Some writing advice

For those of you who are working on essays, I wanted to share some advice that I would present in class if we were all working on essays. Some of this advice is relevant, at least to some extent, for all of you as writers of blog posts. 

First, remember the value of concision, of economy in your choice of words, the flow of your prose, and the decisions you make when revising. I am always reminded of the wisdom of this anonymous poem, reproduced here in the handwriting of the brilliant writer Madeleine L'Engle:

 

The written word / Should be clean as bone, / Clear as light, / Firm as stone.

Two words are not / As good as one.

One way to help ensure that your writing is concise and dynamic rather than wordy and sluggish is to use concrete and active words. The majority of your prose should consist of words that mean something, words that are specific and call to mind an image or precise idea, particularly concrete nouns and dynamic verbs. Verbs, as I always say, are the engine of prose. If you're writing a literary essay, you may find coming up with good verbs particularly challenging, and this handout may offer you some help with word that are useful for writing about literature, and which you likely know but may not think of off the top of your head. 

If you're working on a literary essay, here are a couple of useful handouts I use when students are preparing a literary argument: how to built a point and distinguish a claim from a mere observation and how to develop a thesis for a literary argument.

If you've taken my Nonfiction Writing class, you might go back and look over The (nonfictionwriting) Mothership, our class blog,  to remind yourself of some of our key lessons and priorities with regard to writing. That site still has posts up with many links to handouts or overheads I shared in that class. Those of you who haven't taken Nonfiction Writing with me may also find some useful things there, though it might take you longer to locate them since you won't have a sense of what you're looking for. Here are a couple of posts that I think have particularly useful general advice, on the secret weapon for amazing grammar and some tips on revising your writing. Please feel free to come to me with questions about writing at any point this semester.