We Improve Our Writing

  Our writing is important:

                We can improve our writing. I post about that. We can identify writing errors. We can identify ways to correct those errors. We may identify process whereby we can better our writing. We can keep our word choice as simple as is appropriate. We can use a dictionary to get a deeper understanding of the words we do use. We can spell those words correctly. God bless spellcheck apps.

The following list can point you toward ways to improve your writing:

~ Read some of my posts here. Each of them is intended to be an encouragement and a real help to a writer.

~ Read for pleasure with a bit more awareness of the nature of that writing.

~ Read about the "how to" of writing.

~ Try to see how a writer you like writes.

~ Study with a good writing teacher.

~ Join a writing group.

~ Form a writing group.

~ Start writing.

~ Keep writing.  

                We can learn to write better; practice helps. I intend to pass on as much as I am learning as I can. I still have a lot to learn. I am  following nearly all of the suggestions I make accept the joining of a writing group or forming one. I believe that my excuses for not doing so are fairly good.  I do know of such groups and have given them much thought.

                Participation in such a group strikes me as being an agreeable and productive activity. I have participated in groups and supported them. I have read about writing groups and there is a kind of group which I find attractive. An example of that of that kind of group was practiced and perfected by an Englishman by the name of Peter Elbow. He is a good teacher and a good writer and has written a particularly useful book entitled Writing Without Teachers. Much of that which follows here is my interpretation of parts of that book. I think that another appropriate title of that work could have been The Power of  Good Feedback. Peter's book is about the use of writing groups. An important value of such groups is exceptionally useful feedback. Such a group could prove very useful for you.

                Many of us find that our practice of writing is often an important personal growth process. As our writing grows so do we. That seems a good deal. As we grow and mature our writing gets better too. Writing can be wonderful. Most of us have done it mostly alone and that has worked out pretty well. Others enjoy the fruits of our labour, but know little of the process of its development. It may seem a wonder to them. Not a bad deal.

                Still we could find it profitable to help each other to better our craft. Evidence strongly suggests that learning in a group can be more profitable and productive in a group.

                With the help of a group or on our own we can be pleasantly surprised that our writing develops and improves with completing a single piece. In our career we may come to be please to discover that we have grown, matured, and become a better person through our practice of writing.

Words about that practice:

                I have discovered that I can find "a center of gravity" in a piece of work as I am writing it. That may center can develop and clarify as I write. It is like discovering the sharp, short form of what is is that I am really writing about.

                The example below includes ways I have gathered for getting a center of gravity or unifying theme around which I can organize a particular piece of writing. I trust the list will be helpful. It could be just a way of saying that you have my blessing to stray from an original outline. Such straying could lead to your discovery of a real unifying theme much more useful than was your original idea or outline.

Okay here's that example. Note that the idea is to start writing.

~ Start writing X because it seems more believable than Y. Note that as you write about X that you are beginning to understand about Y.

~ Continue your struggle with X and Y and see "A" come up.

~ As you write along you may honestly say "Ah, now I see what I have been getting at." 

~ Finish that which you have been writing about. Put it aside for a time. See useful implications as you look it over again.

~ See that your good idea iscrap.  Sort out the good parts from the bad.  You do not have to throw anything away. Some of it may turn out to be better than your favorite idea.

~ Your first writing may prove a good scaffolding for your next writing.

~ You find a powerful spark in a tiny digression. You keep the same elements of your work, but change the whole orientation for the better. 

~ As you progress in your writing be alert to emerging focus or theme.

~ If nothing emerges, sum up that which you have written, then sumit up again.

~ Push yourself a bit to keep getting some center of gravity or summing up to occur. 

~ Work gradually toward moderation of extreme positions.

               

                Don't Try to do all of the above at once every time! Reread the items. I have found that just part of one of them can be a saver, can make an okay piece be really good.

                For about 50 posts like this click here to go the Write With RCS site.

                Thank you for reading.

                                                                                                    RCS

        

        

Truman Capote, Writer

A bit about an author and a book. The Author is Truman Capote and the book is Portraits and Observations

            A recent reading of Portraits and Observations reminds me that Mr. Capote was a fine craftsman and a pleasure to read today. He seemed to love New Orleans and New York. His feelings for our West Coast and our Southwest was not love. Some might call him a regionalist. His observations of Europe are congenial. He does not make a secret of his likes and dislikes.

            His observations of persons have a journalistic feel and he still revels himself in them.

             He wrote so well that I suspect that one or two very good contemporary writers became envious.     

            Truman Capote is, I believe, a pen name. He was born in 1924 and died in 1984. Hus childhood, I believe, was unusual, uneasy, and interesting.

 

            I missed his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms published in 1948. I remember talk of and the film of Breakfast at Tiffany's and his his nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood.

            Reading Portraits and Observations may be a good way for you to get to know his work and a bit about him. The Modern Library paperback edition in front of me mentions all, I believe, of his published works. It also devotes a page and half of biographical information about thi excellent author.

            Capote met famous persons and tells of some of their doings and ways in a way beyond charming.

            He seems not to have been very "political," but he was a journalist with a deep feeling for fairness. Among his essays is a piece on another great American writer. Ezra Pound, of Idaho. Capote leads me to believe that Pound had the misfortune of having his love of history lead him to an interest in economics. It seems that speaking of some individual's source of money or wealth makes them very nervous. Americans seem not to be excepted. The American "people" accused him of treason an convicted Pound of insanity. I am not really well informed on that history. If you know some of it, please use the "comments" section below to inform us a bit.

            Just now that history sounds much like the worst that has come from Russia. Pound was incarcerated in Washington DC for over a decade and then declared incurably insane and released as not being a danger to himself or anyone else. I intend to take care of what I say about U.S. economics.

             Capote has written of himself that he is not attracted to people who care more for their pets than for their friends. First friends and then cities seem to be among his top loves. In cities, he says, that one can be pleased to be among different people with  different sets of friends with none of them overlapping. My experience has been similar.

            Talking of friends Capote intimates that intelligence and attention is important and says, "I pay attention to my friends, am concerned about them and expect them to to do the same in return."

            He says that he has always liked to read and enjoys and admires writers such as Flannery, O'Connor, Norman Mailer, William Styron, Eudora Welty, Katherine Ann Portior, and others, but that in his later life he has enjoyed reading the better of what he has already read: Proust, Flaubert, Jane Austen, Raymond Chandler, and Dickens.

            He liked driving off and considered it therapy. He found betrayal of affections traumatic. As a politician he like Adlai Stevenson. (Stevenson was the first politician for whom I felt some admiration!) Mrs. Roosevelt liked him too. Capote knew and liked conversation and dialogue.

            Seems a lot like a regular person, and a super writer.

                            RCS