Three or four weeks ago, there were a number of free books on writing and publishing available for a short time. I am able to see these deals courtesy of iReaderIQ's RSS feed. It's a really great feed and I highly recommend adding it to your list. Barbara Baig, the author of the book, has a sturdy looking webpage over at www.barbarabaig.com. The non-free version of the book is available now for $11.43 on Amazon.The title intrigues me. Though I have a lot of experience in writing fiction and poetry, exploring whatever Barbara Baig has to say on the topic has intrigued me. It's got a solid five star average review rating on Amazon.com from ten reviewers.
The introduction is rather onerous. It does feel like this book is written for the person who has a fear of writing a sentence, or someone who has never done it before, or someone who is just really bad at it. I am not that person. However, the idea that she keeps peppering around the initial pages is that she has these exercises that can help build the skills of the prospective writer. She also writes that she's not going to try to teach the reader how to write a book or a genre, or how to sell that book. So, this is keeping me weakly tethered to the book despite the feeling that I am not the target audience.
Some things she points out are things that I believe: writing is a matter of development more than it is a matter of talent. If it was just talent, Stephen King would have come out of the womb holding a knife and a pen. He surely had to work on his talent (I really ought to bite the bullet and buy his book on writing).
However, over and over I'm brought over to the realization that she is trying to reach the people who don't write. I guess that's a good thing. Writing is an important aspect of reflection over of beliefs, thoughts, one's life, and an exercise in creativity.
Observe the World Around You
This is an interesting exercise I believe. Barbara Baig writes about how one ought to listen into conversations and write them down, look around places, and describe what you see, that sort of thing, as a means to 'collect' material that you can go over later. However, I think that's an interesting point. The exercise will help one learn how to fill out the interesting details which make a description of a scene more interesting. Describe their clothing, the way they talk, maybe body language that they use (my thought), etc. Living in Korea, most TV I get is in Korean (duh!). Sometimes it can be fun to make up funny dialogue for the actors or hosts or whatever they are.
Moving past random freewriting, she moves into focused free writing. This seems to be a good direction to go. Thus, moving the non-writer from not writing, to writing random (likely trash - even she calls the likely results 'junk'), she moves into something a bit more focused. However, when she goes into the benefits, she writes, "You can use it for anything: Writing a memo or a letter or an e-mail..." which suggests she is really *really* trying to talk to those who don't do these things already.
However, I do get a few things here and there that I think are interesting to me, even as someone who has been an amateur writer for about 24 years.
Read to Write
This is a common theme, it seems, amongst all the books about writing that I've run into thus far: read, read, read. They all seem to write about prospective writers who don't want to read. They just want to write. Of course, that's a common bit of nonsense. Where the advice differs is on what should be read. Barbara Beig rebels against literature and proposes that one should read just for pleasure. One should ignore the analytic tools given to literature students.
This is where I would rebel. I think great literature should be studied for what makes it great. I think a good writer does need to be more than just a reader for pleasure. I think a good writer needs to know how to dismantle a story to see how it works. I think keeping a reading journal helps me remember what I read as well as helps me get a little deeper into the reading of it than I might go if I were simply to read it and then put it down. She writes that reading what you like will allow you to 'unconsciously absorb a writer's style and techniques.' I do believe this might be true to an extent. However, I think doing it in this way will at best result in a superficial reading which might not have the best result one might hope for.
Barbara brings up Eliot's famous quip, "Amateurs borrow; professionals steal." But then she goes onto saying that stealing is plagiarism and should be avoided. I don't think people generally understand what this means exactly. It doesn't really mean that one ought to out and out rip off a text in its entirety or partly and present it as one's own work of art. I think what it means is that a great writer writes the best words and the best descriptions that are available. If one is going to come up with words from the mouth of a dictator character in a story, why not choose the words of a politician or judge? ie., There are reams of material from presidents and judges and other fascist type politicos that have said things that might be appropriate for a character in a story. That's what I believe is meant by that.
Where have our imaginations gone?
Well, according to Barbara Baig, it's gone down the tubes. The TV tube, the Internet tube, and glossy magazines. Well, I can't say as I follow her argument here. I remember reading a great book about Osamu Tezuka, one of the great pioneers of the 20th century famous for his Astroboy or Atomu character. He said that he watched a lot of movies: as many movies as he could. He would watch and rewatch them repeatedly. I don't know what the answer about imagination is, or even if there is one. More likely I suspect that it's a myth that people today have inferior imaginations to those in the past.
Also, going to the argument that folks are less literate than they were in the past. It's hard to say. On the one hand, the book and the story were the entertainment of olde. Want entertainment? Well, dad, or grandpa or ma will pick up a book and read it to the family. Or, read it yourself. Also, when one reads older story books, one can be astonished at how even children's books relied on its young readers to have impressive vocabularies.
So, what's happened to our imaginations? Well, I think for many of us, our imaginations have been carried on by the various mediums which others create. This, as a general truth. With the artists being the exceptions and the ones who liked to create their own worlds. Reading a book might require the reader to imagine the setting and characters. However, I don't feel comfortable with the idea that TV sucks out creative potential.
Barbara Baig spends a lot of time going over the reasons why many people find writing intimidating. Her first exercise is what she calls 'freewriting.' In essence, she says that it's a period of 10 minutes in which one is to write without inhibition. At the conclusion of these ten minutes she declares that you have just become a writer. I don't know if I agree with that optimism. It would be like saying that one is a doctor once one has proscribed a Tylenol. I do believe it takes a bit more than a few hundred random words to qualify one.
She makes a distinction between two types of writers: one-step, and, get-it-right-the-first-time (hyphens as she wrote them). She describes the latter process as figure out what you want to say, make an outline, write. As you write, write perfectly. But, what she says following is something that I agree with and something that I have taught as an essay writing skill: if you try to write perfectly, you are trying to use two parts of the brain at the same time: the creative and the critical. As she says, the critical side will step in and inhibit the output of the former.
Where I differ, at this point, on her point, is that I believe outlining and figuring out what you want to say are a part of the process. I use the brainstorming method or, as she calls it, 'free writing' to accomplish this. Then, after I am finished, I use the critical side to figure out what's wrong, what can be improved, until I'm reasonably satisfied. After this is done, I go back to the creative side and follow the outline. I don't have to worry about making mistakes about going in the wrong place or 'writing myself into a corner,' because the guide is already made. If I am inspired to go somewhere different in the middle of the text, that's just fine. However, I will first adjust the outline and improve upon it. Then, I will continue following the outline. This allows me to make sure that I am indeed on the right track.
December 26, 2011
As I progress through the Barbara Baig's book, I am also using one of her exercises spoken about for beginning writers: free writing. This is where one writes without consideration of anything other than to move the pencil (or in this case, the cursor on my netbook). I have now performed this exercise six times.
As she warns, most of this stuff will be junk. So far, I have to agree with her that it is all trash. However, I'm not ready to say that the exercise itself is trash. Perhaps its a good exercise simply to cast off the pressure of writing a good story and simply write with just the pressure to write. I have used this time to describe settings, feelings, and a few other things. I do have the feeling that this is a useful exercise.
This leads me to another point that she makes about the two kinds of writing: public writing and private writing. Here she makes an important point about typical writing teachers and her own unique method. Many teachers, she writes, tell students to write as if no one is going to read their work, and then allow people to read their work. This contradiction or lie does seem to be problematic. Baig stresses that this is a mistake, that it 'blurs the lines' and thus loses the distinction. I am thinking that this is a valuable point. While I have practised this, I have not really thought about it.
There are dark places in my imagination that I will not bring my wife, family, or friends to. I don't think these words would see the light of day if I blurred the lines that Baig pointed out.
Anti-Academic
I'm not really sure why she's so anti-academic. As she writes about how bad writing in school gets read and graded, vs in public it doesn't get read or graded (well, probably it does get a dismissive thought before being discarded). She writes that this is probably due to the academic training these writers receive. “... they are imitating the abysmally bad academic writing they have to read for their courses.)” I can't help but wonder if her academic experience was really so negative.
Getting in the Habit of Telling Stories
Baig suggests going to different sources to find stories and getting in the habit of telling them. So, eavesdrop into a conversation and write what's being said. It's not necessary, she notes, to keep a pad or listening device to the conversation. Simply write what you remember after the conversation has taken place, as well as anything else that might be relevant to the conversation.
Academic Writing
Barbara Baig actually spends quite a bit of time discussing academic writing, and the process in which she breaks down the number of tasks and then uses those tasks to create a paper. While I agree with a lot of those practices, and in large part followed many of those processes, and even found a few additional ideas that I might have used as a student to give it a try, she does leave out one of the most important aspects of writing for a teacher: the examination or test. The process she describes is for the research essay, not for the test or examination.
On Being a Writer
Barbara Baig makes an important point about how writing can and should be an activity for people who are interested in it. There are people who ski, but not necessarily professionally: many do it for a bit of fun. But then, she's talking about being a writer. I think she fails to see the distinction here. She says that you can be a writer without doing it professionally. But, would someone who likes to ski a few weekends over the winter call him or herself a skier, or someone who plays baseball on Saturdays a baseball player? No, they wouldn't. They would say, “I'm a teacher. My hobby is writing. Or, my hobby is skiing.” So, I don't think she has it straight here.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this book fails to accomplish what it states in the title: How to become a writer, for precisely the reason I just pointed out. She hasn't taught us how to be writers. She has taught us how to write. And, I'll venture to say that I have learned a number of things, have found her exercises interesting, and am actually practising one of them with plans to try some more of them. She has tons of solid advice. However, she fails to define what a writer is—or at least she fails to understand what a writer is. Perhaps a better title to this book would be “How to Become Someone who can Write,” or “How to Write.” Some title like this would surely be more accurate than on how to become a writer. I don't feel that I have discovered the road map to this destination. Several times she says that it's the journey to the destination that means the most, but for some of us who pick up this book hoping that it's a guide to the destination might be disappointed. However, it is an excellent book to assist many in the journey: from the beginning to around the middle. I've said this several times and I'm saying it again: this book has excellent exercises in it to promote the growth of skills required to become a writer. In fact, some of the ideas, such as the private vs. public writing space is an important distinction that I hadn't really articulated before either to myself or to students. I believe that there is a lot in this book that can help me become a better teacher as I try to tease words out of students.
Another weakness or aspect of improving writing skills which she does not seem to recognize is that skills themselves can be developed independently to improve the overall. That is to say, she often seems to ignore or put down the usefulness of learning how to spell things or how to correctly modify a verb to arrive at a grammatically correct sentence, or how to syntactically order a sentence properly. And, in fact, she has a good point about staging it into another part of the writing process. However, I think that it could be pointed out that grammar and spelling, choosing the correct words (or finding the best words), is something that can be developed using different exercises.
In conclusion, I believe there is a lot of value in this book. I do not believe, however, that it delivers on the premise of the title.
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