New Blog Focus: The Way Art Works — For Writers

For the past fourteen years, Word for Words blog has focused almost exclusively on writing from an editor’s perspective. The focus is now shifting from an editor’s perspective on writing to a writer’s perspective on writing. Here’s why.

First, you’ll notice that the title of the blog looks a bit different. It’s still called Word for Words, but the tag line is a quote from music critic, manager and record producer Jon Landau on the subject of imperfection and art. Here’s the full quote:

“Sometimes the things that are wrong with something are the same things that make that thing great. That’s the way it is in life, and that’s the way art works.”

The quote first appeared on Word for Words in the post “Second Thoughts and the Way Art Works” on March 4, 2018.

But the blog’s focus isn’t shifting to writers’ second thoughts about their work (though the concept will likely appear in a future post). Instead, the focus will be on the artistic side of writing, what that means and how we go from writing project to work of art. We’ll still cover craft. We have to, because “Craft enables art,” as noted by speculative fiction pioneer Ursula K. Le Guin in Steering the Craft: A 21^st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story.

But when we cover craft, it won’t be primarily from an editor’s perspective, since editors often focus on “fixing”. Instead, we’ll consider how a writer sees (or perhaps should see) writing and its varied components, especially those awkward moments and places in our work: as both art and opportunity for exploration and discovery.

The change of focus reflects a change in my own focus, from editing and teaching to writing. I still edit and teach, but with the debut novel What She Takes Away slated for publication by Bordighera Press in June/July 2023 and other novels in the works, I find that my focus is changing, too, because it has to. Here’s an example of an observation on the craft and art of writing.

Recently, a writing student was lamenting the fact that some days their novel-in-progress read like Proust and some days it read like poo. Who hasn’t felt that way? But rather than shut the conversation down with an offhand comment like that, I thought about what the writer said and why most, if not all, writers feel this way at times. (It’s the “why” questions that, difficult though they often are, usually yield the most fruit.)

One reason for the emotional swings we writers go through is that what many of us are actually aiming for is artistry, and we spend a lot of time, energy and budget on that goal. Whether we always articulate it or not, most of us want more than words on a page and a story—we want our words and stories to be memorable, and for the right reasons.

Apart from the fact that artistry comes at a price, not the least of which is the cost of all the opportunities we give up in order to put ourselves out there, some days we don’t recognize that the things that are “wrong” with our work are the things that can make that work great.

Take, for example, live performance. Live performance of any type isn’t perfect, despite our best efforts. But impromptu moments are precisely what make a live experience memorable, moments where an actor ad libs or a musician doesn’t stick to the sheet. It’s these moments, and what they’re made of, that we’ll explore here, including from the perspective of artists in fields besides writing. Because the more I see of other fields like music, the more I’m learning about the craft and art of writing, and other areas of the arts as well.

For the full interview with Bruce Springsteen on The New Yorker Radio Hour, click on Bruce Springsteen Talks with David Remnick.