The Publication Coach

Word count: 212 words

Reading time: Less than 1 minute

A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. Today’s comes from Sebastian Barry.

I’ve gone on a bit of a splurge with Irish literature, lately. First, I read Malarky. More recently, I finished The Secret Scripture. This Sebastian Barry novel is more a story of character than plot and I found his writing style to be absolutely riveting.

Deeply poetic, the book tells the story of an almost 100-year old woman, set against the history of Ireland — most particularly the 1922 civil war. Barry’s writing is uniformly excellent but here is one sentence I particularly admired:

There in the glimmering room I fancied I saw something strange, a tear rising from the corner of his eye, slipping to his cheek and tumbling quickly down, a sort of dark, private crying.

The modifier “dark” is so seldom used to describe tears and I found the adjective to be especially powerful here. I also liked the “glimmering” of the room (what a perfect word!) and the verb “fancied” seemed to capture a character of a particular place and age.

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He has a long, square-chinned face…

Under the rubble that’s himself…

Before they were unmoored from their spines…

Word count: 359 words

Reading time: About 1.5 minutes

I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from Emily Nussbaum.

Several years ago I enjoyed many guilty laughs over the British film, In the Loop. A crass and funny black comedy about British politics during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the show starred Peter Capaldi, who issued more F-bombs per minute than I’ve heard from any other living actor. I don’t normally find foul language amusing, but Capaldi’s relentless delivery made it screamingly funny.

When I heard that the film’s writer/director Armando Iannucci intended to produce a similar comedy on American soil, I was intrigued. That show is Veep, starring Julia-Louis Dreyfus.

It took me some months to track down a copy of the show. But, ironically, exactly the same week I did (May 6/13),the New Yorker published an Emily Nussbaum review of it.

It amuses me that some of the best writing about TV in North America happens to appear in the New Yorker. This is ironic because by the length of its articles, the sophistication of its vocabulary and its apparent lack of interest in contemporary design, the magazine appears to represent more or less the polar opposite of everything that TV stands for.

I tend to share Nusssbaum’s television aesthetic and I especially admire her way with words. Here is a bit of figurative language – describing Julia Louis-Dreyfous – I found particularly effective:

With her shark’s grin and panicked eyes, she is a skilled navigator of [Armando] Iannucci’s stumbling, filthy, fast-paced exchanges.

The metaphor “shark’s grin” is not new but somehow Nussbaum elevates it by pairing it with “and panicked eyes.” Doesn’t the juxtapostion of the crazy eyes with the smiling mouth perfectly capture Dreyfus’s style of comedy? I also like the way Nussbaum uses the noun “navigator” to describe the actor’s handling of the script. Finally, I appreciate the alliteration in the phrase, “filthy, fast-paced.”

By the way, I enjoyed the show Veep (although not quite as much as I liked In the Loop.) And Nussbaum says the second season is better…. I’m inclined to believe her.

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A tide that would not be coming in again…

He has a hay bale of hair on his head…

Like a wedding centerpiece…

Word count: 208 words

Reading time: Less than 1 minute

Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: spruiking.

I had never before heard the word spruiking. I won’t pretend I stumbled across it in my reading. Instead, one of my subscribers forwarded it to me, via this rather amusing post.  I especially enjoyed the video that allowed me to see shopkeepers or, more likely, salespeople, spruiking on the streets of Melbourne.

Spruiking is an Australian term and it refers to speaking in public to promoting goods, services, or causes. (If you’re from the Pacific Northwest you might think of the stores in the Seattle public market. Lots of spruiking goes on there!)

The etymology of the word spruiking is unclear. But posters to the blog speculate that it might originate from the Dutch word spreken or the German word sprechen for “to speak.” Interestingly, there seem to be two accepted pronunciations: “sprowk,” with the ‘ow’ sound the same as in “cow” or “sprook” the same as the “oo” sound in “moon.”

And the suggested synonyms? Pitching, pimping or touting.

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Word count: 756 words

Reading time: About 3 minutes

Do you habitually leave everything until the last minute? Or are you smart enough to plan your writing time? Here’s how you can plan it in reverse….

Last week I was out for breakfast with friends when I received an urgent text from my son.

 “Mom,” it said, “I paid my tuition [for a summer course] last night the way the bank showed me, but UBC hasn’t registered the money. Did I just pay 600 [expletive] dollars into thin air? Also, my tuition is due today and I cannot afford it with the remaining money in my account. Dad won’t understand online banking and he will blame me for this. I need you.”

Although my son was shrewd enough to bury a compliment in his request for help, he wasn’t smart enough to make his payment in time.

It takes three days for online payments to clear his bank.

As a result, he’s going to have to pay a $100 late fee. And, despite his excellent sucking up, this will come from his own account – not the Bank of Mom and Dad.

Have you ever left a piece of writing to the last minute? And did you pay for it?

Here is how you can plan your writing and avoid the pain of being late:

Always allocate your writing time the SAME DAY you receive an assignment. Whether it’s for school or for work, whether the assignment is a Major Big Deal or a minor nuisance, make your plan immediately. You’ll quadruple your odds of success.

Engineer this plan in reverse. People pay attention when I talk about the 7 habits of highly effective writers.  But today I’m referring to more than habits. I’m talking about the schedule you should produce.

Start with the due date and work back from there. What’s the last thing you should do before handing in a piece? Editing it, of course. And how long will that take you? It depends on your skill and experience. For short pieces, 1,500 words or less, I like to allow at least 30 minutes for every 750 words. It may take you longer.

The next time you edit, time yourself. Then, for the purpose of this schedule, divide the total word-count of your assignment by the number of words you can edit in 30 minutes. Mark it in your schedule.

From there, plan your incubation. This is when you will put your draft aside, without looking at it (no peeking!) for at least one day. Plan an even longer gap if the work is more than 5,000 words.  If you don’t plan for it now, you’ll never have the time for this.

Next, schedule your writing time. Just as you need to know how many words you can edit in 30 minutes, you also need to know how many you can write. “But Daphne,” I hear you saying. “Every project is different. How can I possibly predict?” Let me suggest you start by guessing. Then test the accuracy of your assumption by timing yourself. True, writing some projects will be easier than others, but use a workable average. Businesses do this guessing all the time (with finances) when they prepare their business plans.

Once you know how many words you can write in 30 minutes (your writing speed) then divide the total number of words of your assignment by this speed. For example, if you can write 250 words in 30 minutes and your project is 1,200 words, writing will take you 4.8 blocks of 30 minutes.  That’s 144 minutes or 2.4 hours. Decide how many hours per day you’re prepared to work on writing and mark it in your calendar. (If you’re feeling really nervous about your inability to estimate, then schedule in 25% or 50% more time, just to be safe.)

Next, schedule your mindmapping. If you still think outlining would be better, please read my rant about that. Mindmapping shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes but allow a day for it.

Next, program your research. It’s very difficult for me to suggest how long to plan for this. Working people and university students have entirely different needs, so here’s a spot where you need to use your best guess. Remember: if you’ve spent enough planning time, to determine your angle or thesis statement, the research will go faster than you think because you’ll be more focused.

Finally, mark off enough time for thinking and planning. Do this away from your desk, ideally when you’re doing something physical such as walking, cycling, swimming, vacuuming or cooking.

So there you have it: a backwards plan. Don’t leave it to the last minute. Don’t pay a $100 fine. Just start!

How do you plan your writing time? We can all learn from each other so please share your thoughts with my readers and me by commenting below. (If you don’t see the comments box, click here and then scroll to the end.)

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Photo courtesy FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Word count: 296 words

Reading time: Just over 1 minute

This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help writers. Today’s comes from Jim Sollisch.

When my mother died in 2005,  I helped clean out her apartment. To my surprise, I discovered in her files my own birth notice — a crinkly and browning clipping from the local newspaper. I was astonished that she’d saved it — my mother wasn’t terribly sentimental.

Perhaps because I’d shared the experience of packing up a late mother’s apartment, I was particularly interested to read Jim Sollisch’s recent piece, on the same subject, in the Opinionator section of the New York Times online. But his “find” was much more astonishing than a birth notice: it was a stack of thank-you letters he’d written to his mother’s friends. “That was surprising,” he said, in what I viewed as remarkable understatement. How on earth did she come to collect her son’s thank-you letters?

The story is intriguing, but here, I think, is the paragraph that impressed me the most:

Writing, like building furniture or making jewelry, is “Groundhog Day.” How many ways can you write a headline that says, “Here’s a dollar off coupon”? The answer turns out to be almost infinite.

Have you seen the movie Groundhog Day? The main character, played by Bill Murray, finds himself in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again. Yes, sometimes writing feels like that.

So does packing up after a late mother. I liked the way Sollisch — who is a a creative director at Marcus Thomas Advertising – was able to trace his interest in writing to the way in which his mother had praised him as a child. A moving story. Read it! 

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Have you verified that?

Word count: 235 words

Reading time: About 1 minute

A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. Today’s comes from Ian Parker.

I hadn’t heard of the American writer, director and independent filmmaker Noah Baumbach, until I read the April 29/13 New Yorker. It turns out, however, that I had seen one of his movies.

Squid and the Whale, which was semi-autobiographical, tells the story of story of two boys in 1980s Brooklyn dealing with their parents’ divorce. The film is named after the squid and whale diorama in the American Museum of Natural History, which is shown in the film.

The New Yorker piece, by Ian Parker, which charts Baumbach’s relationship with the actress and writer Greta Gerwig, is almost as charming as Baumbach’s film. I particularly liked the way Parker managed to deal with Baumbach’s (attractive) appearance. Here is what he said:

He has a long, square-chinned face whose handsomeness he is said to recognize but not overprize. 

I’m showing you a photo of Baumbach, above, so you can decide if this description nails it. I particularly like Parker’s turn of phrase, “is said to recognize but not overprize.” Basically, he’s saying the guy isn’t conceited, but I relish the way he does that. Neat. Succinct. Stylish.

Much like Baumbach, I suspect.

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Under the rubble that’s himself…

Before they were unmoored from their spines…

Women seemed stupid…

Word count: 212 words

Reading time: Less than 1 minute

I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from Sebastian Barry, author of The Secret Scripture.

Following a recommendation by my readers Margaret and Seamus, I just finished reading the novel The Secret Scripture by Sebastion Barry (pictured above.) Zounds! What a bravura novel. So far, it’s one of my favourites of the year.

The apparent autobiography of an unlucky 100-year-0ld Irish woman — juxtaposed with the speculations of her psychiatrist — the book offers a gripping plot. But it’s the writing that really grabbed me.

Sebastian Barry has the Irish gift of gab, but, more importantly, he also has the ability to craft compelling, evocative prose. Here, for example, is a piece of figurative language the strikes me as several notches above many other metaphors:

And he looked older suddenly, less the bright prospect, I could see he was losing his hair just at the temples, it was drifting back, a little tide that would not be coming in again. 

I like the personification of the hairline – “drifting” seems like such a deliberate action. I also enjoy the comparison of a hairline to an ebbing tide. Doesn’t that line make you smile?

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He has a hay bale of hair on his head…

Like a wedding centerpiece…

Just an unpleasant drizzle on my career parade…

Word count: 210 words

Reading time: Less than 1 minute

Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: afflatus.

You don’t have to do much more than tell me a magazine article is about journalism. That, alone, is enough to persuade me to read it. So I happily enjoyed George Packer’s reflection on Depression era journalism in an April 29/13  New Yorker story titled Don’t Look Down. (The piece is “locked,” I’m afraid, so the link will take you only to the article’s first page.)

Here, Packer introduced me to the word, afflatus, in providing a quote from literary critic Edmund Wilson (pictured above):

“He [meaning, Sherwood Anderson] doesn’t know much about [Communism], but the idea has given him a powerful afflatus.“

If you’d guessed that the word meant “wind” you would have been close. It means a “miraculous communication of supernatural knowledge,” and it dates back to the 1660s, coming from the Latin afflatus, meaning, ”a breathing upon, blast.” The original word was adflatu, from which we derive the word flatulence. Undoubtedly, that’s what gave me the idea of wind!

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Word count: 735 words

Reading time: About 3 minutes

Today’s post is a letter I’ve written to one of my coaching students (I’ve changed her name to preserve anonymity.) I think you might find these thoughts helpful, as well.

Dear Sarah,

I’m writing to follow up on our last coaching call. I think you’re making some good progress in identifying what’s slowing your writing. That said, I was gobsmacked by your comment that you see writing as “linear and logical” and editing as “creative.” As I told you, I see the exact opposite. (It was clear you were equally gobsmacked by my view!)

While I disagree with you – I think you hold this belief mainly because you enjoy editing more – I’m going to ask you to think about it in a different way. Instead of seeing the choice as logical versus creative tasks, I’d like you to think about it as judging versus perceiving tasks.

I chose these words from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator system. Based on the work of Carl Jung, Myers-Briggs proposes that all human beings can be measured along four categories and, as a result, there are a total of 16 different personality types. If you want to do a free MBTI test, you can go here. (For anyone who’s interested, I am INTJ.)

If you are editing – for example, you might be deciding the best word for a particular sentence or choosing which tense you are going to use – you need to judge. You must decide which word or tense you are going to use. There’s no avoiding the judgment! When you write, however, you perceive. You use your senses or your intuition to decide what words to put on the page.

And this takes me back to my basic belief: That it’s better for writers to write (perceive) as quickly as possible and then edit (judge) as slowly as they can bear.

I don’t mean to suggest that writing/perceiving part is easy – particularly if you’re doing it quickly. To the contrary, every fibre in your body will likely resist. You’ll tell yourself that you need to do some more research. (Aside: as I was writing this letter to you, I decided I needed to do some more research on Myers-Briggs. Did I stop writing to do that? No way! I wrote myself a promissory note and I did the extra research after I’d finished my rough draft.)

You’ll be desperate to check spelling and job titles and a thousand and one other picayune details that you can just as easily check later. You may think of new questions to ask your interview subjects. Or you may feel you need to tweak the lede (beginning) of your story so that if flows more smoothly into the rest of the text.

And here I am telling you to resist all those impulses and, simply, write. Why?

• Because you can’t edit (judge) a rough draft until you have a rough draft.
• Because your deep subconscious (the perceiving part of your brain) will make better, more creative writing choices than your judging brain.
• Because the best writing is always the result of the best most detailed editing – and if you write quickly, you’ll get to spend more time editing. (And, in your case, you enjoy that, right?)

Let me emphasize: I’m not saying it’s easy to write fast. Think about learning to ride a bike, or treading water without holding onto the wall of the pool, or speaking to a large audience, or making an omelette. Were any of these things fun or easy when you were learning to do them? Unless you’re very unusual, they weren’t. They were hard work.

Whenever you learn to do something new you’re going to feel some discomfort. You might even feel so much discomfort that you actually dislike the task. The trick is to force yourself to do it. Struggle through the learning phase and know that when you reach the other side you will be a different person. You’ll also be proud of yourself for what you have done.

It’s hard work to learn more, especially when you’re already a very experienced writer. You may worry that others think less of you for admitting you don’t know everything. Take comfort in the words of Albert Einstein: “It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”

Just stay with the writing questions longer.

How do you “stay with the questions” long enough to improve your writing? We can all learn from each other so please share your thoughts with my readers and me by commenting below. (If you don’t see the comments box, click here and then scroll to the end.)

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Word count: 243 words

Reading time: About 1 minute

This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help writers. Today I give you a link to a story on the history of words, found in the Washington Post.

Did you know that the typical “lifespan” of a word is only 8,000 to 9,000 years? I’m a writer, not a linguist, so this was news to me. But it also makes sense. I know the English of Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400) is only just barely recognizable to me. And his Canterbury Tales were written no more than 633 years ago!

Furthermore, in my brief lifespan, the words “spyware,” “soul patch” and “manga” have all been invented.

But, in contrast to these fickle newcomers, a study now suggests there are also “ultraconserved words” — that is, words that have managed to survive for 150 centuries! Some of these words are: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and “man.”

Most interestingly, the very existence of these words suggest there was a “proto-Eurasiatic” language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages. Today, these are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.

If you have any interest in linguistics, be sure to check out the story in the Washington Post. Or consult the abstract  of the original study. Thanks to my friend, Marcelle, for alerting me to this fascinating story on the history of words.

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