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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Why Writing Is Impossible: A Quiet Diatribe Concerning the Craft Delivered in the Form of an Innocuous Series of Blog Posts

It's hard to learn to write again for all the reasons I've mentioned -- fear, shame, humiliation -- but the emotional difficulties also help to bring into clear relief the technical difficulties. I've been thinking about some of them, some of the reasons writing is so impossible. This is not the first reason or the most important; it's just the first reason I wrote down.

Consider the paragraph, for instance. Francine Prose writes a twenty-two page lyrical, informative, passionate, impassioned, telling, showing, fun, descriptive discussion of the paragraph in her book Reading Like a Writer. In the chapter, title "Paragraphs" (Oh! I love this book), we learn or relearn everything we've ever known about paragraphs but never thought to ask. The writing is a delight. The passages are a delight.

I'm rereading the chapter right now, thinking about how I will begin a conversation about paragraphs with my creative writing class this afternoon, thinking about how I break my own paragraphs, thinking about my favorite paragraph writers (Rick Bass, Richard Ford, Johnathan Kozol, bell hooks) -- yes, I'm just dorky enough to have favorite paragraph writers -- thinking about what makes their paragraphs great.

Prose delivers great advice from great writers, all guided, of course, by her own love of paragraphs, specifically, of writing at large. At certain points, as with the previous two chapters "Words" and "Sentences," we realize that the key to any good paragraph (or word or sentence) is magic. Or, as I like to call it, God. Or, as I like to call it so that atheists and religious folks don't get offended and agnostics don't have something new to ponder, society speaking through us. Or the muse or the Aeolian Harp. Or great writers of the past. I was right at first: all good writing moves are magic.

And then Prose inserts a passage from Strunk and White's The Elements of Style -- certainly, every creative writer's favorite grammar book, despite its many flaws. The passage ends, "Moderation and a sense of order should be the main consideration in paragraphing." Thank you, Strunk and White, for creating this tiny book of writerly advice. It has served me, it has served my students, it has served us all in more ways than we'll ever know.

But "Moderation and a sense of order" . . . ? What the hell are those? This passage marks the closest I've ever come to feeling like Ralphie in A Christmas Story after he waits patiently for weeks and finally receives his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring and deciphers the secret message "DON'T FORGET TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE." "Moderation and a sense of order" . . . ?

I feel like I should apologize to my creative writers in class today for sharing this drivel. "Strunk and White," I'll tell them, "aren't always like this. They're really good guys when you get them alone." Writing, all writing, but specifically creative writing, more specifically fiction, should be human, right?, should be flawed and well-intentioned and beautiful, and, above all, compelling. Paragraphs should be tiny novels or winding narrations with, yes, of course, topical sentences, even though none of us knows what those are, really. And, yes, they should vary in length and intensity. And, yes, like any element of craft -- from dialogue to setting to gesture to title -- they should do more than one thing. Paragraphs should be voice driven as determined by the narrator. Their look, size, density should be dictated by the story, rather than the other way around. How they look when set beside other paragraphs is key -- e.g. a short paragraph in between several long ones can be striking and lovely and carry as much weight as the big ones. Paragraphs, like stanzas, must focus us intensely on a single moment, must control the pacing of a story, must describe huge sweeping changes in time and space -- the paragraph must be able to navigate the present moment as well as guide a reader into the future or past. And because of all the demands on paragraphs, a writer absolutely must have an overarching sense of order -- not necessarily as an impetus for the story, but it must be present as the drafts develop narration. Order, for sure, and a writer must balance lyricism with scientific presentation, the past with the future, long paragraphs with short paragraphs -- a writer must moderate her passions and flare with the rules of language and a knowledge of literary history. In short, the two key elements of a paragraph are moderation and a sense of order.

I hope that clears this up for everybody, and, again, give Strunk and White a chance. They mean well, even when they're making sweeping generalizations about what you need to be a writer.

Francine Prose says all this much better than I, and I have learned more than I can ever convey from her book, but perhaps the most important writerly tidbit I can take away from her book: "Though once again, as with sentences, merely thinking about 'the paragraph' puts us ahead of the game, just as being conscious of the sentence as an entity worthy of our attention represents a major step in the right direction." Some ancient Greek wrote, though he was probably not the first to think or say, "To know that we know what we know and that we do not know what we do not know -- that is true knowledge."

See what I mean?

Smoke and mirrors, slight of hand, misdirection: all within a grounding sense of reality. Magic.

1 comment:

  1. For me writing is impossible whatever the case, it is not up to me to create something original and bright, that's why I use this source where intelligent and educated people are willing to perform it instead of me http://royalediting.com/best-advice-how-to-craft-perfect-paragraphs

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