Writing Advice

When reading, because I write, the passages and descriptions that touch upon methods of writing always catch my attention. My eyebrow raises when I happen across even the smallest account—honest asides, unintentional insights, even prosaic details about ink or pencils, about typewriters or dictionaries. Some authors say far more than needed. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” as the queen states in Hamlet. Some authors are quietly reticent. These I prefer. For when they do provide a hint as to their methods, the words seems all the more authentic and momentous, a treasured insight to the craft of writing.

Henry David Thoreau is a writer whose work I read very carefully. Embedded in his voluminous natural history journals (ten volumes in the edition I have) are small nuggets of writing advice and thoughts about revision. Here are a few examples from the year 1854:

March 28: “Got first proof of Walden.”

March 31: “In criticising [sic] your writing, trust your fine instinct. There are many things which we come very near questioning, but do not question. When I have sent off my manuscripts to the printer, certain objectionable sentences or expressions are sure to obtrude themselves on my attention with force, though I had not consciously suspected them before. My critical instinct then at once breaks the ice and comes to the surface.”

April 8: “I find that I can criticise [sic] my composition best when I stand at a little distance from it,—when I do not see it, for instance. I make a little chapter of contents which enables me to recall it page by page to my mind, and judge it more impartially when my manuscript is out of the way. The distraction of surveying enables me rapidly to take new points of view. A day or two surveying is equal to a journey.”

April 20: “I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following. At this distance it is more ideal, like the landscape seen with the head inverted, or reflections in water.”

I began my own natural history journaling in 2008, nine years ago. My preferred method is to write about observations early the following morning (of course this isn’t always practicable). After a good night’s sleep, after a cup of coffee and an hour of reading (usually poetry), I find I’m best prepared to write. I have, at that moment, the energy and words needed to describe the previous day’s observations. You can be sure my eyebrow raised sharply when I came across the April 20th passage by Thoreau, stating that he felt “some advantage” in this approach.

Publicado el abril 30, 2017 03:11 MAÑANA por scottking