Words Fail Me

by Patricia T. O'Conner

  Draw a mental picture of your reader and carry it with you as you write. Stop working now and then, and, like Lily Tomlin's telephone operator, ask, "Is this the party to whom I am speaking?"

  Of course, you might have a different audience every time you write; where writing is concerned, one size does not fit all. As much as possible, try to anticipate your reader's needs, sophistication, likes and dislikes, attention span, mood, tastes, and sense of humor. In our personal relationships, this kind of discretion is called tact; in writing, it's called knowing your audience.

  Here's how it works. Say you're writing a brochure for an investment firm, giving financial advice to the newly widowed. You'll want to sound serious but not gloomy, honest and direct but not intrusive. A wisecrack about the River Styx would not be appropriate. If you were advising college students, on the other hand, humor might be in order. Your tone and choice of words would be very different.

  For better or for worse, audience is everything, no matter what you write. Unfortunately, some audiences seem to require bad writing: dullness (the phone book), pretentious language (an academic paper), hype (advertising copy). Take the academic paper, for example. Ask yourself who will be reading, then aim at that target. It may be that you hate pompous words like syncretism and etiology, and would rather use plain words like joining and cause. But since the professor or dissertation committee or scholarly journal expects gobbledygook and would reject anything else, you hold your nose and write "syncretism" and "etiology." If they want stuffy, give them stuffy. Once you're tenured or you're running the place, you can be yourself. (There's more on the pretentiousness problem in chapter 6.)

  A fiction writer, too, should always imagine the people who'll be reading. I once saw a read-aloud children's book intended for preschoolers; each left-hand page had a picture and each right-hand page was packed with text, nicely written but impossibly long. The writer should have imagined the audience: a kid squirming in somebody's lap. While the grown-up drones on about the enchanted forest, the audience is clamoring to see the next picture.

  You can't always hold the audience in your lap, even mentally. Unless you're writing to just one person, the audience will be made up of individuals, no two exactly alike. Still, they'll have certain things in common. Determine what those things are and keep them in mind as you write. You'll be surprised how much clearer your thinking and your writing will be. You may even make readers feel you're talking to each one alone.

  While you're drawing your mental picture, remember that the readers are on your side (assuming you're not chewing them out). They want you to succeed. Why wouldn't they? When they read something, they want it to be good. Put mental smiles on their mental faces. You're not adversaries, after all. You're in this together, because you want to write something good and they want to read something good. Even someone who disagrees with what you say can enjoy reading it.

  It's essential to imagine a friendly reader, because fear of your audience leads to serious problems. Writer's block is one of them, and so is first-person phobia; we'll get to them later. The fearful writer pictures the audience as a panel of Olympic judges, all holding up cards with 3's and 4's instead of 10's. But aside from editors, English teachers, and book critics, readers usually aren't sitting in judgment. They'll stay with you if you give them a nice move now and then—not every one has to be a triple axel.

  Even though your mental picture of a friendly reader won't always be accurate, pretend it is. If you dislike the jerk you're writing for, don't show it. And don't imagine a reader lying in wait, ready to pounce on every little mistake, or your writing will sound defensive and fearful. Write as though you were addressing someone whose opinion you value, even if the reader is a boneheaded bureaucrat who wants to put a sewage treatment plant on your street, or a stingy insurance company that won't pay for your tummy tuck, or a neighbor who insists his boa constrictor loves children (as appetizers, maybe).

  But be yourself as much as possible. If you're the serious type, be serious. Don't fake a breezy style or nudge readers with "Get it?" phrases. Assume they'll get it. Otherwise your writing will sound forced and artificial.

  Don't talk down to a reader, either. Imagine he's intelligent, even if you know for a fact that he has a mind like a slotted spoon. It doesn't matter if the person who's going to read your paper is a cretin (or if, in the case of that children's book, the intended audience is three years old). Write as though you were addressing intelligent people you understand and respect. Don't patronize them, but don't talk over their heads. If something needs explaining, explain it.

  Get to know your audience—use your imagination—because it's easier to give your best to someone you know and like. Think of your reader as a familiar presence, someone you can talk to. Your attitude will come through in your writing.

  3. Get with the Program

  THE ORGANIZED WRITER

  This chapter is about organization. Yes, it's grunt work. And no, you may not skip to chapter 4. It doesn't matter how sloppy or tidy you are in real life. Even people whose closets look like Martha Stewart's can turn out writing that's a mess.

  Unfortunately, organizing your mind isn't as simple as organizing your closet. You can't go to Home Depot or Hold Everything and buy the shelving and compartments and cubbyholes that will tidy your material and put it to work for you. Besides, when you put a closet in order, you throw things away. You never, ever throw away an idea.

  Do I hear grumbling? Well, resign yourself to this part of the process. It's not the part where you roll right along, humming a merry tune as the words tumble over one another in their eagerness to get on the page. Writers seldom shout, "Boy, this outline is really cookin'!" (Not that I recommend outlines, as you'll see.) What's more, the effort that goes into organization is largely invisible. You'll never hear a reader say, "My, this [essay/letter/novel/report] is beautifully organized." The job may be a pain in the butt, but it's thankless, too.

  Now for the good news. Once you're organized, the rest becomes easier. No bogging down in the Great Grimpen Mire, that swampy wasteland pitted with the bones of lost writers whose last words were "Where am I?" You'll have a map. How do you get one?

  First, you need something to organize: ideas, material, scraps of expertise, recipes, prognostications, anecdotes, scurrilous gossip, anything that might be relevant to what you want to write. And you get this stuff by hoarding it, by faithfully making notes and squirreling them away.

  Let's say you're planning a magazine article about biker gangs. You could save a newspaper clipping about a turf war in Los Angeles, the nickname of a Hell's Angel you want to interview, or a tattoo ad from a biker magazine. Or perhaps you're writing a memo to your marketing manager about muffler sales in Toledo. You might jot down the boss's latest joke about Midas, or cut out an article from Car & Driver about auto emissions standards in Ohio.

  Keeping a Stash

  An idea in your head is merely an idle notion. But an idea written down, that's the beginning of something! Stripped down to its briefs, a piece of writing is nothing more than a handful of ideas, put into words and arranged to do a job. We all get ideas—try not thinking in the shower. The trick is to write them down.

  How many inspirations have you gotten in the middle of the night, ideas that stole into your mind in the wee hours, only to steal away again by morning? "Great idea," you mumbled as you smugly went back to sleep, confident you'd remember that certain something, just what you needed for the writing project at hand. It might have been a snappy ending for the interoffice newsletter, a perfect first line for a poem to your beloved, a brilliant murder plot (fictional, we hope), or a dynamite punch line for the speech you promised to give at the chili supper.

  Next time, write it down!

  A writer with good material is one who never lets a useful nugget slip away. You can be sure that for every book you've read and loved, there once existed a pile of notes. Emily Brontë paused while cooking, ironing, or kneading dough to
make notes for Wuthering Heights. Balzac was never without a notebook. Anatole France recorded his nighttime thoughts on pieces of paper that he let pile up under his bed. When that elusive phrase you've been seeking finally comes to mind, write it down. Do this without fail, no matter how inconvenient it is to stop what you're doing and write. (No! Don't take your hands off the wheel!Just do it as soon as you can.)

  A tidbit doesn't have to be earth-shaking to be worth saving. It only has to be useful. It can be something that gives you a smile, a twinge, a pang, a shiver, a few goose bumps. It might be a word that grabs you because of its sound or the images it evokes, or because it's your true love's favorite expression. It could be a name, a scrap of conversation, a magazine article, or simply a gesture, mannerism, or stray remark. If there's any chance you could use it in the memo or paper you're planning, save it. And when you make a note—this is important—add beside it a word or two explaining why you wrote it. Your note might look like this: " symbiosis—boss's favorite word." Or "schmooze—add to job description." Without a little reminder, you'll forget why you made the note. I recently came across a long-forgotten note of mine that said only "Mahler." This must have meant something once, but I can't remember what.

  Make note-taking a habit. Carry with you a small notebook, a folded piece of paper, or a few file cards, and something to write with. This goes for the bedside table, too; add a little keychain flashlight. Stick with one system. If you're comfortable with file cards, stay with file cards, even if some well-meaning person gives you a gorgeous, expensive leather-bound journal. And keep the cards in the same spot, so that reaching for them becomes automatic.

  Once you've made a note—whether on a file card, a page torn from a notebook, or a slip of paper—store it in a handy place. This is your stash. Just as a farmer has seed and a carpenter has lumber, a writer keeps a stash of material—promising words or phrases, news clippings, or idle notions.

  The way you organize your stash depends on your personality. If you're one of those systematic types—all right, admit it—you might use an accordion file, with related notes neatly sorted by subject. My own notes tend to accumulate like heaps of nuclear waste. Eventually they reach critical mass and I have to transfer them to manila folders just to get my desk back.

  But no matter how you arrange your stash, don't make a fetish of it. You can be tidy later, when you start writing. And by all means, don't get too orderly and start throwing notes away (unless they say only "Mahler"). An interesting observation might not be relevant at the moment, but it could be perfect for some future writing project. Use it to start another stash.

  Remember that the point of keeping a stash is to capture your ideas as they come. So for now, relax and don't be obsessive (just compulsive). This isn't work—not yet. It's pleasure.

  Ages ago, when a childhood illness or a rainy day kept me inside, my mother used to let me play with her button box, an old fruitcake tin full of buttons in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Quite a few had been snipped from cast-off clothes and still had bits of fabric attached. Many were oddities: a big pink rhinestone, a carved wooden knot, the "eye" of a deceased bear. It was great fun to dump them out and arrange them in imaginative patterns. Sometimes I feel much the same pleasure in looking over a stash of notes before beginning to write.

  But back to the project at hand. The organized writer does not digress!

  The Third Degree

  By now you have a healthy stack of usable material. Don't plunge into it right away, though; stop and think for a moment. Interrogate yourself: What do you want to say, why do you want to say it, and how do you want to say it?If you're not clear about these three things, take a walk—maybe a long one, or maybe only around the room—and think some more. And loosen up, for heaven's sake. You're just thinking.

  Say the neighbors have chosen you to speak before the local zoning board about a proposed toxic dump the city wants to build on your block. For starters, give yourself the third degree: the what, the why, and the how. What do you want to say? The city should not build a toxic dump on my block. Why do you want to say it? Because we'll all turn green, property values will plummet, and there's a better spot across town. How do you want to say it? By presenting statistics on projected mortality rates, on residential resales in Chernobyl, and on the scarcity of registered voters living across town.

  For the less civic-minded, here's another example. You're writing a magazine article about your grandmother on the occasion of her hundredth birthday. Again, run through the big three. What do you want to say? Gran is a specimen of living history, from the days of gaslight and horse-drawn carriages to space travel and cloning. Why do you want to say it?Because through the eyes of the elderly, we get a new perspective on the century. How do you want to say it? By using Gran's own words, along with old letters, diaries, and scrapbooks.

  Even fiction should be subjected to the test. Suppose you want to write a short story about high school sweethearts who meet again at their fiftieth class reunion. What do you want to say? Former lovers look forward to rekindling the old flame, but end up wondering what they ever saw in each other. Why do you want to say it? To show that puppy love isn't for grown-ups. How do you want to say it? By using his-and-hers remembrances of things past and present.

  Flesh and Bones

  Once you have the what, the why, and the how, you need a skeleton to hang your material on. Does this mean making an outline, one of those charts with Roman numerals and tiers of this, that, and the other? If you're comfortable with outlines, fine; make one. Some of my best friends are outline people. If you're not, here's a suggestion.

  Draw up a list, which you may find less intimidating than a formal outline. We make lists all the time: lists of groceries, errands, correspondence, calls to answer. This is simply a list of the ideas you hope to get across or the points you want to include. Arrange the ideas in a logical order, one idea leading to the next.

  What's a logical order? That depends on your material and your point of view. If your list of ideas is mostly a series of events, a straight chronological arrangement might work best. If you're building an argument, you might want to rank your ideas in order of importance. If you want to entertain in a speech or a light essay, you have to wow the audience at regular intervals, so spread the good stuff around and don't blow it all at once.

  Perhaps you're giving a talk before the local garden club about repotting bonsai. If you choose a chronological approach, you might begin by talking about the first signs that the tree needs a transplant, then go on to picking a time, choosing a pot, pruning the roots, mixing new soil, and so on. If you want to build an argument, you might open by describing a pathetic, withered bonsai whose owner waited too long or ignored the danger signals. If you want to entertain, you might start by recalling how you were all thumbs (none of them green) the first time you repotted, but that the plant somehow survived the bungling.

  Keep in mind that two different writers, given the same material, might organize it quite differently, yet just as effectively. There's no single answer to what makes a logical sequence. Pick one that makes sense to you, seems right for your material and your audience, and leads the reader smoothly from point to point.

  If the items on your list don't readily fall into place, try this. Write them on sheets of paper, one item per sheet, with a word or two representing each item. Lay the sheets out—use the floor, if it helps, and invite Macavity to lounge somewhere else. Then arrange and rearrange the sheets into a chain of ideas, perhaps adding connecting items as links, until each idea naturally follows the one before and leads on to the next. Don't think sensational writing isn't put together this way. Ann Beattie used the floor to rearrange the parts of her novel Picturing Will. When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise and The Love of the Last Tycoon, he covered the walls with charts showing the backgrounds and movements of his characters. And J. D. Salinger has been known to hang sheaves of notes from hooks mounted on the wall of his studio.<
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  When you've put your ideas in order—you can get up off the floor now—take out your stash of notes and sort it. For each idea on your list, collect a pile of material(evidence, research, anecdotes, explanations) you might use to make that particular point. Steel yourself and put aside what doesn't belong. Sure, that bit about your seventh-grade homeroom teacher is a gem. But if it doesn't fit now, don't try to squeeze it in. Save it. There will be other days, other writing. Hoard your ideas like a miser.

  You now have the bones of your piece (the list) and some of the flesh (the piles of relevant material). This framework is a guide to the size, scope, and structure of what you want to write, whether it's a short story, an office memo, a speech, a sermon, an essay, or a book.

  As for the physical arrangement, or what you should have on your desk by now, that's up to you. You might make a chart listing the ideas in progression, with notations under each idea telling you which supporting materials to include. Or if you prefer, and if you have the space, arrange the piles in a neat row, one pile (labeled clearly) for each major idea on your list.

  Expect your organization plan to stretch and change as you go along. It's supposed to. If it doesn't, there's something wrong. In the process of writing, you'll get ideas you weren't expecting. A hunch may come out of the blue, and suddenly you're off on an adventure. This phenomenon is called creativity, and your framework must inevitably change to accommodate it. A plan is supposed to help you write, and when it doesn't do that, it doesn't work. If you have to stand on your head to follow a blueprint, maybe the blueprint is upside down.

  4. Commencement Address