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On writing adequately
May. 12th, 2006 03:44 pmIt's getting near my 20th high school reunion, and the alumni mailing list is causing some old memories to come back to me. In my senior year, we took a class called College Literature, which was intended to prepare us for the rigors of university literature classes ahead of time. It was taught by a woman named Margaret Laster, who was simultaneously the greatest help and the greatest hindrance to my writing of anyone in my life. She believed in the shock and awe method of literary criticism. Laster told you exactly what she thought of your writing, and almost invariably, she thought that it was crap. Like Dorothy Parker, she had a lacerating wit that left people silent, until, after class, they realized what they should have said.
The truth is, though, that my writing was crap. The biggest influence on my writing up until that point had been Latin, so my sentences were Jamesian, full of carefully balanced clauses that were so evenhanded that they failed to express any but the most subtle opinions. I never used a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word where a ten-letter Latinate word would do. My writing was full of pretentious puffery. Mrs. Laster made an example of me to the class at its second meeting, when she pointed out two terrible phrases in my first composition:
Yes, it was that bad. Like a flamethrower, Laster burned it all away and calcined it into dust. I went on to win prizes in college for writing, and, although I never attained an E.B.-White-like level of clarity, I gained an ability to vary my diction that helped me in many circumstances.
At the same time, Laster instilled in me a level of doubt about my own writing that has often left me unable to deliver the goods. To this day, I have never been able to revise my writing in drafts. It comes out one sentence at a time, and it doesn't go further until it has been corrected over and over again. Once I reach the end of a paragraph, I check the paragraph. It's a very slow method of composition, which really requires that my ideas be completely worked out in advance. Without that guiding insight to get me through a piece, I am stuck with a blank screen or piece of paper, and, even when I partially fill it, can easily lose the thread in my throes of self-checking. I don't write much, and I don't write often. There are certain kinds of assignments, like catalog copy, where I can let myself go a little, but when I care about my ideas and how they are received, I slow down to a crawl. Deadlines do not have much effect on this kind of stuckness; my ability to advance myself through writing has thus been very limited.
I cannot lay my personal failures at Laster's door. I don't think any sane English teacher could have left me where I was. But, when writing, I think of her before I think of any further potential audience, and I think, "Would she yell at me for this?"
The truth is, though, that my writing was crap. The biggest influence on my writing up until that point had been Latin, so my sentences were Jamesian, full of carefully balanced clauses that were so evenhanded that they failed to express any but the most subtle opinions. I never used a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word where a ten-letter Latinate word would do. My writing was full of pretentious puffery. Mrs. Laster made an example of me to the class at its second meeting, when she pointed out two terrible phrases in my first composition:
deital forces -> gods arboreal foliage -> leaves
Yes, it was that bad. Like a flamethrower, Laster burned it all away and calcined it into dust. I went on to win prizes in college for writing, and, although I never attained an E.B.-White-like level of clarity, I gained an ability to vary my diction that helped me in many circumstances.
At the same time, Laster instilled in me a level of doubt about my own writing that has often left me unable to deliver the goods. To this day, I have never been able to revise my writing in drafts. It comes out one sentence at a time, and it doesn't go further until it has been corrected over and over again. Once I reach the end of a paragraph, I check the paragraph. It's a very slow method of composition, which really requires that my ideas be completely worked out in advance. Without that guiding insight to get me through a piece, I am stuck with a blank screen or piece of paper, and, even when I partially fill it, can easily lose the thread in my throes of self-checking. I don't write much, and I don't write often. There are certain kinds of assignments, like catalog copy, where I can let myself go a little, but when I care about my ideas and how they are received, I slow down to a crawl. Deadlines do not have much effect on this kind of stuckness; my ability to advance myself through writing has thus been very limited.
I cannot lay my personal failures at Laster's door. I don't think any sane English teacher could have left me where I was. But, when writing, I think of her before I think of any further potential audience, and I think, "Would she yell at me for this?"
