Hello from the Slumgullion blog. It’s been a while. This short post is for any writers. It offers some brief thoughts on writing as craft, as far as I feel I’m coming to understand it.

I started writing with intention around 15 years ago, with short stories. I’ve always found it hard, though I’ve never felt less than thrilled to learn, either. For one thing, the accomplished writing of certain others lights me up. Their writing feels like a river — slow, sure, flowing, lively, natural. I think of Seamus Heaney, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut, James Baldwin, Chinua Achebe, Nan Shepherd, Arundhati Roy, Wendell Berry… And yes, Seamus comes first, for me. To learn from any of these is never boring.

I’m a slow writer, though I’ve never felt blocked. I like to leave things around for weeks to ‘mature’, and then come back to them. I think of being asleep as my most fruitful writerly time. I’ve come to love writing that’s light, flowing, simple, on the way somewhere. My own has begun to find its natural movement only in the last year or so. Here, for example. It’s felt worth the wait. Now the words flow from me, if I remember to wait for them, and I just step through them.

Here I’d like to leave a note of some of my own ‘writer’s rules’, being my own little disciplines. I’ve never tried to make sense of them before. They all matter to me though of course I break all of them, sometimes on purpose.

Most of these rules-that-aren’t boil down my immediate options as a writer. It’s like trying to paint with a simpler palette, or so I imagine. You’d think it’d make more sense to widen the possibilities as far as possible — and the sky’s still infinite, don’t fret — but I’ve found the opposite. This has made my own writing harder to do, but richer, and I’ve never looked back.

All these thoughts are offered in take-it-or-leave-it fashion — some may be useful, others not.

Never needed

Clichés – if you’ve ever heard it before, it’s probably one. Some clichés have less to do with the words used than with a hackneyed idea behind them, like she looked stunning, the flowers smelled of spring, the car thrummed to life, irresistible charms. 

Some common words just get in the way, like got, very, and there is/are. Words like however and moreover/furthermore mean to be useful but mean little themselves, jerking the reader this way, then that.

Sentences longer than two lines and paragraphs longer than 15 or so are likely to be under-thought. Let the reader work for the meaning of your story, not the sense of your lines.

Seldom helpful

Any form of the verbs be and do. X is Y lacks movement and says little about how X and Y tangle with each other. Just static. If you want to say how X and Y relate, find a verb that moves and has something to say. It’s unlikely to be the verb to be.

The word and. Yes, and. Instead, tease the two ideas apart and let them breathe in their own space.

Adverbs ending in -ly. Instead of the word ‘and’ is rarely really needed, try the need for ‘and’ is rare.

Repeating words, unless you mean to.

The passive voice, except where the emphasis is on passivity of the subject: he was killed, I was swept up.

‘;:”,() Most syntactic furniture only clutters the room:

• Parentheses, being parenthetical, send the reader off. If a thought’s essential, don’t bracket it. If it’s not essential, don’t say it at all.
• Semicolons are rarely as helpful as a new sentence.
• Even commas, when used for emphasis, can, often, drive the reader nuts.
• Occasional colons I don’t mind too much. The simple appeal was this: just keep loving.
• Full-stops are breaths, but too many make the reader pant.

For general avoidance or most sparing use

Words with more than two syllables, mostly Latinate words like cogitate, deliberation, fortitude, which take the reader straight from their body to their head. Just knowing the word boustrophedonically doesn’t mean it trumps in back-and-forth lines. Leaving so many words on the shelf can feel maddening, but it’s a gift to the reader.

Adjectives often strain to lift up their nouns, particularly when two or more are having a go. Find a stronger noun instead.

The present continuous tense, except when needed for emphasis, though even then a stronger choice is often around. For she was coming home, try on her way home, she… 

En dashes can help to lend text a natural conversational feel – particularly to lay down a bit of emphasis – but they do make the reader stutter and jump.

For seeking out

Short words, like short and words, of Anglo-Saxon origin. Unlike the cognitively indigestible, compound abstractions of Latinate concepts, the reader takes in an Anglo-Saxon word live and whole, straight into the body, which holds them in the realm of feeling. Faith rather than religion, story rather than tradition, presence rather than attendance.

Less-common short words can bring feel to a text, especially when they mean bodily things like brick, bone, stink, soil, moon. Short verbs like crinkle, dunk, screw give that feel its movement, and now you’re dancing.

Shorter sentences peppered through the longer, like He lost. No way. Why?

Rhythm. Few appreciate the definition of love barely stumbles along. Love is a difficult word has stride. Short words help with rhythm, especially when used with a single longer word. Shall this be love or just a radiant dream?

Rules worth breaking

Beginning sentences with But or Because, and less commonly And, can assure the reader that this is all a conversation.

Occasionally, a complex word brings a quality missing from simpler alternatives. Orwell wondered why we’d want to use deracinated when uprooted does the job, and I agree on the point in general. But deracinated has a violence to it that may be worth the emphasis, as effloresce has an abundance to it that blossom may be lacking.

Flow

The end of a sentence is where the emphasis naturally lies. So, that sentence might be better as In any sentence, the natural emphasis lies at its end.

The last word or two of a sentence should lead into the next, which might mean that clauses need reordering.

The first line of a good paragraph sets its scene. The last brings all its ideas together into a single thought. That thought should follow into the next paragraph and on we ride.

A hard break between a group of paragraphs, marked with extra space or a divider, can usefully signal to the reader that we’re still on the same voyage but about to shift tack.

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And there we are. Use, ignore, and always enjoy.