The Fundamentals of Effective Writing

Neither More Nor Less
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF EFFECTIVE WRITING
(August 30, 2006)

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."--Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF EFFECTIVE WRITING

May I have a word with you?

All writing is creative writing, because all writers create something from nothing. Even technical writing requires as much creative thought as does a novel, short story or poem, because technical writing is nothing more than writing about a technical subject.

However, the task of writing--the steps involved in putting words on paper or in a computer file--can be the same, regardless of whether you are writing a technical report, magazine article, scholarly paper, news story, poem or book. If you follow these six steps, you will eliminate a lot of worry and frustration whenever you want to write anything effectively.

First, choose a subject. Decide what you are going to write about. Even if you have been assigned a topic, you can still consider the subject in depth, examining all aspects and choosing which ones you want to emphasize.

Even if you work for someone who always assigns your subjects, many opportunities exist to write about something on your own. You should always take them, because you become a better writer when you keep writing and practicing as often as possible.

Second, decide on a form. Even if the form has been determined for you, there are variations on every form, and every variation you can think of is worthy of consideration.

For example, if you are assigned to write an operating guide for a new computer and your employer has an existing set of guidelines, you can still play around with the form in terms of a better variation, perhaps just a slight rearrangement of the topics.

Third, plan your piece as best you can. Even if you are writing according to a formula, you will save time and worry if you consider carefully how you are going to do it. A schedule might help by giving you a deadline by which to finish certain topics, sections or chapters.

Even if you are given an outline you must follow, examine it carefully. Can it be improved? An outline lets you know where you are going before you start writing. If you are creating from scratch, you should think about it, plan it, and outline your piece before you start choosing words and stringing them together so they best communicate what you have in mind.

Fourth, write down the words you choose, so you won't forget them and so you can keep them in permanent form for your readers. Picture your audience and write in their language as much as possible. Use words they will understand, and explain everything they won't understand.

Fill this draft with as many details as you can. You will discover that you can delete extraneous material more easily than you can add to it, because the words that need deleting are already there staring you in the face. Although some people believe that all a writer does is think of some words, put them down in permanent form, and never look at them again, you should not consider writing in this way, especially if you want to become a better writer. Putting the words down is the easy part of writing. Now comes the hard part.

Fifth, rewrite your work and be your own, harshest critic. Put it aside for a while, so you can reread it fresh without being influenced by both the words you have written and the effort taken to write them.

As you rewrite, change some of the words. Read your draft out loud, and replace a phrase with another one that means the same thing, but sounds better. Prepare a fresh copy without the deleted material, and you will probably agree the writing is better and not even miss the deletions.

Sixth, have someone else read what you have written and ask for comments. Better yet, submit it to a trained editor. Now you want a reaction to your draft from someone not as close to it as you are.

If you are writing for publication or simply for dissemination of your information, never be afraid to show your work to someone else. After all, the whole point of writing is for someone else to read it, and an editor is merely a knowledgeable, surrogate audience.

The fundamentals of effective writing are the same for any kind of writing, together they constitute six steps that describe the task of writing and following them will make you a better, more effective writer.

END

The Art of Writing

Neither More Nor Less
THE ART OF WRITING
(August 12, 2006)

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--that's all."--Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

THE ART OF WRITING

May I have a word with you?

To understand what art has to do with writing, forget the traditional, dictionary meanings of "art." I don't mean "skill acquired by experience, study or observation," nor "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects." And I certainly don't mean "the conscious production of arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty; specifically, the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium."

When I use the word "art," I mean an anthropological definition that I have yet to see improved upon: "Art is man playing at his craft." (Naturally, in this sense, "man" means the species of the human race, the totality of human beings, both male and female.)

Of course, some people might say that this definition can be improved to "Art is man or woman playing at his or her craft" or possibly "Art is a person playing at that person's craft." Although it doesn't quite have the same ring to it, perhaps the best definition of art that comes closest to the original and doesn't offend anyone who is sensitive to any possibility of sexist language is "Art is people playing at their craft."

Craft basically means "skill in planning, making or executing," "especially in handwork or the arts." Therefore, the craft of painting, for example, is being skillful at painting pictures, and being skillful is simply knowing one's tools thoroughly and knowing how to use them sufficiently well enough to produce a pleasing, satisfactory result.

The tools of painting are basically paint, brushes and the medium onto which the paint is applied. And before painters can be considered artists, before they can properly be considered to be "people playing at their craft," they must first be good craftsmen and craftswomen.

Only after painters have mastered their craft can they begin playing at it, using the components to amuse themselves and others, to try out different ways of expressing something, of depicting something, to stretch the accepted limits of their art and bring satisfaction and joy to themselves, their audience and their critics.

Then they are artists.

Like painting, photography is another means of visual depiction of objects. However, photography is more "technical" than painting is, because it requires the knowledge and mastery of a mechanical device, as well as a more scientific analysis of the subject matter in terms of its distance from the device and the amount of light falling on it.

Interestingly enough, the word "technical" comes from the Latin technicus, which in turn came from the Greek tekhnikos, meaning "pertaining to art or skill."

And photographers can also be artists when they have enough knowledge about the craft of photography to be able to play at it, such as knowing which films can be "pushed" (overdeveloped to compensate for an underdeveloped exposure) in order to achieve an effect that couldn't be achieved under normal conditions, how to frame their objects and how to use selective focus all for the purpose of producing a pleasing, satisfactory result.

Finally, writing is a craft, and it can also be an art, just like painting and photography. The tools of the craft are paper and pen, typewriters and nowadays computers. However, the most important tool for writers is their language, and one of the basic facts about language is that no one word ever means exactly the same thing to two different people.

If using language well is a craft, then good writing is an art, to be practiced diligently, until the craft of choosing, arranging, substituting and rearranging words is honed into the fine art of good communication of ideas. After writers have mastered their craft of being able to use their language well, then they can begin playing at it in order to achieve their pleasing and satisfactory results.

Some fiction and poetry are like abstract painting. The audience absorbs and becomes aware of a mood that the artist wants. Slowly, they understand what the writer wanted them to understand, or else they are changed and have a new understanding of something they didn't have before.

Journalism is like realistic painting, because the audience recognizes what they are seeing and know immediately what the writer wants them to know.

Technical writing is like photography, in which the writers show a realistic picture to the audience.

And all writing can be art, if you just work and play at it.

END

Society's Scapegoat

The Boomer Files
SOCIETY'S SCAPEGOAT
August 5, 2006

I'll tell you something.

Once upon a time there was a young man and woman who met, fell passionately in love and left the safety and security of their parents' houses to travel west and build a home and new life of their own.

They discovered a relatively untouched land of pristine beauty and after a minor diversion and disagreement with the previous residents, they managed to acquire a small, but comfortable residence and set up housekeeping.

However, the young man was called home to settle a major dispute where his parents lived, and he did so reluctantly. Although his parents had lived in their home all their lives, one of their neighbors had suddenly built a fence on his parents' property, which they started using as their own for barbecue parties.

The young man went home, discussed the matter with his parents, tried to reason with the obnoxious neighbors and finally settled the matter by getting into a fistfight with the neighbors' son, who had been the one with the idea in the first place and who had built the illegal fence and the barbecue, as well.

The young man won the fight, although both combatants sustained bloody and broken noses, and the neighbors agreed to remove the fence and destroy the barbecue pit. He then thanked himself for a good deed well done, said goodbye to his parents and the neighbors and returned to his own home and his loving wife.

Because she had been anxious about his safety, the young man's wife welcomed him back home with open arms and not much clothing. Nine months later, she delivered a beautiful, healthy, bouncing baby boy.

The young couple lavished all their love on their baby boy, who was larger than other babies, and as some parents do with their firstborn, they spoiled him rotten. Anything he wanted within his parents' budget and many times outside their budget, he could have.

Because he was larger than other children his age, as the baby boy grew up and went through school, he usually got his way with his peers, as well. You might say that he lived a privileged life. You might say that he was blessed with good luck. You might say that he was a victim of his circumstances.

A few years later, the young couple had another child, a beautiful, healthy, bouncing baby girl. Although they loved her with all their sincerity, the baby girl could never receive the intensity of the love they had given their baby boy, simply because she was second on the scene.

The baby girl, too, grew up and went to school, but because she wasn't as large as her brother had been at her age, she wasn't able to get her way as much as he had. She resented this, especially since she was continually being reminded of the baby boy's accomplishments at her age by her parents, because her teachers still remembered the baby boy's achievements in school and compared hers with his and because everywhere she went she saw evidence that the baby boy had been there first, done that first.

Now, older people began to resent the baby boy for all the privileges they saw he received when he was growing up, privileges they had not received from their own parents. And because of all the attention the baby boy received and all the focus on him both inside and outside their family, the baby girl also resented him. She and her playmates would make cruel, unjustified jokes about him, and because the baby girl felt she had no identity apart from the baby boy, she started calling herself X.

The baby boy, who had long since ceased being a baby, was confused by all this hostility toward him. Although he had been privileged growing up, he lashed out during his adolescence. He thought that his parents were stupid, old-fashioned and "square," as he put it.

When he was a teenager, he was called a juvenile delinquent. When he rebelled even more in fashion, speech and indulgences, he called himself a hippie, because he believed that only he was hip in a world so square.

When the baby boy became a man, he resented still being called a baby. He resented being blamed for his parents' mistakes. And he resented being blamed by his sister, Girl X, for every failure, every shortcoming and every mistake she made.

In other words, Baby Boy was tired of being Society's Scapegoat.

END

The Midnight Flight of George Afeared

(With apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
July 7, 2006

(FOREWORD: Feel free to distribute this as freely as you wish, but only as long as proper attribution is made, and if you make any money from it, I want some.--Dan Culberson)

Listen all people and you shall hear
Of the midnight flight of George Afeared,
On the thirteenth of June, in double-oh six;
Pulling another of his sneaky tricks
After five short hours he was in the clear.

He said to his pilot, "If the insurgents arrive
By foot or vehicle from Baghdad to-night,
Give me a call or three or five
On my aides' cell phones and we'll take flight,--
One for the money, and two for the show;
Three to get ready and off we'll go,
Ready to flee and get the hell out
Up to the sky and then we can shout,
For the Democrat pansies to weep and to pout."

Then he said "Ta-ta!" and with smirky grin
Proudly tucked his codpiece in,
Just as the moon rose over the west,
Where lying wide on the tarmac crest,
Sat Air Force One, presidential plane;
A mighty ship, with each rivet and stain
Across the moon like a ghostly train,
And a huge white hulk, that had just been in flight
Like an incubus silently in the night.

Meanwhile, his aides through alley and street
Lead him and guide him, with watchful eyes,
Till in the explosions going up to the skies
Cover the stumblings of the frightened man,
The sound of shots, and the oppresive heat,
And the sorrowful wail of torn families' cries,
Brought on by invasion of this innocent land.

Then they entered the "green zone" of the puppet prime minister,
By the safe side entrance, with many a glance,
To the minister's office, as if by chance,
And startled the Iraqis with what seemed to them sinister
Of this unannounced visit with just five minutes notice
From the man become acronymized only as POTUS,--
He was visiting the minister "to look you in the eye,"
And send a signal to all that spirits were high,
Where he paused not once for the next five hours
'Though six had been scheduled for the Baghdad Towers
Saying the War on Terror would never die.

Beneath, in the rubble, lay the dead,
From the IEDs that did kill,
Friend and foe alike and still
This man could say, what ran through his head,
The memorized catch-phrase, with straight face
Masking the truth in the terrorists' race,
By seeming to bluster, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the naked lie and the countless dead;
For suddenly all his fears replace
The swagger and smirk as far away,
Where the river glistens to greet the day,--
A plume of smoke that rises and hovers
O'er the broken city like layers of covers.

Meanwhile, impatient to turn and fly,
Booted and gunned, with a fearful cry
Across the room walked George Afeared.
Now he looked in the minister's eye,
Now he paid full attention to what he could hear,
Then, impetuous, stamped the floor,
And turned and feinted for the door;
But mostly he listened with timid ears
As the explosions continued to feed his fears,
Which rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks in the minister's face
A glimmer, the thought that he must race!
He heads for the exit, then pauses and turns,
And wonders and muses, then continues apace
As a second explosion in Baghdad burns.

A hurry of boots in the village street,
A group in the moonlight, a crowd in the dark,
And afar, from the houses, while passing, a bark
Called out by a dog lying hoping to greet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the bark called out by that dog, in his fright,
Symboled the land with its flames and its heat.
He has left the city and mounted the jeep,
And behind him, turmoiled and broad and steep,
Is poor Baghdad, inside where everyone hides;
And beside the bushes that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Lies fearful The Bush in his jeep as he rides.

It was twelve by the POTUS watch
When he left the tarmac from Baghdad town.
He began to crow of another notch,
Heard the cheering from the leader's dogs,
But felt the damp of the river fogs,
That rise up after the sun goes down.

It was one by the POTUS watch,
When he headed toward Washington.
He feared to have made another botch
Swim in the moonlight as he flew,
And the country below, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already somehow knew
Of the empty visit that was already gone.

It was two by the POTUS watch,
When he fell asleep o'er a German town.
He dreamed of crowing another Gotch-
A! to the twittering Dems among the crowd,
And practiced saying it clear and loud
Blowing his own horn up and down.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
While at the bridge another would fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
And families again would wail and bawl.

You know the rest. On TV you have seen
How the POTUS party fled so green,--
How the insurgents retaliated eye for eye,
From behind each wall against each lie,
Chasing our soldiers down the lane,
Then crossing the ruins to emerge again
With IEDs at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to blow and load.

So through the night flew George Afeared;
And so through the night went his cry of success
To every radio, TV and press,--
A cry of bluster, and not of revere,
A slink in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a ploy that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the wings of Air Force One,
The War on Terror, never done,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The thumping of chest-beats of that screed,
And the midnight bluster of George Afeared.


(AFTERWORD: This parody was constructed using source material from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dahr Jamail and truthout.org, Tom Raum and the Associated Press, Robin Toner & Kate Zernike and the New York Times News Service, the Providence Journal, Peter G. Gosselin and the Los Angeles Times, Molly Ivins and Creators Syndicate, and AMERICAN POETRY AND PROSE, Fourth Edition, Part One, edited by Norman Foerster, which includes the advisory, "Its historical inaccuracies are unimportant.")

My Life and Works

July 3, 2006

DISCLAIMER ALERT: Well, not exactly, as over the years there have been other activities, hobbies, jobs and even professions that interested me and caused me to have aspirations about doing them for a living. However, I remember writing a story when I was in the second grade that I was proud of, although I no longer have it or even remember what it was about, and as I grew older I took a serious interest in writing, telling stories and even, yes, journalism.

It is no wonder that I no longer have that first story, because my father was a career soldier in the U.S. Army, and we moved all over the United States and spent three years in Europe for one of his tours of duty. Consequently, because we were moving practically every year, my mother was in the habit of throwing away anything she believed was unnecessary so that it didn't have to be packed, moved and unpacked.

So, here is the list of the places we lived, in order, starting with where I was born: Carmel, CA (although we lived in nearby Monterey, CA); Medford, OR; Lawton, OK; Pampa, TX; Lawton, OK (again); Minot, ND; El Paso, TX; Tacoma, WA; Kennewick, WA; Erlangen, Germany; Lebanon, MO; and Colorado Springs, CO, where my father retired from the Army and we could consider ourselves living in a permanent home.

In fact, until I was a junior in high school in Colorado Springs, the longest I had ever lived in one place was three years, and that was the three years we had spent in Germany.

Now, I remember writing a story when I was about nine years old that took place in the Old West and which featured the Ames Brothers as the protagonists. The thing that sticks out the most in my memory is that they traveled the West and encountered various famous outlaws, such as Jesse James and Cole Younger, they would get into a dispute and one of the Ames Brothers would shoot the gun out of the hand of the famous outlaw. I have no misgivings about not having that story anymore.

However, when I was 12 and living in Germany, I earned enough money to buy a typewriter, a portable Royal, and I became serious about writing. I had seen the movie Francis (about a talking mule), and that inspired me to write my own story, J.B. Junebug, which took place in World War II and featured a talking bird. At the time, I thought I had written a novel, but when I came across my manuscript five years later, I was surprised and disappointed to discover that it was only 17 pages of single-spaced type. I believe I still have that story and could even find it if given enough time to search for it.

I then became even more serious about writing in high school, took journalism and worked as a reporter on my weekly newspaper in my junior year and became Co-Editor-in-Chief my senior year, which included writing a column every other week. Also, I was an editor on the literary magazine, won a journalism scholarship to the University of Colorado and was a reporter for the college newspaper.

But before I go into a more detailed list of my writing accomlpishments, let me return to the topic of other activities that held my interest in my youth and adulthood about which I was just as serious, some even considered at one time or another to become my profession.

I feel confident about being able to write something interesting about any of these subjects:

* ACTING--I was on stage first when I was six and in the first grade, receiving my first public laughter, which was for something that I had created; in a second-grade production I performed a pantomime to "McNamara's Band"; in a fourth-grade production of "Sleeping Beauty," I played Prince Charming; in high school I appeared in a couple of plays, performing the lead in one of them; but then in college I dropped my interest in acting, and it wasn't until my divorce after a 10-year marriage that I realized I had suppressed something I was interested in; I then joined a community theatre group and for the next nine years I acted in, directed and/or worked on the crew of every production until I became burned out and dropped out of theatre, but not acting: I had acted in a few amateur films and was selected to appear in two Hollywood productionss that were made near my hometown: The Disappearance of Aimee, with Faye Dunaway, Bette Davis and James Woods, and American Flyers, with Kevin Costner before he became famous.

* MUSIC--When I was in Germany my parents bought a piano and encouraged me (read: "forced") to take piano lessons for the three years we lived there; my allowance was increased fourfold if I practiced one hour a day, and I soon memorized "The Minute Waltz," ending each practice session with however many renditions of it were required to fill out the hour exactly; I was also in the school choir in grammar school and was complimented enough to believe that I have a pretty good singing voice; when we returned to the U.S. I took another year of piano lessons before deciding that I would never be good enough to be a professional pianist; in high school I was given a ukulele and was serious enough to get a book and learn how to play some songs; in college I bought a four-string banjo and did the same; and then when the folk-song craze swept the country, I turned in my four-string for a five-string banjo, taught myself how to play it and even wrote songs on it when there was no piano available.

* FILMMAKING--When I was in the U.S. Army for a three-year tour, I was stationed in Heidelberg, Germany, for 1-1/2 years, where I met some friends who were interested in filmmaking, I wrote a script based on the idea of one of the friends, we shot it on weekends and it won an award and was shown at the 1969 Malta Film Festival; when I was working for IBM, my manager gave me an assignment to write a film that featured our department and that began a sideline of writing, producing and/or directing a number of films both inside and outside of work, one of which won an award and was shown at both the 1988 Aspen Film Festival and the 1988 Denver International Film Festival.

* PHOTOGRAPHY--Also when I was in Germany for the Army, one of my friends was a serious photographer, and I also became interested and serious, buying an expensive camera and parlaying it into taking photographs at work for IBM and being the official photographer for two community theatre groups to which I belonged.

* TELEVISION--When I became burned out in community theatre, our local cable-TV operation began a public-TV station for the city, I went to the first orientation for members and became so active that I wrote, directed, produced and/or worked on the crew of one ongoing weekly live production and at the end of my involvement with public-access TV I was producing and editing six weekly programs.

* RADIO--I became interested in and involved in radio production while I was in high school, being the co-host of a weekly sports show and announcing a few basketball and baseball games; I took some radio training when I joined the Army, although I was never able to use it; and in 1978 I became involved with the new public radio station in my hometown when it began operation, and I am still involved with it, writing and producing a weekly movie review as a volunteer.

* TEACHING--I joined the Army in order to attend its journalism school and after graduation was retained as an instructor at the school; however, when I got out of the Army and decided that I wasn't going to become a successful novelist as I had planned, I went back to graduate school with the idea of obtaining an M.A. degree in English literature and becoming a college professor, but a motorcycle accident forced me to change those plans; then when I was working for IBM, after taking a class in technical writing, I was asked by the instructor to teach an editing class when the scheduled instructor had to cancel at the last minute, he was so impressed that he engaged me to teach more classes and eventually run the entire operation of various courses for our division, where eventually I prepared additional courses and taught them all over the U.S., Europe and Canada.

But back to writing, which is the purpose of this blog:

I am currently writing freelance articles for various publications, some of which I publish myself, in which my columns appear monthly. For 34 years I have been a film critic for three newspapers, two magazines, two radio stations and a cable-TV station, with 3,842 published reviews as of July 3, 2006. I currently write, produce and deliver a weekly film review for KGNU Community Radio, where I have been volunteering since 1978, and in 1994 I wrote a monthly column for a local newspaper and in 1996 wrote a column for another newspaper, both published in Boulder, Colorado, where I live.

I have also written instructor's guides for two Red Cross seminars, published five short stories in various publications and published a total of 722 articles in various publications, some of which I was a staff writer for, and on the Internet.

In addition, I have published two works of fiction; 14 nonfiction books; 167 films, videotapes, commercials and live TV productions; 3 live TV comedy routines; and 147 items of special interest, but who's counting?

I received a B.A. degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in English literature with a distributed minor in history, anthropology, the classics, psychology and philosophy from the University of Colorado in Boulder, during which year I also won a full scholarship to the Rocky Mountain Writers Conference.

My first novel is still being worked on, and my second novel is only half finished. In addition, I have written countless poems, 10 film scripts and treatments, 2 plays and 1 science-fiction novella.

In 2005 my nonfiction book, An Atheist's Handbook, was published by Xlibris Corp., a division of Random House.

I took early retirement from IBM, where I worked as a technical writer, editor, publications planner, technical-report editor and information developer as my main jobs, as well as photographer, film and video writer and producer, course developer and instructor as sideline jobs, which I was allowed to do as long as I satisfied my manager with my main jobs.

As I say at the top, all I ever wanted to be was a writer.