Good Writing and How To Learn It
The RSD wrote me an email a few weeks back, stating how much she enjoys my writing (aw shucks) and asking for writing tips. I gave her some. I now offer them to you, somewhat altered from the personal manner in which I addressed her. There are ten of them, and I’ll post them in two parts.
1. Read a lot. Composition classes don’t teach us nearly as much about writing as writers do by example.
2. Read good literature. Read the best. Try MFK Fisher, a superior writer. Read Abraham Lincoln, Thoreau, Mark Twain, Dickens, Conrad, and especially C.S. Lewis. Find ones *you* think are good; your judgment is likely to be right.
3. Write for publication, in actual magazines and newspapers, where they employ actual editors. These people will teach you lots of lessons.
4. Write for the best publications you can get your work into. The better the pub, the better its editors, and the better the feedback and lessons they’ll give you. Make a targets list and work patiently to get your writing into every publication on your list. Unfortunately, some of the best-written and best-edited publications are all-staff-written (like The Economist) or peer-reviewed journals by folks with very special qualifications (like the New England Journal of Medicine), so you can’t work on them without being on staff. (BTW I know two people who have edited at NEJM, and both found it a great experience.)
5. Read books about writing. Yes, there are too many of them out there, but the good ones are truly helpful. I especially like A Writer’s Time, by Kenneth Atchity; Style: Towards Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams (gets my very highest recommendation); On Writing Well, by Wm. Zinsser; and Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brand.
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That’s the first half of what I told the RSD. I have one more note to add. I did not mean to suggest that composition classes are of low value. I merely meant that they cannot capture all the lessons that are contained in the work of fine writers. Coursework and the vast literature on how to write are very valuable, because none of us learns everything we might learn from example. Sometimes the example needs to be made explicit to us, in a teacherly way, before we can appreciate and use it. One reason I recommend Williams’s Style is how he makes explicit the brilliant choices Lincoln made in the Gettysburg Address.
[coming in part 2: On Reading and Rules. Tune in tomorrow.]