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.It s not tillyou re hefting rock and timber in the sun that you learn how the landfalls and where the best shade is and where you want to flop down inthe late afternoon. I look around at what that technique has conjured here. Have a plan don t stick to it, I say. That s what I tell my studentssometimes.Discover the real work you need to write by writing it.Have a plan to make sure you start.But be prepared to wander off thechart. That s what I m talking about here, says Rob.All creativity shuffles, thus, between order and chaos makinga wall or a bronze statue, a gargoyle or a paragraph.Let the workcatch you in the act of executing a well-laid plan.If it doesn t findyou doing that, it probably won t find you at all.Then let it tellyou what it really needs to be.Try thisDid you ever try to make a cake or build a cabin or make some-thing from scratch that turned out better than you plannedbecause you abandoned the blueprint? Write about that.Random walkYou know the kind of thing I mean: a random assemblage of sen-tences amounting to something much less than Rob and Rhyl s water-garden.Reading prose that s carelessly composed feels like being ledon a random walk by someone who s trying to find out where they remeant to be taking you.It s the rubble, not the garden wall.It sunpleasant.How to avoid that kind of composition how to imposejust enough order on your writing is what this chapter s about.It sabout structure. 198 writing wellYou want your writing to cohere.You want it to hang together, asthough it could hang no other way.And you want this because yourreader wants it.When we read, we need to sense a design holding thenarrative, if it s a narrative, together and moving it along.Lack oforder, too much repetition, no forward movement or logic thesequalities kill a work.So how do you make your writing cohere? How do you move fromthe pile of rubble you start with your gathered and disorderlythoughts and the need to make something of them to the wallaround the garden and the small and shapely universe it contains?How do you do your thinking so that when it s done, you re just aboutready to write? How do you move from the chaos of research and con-ception to the necessary order of the written thing? For thinkingneeds to stay wild; if you micromanage it, it dwindles to a sad trickle.It can t be forced; it needs to be allowed.Writing, on the other hand,must be tidy at least, it must end up seeming so.How do you getfrom the wilds to the garden? That s what this chapter s about.I hold these six things to be true and essential.I neverleave home without them.1 The rough guide.A rough plan will serve you better than an elab-orate one.Writing has a way of making itself up as it goesalong.No one can know where it will go at the outset.2 The tight thesis.On the other hand, a tight thesis will serve youbetter than a loose one.Know what you re trying to say andkeep on knowing it, and keep on refining it, and keep onsaying it, in all its subtlety and complexity, sentence after sen-tence.(If it dawns on you in the writing that you re not sayingthat at all, then remake your thesis and start writing again.)Know where you stand and where you mean to go, and be clearabout it.Writing is not a fishing expedition or a sleepwalk.It sa hike with a map and a compass and plenty of time.3 Have a point and make it upfront.There are many ways to organ-ize thought on paper, but if in doubt, write every document shapely thoughts 199and every part of it deductively.Start, in other words, withyour main point, justify it and explore it.This is probably notthe best way to write a novel or a poem, but it s good for justabout everything else.4 Coherence happens sentence by sentence.The hardest and mostvital work of coherence happens at the level of the sen-tence.Concentrate on making your sentences good, one afteranother.Nothing no amount of mindmapping and planning matters more than this.Sentence making is the ultimatestructural discipline.Ask yourself how each sentence youwrite advances the story you re telling, the thesis you redemonstrating, the argument you re making, the love you reproclaiming, the recommendations you re submitting, thepolicy you re proposing.Get to the end of it rhythmically, eco-nomically and competently.Then join it to the one thatfollows (having already thought hard about how it followsfrom the one before).5 Paragraphs make perfect [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.It s not tillyou re hefting rock and timber in the sun that you learn how the landfalls and where the best shade is and where you want to flop down inthe late afternoon. I look around at what that technique has conjured here. Have a plan don t stick to it, I say. That s what I tell my studentssometimes.Discover the real work you need to write by writing it.Have a plan to make sure you start.But be prepared to wander off thechart. That s what I m talking about here, says Rob.All creativity shuffles, thus, between order and chaos makinga wall or a bronze statue, a gargoyle or a paragraph.Let the workcatch you in the act of executing a well-laid plan.If it doesn t findyou doing that, it probably won t find you at all.Then let it tellyou what it really needs to be.Try thisDid you ever try to make a cake or build a cabin or make some-thing from scratch that turned out better than you plannedbecause you abandoned the blueprint? Write about that.Random walkYou know the kind of thing I mean: a random assemblage of sen-tences amounting to something much less than Rob and Rhyl s water-garden.Reading prose that s carelessly composed feels like being ledon a random walk by someone who s trying to find out where they remeant to be taking you.It s the rubble, not the garden wall.It sunpleasant.How to avoid that kind of composition how to imposejust enough order on your writing is what this chapter s about.It sabout structure. 198 writing wellYou want your writing to cohere.You want it to hang together, asthough it could hang no other way.And you want this because yourreader wants it.When we read, we need to sense a design holding thenarrative, if it s a narrative, together and moving it along.Lack oforder, too much repetition, no forward movement or logic thesequalities kill a work.So how do you make your writing cohere? How do you move fromthe pile of rubble you start with your gathered and disorderlythoughts and the need to make something of them to the wallaround the garden and the small and shapely universe it contains?How do you do your thinking so that when it s done, you re just aboutready to write? How do you move from the chaos of research and con-ception to the necessary order of the written thing? For thinkingneeds to stay wild; if you micromanage it, it dwindles to a sad trickle.It can t be forced; it needs to be allowed.Writing, on the other hand,must be tidy at least, it must end up seeming so.How do you getfrom the wilds to the garden? That s what this chapter s about.I hold these six things to be true and essential.I neverleave home without them.1 The rough guide.A rough plan will serve you better than an elab-orate one.Writing has a way of making itself up as it goesalong.No one can know where it will go at the outset.2 The tight thesis.On the other hand, a tight thesis will serve youbetter than a loose one.Know what you re trying to say andkeep on knowing it, and keep on refining it, and keep onsaying it, in all its subtlety and complexity, sentence after sen-tence.(If it dawns on you in the writing that you re not sayingthat at all, then remake your thesis and start writing again.)Know where you stand and where you mean to go, and be clearabout it.Writing is not a fishing expedition or a sleepwalk.It sa hike with a map and a compass and plenty of time.3 Have a point and make it upfront.There are many ways to organ-ize thought on paper, but if in doubt, write every document shapely thoughts 199and every part of it deductively.Start, in other words, withyour main point, justify it and explore it.This is probably notthe best way to write a novel or a poem, but it s good for justabout everything else.4 Coherence happens sentence by sentence.The hardest and mostvital work of coherence happens at the level of the sen-tence.Concentrate on making your sentences good, one afteranother.Nothing no amount of mindmapping and planning matters more than this.Sentence making is the ultimatestructural discipline.Ask yourself how each sentence youwrite advances the story you re telling, the thesis you redemonstrating, the argument you re making, the love you reproclaiming, the recommendations you re submitting, thepolicy you re proposing.Get to the end of it rhythmically, eco-nomically and competently.Then join it to the one thatfollows (having already thought hard about how it followsfrom the one before).5 Paragraphs make perfect [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]