It's What You Don't Say

Writers are explainers and describers.  It's what we're built to do.  Words are our tools and with those tools we are adept at clarifying things, ideas and impressions through explaining and describing.  But too much verbiage can get in the way of our effectiveness as writers.  Over-explaining and over-describing can leave our writing flat, tedious and uninteresting.  When readers get involved in a story, they want to be fed tidbits, tantalizing pieces of information that they can use to put the story together.  It's similar to the challenge of a jigsaw puzzle.  Readers don't want to be fed everything.  One of the great joys of reading is figuring things out for yourself.  A writer robs you of that joy by telling you everything because it leaves nothing to your imagination.  The same is true in creative nonfiction.  Readers want to be able to create pictures in their own minds as they read.  They want to piece together the whole from the pieces you have given them.  Unless you're writing assembly instructions or some other kind of detailed instruction in which minutiae needs to be abundant and explanation plentiful, you should be a minimalist in your writing.  Provide the critical details and description to create the overall impression you're trying to achieve, but then step back and let your readers fill in the gaps.  The hint of something can be very powerful in a reader's mind.  You don't have to provide a full-blown account of everything for your writing to be effective.  It is reasonable to say that, in editing your early drafts, you can count on eliminating your details and descriptors by at least fifty percent, sometimes more.  Recognizing that you can have more power as a writer by what you don't say than by what you do say can lead you to leaner, tighter, more memorable prose

Leashing Your Research

Most writing takes some kind of research.  Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writers have to know enough about their subject matter to be able to write clearly and effectively about it.  But research can be an untamed animal that can take you on a wild ride and ultimately get in the way of your writing. Leashing your research into a disciplined journey that you keep close to your purpose is the best way to make research a helper and not a hindrance. Researching any subject can be very absorbing and time-consuming; and as a writer, you can become so engrossed in your research that you forget to write. The research becomes the goal, not the writing.  You don't want to let this happen if you are committed to getting a project written.  Research is necessary, fascinating and fun, but don't let it consume too much of your time and energy.  Instead, let your research infuse your writing with tidbits of fact and detail much like you would season a food dish.  But don't let your research overwhelm you to the point where you feel pressured to get every bit of it into the mix.  This is a recipe for writer's block.  You can't possibly fit all of your research into your piece.  It would be overwhelming and your writing would suffer because it would begin to read like a fact list rather than prose.  Instead, look for those bits that will enhance your writing, not take it over.  The majority of your writing should still be your story, your style, your nuances, your voice. The research and fact-checking is just there to make your writing better, more accurate, more realistic, more meaningful.  It should not hijack your writing.  So keep your research on a leash.  Make it useful, but not overwhelming, stay close to your purpose, don't let it lead you off into irrelevant tangents, and let it be the effective tool it can be to make you a better writer.  

Pausing the Muse

It's been nearly four years since this blog was written in and it's time to return to it again.  Sometimes, with writers, there is need to pause the muse. Sometimes life gets in the way, and when it does, the inspiration for writing can weaken and even disappear for awhile.  Because creativity follows the rhythms of life, it needs to be allowed to ebb and flow.  It cannot be forced or pounded into submission, and sometimes the pausing can make the muse stronger.  So it is with renewed strength, tempered by a long pause, that I return to writing with new ideas, new aspirations, and new enthusiasm.  I do hope this blog is helpful to some people at least some of the time.  Over the years, as a writer and teacher of writing, I've picked up a few notions that have been valuable to my writing life and may be valuable to others.  So this blog is the dialogue about those notions and I look forward to the continued conversation.