Be Specific!

Be specific. Make the mundane memorable.

I've been on a binge of nonfiction reading this summer, which is odd since fiction is usually my go-to summer read. But the heart wants what the heart wants, and this summer, my heart wants nonfiction. I am reading it first for the content, but it's hard not to read with one eye on the writing style, which has ranged from the highly academic, loaded down with the kinds of words and sentences found in an Ivy League senior thesis, to warm, simple and intimate, elucidated through anecdote.

The latest nonfiction on my bed table is AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD, by Barbara Brown Taylor, whose personal and connected style really speaks to me. She does occasionally get lost in a wilderness of metaphor, but her ability to ground spiritual things in the real world is powerful and engaging. I realized today that part of her magic comes from being specific.  Here's the sentence that pointed me in that direction:

While I was a cocktail waitress I once spilled a whole Singapore Sling down the back of an Australian woman's red fox coat.

 I read this sentence several times. It seemed so exotic and interesting to me. Then I stepped back. This was no adventure on the high seas. What was she really saying? "One time when I was a waitress I spilled a drink on a customer." BORING!  But make it specific and it's almost like a travel brochure. We visit Singapore and Australia and go fox hunting in England all in one sentence, and suddenly this mundane bit of narrative is rich and textured.

For most of us, specificity belongs to the realm of revision, until we're practiced enough for it to become second-nature. On a first draft, you're capturing ideas and broad strokes. It's not the time to linger over every word and wonder "Is this specific enough?" But when you revise, look for those places where you have chosen the overly general word. Then take it further. Not just a waitress, a cocktail waitress. Not just a drink, a Singapore Sling. Not just a customer, a woman. What kind of woman? An Australian woman. Where was the drink spilled? Down her back. What was she wearing? A coat. What kind of coat? A red fox coat. Bam. Be specific and the mundane becomes the memorable. A rose by any another name may smell just as sweet, but it will affect your reader differently.

Elegy to the Typewriter

I started thinking about this post two years ago, when I heard that the last typewriter factory in the world had closed its doors.  I felt such a wave of grief over this news.  I still remember when my parents gave me my first typewriter, in third grade.  It represented to me their understanding that I loved to write, their belief in me as a writer, and their permission to make it official.  That typewriter stayed with me for over twenty years, before it developed so many personality quirks (truly a ghost in the machine) that I could no longer use it reliably for anything meant for public consumption.

I confess.  I don't use a typewriter anymore.  I haven't for years.  But I still felt so saddened and heartbroken at the notion that such machines had truly gone the way of the dinosaur.

As it turns out, the "last typewriter factory" story wasn't entirely accurate.  The rumors of its death have been exaggerated, though I doubt we can say the exaggeration was great.  Typewriters are still being made, but I wonder for how long.  

We may love the idea of the typewriter more than the machine itself.  It represents a vigorous physical relationship between writer and creation.  Creating on a typewriter is not quiet and subdued, something you do at the beach or the coffee shop or in a secluded garden.  It's loud.  It hammers and bangs and dings and zips.  When the words flow, the typewriter announces it with rapid, staccato urgency.  And when the words slow, there is an ominous, suspenseful sound, footsteps stalking the hallway and pausing to listen at your door.  Mistakes are rocks over which you must stumble, realities you must face and deal with, requiring effort, and correcting tape or liquid paper, to remove.  This is a different animal than writing by hand or by computer.

Does this difference in the physical act impact a writer's style?  I wonder.  Are the works of the typewriter's heyday stylistically distinct from those created before and after?  You could make an argument that they are, that the peak of the typewriting era was also the emergence of rugged styles such as Hemingway, Heller, Salinger - the Americans riding in and driving out the more rococo prose of 19th century novelists.

Some writers (Harlan Ellison, for example) still swear by composition on the typewriter.  Is it a matter of age and generation?  Are there young writers today, under the age of 20, for example, who have even experienced writing by typewriter?  I imagine they are rare and that, like the quill pen, the pounding power of creation by typewriter is becoming an oddity, a curiosity, drifting into a past beyond retro and landing at last on the shores of antique, where it will not be lost but rather kept alive by a small but ever-present order of devotees who will share their love of this John Henry of a machine with anyone who cares to hear.