On a Clear Day: Editing for Clarity and Publication

Welcome to a four-part series on editing your work for clarity and publication. There's nothing like clear communication to get a point across. Even writers of literary fiction need to know what they want to say and how best to say it, how to obscure and reveal. For clarity in revelation, we'll describe, diagnose and provide fixes for four common problems that keep writers from publication: clichés, wordiness, muddiness and disorder.

Today we start with clichés.

Problem: Two common clichés types are word choice and plot choice. Clichéd word choices are common because they're easy to write and understand. But to write with style and keep the reader's interest, clichés aren't recommended, except sometimes in dialogue to convey character. Plot clichés, where nothing original happens, are deadly.

Diagnosis: You know a clichéd phrase because you know a cliché. They're easy to spot, especially if you've stepped away from the work before editing (always recommended). You know a clichéd plot choice when a scene or story is predictable. No one wants readers to come away from a piece thinking, "I knew that would happen." Or, worse, "I could have written better."

Cure: To fix a clichéd word choice, ask yourself what you want to convey. For a clichéd plot choice, for example starting a story with someone waking up, conduct a what-if scenario for characters and plot. For characters, consider a possible flaw or secret. For plot, raise the stakes and increase the conflict. This will enhance the characters, too.

To see whether you've written a cliché, visit Cliché Site. To write with originality, visit Writing Forward, considered one of Writers Digest's 101 best websites for writers.

A Poetic Soul: Creativity in the Off-Hours

Award-winning journalist and list maker Jack Sheedy, news editor of the Catholic Transcript, finds the to-do list helpful in keeping him on the writing track, and to fire up his creative soul.

AA: So, what does a working writer and news editor do in the off-hours, especially before a holiday weekend?

JS: Last night, I decided to drag out the old charcoal grill and make myself and the cat some hamburgers. They were delicious, but I had forgotten how long it takes for charcoal briquettes to heat evenly. I was still cleaning up at 8 p.m.

AA: What about the writing side of life?

JS: Oh, I did have a to-do list that included something like “Do some writing,” but it was kind of a vague self-assignment. By the third or fourth day, it had not been crossed out, and so I searched for some old poems I had started. There was one that tried to express something about my father, something that may have something to do with his special brand of selective competitiveness. As I looked at it, I realized I may have a similar failing: a fear of accomplishing something, compensated for by a zeal for accomplishing other things. The poem is still unfinished, but here is how it stands today:

The Man Who Never Ran
By Jack Sheedy

Dad never ran.
It’s not that he moved slowly —
it wasn’t that —
I just can’t see him

in a sprint for the prize,
necktie loosened,
forehead glistening,
gray fedora lost in the wind.
Not my Dad.

Still, there was nothing slow about him.

He walked briskly. Drove fast.
Solved problems quickly. Spurned calculators.
Bought books on rapid math, rapid reading.

But he never said, “Let’s race
to the willow tree” — never tried
to best me, though he could have.
I don’t even know why
this is important —
but doesn’t everyone run, sometimes at least?

Oh, once at the river I was swept downstream,
eight-year-old limbs no match for the current,
and he quickstepped to the bank,
dove in, hustled me to shore, laughed
at our “great adventure” —
then squeezed his eyes shut, lost his voice,
gripped my hand all the way home.

But that wasn’t a sprint — it was an Australian crawl.
Weeks later, at Burr Pond, I studied his strokes,
long and slow and easy,
then jumped in, flailed to stay afloat, moved
arms and legs twice as fast as he did.
It was no use.
There was no way I could keep up with him.

To see Jack in his natural habitat, visit Jack Sheedy.

Writing Nonfiction: Creativity in the Off-Hours

Award-winning journalist Jack Sheedy takes some downtime to refuel his creative juices. Jack's wife is the poet Jean Sands.

AA: As a full-time working writer who also freelances, how do you work writing into your nonworking time, if we can call it that?

JS: I had a golden opportunity this week to get caught up on my writing. My wife took a few days away to visit our grandson in Maine , and, since I couldn't get the time off from my work as news editor at The Catholic Transcript, I had to stay. So, I had some quiet time – ideal writing time. Did I take advantage of it?

AA: Did you?

JS: Well, you know how it is. My wife usually takes care of our cat, Farino, making sure he has fresh water and food and that he has several opportunities to go outside, come back in, go back out, and so on. She wasn’t here. It became my job.

My wife usually prepares the evening meal, or else we surrender and get take-out. Well, I was determined to take advantage of my kitchen privileges to prepare a few dishes I’ve been aching to try but didn’t dare embarrass myself with in front of my wife. One day, for breakfast, I prepared pancake batter from scratch, using a recipe from a copy of The Joy of Cooking I inherited from my mother. I hadn’t done that in years. The pancakes came out just fine. Next time, I’ll make sure I have pure maple syrup, not a two-year-old bottle of corn syrup that was stuck to the refrigerator shelf.

To see more of Jack's work, visit Jack Sheedy. To see Jean, visit Jean Sands.

Writing Nonfiction: Creativity Without Compromise

Society of Professional Journalists award-winning journalist Jack Sheedy tackles tough subjects with a clear, creative touch.

AA: What was the award, and how did the idea for the winning story come about?

JS: Last year, I received an award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Connecticut Chapter, for a story in The Catholic Transcript (May 2008) about a Jewish rabbi whose 1993 book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus captured the imagination of Pope Benedict XVI. Because Rabbi Jacob Neusner was originally from the Hartford area, and since the Transcript serves the Hartford archdiocese, I saw a story there. I drove to Rhinebeck, N.Y., to interview [Neusner].

AA: How can nonfiction writer — a journalist, for example — be creative in a case like this without compromising good reporting or the facts?

JS: The interview was filled with theological terms, both Jewish and Catholic, and I was worried that my readers — for the most part, everyday pew-sitting Catholics — would be bored. I needed a strong headline and lead that would establish a local tie-in and stir curiosity. I wrote the headline, "Native-son rabbi 'talks' with Jesus." The story began: "Rabbi Jacob Neusner grew up in West Hartford, corresponded with the Pope and spoke with Jesus after the Sermon on the Mount. That last feat got everyone's attention. Especially the Pope's."

I could have begun the story another way. I could have written: "Is Jesus a fulfillment of the Torah, the Jewish law? Or is the Torah the final word? That's what Rabbi Jacob Neusner wanted to know when he set out to write about an imaginary conversation with Jesus." I'm bored already. Aren't you?

Visit Jack at Jack Sheedy.

Getting the Words Right: Revising Your Story With Award-Winning Writer Connie Keller

Short-story writer and Tassy Walden Award winner Connie Keller works to make every word count, especially in descriptions.

AA: What is it about descriptions of settings that makes it tough for them to rise above the mundane?

CK: It's hard to use descriptions of place to build tension (without sounding like a cliché—"it was a dark and stormy night"), characterization or advance the plot. But when it's done right—it's masterful.

AA: How do you edit a scene that's bogging down the story?

CK: I was thinking about the editing process, and it occurred to me that even action can get in the way of plot. Today, I was editing and realized that in the midst of an important plot point, I needed to get my characters from point A to point B. And I did so in the space of two or three sentences. Then I realized the action was really just "stage directions," and that the sentences needed to be combined and cut in order to get my readers back to the plot. The action had gotten in the way.

Also visit Connie at A Merry Heart.

First Things: Don't Forget the Writing

After returning from Italy, I did some housecleaning — mental and otherwise — and eliminated a few pretty large, but nonessential, tasks. No sooner did those things get dumped than a bunch more came in to take their place. Amid this daily shuffle — the changes and the work — it's easy for the writing to get lost.

If you're like me, this happens to you, too. But let's not forget that writing is the thing, why we do the other stuff, the editing practice, the classes, the workshops. Not the other way around. Let's make sure we don't lose the forest for the trees. As editor and literary agent Betsy Lerner reminds in her book The Forest for the Trees, "… you will never finish any piece of writing if you don't understand what motivates you to write in the first place and if you don't honor that impulse."

Let's honor the impulse and nurture it, not suffocate it with a thousand things that have little or nothing to do with our calling. Make the time to write, pull it out of the air, wrest it away from the other tasks that swallow whole these short, wheeling days and arm wrestle the time to the ground — and write.

The Saving of a Vacation: 179 Ways and More

Most people would kill for a trip to Italy, but with family and other concerns, this year's visit was less than stellar for us. Still, there were bright spots, most notably revising my novel from my cousin's architecture studio overlooking ripening grain fields of the March region and the Adriatic, and reading 179 Ways to Save a Novel, by Peter Selgin.

The pastoral setting between the sea and the foothills of the Apennines was perfect for seeing problems with the text of the novel that I probably wouldn't have caught in more familiar surroundings. But even if you're not on vacation, check out this helpful book at Amazon.

It's a great help, whether you're working on a novel, short fiction or even nonfiction. Also check out Peter's new blog, Your First Page. Billed as a place to submit for free the first 350 words of your novel, it can be beneficial for other works, too, since many of the same principles apply.

Ciao, e a presto!

In Between Time: Food for Thought and Consumption

Barring volcanic eruptions or other unforeseen circumstances, I leave tomorrow for Italy for three weeks. So, I was thinking, since I'll have limited email access, what can I leave you with for that time?

 

One of the best things I could leave is a roadmap to better writing. To that end, here are 21 tips from Robert Bausch, author of The Lives of Riley Chance, A Hole in the Earth and The Gypsy Man.

1. Be passionate.
2. If you can make it work, there aren't any rules.
3. Write daily.
4. Don't complain about not having time to write. Complain about something else.
5. Never surrender.
6. Last changes — look at the end [of your piece] to tighten all the words.
7. Write with your experience, not from it.
8. Even if you're writing nonfiction, tell a story; don't report the facts.
9. Use different voices for different points of view.
10. Inhabit all your characters, especially for point of view.
11. Don't have character convey what it's your job as the author to communicate.
12. The narrator tells, and characters show; know the difference and when to do which.
13. Get ideas from other books; look for the inspiration, what inspires you. What touches you in a way that nothing else does?
14. Have a deep emotional attachment to what you're writing.
15. About endings — if you're surprised by what's happening, the reader will be, too.
16. Around the middle, a book will take its own direction, and you have to go along for the ride. If it takes you in a different direction, and it doesn't work, then you go back to where it diverges and rework, but let it go.
17. Cultivate the capacity to let go when a work wants to be something other than what you thought it would be.
18. Find out what your own rules are, and follow those.
19. An author is usually not the narrator, or any of the characters.
20. You don’t have to like or approve of a character to identify with him or her. You only have to be engaged in what happens to the character.
21. An author does not put things in a story or poem to stump the reader. What we find in stories and poems—the metaphors or symbols, or themes—come from a waking dream, the author’s unconscious mind at work.

For more information, visit Robert Bausch and my online writing workshop, The Art of Editing in Writing.