Category Archives: Writing Advice

4 Ways to Write Realistically—Whatever That Is

Realism Seems Simple enough, but…it’s not.

Everyone knows what’s real, right? So why have a movement over it? Why even wonder or discuss it? It’s just a natural thing, isn’t it? Realism. What’s the big mystery?

Well, the term Realism itself is problematic. It depends so much on your conception of what’s real. And that depends, as so much does, on how sane you are. And sanity is a slippery term too, isn’t it? Some people are so sane it drives them insane.

If you think too much about this crazy world, you’ll go nuts. Just look at some of the radio and TV commentators and talk show hosts. They’re so “sane,” so rooted and obsessed with the political “realities” of life—as defined by them—that they’ve become ranting lunatics. Thanks to such extremism, Realism has effectively lost its meaning.

Write down to earth

Back in the day, Realism was a revolutionary way of thinking, living, and writing. It developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries with America’s rise as a superpower, thanks in large part to capitalism and industrialization.

A rather well-off middle class loved their new prosperity and having more money. They no longer wanted to read fiction unrelated to real life.

So the fiction writers—all at once almost—turned from fanciful, Romantic plots and language, to real life material and words. Prior to Romanticism, most fiction writers tried their damndest to sound more educated, distant and aristocratic in their vocabularies and stories.

Realism made it okay to write about everyday people in everyday words. Truth be told, it’s my favorite way of writing.

Today’s generation of bloggers are Neo-Realists. The best ones write like people speak. They write about what exists in the world around them: work, social media, making money, being successful.

They’re fun and entertaining to read because they waste no words. Their writing is clean, clear, crisp. Right to the point. And often very funny. Brevity is, indeed, the soul of wit.

This same Neo-Realist style can apply to fiction. You want to write about dragons and vampires? Okay, fine. Some of the best stories are about real life fire-breathing “loved ones” and blood-sucking friends.

Whatever your subject, say it fast and sharp. For starters, ditch the adjectives and adverbs. Trash the hype. Respect every word and every second of your reader’s time.

Be objective, cool, detached

It might not be you. You might be highly subjective, emotional, and frantic. That’s fine, I guess. But try the opposite on for size.

Get yourself out of yourself. 30 minutes before you sit down to write, pop a Xanex if you have to. Frazzled fiction grates on the nerves after a few pages.

What’s really intriguing is a story that’s tense and roller-coaster wild, yet written in ice-cold, steely-eyed prose. Tell just the facts, ma’am. The remarkable, amazing facts. With no expression and no hyperbole. Like Trump negotiating a deal. Or Moneymaker over a $1m pot at the World Series of Poker.

Emotionless narration chills a reader to the bone.

Plot around complex ethical choices

One of the hardest parts of being human is making tough decisions. That’s reality on hyper drive. Do I do this? Do I do that? Geez. It’s gut-wrenching. And riveting reading.

  • Huck Finn was torn between helping Jim, his black slave friend, escape to freedom, or doing what Aunt Polly and the Widow Douglas would want him to—turn Jim in. After a prolonged, agonizing fight with himself, Huck decides to side with him Jim and help him escape from slavery. In his moment of decision, Huck says, “All right, I’ll go to hell then.”
  • Howells’ Silas Lapham, who’s broke and needs money, still refuses to sell the mills.
  • Earning his Red Badge of Courage, Crane’s Civil War soldier, Henry Fleming, despite formerly deserting, returns to his regiment and leads a triumphant charge against the enemy.

The real world—whatever that is—lies all around you. You’re in it, my friend. Your best stories are growing inside you right now, in the struggles you’re having with difficult choices, but you need to be grounded, objective, cool, and detached to write them into existence—before they write you out.

That’s right: the stakes are high. If you want to be a great novelist, you have to face the present reality: you’re not one yet. So get real before real gets you.

5 Exceedingly Deep Writing Tips from William Butler Yeats

If there’s a better poet than Yeats, I don’t know him. Some as good, maybe, but none better.

“But I’m a novelist, not a poet,” you say. All the more reason to study poetry. You use words, right? Poets use them with more concision, precision, and figurative beauty than any other human beings. Yeats also had plenty of ideas, concepts, and thematic depth that can inspire your thoughts and get your own words flowing.

#1: Be a Bard

Don’t talk, do. Don’t say you’ll write, write. Make yourself into a Bard—a famous purveyor and showman of words.

“Art is but a vision of reality,” said Yeats. By the power of sheer will, you can create yourself into what you want to be. The little lost lizard “Rango” did. (Terrific movie. More for adults than kids. Great script.) He declared himself to be a hero and, thereby, became one. He forced himself to live up to his own invention of a “self” he wanted to be.

Look at the many great rappers and DJs from the hood—guys who had two strikes against them from birth, thanks to their environment. They picked themselves up, created personas, and used words—their powerful rhymes—to turn themselves into Bards. Their vision of the reality around them became their art.

#2: Explore a belief system

If you’re lost in space, with no moorings, no belief system, then write about that. But it’s not much of a credible or admirable sort of life—chaos and anarchy. Though, admittedly, it may make for some good stories.

Let’s say you’re a Catholic. Flannery O’Conner wrote some brilliant stories incorporating Catholic theology. Maybe you’re Jewish. Have you ever read Bernard Malamud’s astounding brand of magic realism? His novels and stories are permeated with his Judaic faith.

Maybe you’re not religious at all. That could work for a writer, too. Yeats explored various traditions of esoteric his whole life: mysticism, folklore, spiritualism and finally symbolism.

He was a pretty disenchanted, skeptical guy, imagining a “rough beast…[that] slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.”

He was always seeking what he called “There,” with a capital T. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it? “There” is some center, some ultimate spiritual reality that made sense, that held everything together. Where is your “There”?

#3: Use symbolism

Yeats’ first volume of poetry was “The Wind Among the Reeds.” Published in 1899, it ushered in the Modern era in poetry, characterized by a highly self-conscious use of symbolism.

 

Yeats believed that symbols have a mystical effect of evoking the Spiritus Mundi, the memory of Nature itself, that would allow many minds to flow together and create a single mind, a single energy.

He was a pretty heavy dude. Always exploring occult traditions; always seeking some unified explanation of the world and the soul. Symbols are his theosophy; he found belief in God through mystical insight.

What’s your heavy side? What deep, far out—forgive the 60’s slang, but no early 20th century writer was any closer to the hippie 60’s than Yeats—ideas do you have?

#4: Ponder life’s interpenetrating opposites

One of Yeats’ main symbols is the gyre:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

That’s the first stanza of “The Second Coming,” one of the 5 best poems ever written. (I’ll share the other 4 with you some other time.)

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase: the trip is both repetitious and progressive. Gyres rotate, whirl into one another’s centers, merge and separate. They come in shapes of paradoxical mysteries: time and change; growth and identity; life and art; madness and wisdom. They go together. They’re interpenetrating opposites.

How can you practically apply this concept to your writing?

  • Through conflicts. All consciousness is a conflict of opposites.
  • Identify and set the opposites in your life—or in yourself—against one another. Show how they interpenetrate.
  • Think Batman in “The Dark Knight” or “Spiderman” in his dark moments: characters conflicted by their superpowers and their humanity, their love and their hate, their social consciousness and their desire to say “screw everything.” Those opposites merge into one being.

#5: Do you “get it”?

All outward things take their character from being internalized. Have you ever stood under the stars, walked through a forest, or gazed at the moon and been in awe, feeling that sense of wonder and amazement at it all? And have you ever done so with someone who couldn’t care less and thought you were nuts for being so moved by the experience of gazing, of “getting it”?

That’s what the writer in you must do: Get it. Find “There.” Be a Bard with a belief system that you set to lyrics or characters and stories that resonate with symbolism through your exploration of the paradoxically interpenetrating opposites.

Got that? Get it and you’ll write a masterpiece.

How to Kill a Copy Editor: Top 10 Grammar Mistakes

Copy editors dive into your writing, making sure it is styled correctly, has proper English, and contains verified facts. They often are the first to see your writing and have the job of cleaning it up. Many common errors are pet peeves of copy editors. Avoiding these trouble spots will help your writing and make your copy editor happy.

  • Incorrect subject-verb agreement: Subject-verb agreement is crucial. People have trouble with agreement especially when writing long sentences with dependent clauses or with prepositional phrases that separate the subject and verb. Don’t let this throw off your writing. Isolate the subject and verb that goes with it to make sure they agree.
  • Long, confusing sentences: I know copy editors who count the number of words in sentences. Why? Because the longer a sentence, the more complex and potentially confusing it can be. Avoid several prepositional phrases and clauses that can make a sentence too wordy. You can express thoughts in shorter sentences without having short, choppy sentences. Balance is key.
  • Comma drama: Comma drama refers to any incorrect use of commas, usually too many or not enough. Particular bothersome habits some writers have include placing a comma between two run-on sentences or not placing a comma in a series of items before and.
  • Pronouns without clear antecedents: Too many times writers use pronouns such as it without making evident what the pronoun is referring to. Make certain the pronoun follows the last noun used so that the antecedent is clear.
  • Split infinitives: People commonly speak with split infinitives and they often appear in writing, but copy editors are still trained to remove these or rewrite them so that sentences are less awkward. As a rule, look for every use of the word to and check if you have split an infinitive.
  • Double spacing between sentences: Double spacing after periods is a holdover from the days of typewriters. There is no need to do this. Free yourself from doing so. Copy editors commonly search documents for two spaces and replace with one space, but you don’t want them to have to do this for you.
  • No verification: When you reference information that is not your own, you must provide source material for verification. Most copy editors do this work as well as styling and grammar. Copy editors will thank you for saving them time and effort verifying facts.
  • Quotation marks to emphasize words: There is no need to add quotation marks around words you want to emphasize or that you think are colloquial. Choose words that carry weight and communicate your intended message.
  • Using the wrong word: There’s a reason why grammar students exhaustively study often confused words in English such as lie and lay. People commonly misuse these words in everyday speech. Use words correctly not based on what sounds right to your ear.
  • No organization: You must organize your work appropriately. Use subheads or other devices that clearly show your outline and organization for your writing.

Worried about your ability to find some of these mistakes? Send your writing to Edit911.com, and we will edit so that you can have peace of mind.

6 Writing Tips You Can Use from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899)

How great is Heart of Darkness?

I don’t ordinarily rate works of art. However, in my opinion, Heart is the greatest novella (short novel) ever written.

Conrad was inspired by his trip to the Congo (now known as Zaire). At the time, the Congo was a Belgian colony. Perhaps the greatest insight Conrad learned there was that the “civilized Europeans” were anything but that in their domination and enslavement of the natives.

#1: Write about Imperialism and Colonialism

You think you know nothing about those subjects? You think they’re irrelevant and absent in your life? Think again.

Heart is an expose into the Belgians’ exploitation of the “savage races.” One of its subjects is racism and the degradation and demoralization of one people at the hands of another. Ultimately, the exploiters and degraders themselves were destroyed by their own actions and attitudes.

Now…doesn’t that ring a bell?

  • Do you know anybody who acts domineering and tries to colonize people? How about your ex-boyfriend or ex-spouse? Or, worse yet, your current “love” partner? Feeling dominated, used, or abused?
  • Have you ever experienced or witnessed people or an institution wield its power and authority in a vicious, selfish, exploitative way?
  • Know any pimps?
  • Know any thugs?
  • Know any criminals?
  • Know any racists?
  • Know any hypocritical, unethical, or corrupt cops, politicians, teachers, leaders, pastors, or others in positions of authority?
  • Know any just plain old assholes?

If you haven’t experienced any of those things or known any of those types, you’ve lived a charmed life. Or you don’t get out much. Or maybe I’ve been out too much…I don’t know…but I do know that all those situations and people make for great plots and characters.

#2: Tap into your subconscious

Heart is a psychological masterpiece about the subconscious mind. Influenced by Dante, Conrad takes his readers on an Inferno-like descent into the underworld of human existence—searching for lost idealism, a center that holds, a meaning to life, and the essence of our existence.

Take your readers deep inside the underworld of your life. I’ve mentioned this before: the best stories are the ones you don’t want to tell about yourself. You don’t want anybody to know just how bad or twisted you really can be.

“I’m not bad or twisted,” you may be saying. Okay. Have it your way. You’re a veritable saint. You oughta be canonized.

Come off it. You lost your idealism somewhere along the way. Write about it.

  • Your center sometimes nearly rips to shreds and flies apart.
  • In your shadowy or shaddy moments, during your worst experiences, you’ve wondered if life is meaningless.
  • What’s the point of living?
  • Maybe writing about those darkest days is exactly what you need to do to achieve some self-awareness and a catharsis.

#3: Apply some epistemology

Conrad explored the boundaries and limits of epistemology: how it is that we know things. How do we know what we know is one of philosophy’s greatest unanswered questions.

What’s the exact mental and emotional process we undertake in learning and understanding “reality”?

  • You could have a character always questioning things.
  • A philosopher type playing off a foil—someone’s who’s the opposite, who questions nothing or disagrees with everything, or who answers with non-answers.
  • Epistemological dialogue can be extremely funny.
  • I’m not talking about having your characters go on and on like two boring know-it-alls.
  • Make it short, snappy, ridiculous even.

One of Conrad’s greatest achievements was his ability to write self-aware, meta-novels—stories that call attention to the art of story-telling itself. You could try that by having a character who declares that he knows he’s a character in a book, or in God’s story, or that he’s treated like he’s not even real. Maybe he questions whether he’s even alive or it’s all a dream.

  • Like Alice down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.
  • Or the Who’s calling out for help on their speck of dust world, and only Horton hears them.
  • Or “Young Goodman Brown” sneaking off into the woods late at night to consort with the devil and his crew.
  • Or the entire 6 seasons of LOST—lives in limbo. Limbo, purgatory, anywhere between two dimensions is a Twilight Zone popular plot.

#4: Tell a twice-told tale

Conrad’s stories are often told through other people’s accounts of them, which are themselves often twice-told tales passed down orally, from several conflicting viewpoints or perspectives.

Conrad employs narrators who confront themselves, both in other characters and in telling the story of their own pasts. The narrator of Heart, Marlow is on a spiritual voyage of self-discovery, where he meets up with his own flawed, fatalistic nature and discovers the darkness in his own heart.

Thus, the reader must take an active role in attempting to discern among the ambiguous and competing versions or accounts of unreliable narrators.

  • Making a reader wonder ‘What the heck is going on? Who are these people?’ creates great curiosity and suspense. If you want answers and you want them now, you’re hooked on sticking with it until you get them.
  • You might have a character tell a story to a group around a campfire, or stuck in an elevator, or, better yet, somewhere mysterious.
  • A vague and ambiguous setting. We’re not sure where they are. We don’t know who the group is, or who the story-teller is, or why he’s telling the story—until the end of the story.

The reader is hooked into hearing this story within a story. The outside story is just as mysterious and page-turning as the inside story. Both stories are meta-stories. And I’ve never met a reader yet who isn’t fascinated by meta-stories.

#5: Try writing an apocalyptic story—they’re always bestsellers and blockbusters

The end of the world. Earth invaded by aliens. A meteor striking New York City. Hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, tornados, tsunamis, riots, war. They never fail to attract an audience—provided you have characters caught in the middle of them.

Apocalypse Now, the extraordinary Francis Ford Coppola Vietnam War movie, is based, in part, on Heart. After reading Heart, watch the movie again, or for the first time, and you’ll have an insightful and fruitful intellectual experience noting the similarities (and differences) between Heart and Coppola’s masterpiece.

#6: Study and work hard like Conrad did

Conrad was born in Poland and didn’t learn English until he was 21 years old, which is a remarkable fact considering he’s one of the very finest prose stylists in the history of English literature. How did he pull that off? Hard work.

 

That’s the final point of this chapter: Read great books, watch great movies, and write every day.

Study the art of storytelling. Study like you’re studying for the most important final exam of your life. If you want to be a great writer, you’re taking a final exam every time you sit down to write.

And you should sit down to write at least 3-4 hours every single day. Not every other day. Every day.

Inside the Mind of a Managing Editor: What Makes or Breaks a Query

In 12 years of publishing experience, I have received my share of queries from hopeful writers. I have seen the good, bad, and ugly along the way! Whether submitting a book manuscript or magazine article, follow these Do’s and Don’ts to ensure you write a query that is well received by the Editor.

  • Do be familiar with the magazine. There is no quicker way to ensure your query is dismissed than writing one that doesn’t fit the magazine’s focus. If possible, review several copies of a publication before submitting a query to make sure your query is on track.
  • Don’t submit queries with grammatical errors! If the query is not in good shape, the Editor will not assign you a longer project. Editors want to take good writing to the next level. Mediocre writing lags the production schedule and chances of using a writer again. You can submit your writing anytime to Edit911.com so that you can rest easy that your query or book is without grammatical errors that might hold your writing project back.
  • Do consult the guidelines for submitting. In today’s market, many book publishers will not accept submissions from anyone but a literary agent. Others gladly accept queries, want entire chapters submitted, or ask for the entire book. Some just want outlines. Check the guidelines before submitting to save possible wasted time and effort.
  • Don’t critique or complain. Slow response? No response? The editor will not respond positively to negativity. Be patient. The worst reaction I ever received? I was sent a certificate of award for being a mean Editor! (I’m not kidding either!)
  • Do find creative twists on tried and true topics. How do you take those tent pole issues and provide a creative take on a topic? Look at the last several back to school issues before submitting your own back to school topic. Brainstorm for a creative book title that grabs an Editor’s attention from the start. The more creative you are, the better. You just might catch the attention of an Editor … and win an assignment!
  • Don’t be a high maintenance writer. It’s great to ask questions but don’t go overboard. Editors are glad for you to clarify but limit your questions to the most important ones. Yes, e-mail is the preferred form of communication but don’t abuse this convenience. Lots of back and forth is tiring to an Editor in today’s world of nonstop e-mail.
  • Do ask for an editorial calendar or for needs the editor has currently. They just might give you a leg up on those who blindly submit queries, especially if no other writers have submitted on a specific topic.
  • Don’t miss your deadline! There’s no quicker way to lose an Editor’s trust. If you know you are going to miss a deadline, e-mail ahead of time and renegotiate a date. You must meet this second due date on time!

Five Existentialist Elements to Ignite Your Novel

Existentialism is a philosophy espoused by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, adopted in great measure by the Modernist authors—most notably Hemingway—and followed, if not fully understood, by many people throughout the 20th century and even today.

It’s pretty controversial and very interesting. Its 5 principal aspects have comprised the personalities and driven the plots of hundreds of characters and novels. Many writers and readers alike have found an eerie fascination with and attraction to existentialism. You might too.

Life is Absurd

Existentialists say that they believe that there is nothing lasting or real, no absolutes, no final purpose, or anything worth any effort. This ironic and somewhat disingenuous position is undermined by their own insistence upon its absolute truth. If there is nothing real, absolute, or meaningful, then neither is that claim itself. So, they deconstruct themselves.

Nonetheless—petty semantics aside—believing that life is absurd is a darkly comedic place to start in fashioning your protagonist’s personality. Read “The Underground Man” by Dostoevsky. What a ride!

If a character believes life is absurd, it probably is for her. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. She may live in isolation and frustration, never satisfied or happy, since nothing means anything. So why bother to try? She could end up paralyzed by her own absurdity. A walking, talking joke.

Absurdity, after all, is the collision between the rational and irrational. Is it not crazily absurd to try to reason with a lunatic? I’m sure you’ve experienced such close encounters, and they make for delightfully comedic scenes—though not necessarily much fun when you’re actually playing a part in them.

Let it Be, Let it Be

The antidote for such absurdity is the character focusing on just “Being.”  Read Kosinski’s Being There. What a book. (And what a movie, starring Peter Sellers in his last role.)

Truth, with a capital T, resides in striving toward, in becoming. People attain meaning in their lives not in stasis, but rather in flux. Change enervates; movement defines.

 

And yes, the Beatles wrote many existentialist lyrics about many intriguing fictional characters. There was Eleanor Rigby “wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.” There was Rocky Raccoon, the walrus, that mean Mr. Mustard, the girl who came in through a bathroom window, the taxman, the helter skelter crew (Manson’s lunatics), Mr. Kite, Prudence, Rita the meter Maid, and Lucy in the sky with her diamonds. Absurd characters, one and all. And all fascinating, all classics—all because they just focused on being themselves, living in their own worlds.

 

 

Face the Dread

Is there a better word than “dread” to describe that black hole depression, those moments of awful, utter clarity that life may, indeed, be meaningless? In Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Kurtz stared into the abyss and saw “The horror. The horror.”

Existentialists believe that people must face the dread of existence, popularly known as angst, the German word for “anxiety or anguish.” Dread is an awareness that anything is possible, that insecurity is infinite. If accepted, dread destroys all faith in finite ends and prepares the individual for the infinite faith of “Positive Nothingness.”

Characters in the death grip of dread palpitate with authenticity. Try to author such a character. Authorize him with a paradoxical positivity in his nothingness. He knows he’s nothing, but he’s down with that. He can cope—that is until he implodes or explodes.

Make Conscious Choices

Taking charge of your meaningless existence by making deliberate, decisive choices is another strategy characters employ to create a meaning in life when they believe there isn’t one.

Note again the deliciously paradoxical nature of existentialism: only through choosing do we define and construct our individuality. Though all is absurd, meaningless, and dreadful, one must move purposely through life, not drift through it. By choosing, we create our “selves.”

Commit or be Committed

Finally, the existentialist must make commitments or go utterly insane. It’s Orwell’s doublethink that Winston Smith couldn’t quite grasp, and so he was defeated and committed to a life of dreadful meaningless. One simply must accept the pointlessness while refusing to be pointless himself. That’s the point of life: effort and accomplishment become the reasons to exist.

This formula for survival is Sartre’s “Doctrine of Engagement.” Talk is cheap; there’s no individual reality except in deeds and actions. That’s all that means anything—that is if anything means anything. Said Sartre, “Freedom is responsibility.” Have your characters mull that one over awhile.

 

Ultimately…

When the absurdity of life is recognized, just being alive is enough, the dread has been stared down, choices made, and responsibility assumed, your existence claims a value in and of itself. In the end—our only friend, saith the Lizard King–nothing else makes sense or is real except existence itself.

5 Fantastic Philosophies Writers Can Use: Thinking like Ralph Waldo Emerson

America’s main man when it comes to philosophizing, Emerson made philosophy accessible and even fun for people. We can learn a lot from Emerson to use in our writing. He’ll make you think, that’s for sure. Here’s 5 philosophical ideas to kick start your writing.

#1: Defy stereotypes

If you’re looking through his writing for an organized manifesto, don’t bother. His style is rambling, anecdotal, analogical, and allegorical. He’s all over the place. But there’s big fat six carat diamonds of ideas everywhere you look throughout his writing.

He can’t be labeled or pinned down. He’s much bigger than any one idea:

  • A Romantic in his pursuit of the unattainable reconciliation of opposites
  • A Realist in “speaking the rude truth” about life
  • An Idealist in believing there’s a deeper truth behind all appearances
  • A Naturalist in depicting nature as a force that determines your fate

He’s all those things and so much more…

#2: Transcend

One of the key developers of Transcendentalism—a philosophy with roots in the Europeans Carlyle and Kierkegaard—Emerson forged its American brand. A transcendentalist:

  • Looks for a reality beyond materialism and reason
  • Aspires to a high idealism, transcending this world
  • Holds to a “moral law” through which man can discover the nature of God
    • A living spirit of God, not—Emerson believed—the conventionalized, formalized, fundamentalized God of Christianity
    • God reveals himself everywhere and at all times
    • Nature is the revelation of God
    • Uses intuition as the primary faculty for perceiving and understanding the world
    • Seeks his Over‑soul: the universal, collective unconsciousness, or Spiritus Mundi. He believed we all share common thoughts and ancient, mythical properties that our intuition can tap into.

#3: Organicize

By organicism, Emerson meant “the marriage of thought and things.” You can make use of this theory by:

  • Choosing just the right word, “not its second cousin,” as Twain said.
  • Using physical things as metaphors or images of unseen spiritual forces, loaded with extra meanings, such as:
    • Melville’s Moby Dick
    • Wordsworth’s lakes and fields of wildflowers
    • Twain’s Mississippi river
    • Composing stories with a transcendent unity:
      • Where the Me and the Not‑Me are joined
      • All of nature, including the body, is Not‑Me; only the soul is Me
      • 60 years later or so, W.B. Yeats called this “There”, where the opposites interpenetrate.

#4: See and Be “Sublime”

Beautiful word, “sublime.” It’s a feeling you get when things aren’t just pretty or picturesque, but when they strike you as “awesome.” I put quotation marks around “awesome” because we’ve worn that word out so badly, it’s lost its meaning. When something is truly “awesome,” you’re struck dumb beholding it.

Try for the Sublime, in your writing through descriptions that are:

  • Like a child seeing something for the first time
  • Written with an “innocent eye” or a “transparent eyeball”
    • Emerson felt we all need a “general education of the eye”
    • As in movies where an innocent, helpless character wanders through a dangerous hood, looking all around with unafraid curiosity
    • As in a trusting and mellow state of mind
    • Fresh with dazzling, surprising details
    • Appreciative of the wonder of creation

As Emerson’s protégé, Henry David Thoreau, said: “Wisdom does not inspect but behold.”

#5: Live a Life of Self‑Reliance

Emerson took Calvin’s work ethic, common sense, and man’s need for sheer survival instincts, and rolled them up into his principle of Self-Reliance. Nothing really new to human history, but new to philosophy, new for a piece of writing. His essay by the same name is at once philosophical, witty, wise, and full of excellent advice for all people— including writers. How so?

  • No one’s going to hold your hand at the keyboard. If you want to write great works, you have to do it yourself.
  • Heroic characters are almost all self-reliant. Who doesn’t like stories about heroes, small or large, famous or anonymous? They make for great plots and compelling reading.
  • A terrific way to get an idea for a story—a springboard or starting off point, a theme or inspiration—is to start with a great quote. Read these incredible Emerson quotes and tell me you couldn’t write a story about any of them?
    • “Society everywhere is a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”
    • “Speak the rude truth.”
    • “Whoso would be a man must be a non‑conformist.”
    • “Trust thyself.”
    • “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
    • “To be great is to be misunderstood.”
    • “Traveling is a fool’s paradise”

Read and absorb some Emerson. He’ll inspire you to rely on yourself, identify and break through stereotypes, thereby transcending your environment and organically growing your mind and senses, your talents and strengths, all the while seeking, appreciating and living the sublime life.

Sloppy Writing: Top 10 Ways to Clean It Up

Have you been told that your writing is sloppy? Does your writing lose its effectiveness because people stumble through it? Below are 10 steps to take to help clean up your writing.

  • Use shorter sentences. Nothing makes writing more difficult to read than long sentences. Shorten them. But this doesn’t mean to count words for every sentence you write. The goal is to make sentences easier to read. Chop unnecessary words. Take out long dependent phrases, clauses, and strings of prepositional phrases. Your readers will thank you!
  • Read it aloud. If your own writing is confusing to you, then it will definitely be to someone who does not know what you intend to say! You will hear many things that sound incorrect to your ear and help you become a better writer. Plus you will find common mistakes, such as leaving out or duplicating words.
  • Give it to someone else to read. Ask that person if your writing makes logical sense, gives a clear argument, is confusing, or has areas that need to be rewritten—whatever you think tend to be your weak points. You might just get feedback that is extremely helpful from a source you never saw coming.
  • Outline your thoughts and make sure your writing follows it. Some like to jump into their writing efforts without outlining or thinking through what they are going to say. Not outlining means you will ramble and can easily lead to sloppy writing.
  • Use subheads. Subheads will bring organization to your writing and help keep you and the reader keep track. Remember the rule of never having one subhead stand by itself. And it is OK to have several different levels of subheads in your writing.
  • Keep your main idea in front of you. This is so important, especially when writing an essay or dissertation. Take away the main idea and sometimes the purpose of writing becomes blurry. If need be, include your main idea as a header on every word processing page or post it on your computer screen as you write.
  • Think of possible objections. If you think ahead how people might differ with your assessment, facts, or hypotheses, then you will be better able to craft your argument to win them over. Clear thinking makes persuasive writing.
  • Know the audience you are writing for. There is no greater mistake than to miss the audience to whom you are writing. People may only give you one chance to win them over. Plus, editors will dismiss your writing quickly if you miss the audience.
  • Use spell check and grammar check. I tell students that God created these handy tools and meant for students to use them. Even professors forget occasionally, but these checkers catch so many mistakes. It is no excuse to forget these essential tools.
  • Think of communicating to a novice. What questions would he have? How do you put your writing into simple terms? Simplifying is a difficult task for some assignments, but writing with these questions in mind will cause you to understand the subject matter on a different level and communicate it more clearly to the reader.

Death by Detail: How to Find a Balance Between Detail and Insanity in Your Writing

I remember Hemingway’s descriptive writing enthralling me at times and then sometimes driving me batty. The Old Man and the Sea was so descriptive; I got seasick just reading it! That’s the way it goes with details! But as you write your own dissertation, how do you decide when enough is finally enough? Do you need more detail or work to get it perfect? Does it need to be a masterpiece? Try the following to help you know where to draw the line in your dissertation writing.

  • Limit your study from the beginning. This means you must closely identify and outline your focus. The more you do up front, the more helpful this will be for later. Likely, you will have to limit your writing even further once you get into it. It is OK to save portions of your research for later if need be.
  • Have professors approve bibliographies before putting in the research, especially your literature review. This practice holds you accountable to a specific list of books, but it also gives you room to push back later if extra books are suggested. Every dissertation needs limits, even in a literature review.
  • Limit quotes. Use quotes only when they communicate in ways you could not possibly summarize in your own words. The problem with quotes is that they forever seem to expand in dissertation writing. Use sparingly.
  • Make use of your appendices. Add information to an appendix that is not absolutely necessary for the body of your dissertation. Your surveys, letters, research questions, etc. can all go into an appendix.
  • Add commentary and information to footnotes only if necessary. This practice can grow uncontrollably. Every resource listed could have additional commentary, but they all are not necessary to your dissertation.
  • Let someone else read your dissertation who is not familiar with your studies. You might be surprised at the insight they bring into the discussion. It is OK to ask specifically for the reader to note areas that seem confusing, either in language choice or level of detail. But also allow for your readers to make insights from other disciplines or their life experiences.
  • Turn your fine-tuning over to a pro like Edit 911. There is always room to take your writing to the next level. Edit 911 staff will work out the details of style and formatting so you don’t have to worry about areas where you don’t feel confident.
  • No second helpings! If you start correcting things that have already been changed once back to the original wording, then you have edited enough. Yikes! Don’t duplicate work. You can forever tweak your dissertation. A wise professor told me that my dissertation could either be perfect or it could be finished! Aim for completing it.
  • If your professor says it’s good enough, you’re done! No questions asked. You may want to perfect your paper but don’t get into that game. If you get it published, you will probably have to make additional changes anyway to meet the expectations of the publisher.