I was just chatting with my sister about her blog. She is amazing at being able to communicate a lot with photos and short amounts of clever and interesting prose. I was lamenting my utter lack of pithiness. I can never say anything in just a few words if a lot of words will do.
When we were talking, I remembered an incident from my childhood. When I was in first or second grade, we had to write a bit about all the books we read. I can't remember if it was to fill in the bookworm that wound its way around our classroom, with each body segment a separate book title, or if it was an index card per book, both of which I did at certain points. Then I remembered a conversation with my mom about a book that I haven't thought of in years. Incident at Hawk's Hill. I laughed so hard when I told my sister what it was about, because it just sounded so funny. It's about a boy being raised by badgers. And then I looked it up, and sure enough, the cover has a big badger on it.
I must have been impacted by the book--I still remember thinking that it was based on a true story. When my mom read my summary of the book on either the caterpillar body or the index card, she asked me if I could leave out a certain part. "NO! These parts are so important! I can't leave them out!"
That is the way I've always been. I can't separate the essential from the extra very well.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
On Wordiness
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4 comments:
The editor in me is laughing very hard right now, because you sound like every one of the dear reporters I supervise. Especially that part about "These parts are so important!"
If I had a dollar for every time a reporter went all tortured artist on me because I was "killing the soul" of their piece (when all I was really doing was tightening here and there), I'd be pretty rich right now.
All kidding aside, there is a certain art to blogging and it's easy to get long-winded. Believe me, when I finish writing something on our blog and see the thick paragraphs, I'm like, "woah, how'd that happen?"
One thing I tell my writers whenever they get wordy is not to force it. You can say a lot in a little bit.
Just think of popular songwriters in American music (Paul Simon, Carole King, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Bruce Springsteen to name a few) and how they can say something in short stanzas that is clever, interesting and enduring.
So it can be done. It just takes lots of practice.
Huh, Ed. Are you saying pithiness is a virtue to be aspired to? I'll have to think about that.
Virtue? Hmmmm... It's a mega-fine line between pithy and just being flip, so I don't know if one can always be virtuous in one's brevity. Like anything else in life, there's a time and place for it.
Whenever I'm editing people's work, I always try to think: if I'm the reader and I'm just scanning through articles online or in the dead-tree version, is this piece going to hold my interest or will I move on to something else?
So that's why I emphasize brevity and getting to the point quickly.
But I also don't want my writers to lose their personality or voice, so inevitably there's some give-and-take and good back-and-forth banter.
Writing's not an exact science and I don't pretend to have all the answers, so I always welcome the dialogue.
EB White would have said that pithiness is unquestionably a virtue in writing. (And we would have cut "unquestionably" out of that sentence.)
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