Words Fail Me (3 page)

Once you've made a note—whether on a file card, a page torn from a notebook, or a slip of paper—store it in a handy place. This is your stash. Just as a farmer has seed and a carpenter has lumber, a writer keeps a stash of material—promising words or phrases, news clippings, or idle notions.

The way you organize your stash depends on your personality. If you're one of those systematic types—all right, admit it—you might use an accordion file, with related notes neatly sorted by subject. My own notes tend to
accumulate like heaps of nuclear waste. Eventually they reach critical mass and I have to transfer them to manila folders just to get my desk back.

But no matter how you arrange your stash, don't make a fetish of it. You can be tidy later, when you start writing. And by all means, don't get too orderly and start throwing notes away (unless they say only "Mahler"). An interesting observation might not be relevant at the moment, but it could be perfect for some future writing project. Use it to start another stash.

Remember that the point of keeping a stash is to capture your ideas as they come. So for now, relax and don't be obsessive (just compulsive). This isn't work—not yet. It's pleasure.

Ages ago, when a childhood illness or a rainy day kept me inside, my mother used to let me play with her button box, an old fruitcake tin full of buttons in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Quite a few had been snipped from cast-off clothes and still had bits of fabric attached. Many were oddities: a big pink rhinestone, a carved wooden knot, the "eye" of a deceased bear. It was great fun to dump them out and arrange them in imaginative patterns. Sometimes I feel much the same pleasure in looking over a stash of notes before beginning to write.

But back to the project at hand. The organized writer does not digress!

By now you have a healthy stack of usable material. Don't plunge into it right away, though; stop and think for a moment. Interrogate yourself:
What
do you want to say,
why
do you want to say it, and
how
do you want to say it?If you're not clear about these three things, take a walk—maybe a long one, or maybe only around the room—and think some more. And loosen up, for heaven's sake. You're just thinking.

Say the neighbors have chosen you to speak before the local zoning board about a proposed toxic dump the city wants to build on your block. For starters, give yourself the third degree: the what, the why, and the how.
What do you want to say?
The city should not build a toxic dump on my block.
Why do you want to say it?
Because we'll all turn green, property values will plummet, and there's a better spot across town.
How do you want to say it?
By presenting statistics on projected mortality rates, on residential resales in Chernobyl, and on the scarcity of registered voters living across town.

For the less civic-minded, here's another example. You're writing a magazine article about your grandmother on the occasion of her hundredth birthday. Again, run through the big three.
What do you want to say?
Gran is a specimen of living history, from the days of gaslight and horse-drawn carriages to space travel and cloning.
Why do you want to say it
?Because through the eyes of the elderly, we get a new perspective on the century.
How do you want to say it?
By using Gran's own words, along with old letters, diaries, and scrapbooks.

Even fiction should be subjected to the test. Suppose you want to write a short story about high school sweethearts who meet again at their fiftieth class reunion.
What do you want to say
? Former lovers look forward to rekindling the old flame, but end up wondering what they
ever saw in each other.
Why do you want to say it?
To show that puppy love isn't for grown-ups.
How do you want to say it?
By using his-and-hers remembrances of things past and present.

Once you have the what, the why, and the how, you need a skeleton to hang your material on. Does this mean making an outline, one of those charts with Roman numerals and tiers of this, that, and the other? If you're comfortable with outlines, fine; make one. Some of my best friends are outline people. If you're not, here's a suggestion.

Draw up a list, which you may find less intimidating than a formal outline. We make lists all the time: lists of groceries, errands, correspondence, calls to answer. This is simply a list of the ideas you hope to get across or the points you want to include. Arrange the ideas in a logical order, one idea leading to the next.

What's a logical order? That depends on your material and your point of view. If your list of ideas is mostly a series of events, a straight chronological arrangement might work best. If you're building an argument, you might want to rank your ideas in order of importance. If you want to entertain in a speech or a light essay, you have to wow the audience at regular intervals, so spread the good stuff around and don't blow it all at once.

Perhaps you're giving a talk before the local garden club about repotting bonsai. If you choose a chronological approach, you might begin by talking about the first signs that the tree needs a transplant, then go on to picking a time, choosing a pot, pruning the roots, mixing new soil,
and so on. If you want to build an argument, you might open by describing a pathetic, withered bonsai whose owner waited too long or ignored the danger signals. If you want to entertain, you might start by recalling how you were all thumbs (none of them green) the first time you repotted, but that the plant somehow survived the bungling.

Keep in mind that two different writers, given the same material, might organize it quite differently, yet just as effectively. There's no single answer to what makes a logical sequence. Pick one that makes sense to you, seems right for your material and your audience, and leads the reader smoothly from point to point.

If the items on your list don't readily fall into place, try this. Write them on sheets of paper, one item per sheet, with a word or two representing each item. Lay the sheets out—use the floor, if it helps, and invite Macavity to lounge somewhere else. Then arrange and rearrange the sheets into a chain of ideas, perhaps adding connecting items as links, until each idea naturally follows the one before and leads on to the next. Don't think sensational writing isn't put together this way. Ann Beattie used the floor to rearrange the parts of her novel
Picturing Will
. When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote
This Side of Paradise
and
The Love of the Last Tycoon,
he covered the walls with charts showing the backgrounds and movements of his characters. And J. D. Salinger has been known to hang sheaves of notes from hooks mounted on the wall of his studio.

When you've put your ideas in order—you can get up off the floor now—take out your stash of notes and sort it. For each idea on your list, collect a pile of material(evidence, research, anecdotes, explanations) you might use to make that particular point. Steel yourself and put aside what doesn't belong. Sure, that bit about your seventh-grade homeroom teacher is a gem. But if it doesn't fit now, don't try to squeeze it in. Save it. There will be other days, other writing. Hoard your ideas like a miser.

You now have the bones of your piece (the list) and some of the flesh (the piles of relevant material). This framework is a guide to the size, scope, and structure of what you want to write, whether it's a short story, an office memo, a speech, a sermon, an essay, or a book.

As for the physical arrangement, or what you should have on your desk by now, that's up to you. You might make a chart listing the ideas in progression, with notations under each idea telling you which supporting materials to include. Or if you prefer, and if you have the space, arrange the piles in a neat row, one pile (labeled clearly) for each major idea on your list.

Expect your organization plan to stretch and change as you go along. It's
supposed
to. If it doesn't, there's something wrong. In the process of writing, you'll get ideas you weren't expecting. A hunch may come out of the blue, and suddenly you're off on an adventure. This phenomenon is called creativity, and your framework must inevitably change to accommodate it. A plan is supposed to help you write, and when it doesn't do that, it doesn't work. If you have to stand on your head to follow a blueprint, maybe the blueprint is upside down.

Imagine you're on
Oprah.
The camera swivels your way, the red light is in your face,
you're on.

What do you say? Your mouth opens, and out comes..."Uhhh, ahhh." The camera swivels away. In a split second, you've ruined your life!

Don't let this happen to you. Whether you're on camera or at the keyboard, get to it. Those first few words are your most important. They determine whether the audience will stick around for the rest.

An audience is a terrible thing to lose. Gorgeous writing, moving passages, clever wordplay, startling ideas— they're all wasted if nobody reads far enough to find them. Avoid throwaway beginnings like these:

My purpose in writing this report on the plight of the takeout pizza industry is to show that...

I confess it's not without some trepidation that I turn to the subject of Elvis sightings, but...

At this point in time, you've no doubt observed that the frequent flyer...

The subject of this paper, potty training, has been the focus of considerable interest recently because...

It may be idle to speculate on the chances of a comet's destroying life on earth, and yet...

Needless to say, it's safe to assume that when we consider the rise of plastic wrap and the decline of waxed paper...

Generalities are hard to make, but my experience with alien abductions has been that...

After giving the subject of fat deprivation much thought, I can assert without fear of contradiction...

It's valuable to recall that only a few short years ago, the passenger pigeon was...

Eventually we all must acknowledge that the demographic impact of the station wagon...

Opinions to the contrary notwithstanding, it is distinctly possible that Jack the Ripper...

Don't start out by clearing your throat.

Now that you know what
not
to do, how do you find a beginning that works? The one you choose depends on your audience and on how you've decided to organize your piece. A meteorologist writing an article for the
Journal of Macromolecular Hermeneutics
wouldn't start out the same way as an Army chaplain planning a Memorial Day sermon or a stockbroker making a pitch to an investment club. Here are a few opening gambits.

One way to start your piece—as well as to get yourself writing—is to sum it up at the beginning. Write a short paragraph to tell the reader where you're going:
what
you plan to say,
why
it needs saying, and
how
you'll do it. A paper on Elizabethan drama might start this way: "Shakespeare's male-pattern baldness had a profound effect on his work. This revelation throws new light on his later plays, as a close examination of them will show."

Summarizing the what, the why, and the how (the third degree you gave yourself in the previous chapter) will help you start and keep you focused. In later drafts, this paragraph might move to another spot—after an opening anecdote, for example—or disappear altogether if it becomes unnecessary.

The summary beginning has been around for a long time, and it still works. In the fifth century B.C., Herodotus used this technique to begin his history of the Persian Wars. While the translation may have a few cobwebs, the opening sentence gets right to the point:

"These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud."

The writing still has grandeur, nearly twenty-five hundred years later.

You, too, can sum up the what, the why, and the how in your beginning. Just remember that a summary doesn't have to include the whole shebang. It only has to give the reader a taste of what's to come.

If you don't want to sum up your piece at the beginning, try starting with an anecdote. This technique can be overused, but everyone loves a good story, and a diversion or joke at the outset is a good way to catch the reader's attention. Keep it relevant, though. Starting off with a traveling-salesman joke, even an uproariously funny one, won't make much sense if your topic is periodontal disease. Use a joke about George Washington's dentures or Dracula's canines, or maybe a personal anecdote about flossing around that pesky upper-right bicuspid.

If you're writing an autobiography, a memoir, or something else about yourself, it may help to begin with an account of an important or symbolically significant incident in your life. Here's a bare-bones example: "If Mom hadn't sewn me a skeleton suit for Halloween when I was three, I never would have become the chiropractor I am today."

Anecdotal beginnings can work with almost any kind of writing, fiction or nonfiction. In the first paragraph of
Goodbye, Columbus,
Philip Roth gave us this unforgettable opening:

"The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses. Then she stepped out to the edge of the diving board and looked foggily into the pool; it could have been drained, myopic Brenda would never have known it. She dove beautifully, and a moment later she was swimming back to the side of the pool, her head of short-clipped auburn hair held up, straight ahead of her, as though it were a rose on a long stem. She glided to the edge and then was beside me. 'Thank you,' she said, her eyes watery though not from the water. She extended a hand for her glasses but did not put them on until she turned and headedaway. I watched her move off. Her hands suddenly appeared behind her. She caught the bottom of her suit between thumb and index finger and flicked what flesh had been showing back where it belonged. My blood jumped."