“WHAT MAKES ME NERVOUS IS THE WRITING.”
Every day, Quora sends me questions from writers that begin like this: “How do I write a…” The thing they’re tasked with writing is irrelevant. The question always makes me shake my head, because the answer seems so simple: Sit your butt in the chair and do it. But is it that simple? Yes. Yes it is. It is that simple-- IF you have the one single, secret ingredient. The simplest version of that ingredient was just handed to me by a high-school chemistry teacher. We were talking about her efforts to get an advanced degree. She said that the monkey wrench in her degree program was the writing. It made her nervous. But one day, that changed. It changed when she finally clarified for herself what she wanted from the program. Then, the writing stopped being a struggle. Instead, it became simplicity because bot she and the writing were charged with that one ingredient: Purpose. “Once I knew what I wanted, it became simple. Now it had meaning.” Purpose is the pole star of writing. When you’re tasked with writing something--anything--purpose is your guiding light. This is especially true if you don’t consider yourself a writer. Don’t know your purpose? That’s probably because you’re sitting alone in a room staring at a computer screen. Get out of that room. Go talk to someone about the challenge. Say, “Hey, I have to write about BLANK.” Have a conversation. Let the other person ask you questions that require you to explain it. During the conversation, an idea will begin to form. Purpose will begin to peek its little head over the edge of your problem and whisper, "Here I am!" You’ll begin to feel an electrical charge of meaning and direction. You will experience the joy of moving from confusion to control. Go back and immediately sit down to write. Yes, it will still take more writing than you might want to do. That’s part of the process. Just let the brain dump happen. Shape it and control the words later. Right now, just let them flow. Know your purpose and your writing will pop. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95 For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!)
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OBVIOUSLY, THIS IS A DUMB MISTAKE
Write with more impact! More punch! More zip and zest! More verve! But, how? What magic must there be in making words sizzle on the page, and perhaps leap from an announcer’s lips as if frantic newts scampering away from a hot griddle of garter snakes? Obviously, you have no idea. But one of the first, obvious things to do is stop using a word like, “Obviously.” Want to see? Look at how much punch is in this one line after removing the adverb: You have no idea. That word is obviously standing between your idea and your reader. We’re going to call that word a “crutch word.” It’s one of those words that we lean on every day because it’s there and it’s easy and we got used to it when we were small children. Another word we got used to as even smaller children was, “Goo.” As in, “Goo goo.” We stopped saying that one. Is it not time we stopped goo’ing up the works using words that don’t move things along? Should we not stop allowing our words to slump and slumber? Shouldn’t we stop dragging our fat sentences across the page like lead-filled plaster casts of broken body parts? Instead, why aren’t we vaulting into the air on vital, rippling musculatures of verbal lean? And is that preceding paragraph awful? Yes! But you’ve read this far. Why? Two reasons. One, there’s an initial promise of something better and more profitable. Two, that paragraph was not expected. It’s fast. It flies. It surprises. And it doesn’t do that by leaning on crutch words like, “Obviously.” As has been established in previous episodes of this missive, one must write fast—even if it means committing grammatical transgressions like “fast,” which ought to correctly be an adverb like quickly or (less correctly) “fastly.” (Good grammar is optional if the impact is more important.) Write! Write as quick as silver streaks across a red hot skillet. Whatever that means. It sounds fast. Then, after writing, one must edit. Edit it. Ed-it. Edit. Let’s say you’re writing a 60-second radio script. That needs to be about 150 words of comin’ out swingin’. It might be swingin’ like a punch-drunk fighter in what will be an unfortunate face-down situation on the canvas. Or it might be swingin’ like a big band in front of a floor full of hep cats cuttin’ a rug to all that jazz, daddio. Or it might be swinging like an old tire at the end of a knotted rope tied to the branch of a grandaddy oak tree on a steamy summer day where the only respite from the swelter is in the shade of that green, leafy canopy while mom makes an icy pitcher of lemonade and a lazy banjo plinks away in the background. Three different ways to swing. But not one of them says, “Obviously, you want to swing.” Or, none of them says that right now, that is. Earlier, a crutch word may have been in there, back when your relentless scribe was in a speed-writing brain dump onto the page in an effort to puke up anything that might make sense here. After the dumpage, I went back and used my pen like a surgeon’s scalpel, slicing away the fat and bother. If you want more punch in your prose, you can’t saddle it upon the threadbare horse blanket of words that don’t spur it into action. What words are they? We’re talking about words like, “Obviously,” “Actually,” “Basically,” “Literally,” (which is literally almost never used properly), “So,” “Well,” “Look,” “Awesome,” (almost always never true), “Seriously,” “Totally,” “Essentially,” “Really,” “Just,” “Right,” and “Very.” Oh, and let’s not forget that super-annoying crutch word of the 21st century... “Super.” AUUGGHH! There, I said it. Super awesome or what? Write your brain-dump blather draft. Then, make it make more sense. After that, go through it again and ask yourself about every single word, “Do I need this?” You will often find yourself loaded up on crutch words standing in the way of actual impact, magnitude, swagger or sizzle. Cutting out such words helps your other words talk smack. And while you’re at it, be certain to kill, kill, kill your darlings. There will always be some kind of cuteness in there, all fuzzy and fun and rolling around right in the way of getting things done. And you adore it. Crush it! Squash it like a bug! Execute it with extreme prejudice! What exactly is a darling and how doth one spot it? Good question for another time. I have already overstayed my welcome. Words good. Edits better. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95 BUT ON SALE RIGHT THIS MINUTE FOR 3.99! For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) WORDS GOOD! BANG BAD?
Screamer. Startler. Gasper. Shriek. Pling. Bang. There is a single, potent mark that goes by many names like these. Are you inserting that mark into your writing as a tool of emphasis? And if so, are you plinging yourself in the eye, screaming at your reader, startling your message off the page, gasping with every word, eventually shrieking into the void, and banging yourself into oblivion? Each of the aforementioned words (pling, et al) is a synonym for what is one of the most declarative and most overused pieces of punctuation in contemporary English: the “!”. It is also known as the exclamation mark or exclamation point. Granted, this is probably not be about you and your writing. But guaranteed, you know such a writer. You? You are more likely a victim of this punctuational assault on the senses. And it can help to know a little about the weaponry of one’s adversaries in an effort to disarm them. One great place to start is with the great F. Scott Fitzgerald, contender for Great American Novelist status as author of The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was mentoring Hollywood journalist Sheila Graham, who had literary aspirations. She asked Fitzgerald to look at something she had written. According to Ms. Graham, Fitzgerald read the piece, edited it, and told her… “Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” In other words: Ah-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha--ha-ha-ha! HA! HA!! Nobody needs that. The person who needs it least is the joke teller. When you tell a joke that way, you lose the telling and become the joke. And the comedy is not pretty. That said, the exclamation point has a colorful history. Really! It has been places and seen things. It may have originated in Latin, evolving from “io,” which was an exclamation of joy. Medieval copyists would write “io” at the end of a sentence to express joy. Gradually, the “i" was moved on top of the “o”. And eventually, the “o” evolved to a dot, and the rest is history! It’s possible that you’ve used an old manual typewriter that has no exclamation point key. Instead, you were required to type an apostrophe, backspace and type a period. (That should give you some idea about how frequently one was intended to use the mark.) Back in the day, secretaries and proofreaders called the mark by perhaps the most glorious of its many names. And that name was, “Bang.” Why bang? The fun option is that it’s a reference to comic-book style, where a gunshot is indicated by “!”. Computer hacker slang has borrowed the “bang” descriptor, and also uses the words “shriek” and “pling” to indicate “!”. And yes, “!” has become a fixture in social media and in texting. But I’ve even seen it used to excess in BUSINESS EMAIL!!!!! HOLY COW!!!!!!! Let’s revisit the word “pling” for a moment. It’s a lovely word. It sounds like the barest tap of a tiny hammer on fine crystal. That sound, used once, can be pleasing. Less pleasing is when that tack hammer BANGS that crystal over and over until there is breakage and crashage and a gigantic mess of epic proportions. Yes, from joyful to junk with just a few keystrokes. When used with relentless abandon, the exclamation point stops being a mark and becomes the message. The message is, “I have nothing to say. Words escape me. But I possess a giant bag of hammers and I will use them all right here and now.” The “!” is a single kiss. But some writers are sucking face in the backseat with their date and nobody needs to see that. The problem of the “!” is a problem of emotion. A writer might have powerful feelings, but mistakes the mark for conveying those feelings with power. Not so. Excessive use of the mark is thrashing about in a cage, the emotion imprisoned by a lack of verbal control and command. Replacing the mark with potent wording is far superior in conveying meaning. Let’s express this as succinctly as a tweet, shall we? “I hate exclamation points!!!! They suck!!!! Stop doing it!!!!!!!” OK. But what about… “Every time you use the mark, it’s a dagger thrust into the heart of your reader. Each exclamation point kills your message, your reader and you just a little bit more.” Each of those thoughts will fit Twitter. But one of these things is not like the other. THE FIRST ONE IS SCREAMING ABOUT ME!!!! The second one is about someone more important, and the injury being done to them. Persuasion does not come at the end of a bang! Persuasion doesn’t scream, shriek or pling. Persuasion comes at the end of phrasing that matters. Try turning the scream into a whisper. It’s easier to hear. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) DON’T BALTER ABOUT, YOUR BEER-SOAKED BABOON!
Yes, today’s Good Word is “balter.” The word "balter” means to dance artlessly, without grace or skill. In other words, it's dancing like a lot of geeky guys do at their junior prom. It might even be how we dance in this missive. Words Good does not claim to bring any particular art to you or your writing. But it does bring a great degree of clumsy enthusiasm. And occasionally, it offers up a fun word without any clear need for that word. However, with a word like “balter,” is "need" really the issue? Balter is about the fun, the thrills, the joy of lex. Words? Good! Balter? Better! As great as they are, you can’t run around plugging big, unusual words like “brobdingnagian” into your everyday conversation. But a word like “balter” can find a home in your daily chatter. Let’s say your friend Walter gets drunk and tries to dance yet again. You can call him Baltering Walter. Perhaps he was even that beer-soaked, baltering baboon at the top of the page. “Balter” is a good enough word that you could even start a whole movement about it. You might start printing and selling T-shirts that proudly proclaim, “Balter on!” and it becomes a thing. As an alternative to the annual spring debutante ball, where fresh young flowers are introduced to society, you’ll begin seeing that annual satirical rite, The Annual Autumn Balter Ball, where besotted balterers celebrate the death of the season among the brown, crunchy leaves of another wasted summer. And just by the way, speaking of trees… Whilst researching “balter” for your dining and dancing pleasure, Google informed me that “People also ask, ‘What is a Dendrophile?’” I had to ask, too. It sounds like something the cops might be able to run a sting for. "Let's nail those disgusting dendrophiles, damn it!" Indeed, knowing something about the word “dendrites” did not inform any further understanding of dendrophilia, which sounds just a little bit dirty. Seems a “dendrophile” is a tree lover. So very quickly, while baltering about with Google, your artless scribe succumbed to the juvenile joys of fabulous phonemes with no regard for usefulness or practicality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Anyway, Words Good Good Word for Daily Use is “balter,” to dance artlessly, without grace or skill. Bet you can find a place for it. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) THE BLANK PAGE IS AN IDIOT.
It will not do as you tell it. If you try asking nicely, it just scoffs. You can try threats. “Hey, paper boy! There’s open flame over here. I have matches, a lighter, even a gas cooktop. I can toss you in and watch you go up in flames and smoke like some kind of inhuman sacrifice to the saints in a witch trial by writers who hate the blankness of your pagery!” Guaranteed: the page will merely look back at you, blankly. It has the upper hand and it knows. “Say something!”, you yell. Nothing. If only you could find the fight that makes this passive ass cooperate in a way that lets you both get on with it and move on to bigger, more profitable problems. This vignette brought to you by Everything Is Nice. But it’s better when it’s not. Do you want to make your writing more interesting? Immediately? Throw it against the wall. Stomp on it. Yell at it. And let it fight back. One reason why so much writing is so flat is that there is so no conflict. People (thankfully) try to avoid conflict in daily life. But one place to embrace the fight is on the blank page. And it doesn’t even need to be the good fight, It can be the nastiest, pettiest, most mean-spirited little spat you ever had. Have a tug of war. Have a battle of wits. Recount a witlessness in which you’re forced to participate. Pine for someone you love who hates you back. Recount the tale about how you use your Jedi lightsaber in heavy traffic against New Jersey drivers. (If you’re from New Jersey, no apologies. Your drivers are offensive zipnods.) Write about the time you were banging heads with someone and it led to blood and stitches. Write about a fistfight and how it feels--especially if you’ve never had one. Fight with sleep and let sleep lose. Writing an advertisement? Describe the deep-seated hatred you feel for the advertiser’s product. When the blank page is mocking you, turn it around. Mock the page back. Show it who’s boss, especially if you feel you’re not. Fake it. Bring the fight and turn the page’s mockery into full cooperation. The blank page is a bully, and a weakling at that. Don’t fight the page. Fight ON the page. Be strong and it will bend to your will. And write more than you need to. It will share the abundance of gems you never knew you had at hand. Cheers, Blaine Parker Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in Park City LIGHTNING BRANDING ON AMAZON The Kindle edition of our new book is now available at Amazon for the bargain price of $19.95. For details about our new Lightning Branding courses, both do-it-yourself and we-do-it-with-you editions, click here. (There's even a video of us!) |
AuthorBlaine Parker is prone to ranting about any and all things related to brand. In many ways, he is a professional curmudgeon. While there is no known vaccine for this, the condition is also not contagious. Unless you choose it to be so. Archives
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