Write With RCS: We get stuck and we have our ways of getting unstuck.

We get unstuck. An aid for getting unstuck is feedback. An excellent source of feedback is a writing group. Your own writing group, like ones I've written of in other posts on this blog, is more helpful than most casual conversation and often less of a threat. Taking some time to consider what is going on with you is also a help and so is just some rest. Taking care of some personal business may free up your writing. Often thinking about the meaning, not the words, of what you are about to write helps.

Try the following to get your writing to flow:

~ Look for contrasting or conflicting elements in what you have written or are about to write. You can interact with those elements when you find them. Just finding an example of just one such element and naming it can help.

~ Try just babbling in you writing. You may find yourself being not so nice or less agreeable than usual. You might even begin talking back to yourself. Try not to shut yourself down too fast. Let each voice say what it has to say in your writing. Let each argument build a bit. Don't stop yet. Again, let each voice have it's say.

~ Of course you get frustrated; me too. Let there be some movement. Again, let each and every voice have it's say before you shut it down. No one is looking. Some writing may occur.

~ Try more meaning before words. Develop the meaning of the words you are using. Clarify those meanings. Fit word to meaning.

~ Keep writing even if you only write why your writing doesn't make sense. Keep writing for 10 or 20 minutes. Then try to get yourself to step back and look at what you have written with some perspective. You may discover that you have verbless phrases, or that nothing you have written asserts anything. A few verbs and a couple of assertions may improve you writing.

~ Sit back. Look at your writing and try to see what it adds up to. Going back and forth between immersing yourself in writing to gain some perspective is writing. As Mr. Elbow says, "You are cooking."

~ At times it helps to let yourself get a bit extreme. Be emotional. Let each impulse have it's day. Sometimes it seems that one has a cycle to go through before you can get down to better writing. Such a time may well be the time to take to extremes for awhile. Take it to the limit one more time. Later you can be a ruthless editor with a sharp knife.

Reading, and even rereading, essays on this blog can be a help.

Editing With Peter

Write With RCS: Peter Elbow and editing. We'll say good bye to Peter soon.

From some old notes of mine from a book by Peter Elbow about learning to write without teachers I am rediscovering that he seems to be a very good teacher and writer. I am learning from these old notes. Maybe you can learn from them too. I intend to publish some posts dealing with them. This particular post is about editing one's writing.

               Mr. Elbow's book was published by Oxford University Press in the early 1970s. It is entitled: Writing Without Teachers. You may want to find a copy for yourself.

               From my earlier reading and from my present notes I have come so familiar with Peter Elbow I feel I can call him Peter.

                   According to Peter, you may come to a point when you say, "I see what I have been driving at; I see what I have been stumbling around trying to say."

               When you agree with Elbow, ah, Peter, that editing means figuring out what you really want to say, getting it clear in your head, getting it unified into an organized structure, and then getting it into your best words, and throwing away the rest; at that point you are ready for some editing That seems a bit much and not completely clear. Maybe you ought to read Peter's book.

               Time to struggle for the exact phrase, cut out he dead wood. If you find yourself in trouble, it may finally be time to write out an outline.

               A useful outline is a list of full assertions - one for each paragraph. Assertions are complete sentences pointing to a real configuration. The list of assertions logically progress to a single assertion. Having done this you have worked your way up to a point at which you can work down through your editing

              I intend that there be more coming.

Here it is:

More About Editing Your Writing

               You can't edit your writing, says Peter, until you you can say, " What the hell, there is more where that comes from. Easy come, easy go." "Be a big spender not a tight-ass."

               You might find yourself regressing. Enjoy it and learn. You may have to revisit earlier difficulties. You may have yet to really inhibit fully your difficulties of producing. You may be doing things like trying to recombine words so as not to have to throw them away.

               Throw them away ruthlessly; you will learn to generate more prolifically.

If you find yourself spending a lot of time on introductions and transitions you had best reexamine relationships.

               Cut a word and keep a reader. Peter suggests that you play sculpture pulling off layers with chisel to reveal a figure beneath. Leaving things out can make the backbone or structure show better.

               Editing is being tough enough to make sure that someone actually reads your work.

               In Peter's own words, "To write ten pages and throw them away, but end up with one paragraph that someone actually reads---one paragraph that is actually worth sixty seconds of read time---is huge, magical, and efficient process.

Let me know if you find Peter's book available.

by Richard Sheehan