What I'm Saying Is

I refuse to write according to all the rules because I don't want to right now...so sue me...

Photo by Fiona Murray on Unsplash

As the end draws nigh—not that end, I don’t think anyway, but the end of this current scholastic horrorshow —I would like to offer up the following complaints about a whole range of subjects that are irritating me. Think of this as a grievance against all people who make writing rules when I don’t want them to:

1. To fall asleep at night when reading the news has failed to do its one job, I’ve been slogging through a 300 page book on my Kindle called On Writing Well by William Zinsser. I’m only 17% of the way through. Last night I finished chapter 10 called “Bits and Pieces,” and let me tell you, (imagine me waving my meat mallet over a lot of tough pork I’m trying to bash into some kind edible shape) Mr. Zinsser can come over here and pry my wordiness and run-on sentences out of my cold, clenched fists. Here are just some of the unpleasant things he has to say:

Use active verbs unless there is no comfortable way to get around using a passive verb. The difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.

I’m sorry, sir, but I love…LOVE…the passive voice. Mainly because you just said you don’t like it. And also because I’m tired of being told not to use it all the time. Sometimes sentences in the passive voice are restful. One doesn’t always want to be rushed along to the next thing. By “one” I mean me, in case you were confused about anything. We carry on:

Most adverbs are unnecessary. You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a specific meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning. Don’t tell us that the radio blared loudly; “blare” connotes loudness. Don’t write that someone clenched his teeth tightly; there’s no other way to clench teeth. Again and again in careless writing, strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs. So are adjectives and other parts of speech: “effortlessly easy,” “slightly spartan,” “totally flabbergasted.” The beauty of “flabbergasted” is that it implies an astonishment that is total; I can’t picture someone being partly flabbergasted. If an action is so easy as to be effortless, use “effortless.” And what is “slightly spartan”? Perhaps a monk’s cell with wall-to-wall carpeting. Don’t use adverbs unless they do necessary work. Spare us the news that the winning athlete grinned widely.

You know what, I really very much feel that adverbs are the hearts and souls of all my various kinds of sentences. I like them—a lot. Adverbs make me feel happily happy and differently different. Without adverbs, I don’t even know how to even. Put that in your longish pipe and smoke it thoughtfully and remorsefully for hurting my feelings. Also, this can’t possibly be true:

Most adjectives are also unnecessary. Like adverbs, they are sprinkled into sentences by writers who don’t stop to think that the concept is already in the noun. This kind of prose is littered with precipitous cliffs and lacy spiderwebs, or with adjectives denoting the color of an object whose color is well known: yellow daffodils and brownish dirt. If you want to make a value judgment about daffodils, choose an adjective like “garish.” If you’re in a part of the country where the dirt is red, feel free to mention the red dirt. Those adjectives would do a job that the noun alone wouldn’t be doing. Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit—a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective that exists solely as decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader. Again, the rule is simple: make your adjectives do work that needs to be done. “He looked at the gray sky and the black clouds and decided to sail back to the harbor.” The darkness of the sky and the clouds is the reason for the decision. If it’s important to tell the reader that a house was drab or a girl was beautiful, by all means use “drab” and “beautiful.” They will have their proper power because you have learned to use adjectives sparsely.

What if I don’t want to use the word “garish” for a daffodil? What if I want my oak tree to be gnarled? What is this? Some new not wordy enough totalitarianism? Taking away adjectives is inhuman because, as someone said somewhere in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the clever thing about human people is that they like to say very obvious things. They will literally look up into the bright, cloudless, sultry, blue sky and say something like, “Sure is a hot day.” If people—and writers—can’t say the obvious thing with lots of extra words, what is even the point of being human? That’s what I ask myself as peel the rough brown skins off my larger-sized onions and mince them, weeping gently over the butter as they sweat and turn delicately and goldenly translucent. This is actually the worst of the whole lot:

Prune out the small words that qualify how you feel and how you think and what you saw: “a bit,” “a little,” “sort of,” “kind of,” “rather,” “quite,” “very,” “too,” “pretty much,” “in a sense” and dozens more. They dilute your style and your persuasiveness. Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be confused. Be tired. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. Don’t say you weren’t too happy because the hotel was pretty expensive. Say you weren’t happy because the hotel was expensive. Don’t tell us you were quite fortunate. How fortunate is that? Don’t describe an event as rather spectacular or very awesome. Words like “spectacular” and “awesome” don’t submit to measurement. “Very” is a useful word to achieve emphasis, but far more often it’s clutter. There’s no need to call someone very methodical. Either he is methodical or he isn’t. The large point is one of authority. Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader’s trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don’t diminish that belief. Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold.

I feel, rather, that not enough people, anymore, use those small words that qualify what they’re trying to say, especially in email. I guess, if you want to, you can write everything like Earnest Hemmingway. But, you know what, not all of us want to read those short, jarring statements of brutal and inescapable fact. Some of us want vast and expansive and capacious descriptions of the food and scenery. We don’t want to have to contemplate the wretchedly bleak vista of a man pissing over the side of a boat after slaughtering a fish and eating it raw with no extra words to cushion the awful blow. Too many people today think they are Earnest Hemmingway, especially in all their emailing. Instead of writing something nice like:

Good Afternoon! I hope this note finds you comfortable and happy, a state which I will do nothing whatsoever to diminish. Indeed, it is my constant prayer that nothing I could possibly say or do would ever cause you any slight distress however small. I imagine you must be very busy doing much more important work than reading any communication from me. Would it be possible, though, for you to do that thing you said you would do some time ago? If not I totally and completely understand. It’s of no consequence whatsoever. I just want you to be well—and happy. That is my highest and best desire. Please do have a lovely day! etc. etc.

they write:

Where is that thing you said you would do six weeks ago? Regards, etc. etc.

And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go baste the strips of pork roasting on the grill in my lush and verdant garden, and then yell at my kids, both in the manner of William Shakespeare, Earnest Hemmingway, PG Wodehouse, and Barbara Pym. Have whatever kind of day you like best. I would never presume to tell you how to do anything.