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Craft and Draft: The Most Important Tool of the Writing Trade

March 2, 2015 · by Oliver Gray

Writing advice tends to focus on ways to improve wordplay through seductive syntax, elegant editing, and creative applications of your personal brand of writerly insanity. The sentence sages of the internet kingdom give (and have given) solid suggestions for how to augment ideas and the words, and should be thanked and showered with gifts for their contribution to improving the stories of the writing collective. But even among such varied and abundant advice, I rarely see anyone transcend the theoretical, to advise to writers beyond the writing, to perhaps talk about some of the more practical aspects of being a prolific letter bender.

There’s one niche topic that seems all but wholly ignored, probably because it falls very low on the priority list of most writers who are investing free time to refine their craft. One niche topic that plays a role in everything you write, eventually. One niche topic that I, as a technical writer, hold very near to my heart:

Keyboards.

I know, I know, all that build up for keyboards? But belay your disappointment for a moment and think about the importance of that chained click-and-clack: even if you draft stories on paper, one day, sooner than later, you’ll have to transcribe that onto your computer to get it published. Your keyboard is your gateway to the written world, your concept manifester, your irreplaceable partner in the literary dance of life. The sooner you embrace your relationship with your keyboard, the sooner you’ll be a happier (and potentially healthier!) writer.

I upgraded my keyboard after fighting daily with a dying Logitech for a few months, and suddenly realized how much I’d been involuntarily handicapping myself by using a keyboard that didn’t work well, and didn’t fit my typing style. Since I starting smithing on my new board, not only can I write more quickly and accurately, but actually find I enjoy typing, to the point that I want to sit down and write simply for the satisfaction of feeling my fingers on the new keys. Like a new pair of running shoes, a new keyboard offers more comfort, fits your body better, and rejuvenates your mind for the tedious task at hand.

But before you just jump on Amazon and buy the prettiest little QWERTY out there, remember that not all keyboards are created equal, and just like shoes, you have to find the right fit. Fortunately, I’m about to condense 6 months of keyboard research into a single blog post, which should hopefully take some of the guess work out of choosing the right board.

To start, there are two types of keyboards: mechanical and membrane. Mechanical keyboards echo the earliest generation of computers; large, heavy, noisy slabs with that either very satisfying or very annoying plastic clatter. Membrane keyboards, the more modern of the two, are much more common, and nearly every laptop has this style hidden underneath its alphabetical layout. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but the decisions really comes down to preference and comfort.

Mechanical Motoring

Cherry MX Brown Switch

Partly due to their popularity with gamers, mechanical keyboards have seen a contemporary resurgence. They tend to be very easy to type quickly on, and include fancy, technical features like full N-Key rollover (a jargony way of saying that it will recognize all key presses even if multiple keys are hit at once; an advantage if you’re a very fast typist). These boards have an individual switch under each key that translates your keystroke to the computer as soon as the key is pressed. Most modern mechanical keyboards use “Cherry MX” switches, which come in a variety of colors.

These “colors” translate to different tactile feelings when you type; some are linear and need to be pressed all the way down, while others, like the “blue” switch includes a “bump” when you press the key, so you know when the keyboard has registered the letter. They also vary in terms of the force needed to push the key all the way down; a keyboard with “black” switches needs a surprising amount of downward pressure for each stroke, which may turn off writers with a lighter touch, who don’t (like me) attack their keyboards with much vigor.

The good news: there are many types of switches, offering varying levels of speed and comfort depending on your preferences. I won’t bore you too much with tje technical details of each switch, but if you’re curious, more information can be found here: Overview of Cherry MX Switches. If you’re curious about how the keys actually feel when pressed, visit a computer supply store that displays keyboards (read: not Best Buy). You can also buy a tester kit online.

Now for the practical stuff: as a writer, I found the linear black and clear switches too heavy/stiff for daily typing, and the blue too noisy. I found the red switches too flighty (leading to more mistakes the faster I wrote) and was thus torn between green and brown. I preferred the brown overall, for the tactile response and significantly reduced noise. I also find I have less tension in my hands and arms when typing on this keyboard. YMMV.

My new keyboard is mechanical, and I’m coming from a membrane style. I find that my writing is smoother, with fewer mistakes, and that I really enjoy typing on this thing. Several companies sell mechanical keyboards: mine is from WASD, but Das Keyboard, Razer, Logitech, and Corsair (plus a few others) also make variations.

Pros:
Fast, accurate typing
Heavy, so it doesn’t slide around on your desk
Satisfying key strokes that encourage more writing
Easy(ish) to clean

Cons:
Very noisy; not very good for writing in a quiet environment
Relatively expensive compared to membrane keyboards
Time investment needed to learn which switches you like best

Membrane Malleability

My old (and filthy) membrane keyboard. The membrane is beneath those dome keys.

A large portion of modern keyboards sit on top of a gummy rubberish membrane, which in turn sits on top of a circuit board. When a key is pressed, the membrane contacts the circuit board, sending a signal to the computer that translates it into a letter. Each key is not its own moving part, but instead a pressure pad that is part of the entire membrane. Where the mechanical keyboard provides immediate tactile response, a membrane keyboard provides very little (sometimes none at all). There are two sub-types of membrane keyboards: “flat” like the one on your microwave, and “full-travel” like the one on your laptop.

On that note: membrane keyboards are featured on almost all laptops (as the space and weight of individual switches would be cumbersome for the form factor). They tend to be very gentle on your fingers and hands, very quiet, and preferable for light typists. They’re pretty resilient, too, as the membrane acts like a shock absorber that can withstand a lot of daily use. Many people prefer membrane keyboards because they take next to no effort to type on, and over years of using them by default, they’ve adjusted to the relative lack of physical response.

Nearly every company that makes keyboards makes membrane versions, but some feature media keys (to control music and movies), and other gizmos, gadgets, and assorted colorful knobs. There isn’t much difference between the actual keyboards based on manufacturer (like there is with the mechanical switches), so you’ve got more freedom in terms of design and additional features.

Now that I’ve made the jump, I wouldn’t go back to a membrane keyboard unless I had to (like when using my laptop). That’s solely personal preference; I’m a pretty aggressive writer, and hit the keys hard and fast when I’m in the proverbial zone. I’ve obviously written many, many things on membrane keyboards and found them comfortable for a very long time, so don’t take me as a followable example. You do you.

Pros:
Quiet
Easy on fingers and hands
Relatively cheap

Cons:
Little tactile response can lead to mistakes in typing
Gets dirty very easily, and can be difficult to clean
Key replacement proves difficult without proper tools
Lightweight means it can slide around your desk

Advanced Keyboarding

Tweet me if you’ve got questions! @OliverJGray

Keyboards also come in variations of form factor. If you experience pain while writing, or never feel comfortable on a flat keyboard, several companies sell ergonomic keyboards that split the keys down the center, supposedly to improve hand placement and typing accuracy while reducing wrist stress. The traditional keyboard has 104 keys (including a number pad), but if space is limited, you can also buy an 88-key version that sacrifices the number bad for a shorter body.

For the adventurous hipster, there are also other key layouts, including DVORAK and COLEMAK, all of which purport to be superior to the traditional QWERTY layout in terms of speed and accuracy (if modern typing lore is to be believed, QWERTY was actually designed to slow a writer down, as to not jam up the then completely mechanical type writers). I’ve only ever played around with DVORAK and abandoned it pretty quickly; it seems like a lot of work to erase QWERTY from my brain all to learn a completely new layout for a relatively minor bump in typing speed. Plus, the majority of the English speaking world uses QWERY, so you’d then have to play mental Twister anytime you needed to use a keyboard that wasn’t yours.

Virtual keyboards on phones and tablets add another layer of complexity to the puzzle; I, as a matter of preference, loathe typing anything on my phone. I even dislike sending texts. I sit there plucking at letters thinking, “this would be so much better and faster on my computer.” They do have the added feature of predictive text, which as we all known, can be a mixed blessing, and always seems on its worst behavior when you’re texting your mom or your boss. I know some people swear by Swype, and actually enjoy writing using the relatively new digital interfaces, so if that’s your jam, go for it!

You have a world of possibilities at your finger tips (ba-dum-ching) when it comes to selecting the right keyboard. I’m not suggesting any one way is the best, but I do implore you to consider the medium through which you forge your wordy worlds. A painter would painstakingly select her brushes and a soccer player tests many types of cleats before he plays in a game, so why would you not do the same for what is arguably, the most important physical tool for a modern writer?

If you’ve got any specific questions, either Tweet me at @OliverJGray, or leave them in the comments below. If you can’t tell, I’ve got keyboard fever.

Craft and Draft: Three Words You Should Snip From Your Vocabulary

July 11, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

(Warning: This post contains grammar, a substance known by the state of California to cause headaches and crossed eyes)

In the literary long game, few experiences rival that of learning a new word, feeling the thrill of pristine morphology rolling around on your tongue, turning your brain into a squishy grey beanbag chair, getting comfortable in a new heuristic home. Expanding vocabulary is the writer’s prerogative after all, as each new word tempers the steel of the already mighty pen, and makes each new piece of imagery that much more formidable.

Bolts of pure hypocrisy would strike me dead if I claimed not to enjoy the tantalizing tug on my line as a multi-syllabic monster sinks its teeth into my baited hook, but many of us get caught up in the default mode of “acquire,” and forget that not all words are created equal. Every word deserves a chance at a happy linguistic life, but we’d be duping ourselves to suggest that “rock” and “ruby” are contextual equivalents. Some words, despite their best efforts, just aren’t very good. Some words exist on a tier that need not be used, not because said words are incorrect, but because so many better words exist just a short climb away.

When I edit, the following three suspects are my number one targets. I will hunt them down, aim my find/replace at their built-in bulls-eyes, removing and rezoning them before doing any other serious rewriting. If you want to improve your writing, train your eye to notice these words, learn to hate their complacency and laziness, get angry when they clutter up your sexy soliloquy of Shakespearean sentences with their sorry, sad, simplicity. They’re not always the bad guys (as exceptions to my rules exist in this very post), but they don’t exactly have a great track record, either.

“Thing” (as a stand-in for a real noun)

“Thing” by definition, means “an object that one need not, cannot, or does not wish to give a specific name to.” Why would you ever want something with so little syntactic power in your writing? If you use the word “thing,” you’re basically admitting defeat, claiming that some object in your sentence is beyond the descriptive powers of your infinitely creative brain. You should not be OK with that. The word “thing” is an insult to imagination, a slap in the face of poetic license.

Most writers use “thing” when they’re unsure how to describe a noun, but never come around to fix it in edit. In 99% of cases, “thing” can be replaced by a noun that shines, brings delectable context to the sentence, and ultimately makes the whole piece more enjoyable for writer and reader. Consider:

I have a thing to go to later.

-versus-

I have a pirate-themed bluegrass and beer festival to go to later.

Don’t let “thing” bully you with its laziness. Your creativity deserves better. Watch out for his other slimy buddies, “stuff” and “something,” too.

Note: There are legitimate ways to use “thing,” especially when speaking in the abstract (see my hypocrisy in the next section), but it should never, ever, ever, stand in for a concrete noun.

“Boring” (as an adjective or subject compliment)

There’s nothing wrong with the verb “to bore,” especially the lesser used meaning that plays well with insects and power tools. If only we’d left this penetrating wonder alone, and not gotten so vernacular-happy with its adjectival form, “boring.” For shame, legions of internet commenters.

This may be part pet peeve, part personal preference, but no one should ever use the word “boring.” If you confidently state that you think an activity or event is “boring” I assume that your curiosity has lapsed into a coma, and the prognosis isn’t good. “Boring” suggests you’ve given up trying to learn, abandoned all hope in trying to figure out the nuance of why other people may find a particular thing enjoyable, and decided to subjectively relegate it into some bottom drawer, never to be bothered with again.

I think people use “boring” in two situations: 1) they don’t understand whatever it is they’re claiming is boring, or 2) they just don’t like it.

The latter is completely acceptable. But if you don’t like something, say you don’t like it. Don’t say it’s “boring,” because that’s a fundamental fallacy (as someone, somewhere, probably doesn’t think it’s boring).

The prior is completely unacceptable. New internet rule: you’re not allowed to call something boring until you fully understand it. If, after discovering all the fascinating minutiae, you still want to label something “boring,” go for it. But I’m willing to bet after experience and research, you’ll find that it isn’t boring at all, just maybe not your style.

Instead of writing “boring,” think about the emotion or feeling you’re trying to convey instead. What makes it “boring” to you? Is it confusing? Annoying? Vexing? If you replace “boring” with the underlying context of why you arrived at that descriptor, you’ll almost certainly have a better sentence as a result.

“Interesting” (as an adjective or subject compliment)

A complete one-eighty from the previous word, “interesting” is the flavorless lump of Subway bread of the linguistic world. “Interesting” means you found interest in something, which is about as generic as a word can get. Think about it; what does “interesting” ever really add to a sentence?

That’s an interesting sweater you’re wearing. This article on krill migration habits is interesting. What an interesting song choice!

The word means almost nothing. It adds no context, describes very little, and just sits there with a goofy look on its face.

You can do so much better than “interesting.” Get out there and date some fancier words, words with better jobs and better families, who really care about your writing and want you to succeed. Don’t get stuck in a rut of comfort with “interesting.” He’ll break your heart and lack the self awareness to even realize it.

As with “boring” consider what makes the topic interesting to you. Is it fascinating? Engaging? Joyous? Intricate? If you can dig deeper, past the perfunctory, you’ll find that you almost never need to use the word “interesting” because almost any other adjective would work better.

Maybe little snip?

Craft and Draft: To Be or not To Be – Intransitive vs. Transitive Verbs

April 29, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

When I write, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about verbs. I’ll often pause, mid-sentence, staring blankly into the distance, considering the way a verb sounds in combination with the surrounding words, its context in our language outside of the sentence I’m trying to use it in, and whether or not it captures the tone I want for a specific section. I’ve lost hours to mulling over and mashing specific words into verb shaped holes. I’ll sometimes swap in seven or eight synonyms looking for just the right verb, that one jumble of letters that makes the most sense logically, syntactically, and holistically.

So it comes as no surprise that when I edit a peer’s writing, the first thing I look at are verbs. I’ve noticed that a lot of writers tend to put emphasis on their adverbs and adjectives, trying to capture action, personality, and setting with exposition and direct description. While this can work, it often encourages lazy verbs, who, with a just a gentle nudge and a dash of motivation, could be doing a lot more work in the sentence.

Two Flavors of Verbs

If you pull up the definition of a verb in a dictionary, you’ll find “intrans” or “trans” next to it. Sometimes it will say “used without an object” or “used with an object” instead, but it fundamentally means the same thing. These grammatically designate “intransitive” and “transitive,” or more simply, if the verb functions with a direct object or not. Practically, it tells you what kind of relationship the verb has with the subject of the sentence.

An intransitive verb does not take a direct object, and acts as a descriptor for the subject: “I ran.” All the verb does it tell the reader what action the subject took. Nothing more, nothing less.

A transitive verb does take a direct object, and explains how, why, or what the subject did: “I ran the marathon.” This verb has an object (marathon) that receives, and explains, the action of the sentence.

Pretty subtle difference, right? Subtle, but very important. An intransitive verb, even when coupled with prepositions or other adornment (“I ran to the end of the block.”) still only describes, and does little to move the narrative forward. A transitive verb, conversely, unfolds an explicit action or event, and as its name implies, transfers action onto the direct object, propelling your story forward.

Note: There are verbs that can be both intransitive and transitive, depending on context. I used, “to run” above, as an example, but there are many others.

Why does it matter?

Engaging writing captures a reader’s attention and holds onto it fiercely. It needs the reader’s engagement to live. If someone gets distracted or bored and stops reading, the piece might as well not exist. Your writing dies if no one reads it. ::drama intensifies::

Verb use impacts the pacing of a story. Have you ever read a piece of writing, that while topically and thematically fascinating, seemed to drag on and on, and could barely hold your attention? If you analyze the writing, you’ll probably find that the author used a lot of intransitive verbs. There is nothing inherently wrong with these verbs, and at times they are the best choice for a sentence, but they do have the effect of slowing down the natural movement of writing.

Reading is a fluid journey. Our brains have been trained to recognize this transference of action from verb to direct object automatically, but that also means that if we don’t subconsciously see it, we’re likely to lose interest in what we’re reading.

Think of your story or essay like a series of white water rapids propelling your reader down a river, each sentence flowing from the previous one, cascading across the page as a torrent of words. Each intransitive verb is like a rock in the way of the flow, slowing the water down, forcing your reader to linger there for a moment before moving on. If you put too many rocks in the reader’s path, the flow will slow to a trickle, or maybe even stop, prematurely ending your reader’s journey to the end of your piece.

Transitive verbs keep the flow consistent, unbroken, and sweep your reader down the river of words with the energy and enthusiasm of an unhindered waterfall.

To Be, Is, Was

While normal intransitive verbs can be troublesome, the single most common intransitive error comes from the verb, “to be.”

It makes sense. “To be” is our existential default, how we describe the delicate intricacies of what it means to be human, how we articulate our feelings and describe ourselves to others. It’s a wonderful, necessary verb, with one fatal flaw. “To be” is always intransitive. It’s somewhat of a grammatical anomaly; “to be” sets up a comparison with the subject and a subject compliment (not a direct object), and as a result, does nothing but offer flat description. Because of this odd behavior, “is,” and “was” never move a story forward.

For example:

“Alex is a writer.”

In this sentence, “is” acts as an equals sign for the subject (Alex) and the subject compliment (a writer). Alex = a writer. The sentence contains no action. It serves only to describe the subject, and plant some exposition in the piece. The problem is that the verb – arguably the heart of the sentence – is doing no work, floating idly in the middle, like it’s on vacation or something.

Why waste a perfectly good verb?

Let’s rewrite that sentence with a transitive verb:

“Alex writes essays.”

We still capture the idea that Alex is a writer, but now we get more information in the form of the direct object (essays), and know what he writes. The verb works hard here, giving us information about the subject, while simultaneously providing action. Alex actively writes essays, doesn’t just exists two-dimensionally as a writer. The transitive form (in this admittedly simple example) conveys more information than its intransitive counterpart, and makes our monkey brains happy by using language’s natural propensity to keep rolling onward.

To Edit, To Revise

Scrutinize your verbs. When you write a sentence, look to see what action the sentence tries to convey, and then see if your verb accurately portrays that. You might subconsciously be using a form of “to be” because it sounds natural, not realizing that you’re slowing down your own narrative and holding a reader back.

Do a search for “is” and “was” and see if you’re using them as “filler verbs” where a more appropriate transitive verb might work better. Intransitive verbs do serve a purpose, and there are times when you intentionally want to slow your reader down, either to delay the payoff of a certain scene, or to have them really focus on a certain detail or description. “To be” is a great, unfortunately overused verb, partly because it’s so malleable, partly because few writers stop to check if the verb they’ve used is contextually a “best-fit.”

If you can start including more transitive verbs, you’ll almost certainly improve the flow and pacing of your writing, and keep a reader’s attention from wandering off to cat videos. I’d say, given how many cat videos I find myself watching daily, that’s a win.

Proper application of a Subject – Verb – Subject Compliment sentence.

So you want to be a Beer Writer? – Part 1 – Pallet vs. Palette vs. Palate

December 4, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

You’ve finally arrived at the intersection of inebriation, grammar, and Microsoft Word. You want to pour your love of beer out of the glass and smear it all over the page. You don’t want to be stuck a mere drinker; you want to transcend, elevate, lift yourself up in a rush of carbonated glory. Good for you! Admitting you have a problem is the first step to becoming a beer writer.

But the first step, in this case, is nowhere near the last step. Being a beer writer isn’t all strolling down easy street, wearing your casual Ugg boots, whistling “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” Beer isn’t a matter of life and death; it’s much more serious than that. You’re going to have to commit to not only drinking lots of beers, but also drinking lots of beers. You may have to take time to appreciate flavors and smell decadent aromas, possibly with your nose. You may even, at times, when things get really intense, have to go out with your friends to drink beers.

It’s a cruel, unforgiving pursuit.

But if you’re committed, I’m here to help. The information below is part one of a primer to transform your regular old prose into luscious lager literature. I’m happy to answer any questions in the comments, too.

Bubbling Verbs

Any good writer knows her verbs are the real pack mules of the syntax, lugging all that context on their backs without so much as an angry bray. The beer world affords a writer a bevy of excellent verb choices, namely those associated with liquids, drinking, staggering, and hanging (over). If you’re trying to up the ABV of your blog posts and articles, strong beer verbs can make all the difference. See “she opened the beer” verses “she wrenched the cap free.”

Here are a few of my favorites (in infinitive form):

Brewing-related: to ferment, to flocculate, to mash, to stir, to boil, to roll, to pitch, to rinse, to sanitize, to cool, to rise, to sink, to measure, to gauge, to float, to attenuate, to prime, to bottle, to carbonate, to cellar

Beer-sound related: to hiss, to pop, to sizzle, to fizz, to glug, to chug, to gulp, to cheer, to clink, to clunk, to plink, to crack, to toast, to sing, to yell

Beer-action related: to pour, to glass, to barstool, to order, to bitter-beer-face, to pry, to wrench, to twist, to nose, to sip, to savor, to tongue, to raise, to grasp, to slam, to session

Beer-effect related: to smile, to laugh, to hug, to proclaim, to embelish, to haze, to blur, to lurch, to occilate, to waiver, to stagger, to wretch, to drunk-dial, to wrestle, to put-your-leg-over-the-edge-of-the-bed-to-stop-the-spins, to vomit, to pass out, to pound, to thirst, to hunger, to regret, to swear

There are of course hundreds more. Don’t be afraid to verb a noun if it seems fitting. Shakespeare did it, and he seems to have done pretty well for himself.

Off-Flavors

At times, when home brewing your own word-beer, slight miscalculations in syntax temperature or literary recipe can lead to unwanted off-flavors. These are easily avoided by carefully paying attention during mash-draft. Some common off-flavors to watch out for:

Pallet vs. Palette vs. Palate

Unless you’re talking about moving a bunch of cases in a warehouse or are literally planning to paint with your beer, the correct spelling of the tasty portion of our mouth is “palate.”

Drink, Drunk, Drank

To drink is probably the most important verb in a beer writer’s keg-o-verbs, but it vexes many people because its past participle, “drunk,” can be a verb, a noun, or an adjective, depending on its role in the sentence. To add to the confusion, as a verb “drunk” requires an auxillary verb (to have, to be) to be used correctly. You wouldn’t say “I drunk the beer” unless you were already ten deep. An easy rule to avoid mistakes in obscure sentence constructions: check for a “be” or “have” before the word. If there is one, use “drunk” (The beers will be drunk tonight). If there isn’t, use “drank” (I drank the beer).

Drunk is very versatile:

As a noun – Oliver is a drunk.
As an adjective – Oliver is drunk.
As a verb – Oliver has drunk all the beer.

As an added grammatical bonus, here’s a full list of tenses for “to drink”:

Simple present – I drink (beer.)
Simple past – I drank (three beers.)
Simple future – I will drink (that beer. That one, right there.)
Present perfect – I have drunk (all the beer in the fridge. My bad.)
Past perfect – I had drunk (all those beers before they even got here.)
Future perfect – I will have drunk (that whole case before I leave.)
Present progressive – I am drinking (this beer.)
Past progressive – I was drinking (that beer before I started drinking this one.)
Future progressive – I will be drinking (during #beerchat.)

There, now you are never allowed to mess up “to drink” ever again.

Craft and Draft: Go Small or Go Home

July 29, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

If I shoved you through the doors of a commercial brewery and said, “make some beer!” would you have any idea where to start? Would you be overwhelmed by the towering shiny metal of the brew kettles? Would the verdant pounds of hops intoxicate you with their heaven-scented mystery? Would you try to make a beer, even if you didn’t really know the process or how to use the equipment? And if you did, how good do you think the beer would be?

Now, imagine I did the same thing, but you’d been homebrewing for a few years. You may not have experience with the tools and ingredients on such a large scale, but you’d at least understand how beer works. You’d know that you needed to crack the grains and get them sparging, as the wort is the soup stock of your new brew. You’d know that you needed to decide what and how many hops to use for bittering, and then which to add later in the boil for aroma. You’d have a much better understanding of what was going on, and there’d be a chance you’d make a beer that people actually wanted to drink.

If I shoved you into a chair in front of a computer and said, “write a novel!” would you have any idea where to start?

Now, imagine I did the same thing but you’d been writing short stories for a few years.

It’s our nature to think big

I think if you’re dreaming at all, you’re dreaming big. You’re thinking of all the wonderful splendor that your potential might manifest as: riveting novels, acclaimed works of nonfiction, successful innovative breweries, a work environment where flip flops are not a faux pas, but a deliberate and encouraged style choice.

And as a direct result of thinking big, we act big. We draft huge plans for ourselves, for our careers, for our lives, even if those drafts are little more than theoretical scribbles on a post-happy hour cocktail napkin. We imagine our lives as they could be, filling in the holes with success shaped ideas. There is a certain pleasure in being wrapped in the warm, down blanket of future-thinking fantasy.

So we try, from the onset, to do big things. Writers try to go from zero to epic SciFi space drama, homebrewers try a Flemish Red for their very first beer. We aim high, probably too high, because the challenge and wonder of something new drives us. We get drunk on our own potential, our own dreams of what we can accomplish.

But when expectation falls short of reality and our dreams run out of gas 10 miles before the next Wawa, we feel disappointment. We’re confused as to why our novel reads like a Jarlsberg hunk of plot holes, why our beer tastes like band aids and dirt.

But our nature is also cumulative

There is a reason we don’t teach children to read by handing them a copy of Anna Karenina and saying, “good luck, kid.” We have to build our skill sets a bit at a time; win a ton of minor educational battles to win the knowledge war. You’d never expect a surgeon to be able to remove a tumor on her first try, with no experience except some stuff she saw on YouTube. So why do we expect to be able to write full length books with little or no training?

I’m certain there are some people out there who are an exception to this rule, who can, almost by magic (or raw talent) drop out a novel on their first try that is of ridiculously high quality. But for most of us (me included) that’s just not how it works. As much as we want to be the exception, the one who finds the genie bottle, the one who wins the lottery, chances are we’re not going to. We’re those unlucky saps who have to do all those labor intensive things like study and practice.

When we practice, we could keep aiming very high, firing that cannon at all those stars, hoping against hope that we might hit one. Or we could be a bit more realistic and aim for something a few thousand light years closer.

Go small or go home

If you want to brew beer that sells, start by homebrewing. Start with simple recipes, so you can learn what makes good, tasty beer, regardless of the ingredients or equipment.

If you want to write books that sell, start writing short stories. Start with single characters and tight narrative arcs with a focus on sentence structure, grammar, and tension.

Why?

Because smaller is easier to digest, break apart, experiment with. A five gallon batch is a good sample size to test what kinds of hops to use (and in what combination) or how a certain temperature during mash can affect a finished beer. A short story is a perfect place to try a new setting or structure or kind of dialogue.

Instead of committing a ton of time and resources to something you’re not sure will work, try it on a smaller scale first. If you nail it, awesome; you’ve learned how it works, and can always scale it up. If it didn’t turn out so well, even more important lesson learned.

Starting small let’s your practice your art on your own time, by your own rules.

Remember: Jim Koch started Sam Adams with a small batch of Boston Lager in his kitchen. George R. R. Martin wrote short stories for years before the Game of Thrones (ASOIAF) series.

They went small so they didn’t have to go home defeated. They went small to teach them how to go big.

“Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.” -Albert Einstein

Craft and Draft: Why Writers should Listen to Pop Country Music

July 18, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I know. You don’t like Taylor Swift. Keith Urban offends you on at least seven, different, personal levels. Rascal Flatts makes you want to get all stabby with the butter knife when their wailing interrupts your morning bagel-and-cream-cheese ritual at the local coffee shop.

I honestly don’t blame you. Country music is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot of drivel dribbling out of Nashville. A veritable ice cream sundae of uninspired banging on the same three chords with some cheap-beer lyrics messily ladled on top. It’s pretty hard to get your brain around all that twang, especially when there is so much great music out there that could be filling our earholes with audio joy instead.

But cast your prejudices about country music aside for a moment. While it may not be the height of melodic art, those guys down on Music Row understand the business. They get what makes a hit song, and why; all the minutiae that turns a regular guy with a hat and a guitar into a legend of Southern rock, or a baby-faced blonde bell into a stage-trotting goddess.

They’ve figured out what people want to hear, and the song writing reflects it. If there is any art in the industry, it is in the hearts and minds of the writers who, beyond all human belief, can still work the words “Georgia,” “redneck,” and “truck” into new songs in new ways. They use grammar to infuse the verses with freshness, even when the backing music is the same one-four-five progression we’ve been listening to since the Grand Ole Opry went on the air in 1925.

Let’s look at Tim McGraw’s 2009 hit, Southern Voice.

This song is the quintessential three-major-chord-progression that all new guitar/mandolin/banjo players learn: G, C, D. It’s plain vanilla ice cream, white bread, about as complicated as toast. But the writers (Bob DiPiero and Tom Douglas) manage to toy with the grammar of the verses, breaking/playing with some literary rules to great effect:

Hank Aaron smacked it / Michael Jordan dunked it / Pocahantas tracked it / Jack Daniels drunk it / Tom Petty rocked it / Dr. King paved it / Bear Bryant won it / Billy Graham saved it

The sentence structure is as simple as the chords: subject, past tense verb, direct object. But these sentences are perfect examples of the power and importance of the right verb; not only does each move the song forward with action, it’s also perfectly applicable to its subject. The historical subjects are allusions that build on the theme of the song (a single, unified “voice” of the Southern states) and give the reader (or listener) a concrete idea-cleat to attach their brain-ropes to.

The major rule violation here is the use of the abstract pronoun, “it.” In most other settings, this would be a no-no, as it’s an unqualified, unattributed object, which normally leaves a reader confused. But when the chorus comes in…

Smooth as the hickory wind / That blows from Memphis / Down to Appalachicola / It’s “hi ya’ll, did ya eat?” well / Come on in child / I’m sure glad to know ya / Don’t let this old gold cross / An’ this Charlie Daniels t-shirt throw ya / We’re just boys making noise / With the southern voice

…we see that the “it” actually refers to the eponymous “southern voice;” as if each sentence is a square on the quilt that makes up the culture of the American South.

Ever wonder why a song is so catchy? How it so easily grafts itself to your short term memory even when you actively try to force it out? Because it’s grammatically kickass, that’s why.

Not convinced that you should subject yourself to country music from one example? Then here’s another; this one form Jason Aldean’s Texas Was You.

This one’s chord progression is, you guessed it: G, C, D. It throws in a nice little E minor for spice, but it’s still as standard as it comes. But check out this gorgeous grammar writers Neil Thrasher, Wendell Mobley, and Tony Martin slipped into the verses:

Ohio was a riverbank / 10 speed layin’ in the weeds / Cannonball off an old rope swing / Long long summer days.

Tennessee was a guitar / First big dream of mine / If I made it, yeah, that’d be just fine / I just wanted to play. I just wanted to play, but…

Carolina was a black car / A big white number three / California was a yellow jeep / Cruisin’ down Big Sur.

Georgia was a summer job / ‘Bama was a spring break / I got memories all over the place / But only one still hurts.

The opening lines of all four verses are Subject, verb, subject compliment, a sentence structure that typically doesn’t move anything forward, as it’s only equating the subject to the compliment. The fragments that follow all support the initial comparison, building on the same image or metaphor established by the full sentence. It has an awesome effect in this song because it drops a declaration at the begging of each verse, confidently telling us what comparison Aldean is making.

It’s especially powerful when the chorus comes sliding in…

Texas was green eyes crying goodbye / Was a long drive / A heartache I’m still trying to get through / Texas was you

…and we get three more “to be” verbs, three more comparisons, showing us why he’s making all these metaphorical connections. The setup for the chorus is great, and proves that even generally inactive sentences/verbs can be used bring the hammer of theme down onto the nails of details in your writing.

I can provide other examples if people are curious, but popular country is full of songs that are captivating listeners with clever lyrics with even cleverer grammar. If you’re struggling with edits, or need examples of structure and verb usage, or just how to arrange written elements to get people interested, fire up some Eric Church or Dierks Bently and getcher country on!

“Bend those strings until the Hank comes out.”

Craft and Draft: Poison Ivy, No Calamine Lotion

May 29, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

The writing side of your life – once you’ve truly embraced it, absorbed it, made it part of you – is like a new skin. It surrounds and covers you, forms a protective barrier, keeping your emotions and squishy opinions safe from the daily onslaught negativity and rejection and slimy internet trolls.

When you start out and your writing is raw and innocent, this skin is delicate, easily marred and easily broken. But as you grow through and with life, every fall and bump and clumsy tumble toughens it. Callouses form and harden, scrapes dry and scab over, and the worst gashes fade into story-worthy scars.

As years and decades flit by, exposure to life will turn this skin into a flexible, protective suit of armor. Eventually, it will be your natural bulwark against critics and haters, who by definition, are gonna’ hate. And that’s real nice. A mighty fine thing. But it’s a pretty slow process.

If you want to speed it up, you have to main-line some kind of writing steroids. You have to introduce an external catalyst to creativity and motivation.

You have to give your writing-skin some poison ivy.

Poison ivy, that insidious vine, isn’t all bad. Sure it’s painful and unsightly, springing up at the worst possible times, in even worse places. But it also has the ability to bring your mind into a state of hyper-focus, where your brain is twisted and bent on one thing: itchy scratches and scratching itches.

Go finds some oily, nasty leaves (the kind made of focus and determination and motivation are the best) and rub them all over your writing. On your drafts. On your edits. In between your independent clauses. Rub them in the most annoying places you can think of, and make sure to get the oil in there really deep.

Rub them on yourself too. On your wavering confidence, on your self-doubt, on the weakest parts of your artistic bones.

A day or two will pass with no results. You’ll think, “thanks a lot, Oliver, I wasted like, 22 whole minutes finding and rubbing those leaves. I could have watched most of Wheel of Fortune instead!” And you’ll sit and be annoyed with me, typing like you usually type, thinking like you usually think.

Until a herald appears. The oil of motivation sinking into your brain, causing an allergic, innervating reaction. A red smear on a Word doc, an itchy piece of awkward grammar that you can’t help but scratch. You’ll think nothing of it at first, mindlessly clawing at the annoyances as they appear. You’ll rub and rub just so the frustrating feeling goes away, but that will only work temporarily.

Soon the red smear will spread to entire manuscripts of impartial edits, hundreds of damaged sentences you can’t help but repair, tens of thousands of word-itches that can only be scratched by typing them out, one-by-one. The oil has now been absorbed by your brain, and no amount of laziness or doubt can wash it off. You won’t be able to ignore the vexing throb and burn of all those words that just need to get out, all those edits that need to happen, all those ideas that need outlines.

All those itches that invariably need scratching.

And don’t even think about dumping half a bottle of calamine lotion or Benadryl gel onto the festering mess. Let it flare and shout its anger out into the world. Let the itches itch. Let the annoyance and frustration build, until the blisters and boils and the crimson patches of infected writing are the only thing you can conjure in your mind. Let them interrupt your sleep. Let it be the first thought on your mind before food or drink or other worldly wants.

The itch will become all you know, the scratch all you want. And you will write because you have to. You won’t have time or energy to think about “not being good enough” or mull over “will this be rejected” as you force the words down onto that poor keyboard, chasing after the never-ending tail of an insufferable itch worm.

And then, with as much creeping subtlety as when they arrived, the itches will fade. The redness and swelling will recede like a beach at low-tide, leaving freshly exposed writing-skin made tougher by the fury of the flaming reaction. Your skin, in a matter of a few weeks, will be more resilient and more experienced. Your writing will be stronger from having fought the itches and won.

And after you’ve had it once, sometimes in the shower or at your desk or on the toilet, a phantom itch with dash across your skin and you’ll remember how the poison ivy made you feel.

And then you’ll write, knowing that the itches might come back. Secretly hoping they will come back. Just so you can have the joy of scratching them all over again.

“Poison Ivy tastes like an itch when you have it on your tongue, and I’d say that love tastes the same, only itchier.  ” – Jarod Kintz

Craft and Draft: Plotting Progression

May 20, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Do you remember the exact moment your pet turned from kitten into cat, or from puppy into dog, or from tiny goldfish to slightly less tiny goldfish? If you’re a normal human, probably not. Our brains tend not to notice small, incremental changes that happen over a long period because we’re only fed little pieces of information each day, and struggle to put all the puzzle pieces together to create a single image of the change. The only way we really notice the complete evolution is by comparing the present to the past using photographs or some other artifact, so we can make a direct comparison between mewling kitten and meowing cat.

Your progress in writing follows the same rules. You improve slowly over the course of many sentences and paragraphs written over many hours and many days, and you rarely notice any improvement as it is happening, even if it is relatively drastic. This is partly because of the natural functions of your brain, and partly based on how we’re told progress is supposed to work.

We are taught, through school and the visible success of public figures, that progress is a linear thing, a perpetually chugging and climbing train that always moves upward and forward, upward as we scramble up the Aggro Crag of our craft and forward as we hurdle over the obstacles of life and art, American Gladiator style. It makes logical sense that every word we write, every short story and essay we finish, moves us closer to our goal of becoming excellent writers. Every hour we put towards getting better actually makes us better. Practice, in theory, has a one-to-one progress pay off.

If we graphed the idealized form of progress, the purest, sweetest form of achievementitude, it would look something like this:

Pretty simple: as time stomps ever-forward, our skill inevitably improves.

But obviously nothing in life is idealized, not even our fantasies and dreams. Writing is a roiling, boiling witches brew of different techniques and skills, all of which need to come together to create a strong, compelling narrative potion. It requires a close eye on the cauldron and balance of the various ingredients – for these purposes grammar, imagery, dialogue, creativity, and structure – to brew up a tincture that readers will pick out from the other bottles on the shelf and actually want to imbibe.

And because these skills are not perfectly synonymous with each other, because they require different, often disconnected parts of your brain, because they may come naturally or not come at all, progress is never going to be perfectly linear. We’d like to think that each thing we write is still moving us forward though, so roadblocks in certain areas are just plateaus, times when we circle the wagons to weather the dust storm until we can sally-forth once again, all pen-and-paper manifest destiny like.

If we graphed a more realistic representation of progress, it would look something like this:

A little more complicated, but still manageable: time still trudges down his path and we still get better, but we have to take some detours and hang out in some places until it’s safe (or smart) to move on.

But naivety; I know you too well. How quaint to think we’d always be improving, never slowing or staggering or falling behind! For a long time this idea, the notion that progress could never be stopped, clouded my mind like a heavy early morning fog that had yet to be burned off by the heat of the afternoon sun. I wanted – expected – everything I wrote to improve upon the last thing I wrote. I lived under the impression that every essay had to out-do the last, every short story needed to be more and more nuanced and literary, that every metaphor had to transcend mere humanity and do a fly-by buzz of the god’s palatial manor up on Olympus.

But that is as improbable as it is impossible. We are hard-wired to want to always improve, but if you obsess over what is in practice an unachievable goal, you’ll never actually write anything, stuck the underworld on the quest for unending improvement. You will write stuff that just isn’t very good. You’ll backslide, your words will fail you, you’ll have some pieces that instead of ringing out into the world with the flair and revelry of a triumphant trumpet, will slither out and drop onto the ground with an unsatisfying and sort of disgusting plop.

You’ll find that the train of climbing progress is actually a roller coaster, and at any moment the bottom might drop out, sending you screaming down the rails into a valley of meh. Sometimes you’ll write a thousand words and the only improvement is a single adjective clause tucked away in some otherwise uninspired paragraph. Sometimes you’ll have a fresh, invigorating idea that ends up ruined by your poor execution. Progress isn’t always upwards, but that’s OK. You can learn just as much from your not-so-good writing as you can from your really good writing. The point is, you’re still writing.

If we graphed the ups and downs, the cheers and jeers, the flourish and the plops of how we really grow, it would look something like this:

Now it’s looking more like a true writing process: when your dialogue is near perfect, your imagery is like, something grey or something? When your creativity is soaring, your grammar might be guttural Cro-magnon pseudo-speak and your structure might be reminiscent of a 3rd grader’s finger painting. You’re still technically improving, but sometimes only in one area, sometimes moving downwards before upwards, but still forward, as each new lesson, good or bad, teaches you something new.

This all dances around the idea that we are humans (not robots who can eat and survive on graphs alone) and our moods and wants and emotions all play into how we create. All of these skills are completely dependent on how we employ them, how we glue them down on the construction paper and arrange the colorful shapes, which is in turn dependent on our confidence.

Confidence, even using bold and headstrong people as examples, is nigh unplottable. The data for such a thing isn’t made up of numbers that can be understood by anyone in any real way. It’s like a taco made of paperback books or a cupcake baked with broccoli inside and frosted with hummus. It’s outside of our normal brain bubbles. It’s all very non-Euclidean.

But, since I’ve got this graph theme going, I tried anyway. If you added human confidence to this whole progress thing, it would look something like this:

Regardless of your actual progress, you’re constantly fighting the growth and maturity (or lack thereof) of your confidence. Each success boosts and sends the orange line twirling skyward, like a model rocket at full blast, bumped slightly off it’s trajectory. Each rejection and stream of mean comments causes the rocket (and orange line) to smash into the ground (or X-axis) at full force, trying to burrow into the ground to hide from the negativity. Confidence in your art is the one ingredient that can make or break the literary meal, as it effects every single aspect, down to how you cook it and present it to your diners.

Progress can be so intangible, so caught in the fishing nets of practice and skills and self-doubt, that we can’t even see it as it creeps into our brain. It is important to take some time to track your progress, either with spreadsheets or a notepad or an abacus or something, so that at intervals you can take a break and actually look at what you’ve accomplished and how much you’ve improved.

Progress is slow going and often painfully roundabout, and yet we’re taught to think it’s a straight arrow-shot to fame and fortune. We’re conditioned to think that achievement is positive and should be celebrated, while failure is negative and should be shunned. But that’s just silly. No one could possibly live up to the expectations of winning or succeeding at everything they do, every time they do it. And if they somehow could, via a pact with some ancient evil or a old, bored Djinn, I’d say they were actually missing out on the lessons that can be taken away from doing something wrong.

Don’t be upset if your progress slows or stop or goes backwards, or even if you can’t even see any progress for a while; that is completely natural. The only thing that will actually hurt your ultimate progression is to quit completely. If you stop writing, you stop learning – from the wins and the losses – and soon enough, your graph will be blank.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a ton of squiggly, messed up lines that show I’ve tried, than no lines at all.

How to Peer Edit

May 9, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

It’s easy, as a writer, to think of your craft as a one-way street. You write words, send them bleeping and whirring through the wiry innards of the internet to a reader, who then reads them. It’s all very binary. Writers are 0, readers are 1.

But when you start getting up and out, into the writing world, into the community of like-minded crazy people and neurotics and geniuses, you’ll start to notice that the writer-reader relationship is just the final product of a massive word factory, an interconnected automaton that clunks and steams as writers feed it raw materials through their laptops and tablets and notepads.

This factory is where all the drafts between 0 and 1 happen, where those oft-spoken-about but rarely seen editors do their editing things. While there are some wonderful and talented professional editors holding senior positions in the factory, the majority of the day-to-day editing is handled by the writers pulling bad words off of never-ending conveyor belts and turning big red valves on proofreading machines. This factory is the thumping mechanical heart of planet writing, the place where little baby mewling essays turn into triumphant opinionated masterpieces and sad, confused stories grow up to play in the literary NFL.

Good news: they’re hiring.

Editing another writer’s work will improve your writing. It gives you a chance to read all kinds of stuff you might not see otherwise, but also gives you a chance to see what mistakes other writers are making. Editing gives you the chance to learn from other people’s lessons, dissect how a writer created an image or a theme or a tone. It’s also one of the few ways you can truly give back to the writing community short of becoming Rowling-famous and giving away money because you’re feeling particularly philanthropic.

Seems easy, right? Go join a workshop group, grab some stuff, and edit! I like that attitude, that energy. You’ll need that. But not all edits are created equal. Prior proper preparation leads to efficient, effective editing.

How to Peer Edit

Things You’ll Need:

Something to edit (preferably something that needs to be edited)
A word processor with a “track changes” feature (MS Word, although I don’t like to admit it, works great. GoogleDocs ain’t bad in a pinch either)
A printer and a red pen (in case your computer explodes or the hamster-wheels powering the internet suddenly fail)
Your brain (that thing you routinely confound with whiskey and words)

Step 1: Take it for what it is

Before you take your crimson, inken scalpel to the page, bent on excising the grammatical tumors of the piece, take some time to just read it. Enjoy the story. Let the language court your brain and take it out to a fancy dinner, listen to the nuance of the word choices as they dance their elaborate syntactical ballet. Make friends with the characters, take a mental vacation to the setting, and really just let the narrative wash over your brain like a beautiful word wave.

Don’t try to fix mistakes, even if they’re obvious. Don’t try to analyze the voice or theme.

Just read.

And when you’re done, put it away for a little bit.

It’s important to appreciate the art of the piece you’re revising before actually offering any feedback. You need to understand what the author was going for, what message they hid deep in the emotional soul of the writing. If you don’t “get” the story, or haven’t taken time to just read it as a non-writer would, your final feedback won’t be as helpful, and might even, at times, be hurtful.

Step 2: Fix the easy stuff

Once you and the story are BFFs, you can start your actual review.

I find typos, misspellings, grammatical mistakes, and punctuation faux pas the most distracting things on the page. Before I can look at theme or metaphor or fancy things like sentence structure and variation, I have to go through and (try to) clean up as many eye-luring boo-boos as possible. It’s OK though; I’ve got a big supply of backspace band-aids.

There are many ways to do this, some really effective, some not so effective.

My favorite technique is to read the story backwards, starting with the last sentence working towards the start. This lets you view the sentence as a whole and fish out any little inconsistencies without your brain automatically filling in the gaps of what it already knows and expects to come next. By going backwards, you can focus on the sentence in a vacuum of itself, all without damaging its relationship to the rest of the paragraph.

Some people might argue that this isn’t a good use of editing time, but I disagree. The writing will have to be proofread eventually, and training your eyes to spot inconsistencies will make your own drafting stronger.

Step 3: Look for writing tics

As you read, try to notice if the writer repeats certain ideas or constructs or words. It’s possible that something (an idea, a memory, an ancient evil) has wormed its way into their processes, influencing every single sentence they type without their knowledge or express written consent.

This can be as simple as a person using the same kind of transition (say a terminal simile) or as complicated as a person creating the exact same kind of metaphors with very little variation. For example, I know I have a problem with creating too many magic/wizard/fantasy/medieval metaphors, like a hardened warrior whose sword and steel soul is tainted by blood and battle.

It is your responsibility as an editor to point this stuff out for the writer. This kind of feedback is the most revered and praised, as it often brings into focus topics and issues that would have been near impossible for the writer to discover on her own. Read carefully and note anywhere things seem to sound or feel the same. Highlight similarities in the same color (say bright orange), so the writer has a stark visual of just how often a tic is sneaking into her writing.

Step 4: Ponder the mysteries of theme

Theme in a piece of writing (especially a short piece of writing) can be an elusive gremlin that pops his head out of a hole for a second and then disappears, only to pop up again in some impossibly distant place a few seconds later. Sometimes it’s blatant, like dozens of thick slices of chopped jalapeno on the top of a pizza when you specifically wrote “no jalapenos” in the “additional notes” field on the pizza ordering website. Sometimes it’s so subtle that you can barely pick it out, like the addition of a tablespoon of dry Amontillado sherry to a traditional enchilada sauce.

But it’s gotta be there if the piece is going to succeed. Try to find examples of a writer carrying the theme that you like and specifically call them out with colors or comments. In a recent story (it’s short, I promise) I used a lot of Christian allusions and references to support the theme of a lapsed Catholic being unsure of her place at a funeral. Some were intentional, others weren’t. I had an editor friend point out some that I, caught in the energy of the writing itself, didn’t even know I’d written. It was pretty cool and taught me a lot about the piece.

When you’re editing, point out every example you can find, even if they seem loose or under-formed. These help the writer see if his theme is strong, or if it needs to be bolstered in certain places. It also helps you develop closer reading skills, which will benefit you when you’re self editing early drafts of your own work.

Step 5: Write pointed, specific feedback

There is nothing worse than getting all pants-peeing excited to digest someone’s comments on your work, only to find things like, “this is good,” “I don’t like this,” or “I don’t get this at all.” Comments like that are worse than not reviewing the piece at all.

Fight your baser instincts to immediately point out what you like and don’t like. In the grand scheme, your subjective tastes don’t matter. Just because you didn’t like it doesn’t mean it’s bad. Just because you did like it doesn’t mean it’s good.

A writer needs objective feedback about how it is written.

If you can’t, you just don’t possess the fortitude to not voice your opinions, then make sure you accompany any vague comments with a clear and specific why. Did you like it because it was beautiful to read or because it established the tone? Did you not like it because it was confusing or distracted you from something more important?

The more specific your feedback, the more the writer learns about his own craft from your edits, and the more you learn about the writing process as a whole. This is one of those, “you’re only cheating yourself” situations, like lying about how hard you worked out to impress your coworkers who really don’t care either way. If you take short cuts in your editing, you’ll be missing great examples to learn about bigger issues at work in all writing, and you’re just being a dick to the person whose work you’re reviewing.

Step 6: Do it again, and again, ad infinitum

Yea, nothing fancy to say here. Do 10 sets of 30 edits three times a week for maximum results. Apply ice to any finger injuries. Apply beer to any brain ones.

Craft and Draft: Metaphor Galore

April 15, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

If I put you in a dark room with a lone chair in the middle, made you close your eyes and just listen to random people speak, you could tell me a ton of information without much effort: the sex of the speaker, their rough level of education, the region they’re from, the mood they’re in, where they are in relation to you, and lots more.

Aside from touch, our voice is one of the only ways we can connect to another person; the sound waves of our speech bouncing and rebounding, pooling in their ears where they can physically process the meaning of the message. We connect a lot of emotions and meaning to a voice and revere its power through things like plays and songs.

Some voices are soft and gentle, like your mother waking you up for your first day of elementary school. Other voices are harsh and cruel; an angry drill instructor, an unscrupulous calculus teacher, a dictator with a tenuous grasp on his rule. And yet some are irreverent and silly, some spiked and drunken, some magical and lilting and full of poetic grace.

A writer’s voice is the same a spoken one; it is personality on the page, how you sound to your reader. When you write something, it’s like a text recording of your voice, packaged up on pages, sent direct-download to the media player in your reader’s brain.

The term, “voice,” gets throw around a lot: “you need to work on your voice,” or “your voice could be stronger here,” or “her voice is so clear and consistent in this piece!” But what is a writer’s voice? How can it be defined and caught and kept in a jar of formaldehyde for dissection and study?

An oversimplified answer is that your voice is a combination of your day-to-day personality, your diction, your attitude towards the subject (or tone), and most importantly, metaphor.

What, metaphor?

Yep, metaphor.

Metaphor Galore

We all know what a metaphor is, right? A comparison of one thing to another, tangentially disparate thing in an attempt to create an image or elicit an emotion or make someone laugh. They use imagery and creative language to cause your reader to create a visual comparison in their mind like an LCD monitor with a slide show of your story. Did you picture a TV in someone’s head just now?

Just in case you’re not familiar with metaphor, here’s one: “He wrote with the abandon of a drunk sea captain who knew that this night, in this storm, the sea would finally drag him home.”

Yay, metaphor: making writing and language more than just communication since 600 AD.

But what makes metaphor special, other than it’s ability to conjure images better than Dumbledore, Gandalf, Merlin, and uh…Willow?… combined?

Metaphor is Unique to You

I’m going to give you a present. It’s a big brown burlap bag full of potential metaphors. All yours. For free. You can thank me later.

When you go to create an image via metaphor, you’re bringing all of your collective knowledge about life with it. You have forged connections between ideas in your brain that are as unique as your fingerprint or the first dainty flake of an incoming blizzard. When you compose a metaphor – a good, strong, bold metaphor – there is a very good chance that nothing like it exists anywhere else in the written world. It sounds crazy, but that’s the power of the sprawling, near-infinite universe of English.

Do you ever notice yourself, mid-story or essay, making very thematically similar comparisons? I for one am guilty of writing a lot of metaphors about battle, chivalry, and ancient lore. That’s because those are the things I like, the things I’ve exposed myself to over years and years of reading and writing and pop culture. My metaphors are Tolkien and George R. R. Martin and Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. They are SyFy channel and Star Wars and a huge unsorted bin of Lego bricks.

Food writers may make a lot of cooking and eating metaphors, relying on smell and taste to create their imagery. Sport writers may use a lot of athletic and physical terminology. How you create a comparison is going to be built, nay forged, from what you do in life and what has slowly seeped into the crevices of your brain, consciously and subconsciously.

And this is the greatest thing ever for you as a writer. It gives you license to embrace all that weird, counter-culture stuff you’ve been so greedily imbibing, an absolutely acceptable (probably even encouraged) environment to write quite literally, “what you know.”

The more unique the connections you’ve made between ideas, the more vivid and confident your imagery, the more your voice will boom out from the flat ink of the page, invade your reader’s head and keep them thinking about your work long after they’ve closed the book.

So go, be free, play word and idea association with yourself like a raving vagrant. Take chances are trust in your own skill that the images you create will work. If they don’t, if your imagination ran a bit too wild-pony-on-the-loose, don’t worry. You can always fix them in edit.

Better to have written a wild, never-before read dream than a boring, expected plunker.

"A great metaphor is like a white squirrel: rare, worth crawling through your yard with a zoom lens to see." -Oliver Gray (copyright right now)

“A great metaphor is like a white squirrel: rare, and worth crawling through your yard with a zoom lens to see.” -Oliver Gray (copyright right now)

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