." ("On Genius and Common Sense.")
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Perfect Writing:-
"It was the opinion of Voltaire that an author, while life lasted, should continue to correct his words. This view seems to have been shared by Rousseau and Hume. 'He [Hume] more than once quotes 'a saying of Rousseau's, that one half of a man's life is too little to write a book and the other half to correct it.' In truth, he never wearied of the attempt to bring his words as near to perfection as possible, and it was from his death-bed that his last corrections were sent.'"6
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It was the great French writer, Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) who was of the opinion that there were not two ways of saying a thing, but only one, and that the wording must fit the thought as the glove fits the hand. Flaubert's ideal is, of course, to be aimed at; the goal, success in writing, more generally, however, will likely come to the person who learns to write simply. No one would argue with W. Somerset Maugham's success, and his advise was: "When the amateur ... sits down to write he thinks he must use grand words rather than ordinary ones. It is only by practice that he learns to write simply." (Great Novelists.) Disaster comes about when a writer makes an "affectionate study of eloquence." What happens is that he begins "to hunt more after words than matter, and more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, soundness of argument, life of invention or depth of judgment." (Francis Bacon.)7
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1 Peter Landry is a lawyer and has been, for 20 years, in private practice in the City of Dartmouth. He invites correspondence on the topic and may be contacted at P.O. Box 1200, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, B2Y 4B8, or at peteblu@blupete.com.
2 Sir. W. Robertson Nicoll (1851-1923), People and Books (London: Hodder & Stoughton, nd).
3 See Birrell's essay, "Walter Bagehot," found in Selected Essays (London: Nelson, 1908) at p. 225.
4 See, Selected Modern English Essays (Oxford University Press, 1927, at p. 20-1).
5 Nicoll, op. cit.
6 Austin Dobson, A Bookman's Budget (Oxford University Press, 1917, pp. 141-2).
7 See Bowen's biography, The Temper of the Man.
8 Chas. F. Richardson, (1775-1865) lawyer, The Choice of Books (New York: Alden, 1883, pp. 118-19.
11 See Richard O'Connor's Ambrose Bierce: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown; 1967) at p. 190.
12 Nicoll, op. cit.
Fancy Words and Muddled Meaning:-
Macaulay's first law in writing is that "the words employed shall be such as convey to the reader the meaning of the writer.
"Aim at things, and your words will be right without aiming. Guard against love of display, love of singularity, love of seeming original. Aim at meaning what you say, and saying what you mean. When a man who is full of his subject and has matured his powers of expression sets himself to speak thus simply and sincerely, whatever there is in him of strength or sweetness, of dignity or grace, of humor or pathos, will find its way out naturally into his language. That language will be true to his thought, true to the man himself."8
One should avoid fancy words and always favour the simple expression to the complex; one should endeavour always to choose the right word. I made reference earlier to what W. Somerset Maugham wrote of Gustave Flaubert, how it was Flaubert's opinion "that the wording must fit the thought as the glove fits the hand."
"... he [Flaubert] worked hard. Before starting on a book he read everything he could find that was pertinent. He made voluminous notes. When writing he would sketch out roughly what he wished to say and then work on what he had written, elaborating, cutting, rewriting, till he got the effect he wanted. That done, he would go out onto his terrace and shout out the phrases he had written, convinced that if they did not sound well to the ear, if by their form they were not perfectly easy to say, there must be something wrong with them." (Great Novelists.)
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The Writer is his Best Judge:-
"The choice and command of language is the fruit of experience. ... The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; no one has so deeply meditated on the subject; no one is so sincerely interested in the event." (Gibbon's Autobiography.)
Edit and Cut:-
"Rising with Auora's light,
Artistic economy and unswerving directness: That is what one should strive for; too much of what we find is prolix, aimless and formless. Meredith set forth at least two duties of the writer: he is to develop a "habit of weeding out the unessential and commonplace; ... he will express nothing but the heart of the matter in hand." "In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give your style."9 "I require to see a proof, a revise, a revise, and a double re-vise, or fourth-proof rectified impression of all my productions ..."10 And always bear in mind the legal maxim that, "Whatever is added to describe anything already sufficiently described, is without effect."
The Muse invoked, sit down to write;
Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline;
Be mindful, when invention fails,
To scratch your head, and bite your nails."
Bierce and Mencken on Writing:-
"[Aspiring authors] are unanimously commonplace, unanimously stupid. Free education has cursed them with aspirations beyond their congenital capacities ... they lack the primary requisite of the imaginative author; the capacity to see the human comedy afresh, to discover new significances in man's eternal struggle with his fate. ... material prosperity and popular education have made it [the urge to write] a sort of national disease."
Let me quote Mencken at further length:
"Writing, they say, is the most dreadful chore ever inflicted upon human beings. It is not only exhausting mentally; it is also extremely fatiguing physically.
No reference should be made to Mencken, unless reference be made to Bierce:
"... so the horrors of loneliness are added to its other unpleasantness. An author at work is continuously and inescapably in the presence of himself. There is nothing to divert and soothe him. So every time a vagrant regret or sorrow assails him, it has him instantly by the ear, and every time a wandering ache runs down his leg it shakes him like the bite of a tiger. I have yet to meet an author who was not a hypochondriac.
"... The point is that an author, penned in a room during all his working hours with no company save his own, is bound to be more conscious than other men of the petty malaises that assail all of us. They tackle him, so to speak, in a vacuum; he can't seek diversion from them without at the same time suffering diversion from his work.
"... Why then, do rational men and women engage in so barbarous and exhausting a vocation ... vanity ... His overpowering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized countries, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression." (Selected Prejudices, 1927.)
"He [Bierce] believed it took about five years to train a writer. The first two years would be spent in reading and taking notes. 'If I caught him reading a newly published book, save by way of penance, it would go hard with him. Of our modern education he should have enough to read the ancients...
"'But chiefly this fortunate youth' - Bierce did not undervalue the benefits of his patronage - 'should learn to take comprehensive views, hold large convictions and make wide generalizations... And it would be needful that he know and have an ever-present consciousness that this is a world of fools and rogues, blind with superstition, tormented with envy, consumed with vanity, selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions - frothing mad!... He must be a sinner and in turn a saint, a hero, a wretch.'"11
Conclusions:-
To conclude, I refer to one of the finest writers of the English language, Lord Macaulay. Macaulay's was a perfection of clearness, there is not an ambiguous sentence to be found throughout his works, brilliant language; Thackeray referred to him as a master with a "prodigious memory and vast learning ... He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description." Thus, to become a good writer, one must write, and write, and write: and, too, both before and during the exercise, one must read, and read, and read. As Sir W. Robertson put it, he "who is not continually reading and refreshing his mind will soon become stale, flat, and unprofitable."12
[ See, also, Blue Pete's essay "On Language." ]
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