Martin Espada wrote this advice to young poets in The Republic of Poetry, but it applies to all writers, bloggers included.
Advice to Young Poets
Never pretend
to be a unicorn
by sticking a plunger on your head.
Let me just extract a few editorial lessons here.
1) “Never pretend.” Good words are always true. Period. Of course, they may not be factual. But they are true. Tim O’Brien calls this the difference between happening truth and story truth. In fact, facts and statistics can lie. That is, they can be used to imply conclusions that aren’t true. (This doesn’t mean you should pretend something is factual when it isn’t, ala A Million Little Pieces.) But it does mean writers and poets and bloggers create truth. Why else should we bother to write?
2) Be a unicorn. Good writers make extraordinary goals. Good writing transforms the reader and the writer. It is no exaggeration to say that I was transformed this past week by reading Cormac McCarthy’s stunning novel, The Road. When readers are transformed by a writer, they will come back for more.
3) Crap may shock an audience, but it will still smell like crap. Another way to say this: Don’t be a Scheisskopf. The grimy details of your past aren’t necessarily the best source for inspiring others. Neither are the evils of the world. We live in a redeemed world. Conflict is often filthy and gritty, true, but a writer’s goal is not filth or grit for its own sake. A writer’s goal is truth.
Like I said a few days ago. Every writer has a call to action. A novelist wants the most simple action of all—for the reader to keep turning the page.
Different bloggers have different calls to action. I’m just looking for good conversation and comments. In a comment here on my post Great Content Needs Great Design, Karin said she was looking for questions (among other things). Liz Strauss is completely straightforward about what she wants her readers to do: “take conversations here back to their readers.” If that’s not enough, she clarifies even more:
The idea was that anyone who took the discussion back to their blog would let me know. Then I would give that blog recognition on Successful-Blog for extending the conversation into the blogosphere–making the community larger, the dialogue bigger, all of us smarter, better and our businesses stronger.
Sometimes, in our eagerness to reach a specific goal, we manipulate readers. We lie to them—in form or content or style or substance. We deceive them, so they will do what we want. This is why Brian Clarke doesn’t like the term “link bait,” I think. It suggests the goal is of hooking a reader is more important than the way we hook them.
There’s only one way to hook a reader. Good words. Good words have truth and beauty. Truth and beauty will transform the world.
(By the way, The Road is quite seriously one of the most powerful books I have read in years. My wife and I both read it. At the end, you will not just shed a few tears, you will be undone.)
(Sigh. Sometimes I’m so idealistic I think I’m a fool.)
{ 23 comments }
There’s only one way to hook a reader. Good words. Good words have truth and beauty. Truth and beauty will transform the world.
Those words are an example of what they speak.
I’m a sucker for a good book recommendation (because I’m always looking for more good words to read). I’ve requested The Road from my library, so maybe by this weekend I’ll be reading it. Thanks in advance.
I think the point of good words having both truth AND beauty is important. Like you noted, some truth stinks and we really don’t need to read the smelly stuff. But if there’s beauty in that truth, then it’s worth reading. I’ve also read words that sound beautiful but don’t have truth (though this is more unlikely than the reverse).
It seems to me sometimes that good words are hard to come by, for both readers and writers (but when I find a writer of good words I stick with them). Sometimes I think we, as writers, write to express inner longings or conflicts not knowing whether those words will be good. We know they’re true, but until they connect with another person they may not seem beautiful.
My (long) two cents.
Liz, you just made my day.
A Musing Mom, you have to tell me what you think of The Road! I loaned it to my dad, but I what I really want to do is read it again. (But I’ve moved on to Freakonomics and a Joyce Carol Oates collection of H. P. Lovecraft. It’s an odd pairing.)
See, that’s what was wrong with Macbeth. He was the most eloquent guy in the room. But beneath the beauty of his words was a lying heart. Maybe that was the biggest tragedy in the play… not simply that he died, or killed the king, but that truth and beauty never kissed.
Oh, but L.L., they do kiss at the end when it is too late. Macbeth recognizes what has happened and he says,
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Of course, the speech is only true for Macbeth’s life, but what a horrible and beautiful warning for us all. A life consumed by ambition will be full of sound and fury, but it will signify nothing.
And I love how Shakespeare leaves that last line of poetry unfinished. What a powerful way to blend of message and form.
Hmmm… now there’s an interesting thought… that these words, which are so depressing, are beautiful because they express the truth about Macbeth’s life… it makes one reconsider what the qualities of “beautiful” really are.
Is any truth beautiful?
Wait… he dies? Oh man, I was gonna rent the movie, too!
Oh double, double
toil and trouble!
Cute. I almost missed the connection between a poo-poo head and the toilet plunger.
Craver, “fire burn and cauldron bubble,” brother! Also, I finally responded to your comment on the poetry post a few days ago. It slipped through my net. Curses!
L. L., is any truth beautiful? All of it is! Beauty may not look like a fashion model, but as Dostoyevsky said, “Beauty will save the world.”
I do like the sentiment… really, really… but here’s a thought. If I tell a story of abuse and it is the truth, is that truth beautiful?
Not to be overdramatic or anything. I just think it’s an interesting thing to ponder, and perhaps important for the writer to consider.
LL-that’s what I was thinking when I said you’ve got to have both truth and beauty to have “good words”. I think the truth about evil is maybe more “hard words”. Sometimes we need to know those truths even though they’re hard to take. Other times…
But I bet there’s a unicorn out there who could write about abuse in a redemptive way.
LL — That the one who is abused has moved on to the point of telling her story is beautiful. I will never tire of hearing the stories of people once knocked down who have gotten up again and again.
Of course, these stories aren’t true for everyone. Not everyone who reads a story of redemption and healing is going to receive those things herself. Do these words then become “ugly” because they are not true for her?
Funny you should ask that final question, Charity. When I gave my manuscript to my sister to read (I highly value her opinion…she is a closet writer), she was completely distressed and disturbed.
“The words you use to talk about him are too beautiful,” she said. “That is grace,” I said in return. I could see the beauty. She could not.
Wow, you all amaze me. AMM, L.L., Charity. What incredible comments.
I see what you mean about some truths just aren’t beautiful. Though even a horrific cautionary tale has a kind of beauty.
Abuse tales. Abuse truths. I wouldn’t want to belittle anyone’s abuse by suggesting their story has beauty.
And yet, my mother was horribly abused as a child. She ran away from home when she was 12, then found out she was really 10. The stories of her neglect haunt me sometimes.
But her life turned. God protected her and her family. She was well on her way to becoming a statistic, my dad, too for that matter. And now they are pretty much the American Dream.
Here’s the harder part. What about abuse stories that don’t turn.
I don’t know.
Wow, what a discussion. LL, raised such a compelling question about whether all truth is beautiful.
As Musing Mom says…truth and beauty are both needed for good words.
But perhaps, beauty is revealed in what is true and also redemptive. To tell a story of abuse is truth but to see the redemption of God is what makes it beautiful.
Andre, interesting! So abuse stories might be true and beautiful if they include at least the possibility for redemption?
Mark, Yes. I love good stories that carry you along. And theology that emphasizes the Story of God.
One of my regrets in life. Not having read more. I try to do so as I can.
Good thoughts here. Thanks.
Well, it’s my theory anyway… hard, crushing stories of human suffering tell us that we live in a fallen, broken world… as we all know that’s only half the story…the other half is that there’s hope of redemption. That’s beautiful….perhaps not the way I described it, but I’m sure a skilled writer could bring that view into sharp focus.
I think there’s so much to delve into on the topic of beauty. It’s a very culturally relevant topic. Ted G. posted something a couple of weeks back…. I’m going to think about it some more …might be an Every Square Inch post in the making.
Ted, great thoughts. And one of my regrets lately has been letting others tell me what to read more often than I should. I love science fiction so much. But for years I thought it was too low brow. How could I be a real writer or a real teacher if I was reading science fiction?
Andre, I’m with you completely. Why else would the bleakest of bleak poems— like “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or “The Hollowmen”— why else would they be beautiful?
This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Or Prufrock’s lament, “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be. Am an attendant Lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two…”
These are beautiful words—and they are warnings with implied redemption. Prufrock doesn’t have to stay alone in the corner. The world doesn’t have to end this way!
Extremely thought provoking-I like:) The mind-boggling thing with God is that He can make all things beautiful. It constantly amazes us how He can take the most ugly, vile things and create such beauty from them. That is, after all, what He has done with us.
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