I made a mistake last week by reading “Eat Your Own Writing” instead of “Edit Your Own Writing,” in an email I got. I’m always getting unexpected writing advice from some damned place.
But I have to admit, “Eat Your Own Writing” was intriguing.
“Not a bad idea. Write it, then eat it,” I thought. “No one will ever know how bad it was.”
Once I read the article’s title correctly I deleted the email, since editing my own writing is about all I ever do, and I don’t need an anonymous somebody’s advice on the subject.
But eating it, yeah… Just gobble it down! Destroy the evidence.
Speaking of destroying the evidence, years ago I read that the best way to kill someone was to beat them over the head with a frozen leg of lamb, then cook the leg of lamb and eat it… And the second best way was to stab them with an icicle and then let the icicle melt.
Well, eating one’s own writing is a bit like both of those things, don’t you think? Except that lamb is probably tastier and if you do it right with the icicle - like, let it melt in a glass - you can drink it.
Anyway, this essay is on writing succinctly, not on good ways to kill someone, so let me start again.
How do you like the following line for the beginning of a story?
“She smokes a lot and drinks a lot, she never seems to think about her future, and she does all three in a casual way.”
I admit, I am sneaking up on a point here, but I did my best with the line, and I think it’s okay, though if it were truly the beginning of a story I am sure I would mess with it a few more times.
For example I might delete that first “a lot,” thus making it shorter… “She smokes and drinks a lot” … But then I might put it back in after considering the whole thing rhythmically.
Is it better with, or without, that first “a lot”? That’s a rhetorical question for you but it’s the kind of thing I ask myself, non-rhetorically, all the time.
It also occurs to me that I might change “she never seems to think” to “she never thinks,” thus making my narrator more authoritative.
Which begs the question, who is the narrator in the story and what’s up with this woman that she smokes and drinks so much? Is the narrator a friend or a lover, and therefore worried about her?
Maybe. But whoever the narrator is, he (or she) is not omniscient, that much is clear since the woman only “seems” never to think about her future.
And lastly, what about the sentence’s ultimate insistence that she smokes, drinks, and doesn’t seem to think about her future - casually?
Whew! That’s some woman if it’s true! But is it? I would have to write the entire story to get to the heart of the matter, to find out what was really going on.
Now to the point I admitted to sneaking up on.
There’s a famous lyric with pretty much the same meaning as my line, but far more elegantly put, in Duke Ellington’s 1933 jazz classic, “Sophisticated Lady” (music by Edward Kennedy Ellington, lyrics by Mills Irving and Parish Mitchell).
Do you know that song? Can you hear it in your head?
The lyric is: “Smoking, drinking, never thinking of tomorrow, nonchalant.”
Seven words, while it took me twenty-five to open my fake story.
I am not saying (again) that music is the greater art, but simply letting you know that for me (at this age) less is always more. When I was a younger writer more was more and I wanted more of it.
Wanting more of more… that’s a fine mess to put yourself in, but that’s the way I was.
In Sophisticated Lady, the line that follows those seven words is: “Diamonds shining, dancing, dining with some man in a restaurant, is that all you really want?”
So sixteen words, plus the first seven, pretty much gives us the consummate sadness of the woman even without Mr. Ellington’s music. And with the music it’s sublime.
Here then, for your listening pleasure, is “Sophisticated Lady” in its entirety. You’ll have to wait a minute to get to the magnificent part, but it’s worth it. Take a listen, and then come back for my compelling closing.
Were you able to play it properly? If so, do you see what I’m mean about how those two lines do what the beginning of my story wanted to do, but far more beautifully?
Maybe it’s unfair, since Duke’s music and Billie Holiday’s ethereal voice (call her the “narrator” of the song) pretty much mainlines meaning into your veins, but here’s what I’m getting to: Great writing should do that to you with words alone.
That’s the goal, rarely to be achieved, of “less is more.”
Postscript…
If you have read my new novel The Grievers’ Group in its ebook format, I would very much appreciate your writing a review on Amazon. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s a “one click” download. My publisher is offering a special introductory price through July.
The paperback version of the novel will be released shortly. I’ll let you know when, and also the dates of my bookstore appearances.
The misuse of the phrase "begs the question" is pervasive, insidious, and inexorable. It seems to work just fine, everybody knows what it means, and only a very few people know what it is really supposed to mean. Insisting that it should be used only in its narrow sense in reference to philosophy and rhetoric is probably as futile as saying that only married people should be having sex.
writing should do that to you with words alone.