Feb 17, 2014
Back in the day, before there was Word, these symbols were part of every editor's muscle memory. Editing on paper was a wonderful discipline -- nothing in the tech-era teaches you to write/edit tight like paper and pencil can.
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Back in the day, before there was Word, these symbols were part of every editor's muscle memory. Editing on paper was a wonderful discipline -- nothing in the tech-era teaches you to write/edit tight like paper and pencil can.
Certainly the aural part of writing is a big, big thing to me. I can’t stand a sentence until it sounds right, and I’ll go over it again and again. Once the sentence rolls along in a certain way, that’s sentence A. Sentence B may work out well, but then its effect on sentence A may spoil the rhythm of the two together. One of the long-term things about knitting a piece of writing together is making all this stuff fit. I always read the second draft aloud, as a way of moving forward. I read primarily to my wife, Yolanda, and I also have a friend whom I read to. I read aloud so I can hear if it’s fitting together or not. It’s just as much a part of the composition as going out and buying a ream of paper.
This bit, from a Paris Review interview with John McPhee on the art of non-fiction, resonates. We often forget that the words we read make sounds inside our head; the best writers know this, they tune their pieces and at their best, their work has a music, a rhythm, a cadence that captivates.
And while on McPhee, here he is in the latest issue of the New Yorker, providing a masterclass on the structure of longform magazine pieces.
Tangentially, here is McPhee contemporary and master essayist EB White on the art of the essay. Gold, these links.
You are full of your material—your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation—when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first 20 years on earth are most writers’ main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings.
John Updike on point