Re: Curiosity - how fast do professional writers write?


Alan Hope wrote:
> chris_tine49@xxxxxxxxxxx goes:

> Is a
> tailor failing to challenge himself by always sewing the buttons on
> the front of the jacket?

Of course not.

> The analogy is a very poor one. You have to get away from this
> tiresome dilettantish view that writing is all about surprise and
> invention and mould-breaking. It's not. Writing is about
> communication, and in just the way that I will make myself understood
> by using words my interlocutor understands rather than the ones that
> please me the most, so I will write a better article if I write it
> according to the principles which have been shown time and again to
> work.

The analogy may well be a poor one. However, I never said writing was
about surprise and invention and mould-breaking. I think it's about
invention, of course, in the sense that however workmanlike (a good
thing), a piece of writing is a newly made thing.

> As you all must know by
> now, any sentence that makes you swell with pride for its literary
> felicity is the very one you'll strike out as you read the piece over.

You all? Are you speaking to the MW audience or me? Of course I know
it.

> The man was asking professional writers their view about something or
> other.

It pays to know the question.

You're talking about, I dunno, Hornby trying his hand at
> melancholy fiction or something.

No, I'm not. I'm talking about the hard work of writing truly about a
very personal and emotional thing, without glossing over it or being
dramatic or making it dead, ill-written, textbooky prose.

Which is the task John has set himself. The advice you, Bob, and Ivor
give is great advice for apprentice commercial writers who want to
become journeymen. But I don't think it's entirely what John needs.

He's writing not because he's a writer but because he has something
that is important to him that he wants to communicate to others. I
think he will survive some bad writing if he is scrupulously true to
his experience, which is hard to do because you have to step out of
yourself to see it in context. And without context it has less value.

You also have to be brave because people will arise to mock you for
whatever it is that they value and think you lack. Or just because they
think it's fun.

> So there's a time and a
> place for trying out new ways, and the place is fiction.

Some journalists are fusing journalism with invention: I forget the
name for that. And scientists are moving to try their hands at
expository prose because there is much of importance that can't be said
in the boundaries of a research publication. They don't do the
different IN the scientific report, they do it in addition to it.

> I've mentioned a modest move across to humour. And I sing in a choir.
> That's a challenge.

Yes, I agree.

> >Like Lance Armstrong: now he's becoming a
> >roadie for Sheryl Cross or something, which seems more challenging than
> >managing his huge foundation enterprise.


> Sorry. I thought the OP asked for the views of professionals because
> he wanted the views of professionals, not the views of starry-eyed
> girls who fail quite spectacularly to take a realistic look at the
> situation.

The OP, who has a name, John, wanted the view of professionals. You
presented one side of the task before him, I another. And I too am a
professional who makes her living and supports her family by writing
and helping others to get stuff written and published.

> >But then, discontent is my spiritual path.
>
> Well, that makes about as much sense as anything else you've said, and
> contributes quite as much to the discussion.

I see we've gone past your limit for give-and-take that isn't all
snarky.

Thanks for the earlier discussion. I enjoyed it.

Christine

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