On Writing: To Be Feared or Revered? Who's Occam and what's the Deal with the Razor?

In a previous blog (9/03/10) I used an Esther Freud quote to suggest that good writing is achieved through good editing, and it's with this lancing of unnecessary words that Occam’s Razor comes in.

In a literary sense, the rule of Occam's Razor is essentially: prune all inessential words. There are many variants but I’ve often wondered: who's Occam? And what’s this razor? Was Occam Sweeney Todd’s predecessor? Was he a murderer or a philosopher?

A dichotomy like this is important to resolve, so I decided to put a face to the name.

It turns out that the name Occam refers to British born William of Ockham (1288-1348), an intelligent, multi faceted Franciscan Friar who was a logician and theologian, and is known as the pioneer of nominolism as well as the father of epistemology and one of the major figures of scholasticism; all that despite never completing his Masters at Oxford University and being charged with accounts of heresy. Not bad for a University drop-out and possible heretic!

At least the image I now have of Occam/Ockham is less malevolent than before.

On Writing: Following the Pro's Rules

How are your writing habits? Could you be more organised? Do they yield constantly good quality work? Or do you often get writer’s block or feel the work is sloppy and needs shaping up?

Maybe you need some helpful tips to get you on your way?

If so, follow this link to the Guardian’s website where a collection of writers, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s forthcoming 10 Rules of Writing, have shared their top 10 rules for writers. I followed it and was prompted to compile my top 10; not my own top 10 though, the top 10 as chosen from the website – they’re professionals after all.

Here’s my Top 10 Rules of Writing

From the Pro's Top 10 Rules for Writers
(which is now printed on A4 paper and attached to the wall in front of me)

1) If it sounds like writing, rewrite it. (Elmore Leonard)

2) Read it aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentence are OK (prose rhythms are too complex to be thought out…). (Diana Athill)

3) Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones… (Roddy Doyle) *

4a) Keep a diary. The biggest regret of my life is that I never kept a journal or a diary… 4b)Beware of clichés… There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation. (Geoff Dyer) **

5) You see more sitting still than chasing after. (Jonathan Franzen)

6) Editing is everything. Cut until you can cut no more. What is left often springs into life. (Esther Freud) ***

7) Read as much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won’t need to take notes. (Al Kennedy) ****

8) When I’m deep inside a story, living it as I write, I honestly don’t know what will happen. I try not to dictate it, not to play God. (Michael Morpurgo) *****

9) Don’t overwrite. Avoid redundant phrases, the distracting adjectives, the unnecessary adverbs. Beginners, especially, seem to think that writing fiction needs a special kind of flowery prose, completely unlike any sort of language one might encounter in day-to-day life. This is a misapprehension about how the effects of fiction are produced, and can be dispelled by obeying Rule 1. To read some work by Colm Tolbin or Cormac McCarthy, for example, is to discover how a deliberately limited vocabulary can produce an astonishing emotional punch. (Sarah Waters) ******

10) Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet. (Zadie Smith) *******

* This reminded me of the late Alan Coren’s rule: Whatever the first thing is that comes into your head, don’t write that because that’s what everyone will write. When the second idea comes into your head, don’t write that either because that’s what the bright kids will write. Wait for the third idea, because that’s the one that only you will do.

** I similarly regret not keeping a diary throughout my childhood. I tried once when I was about 7 but only managed about 5 months. I regretted this more significantly after taking note of Francois Truffaut’s like minded quote about a film director’s total work is a diary kept throughout their lifetime.

*** This is the rule known as Occam’s Razor which I’ll be writing about in a post shortly.

**** He’s right about ‘good things will make you remember them’, one quote that has stuck with me recently was David Blunket’s summary of the Question Time/Nick Griffin debacle: They made a victim out of the perpetrator. 8 words that perfectly summed up the 10000’s of words used surrounding the event.

***** This style of writing illustrates the organic and majestic nature of the idea: spontaneous, unexpected, unpredictable, magical, natural, primal.

****** Overwriting is an easy trap to fall into. Unnecessary flourishes in language can be destructive.

******* It’s inevitable: how can you fully concentrate on a piece of writing when the world is at your fingertips. Sometimes it takes me two hours of surfing the web before I realise I’m not doing what I intended and have to click-off!

On Writing #6: Article in Public Domain

An article I wrote - which I mentioned in the On Writing #3 7/12/09 blog - is being published in February’s edition of Fibromyalgia Focus. Having been sent a pdf copy of the magazine for proofing I've had a sneak preview. My article lies near the centre of the magazine and covers two pages and includes one photograph. I'm excited and nervous.

All I can do now is hope that it resonates with the readers - and that the stabs at humour work.

I’m going to read through the magazine’s 24 pages and hope that my article fits snugly between the other articles.

It’s quite nerve racking anticipating what the general response will be, if any. Also, I'm not too keen on reading the article again: it’s been several weeks since I last read it and I’m sure I’ll see something in it that I will want to change, but then again it's been through a few edits so there shouldn't be anything too drastically in need of change.

Off the top of my head, there is one aspect of the article I would like to change: the photograph of my mother and I. The photograph is two years old. Ideally I would have liked to have issued a more up to date photo but sadly that wasn’t possible at the time due us being 300 miils apart.

On Writing #5: A Journalistic Alter Ego

I’m not a trained journalist but yesterday I had to step into a journalist’s shoes and interview somebody for a magazine article I am writing.

The article is about people with fibromyalgia who have had their benefits withheld having fallen foul of the government's latest scheme to catch benefit fraudsters.

To the supermarket cafe where I was to meet my first interviewee, I took an archaic Dictaphone, a notepad and a pen. I tried to project a proficient journalistic facade, harbouring the virtuosity of Woodward and Bernstein but that was dashed immediately: I approached the wrong lady; I was feeling lucky and thought I would take a punt, after all she both resembled the description I had been given and was giving me the proverbial eye - she confused me.

So I sensibly decided to just be myself and phoned my interviewee. She was only a few feet away (and several years younger than the woman I had just mistakenly accosted) waving at me - nice start.

Anyhow, the harmless blunder did well to break the ice and the interview went well, although the audio on the Dictaphone is hard to hear at times, partly due to a child nearby that occasionally screams and at one point, came right over and started fiddling with my interviewee’s handbag!

The article is in its early stages; however, I will be charting its progress in following blog posts.

On Writing #4: The stream of unconscious

In the summer of 98, I experienced a strange writing-related incident when I was working on a play entitled the Paper House.

The basic plot of The Paper House is: a couple with marital and medicinal problems are in their bedroom preparing for their vacation when they're interrupted by a young burglar who, it turns out, the husband had arranged to rob their house (but the burglar arrived one day too early). What happens next is a mock-courtroom set-up in the bedroom where the husband and wife battle against each other, their secrets and weaknesses are exposed, while the befuddled burglar has become an unwitting juror/hostage.

I wrote The Paper House with Edward Albee's Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in mind.

When I finished my first draft I printed off two copies and got my parents to read it out - I played the befuddled burglar. To my embarrassment I realised that the two 'characters' where caricatures of my mother and father, revealing what were to my mind their worst aspects. I wanted to stop the read-through, but carried on.

It was very strange watching this happen before me; first to see my parents reading it out aloud not realising what I had done, that was bizarre enough; second, recognizing how this play came directly out of my unconscious - it did come very naturally.

This incident demonstrated how cathartic writing can be, how everyday experiences can filter into writing, sometimes explicitly, othertimes unconsciously.

On Writing #3: A Tense Situation

As part of my first MA project I wrote an article for a magazine. The article was about my mother’s long term illness. Writing it was harder than I expected. Condensing 12 years worth of events into roughly 1200 words was a challenge in itself, but the hardest moment was when I handed it to my mother to read.

Before I began to write the article I talked to my mother about it, partly to refresh my memory, mainly to have her consent to continue. Once I had her consent and enough of a refresh to write about her illness it dawned on me that squeezing everything I wanted to write about into 1200 words (about 3 pages) was quite a chore. My main concern was that the condensation would trivialise my mother’s illness and fail to fully capture its nature.

After editing my first draft down to the bone, I took the second draft of the article to my mother and sat next to her while she read it. As she read I realised how tense I was; my right hand was firmly grabbing my left wrist. Even my mother's odd chuckle did'nt relieve the tenseness I felt. It was weird. My previous scribblings have been read by family, friends, tutors, judges, examiners and strangers, and I'd never felt this tense before.

Could it be because the article is the most personally important piece of writing I've ever done?

Fortunately when she finished reading it her verdict was a double thumbs up. It turned out to be theraputic for both of us.

Now the article may be published in February, I hope all those that read it who have the same or similar illness to my mother, will equally enjoy it.

On Writing #2: The Domain Name Game

For part of my MA course I have to create a website to market myself as a freelance writer. This task led to a dilemma: for the domain name, do I use my name or create a name?

I have been playing ping-pong with a barrage of ideas for a while. I want something fresh and simple; a name that is at once self-referential and suitably indicative of the kind of workmanship that’s up for hire; a name that twinkles and gives a knowing wink while projecting seriousness and professionalism. That said, some ideas have been unbelievably corny, but that's the nature of an inhibited brainstorm: there is no self-censorship, so some self-esteem-knocking howlers are expected to filter through - that, on the positive side, makes the better ideas seem better.

Below are some remnants of the dilemma induced brainstorm (Hurricane Andy). As you may notice, it turns into a Cyrano de Bergerac/Roxanne type routine.

Option (1) Variables of my name (My full name is Andrew Duncan Wright. When I was a teenager I became Andy. I’m also known as Wrighty)

www.adwright
www.andy-d-wright
www.andyman
www.handyandywright
www.a-d-Wright

Option (2) Setting myself up as a writer more explicitly

www.andywrite.
www.andyduncanwrite
http://www.copywright/
http://www.adwwriter/


Option (3) Something completely different

Modest – www.writingsolutionsforyou/
Modern & Modest – www.writingsolutions4u/
Direct - www.andywrightfrelancewriter/, andyfreelancewright
Direct with a touch of Moulin Rouge - www.andyduncancanwriteforyou/
Brash Confidence – www.stealthpen, www.heavensentsolutions
Wordy - www.writing-quandaries-quibbled
Arrogant - www.thegreatestsolutionsever, www.bestsiteintheworld/, www.grabyourcoatyouvepulled/
Exploitative - www.google2, www.stephenfri/, www.wrightstuff/

After a spell of deliberation, I made a decision and - as is always the case - whittled back to my first, most obvious idea: my name!

However, depending on how I evolve over the next few months, the domain name may have to change.

On Writing #1: The Writer vs The Editor

Whenever I’ve read a work of fiction, I’ve naturally assumed, perhaps naively so, that the content was entirely decided upon by the author. I never considered the work of the editor nor the extent of their influence. That was until I read The Final Cut, Sarah Churchwell’s revealing article in the Guardian’s 24/10/09 Review supplement.

In the article Churchwell illustrates the influence editors have had over literary giants such as Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. For me, the article was a shocking revelation; editors not only advise but also rewrite, sometimes making huge decisions on the author’s behalf? Inevitably I was led to the question: how much is the author the author?

During the 70’s, Raymond Carver was a respected writer, having written the well-received Will You Be Quiet, Please? (1976), but far from famous. Then he wrote the collection of short stories, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1980), which received massive critical recognition. The collection was noted for its laconic and ‘minimalist’ style, a style that was labelled ‘Carveresque’. This distinct writing style was not so much created by Carver but by his editor, Gordon Lish. It could therefore be said that Lish had, in effect, ‘made Carver’s reputation’.

When Lish was handed the manuscript for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love he proceeded to edit, after he finished he had altered Carver’s original book’s title (Beginners), the characters’ names, the chapter titles and even the nature of the stories. Churchill writes:

‘… Lish not only made the stories much shorter: he also made them more elliptical, more open-ended, darker, more violent and callous, more working class and less overtly intellectual… changing their tone and overall attitude to women.’

I never realised editors had the power to take such liberties. I assumed the brave or ruthless editorial actions Lish took would scorn the author’s credibility and breach the extent to which editors can contribute to an author's work. I was clearly wrong, or maybe the Carver and Lish relationship was unusual. To me it seems that their collaborative relationship was so intermingled that the editor should be credited as much as the author, otherwise is that not a doing a disservice to the editor and fooling the reader?

After reading Churchwell’s article I went to my own shelf of books and rifled through a dozen or so, searching for the names of credited editors. I could not find one. So who knows who made the final decision of the final piece? Has the content been toned down? Who is responsible for the quality of the writing? How much have the author's original intentions been swayed by those of their editor?

Ironically the closest I came to finding an editor was in Raymond Carver’s Short Cuts (1993), a collection of 9 stories from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love that inspired Robert Altman's film of the same name. The copyright goes to Tess Gallagher, Carver’s wife who has recently restored Carver’s original, un-Lished, version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, restoring even its title, Beginners (which now is 229 pages long, over 80 pages longer than before).

Afterthought........ Comparatively, in other works of art, for example painting, I wonder what it would have been like if there was an editorial artist who finished some of Dali's surreal landscapes, adding tones where they had consider it missing.

The editors of films are credited and well acknowledged. However, the real editors who notoriously use their power to cut are the producers and studio executives. But which one is superior: the director’s cut or the studio cut? The author’s vision or the populist package? Would you rather see Sergio Leone’s 229 minute cut of Once Upon A Time In America (1984) or the studio version which runs at 144 mintes?