Word By Word

In writing, while there’s no ‘wrong,’ there’s often ‘better.’

I’ve taught writing for over a decade and reviewed books for nearly as long. (Hint: authors dream of good reviews from two sources — and I write for the one that’s not Kirkus.)

It’s easy to say what’s good about the work you’re reading, but quite a bit tougher to articulate what could be improved. Many of us can ‘feel’ when the material goes off, but we don’t have the tools to identify specific problems and suggest improvements.

Tools of the jackal

I’ve acquired those tools in the past ten years. I’ve had to.

As a book reviewer for Publishers Weekly, a theater reviewer for my hometown newspaper, and as a writing instructor, it’s my job to praise what works and parse out what falls short.

Most of us flinch at criticism. (Gustave Flaubert once alluded to critics as “jackals.”)

But professional paid criticism is not sanctioned cruelty. It’s an acknowledgment that something worthy of attention has the capacity to develop into something meritorious.

Creative vulnerability

I will gladly and easily describe what works about your writing with no compensation expected or required. I do this to celebrate what’s on the page and support your willingness to be vulnerable as a creator. That’s a big step, and I’m proud of anyone who takes it.

But the next step is viability: either commercial appeal or critical acceptance. Are you delivering your work, your ideas, your vision in a form that others understand, embrace, and want more of? Or are they reading out of politeness, smiling blandly, and saying in their heads, Get me out of here?

Sit in a circle of writers sharing work and you can hear when the response is genuine vs. merely courteous.

Literary surgery

Criticism is what makes you better. My best editor was my hardest one.

Everyone’s writing can be improved. I’m always looking for a good editor who will tear my work apart. Sure, it stings, but it’s literary surgery. Something that was hurting your writing has been removed, and afterwards, if you don’t pick at the scab, you’ll heal — and be better than before .

Weighing story

After years of doing this, here’s what I know: when I’m compensated for my criticism, I will tell you what I perceive as the strong and weak elements of the work before me. Is it the truth? There is no truth — it’s all subjective. But I read a minimum of 2-3 books a week — and have done so for the past eight years — books that aren’t yet published, so I have to figure out whether they’re good or okay or not worth your time and effort to read. And I see at least one theater show a month, and again, I’ve been doing this for nine years.

Between the reviewing and the teaching, that’s 25 years of weighing the merits of story and narrative. It’s experiential learning. Anyone else in my position would have the same abilities — I’ve just been fortunate enough to have been given the opportunity to do this work, and I’m dedicated to it.

Likewise, I will only tell a writer what could be improved in their writing as a paid consultant. Nobody wants difficult news for free, and my goal is to see that a writer get what she wants. Because what all of us want is to impact someone with our words.

Stick that landing

We frequently say, “I just want to write for the enjoyment.” While that’s partially true, you write to connect to others; to touch down in their hearts, heads, and souls that sense of who you are, what matters to you, and perhaps even sway them to your side of things. You are flying a plane, and while the journey matters and the views may be glorious, you have to land — and you have to stick that landing.

Words on a page are two dimensional, flat, abstract. What matters is what the reader takes in, interprets for themselves, and remembers.

When you write something that impacts the reader, that feeling you’ve created or thought you’ve sparked is a piece of you embedded within them.

The splinter of you

It is the splinter of you that burrows into long-term memory and — ever so slightly — redirects them onto a slightly different path, changing who they will be for the rest of their lives. When your words affect a reader, a portion of you is carried into the future, long after the physical you is gone.

That’s connection. That’s permanence. That’s power.

Now that you’ve read this, I hope these words have forged that connection. I hope you feel that we are friends. Over time, I hope my words will convince you that you can trust me to guide you based on my experience reading, reviewing, and teaching writers the basics in order to forge their own connections.

Feeling inadequate

Consider me your best friend the writer. And my goal for you is the same as the goal for myself: to write words that burrow deep.

Flaubert understood how our own inadequacy is the challenge. He felt it:
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within

And he saw it all around him:
Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music tht will melt the stars.

So, our cracks and crude rhythms will never melt the stars. But they can still resonate with others. Leonard Cohen understood this. Here’s a splinter of his that — for me — has burrowed deep:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

If you like what you’ve seen here, I’m working on continuing this conversation in a craft book on writing filled with more of the same.

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