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Miyamoto Musashi
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Do not ever think in acquisitive terms.
Do not harbour hopes for your own personal home.
Do not be intent on possessing valuables or a fief in old age.
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Bruce Lee’s Fundamentals
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“As you think, so shall you become.”
“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”
“Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
“Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
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How to Write With Style
by Kurt Vonnegut
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Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.
These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful-- ? And on and on.
Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you're writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead --- or, worse, they will stop reading you.
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.
So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.
1. Find a subject you care about
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way --- although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.
2. Do not ramble, though
I won't ramble on about that.
3. Keep it simple
As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. "To be or not to be?" asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story "Eveline" is this one: "She was tired." At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.
Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
4. Have guts to cut
It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.
5. Sound like yourself
The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.
In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.
All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.
I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.
6. Say what you mean
I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable --- and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.
Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.
7. Pity the readers
They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school --- twelve long years.
So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify --- whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.
That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.
8. For really detailed advice
For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.
You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.
In Sum:
1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers
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Page Summary
December 2008
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Recent events have lead me to do a bit of soul searching. A karmic audit of sorts. Was in Prague recently. Beautiful city. Thought I'd throw some of the pix up here. I found this file on my hard drive just now. Written lastnight while drunk. The world stood still and a hush washed over all. What the hell do I want to say to the world?
Piss Artist more like!   What Muppet are you?  You are Gonzo the Great.You love everyone, and still you get shot out of a cannon on a regular basis. Oh, and you are completely insane and have a strange fascination for chickens.ALSO KNOWN AS:The Great Gonzo, Gonzo the Great, Just Plain Weird SPECIES:Whatever HOBBIES:Tapdancing blindfolded on tapioca while balancing a piano on his nose, backwards, five times fast. FAVORITE MOVIE:"From Here to Eternity...with no brakes." FAVORITE TV SHOW:"Touched By An Anvil" QUOTE:"No parachute? Wow! This is so cool!" Take this quiz!  Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code
The decision to tattoo his face with functional circuitry had seemed a good one at the time. Felix had been one of the first to adopt the trend, a good 18 months ago now. It became obvious soon after that the permanent conductive-ink would soon be outdated. The conductive ink itself wasn’t a problem. Hardware can always be reverse engineered. The conduction software was the problem. The ink suffered greatly from broken signals but Microsoft, the originators of the ink, had perfected a transmission system that rendered this problem inconsequential. Nico Gates (no relation), a Microsoft employee, leaked the code to the open source community and is now spending a life sentence in jail. Rumour has it he is allowed an internet connection in his cell and is plotting revenge on Microsoft with a group of hackers that have been following him since the code leak. But you know how rumours go. All that aside, the code was leaked and the open source community soon built a better mousetrap. They improved on Microsoft’s code to the level that a new hardware infrastructure was needed to support its sophistication. “Nodes” were the next big thing. Small implants that transmitted the data over short distances. They could be implanted in the body and not show on the surface, but many of the body-mod aficionados chose to have the node protrude from the skin. Many arranged them in intricate designs or incorporated them into existing mods. Microsoft abandoned the development of the conductive-ink project (though the same could not be said for the lawsuits). Felix, always one to ride on the cutting edge of technology, was now a walking anachronism. His skin was obsolete, which made it crawl. Already, the newest release of Pidgin would not run over the conductive-ink. Of course he upgraded to nodes but the conductive-ink could not be removed. He modded with the largest, most obtrusive nodes so that no one would think he was still using old software but it still played on his mind every time he looked in the mirror. It was like having a horse and cart in the back of your pick-up. Something would have to be done. He set about upgrading himself in every way possible. He invested in the best digital-eyes on the market, imported new hearing sensors from Japan, tested out all the latest hand widgets and experimented in every depraved form of sex-tech. It wasn’t enough. He was constantly just behind the curve. His skin still haunted him. Something had to be done.
------------------------------- Need to do more writing. I punched myself in the face and submissively wrote this in a free half our in work. May continue... B I'm a fucker for to-do lists... I spend more time making lists than taking care of the shit that I'm putting on them. Sitting here feeling like the words are supposed to spring the life and not the other way around. Where is my edge? My periphery has escaped me. I am a suggested form, a blunt force incapable of forming a point of impact. Rubicon or gradual change or just sit around and think about it some more. Nothing gets finished as I finish nothing. I barely start. Tend to stare at the sparks and see their prettiness as they burn out. I marvel at external perfections. Would to bring one forth myself, a beautiful lie from a scrambled core. Seek help from catalysts or contemplate it at least. Expressions are beginning to constrict as I for some reason feign the effects. What am I playing with? It contains too many small parts. Not suitable for children sixteen years or older. He walked among them by day, despising every minute. Endlessly dealing with the lowest of them through their arcane communication systems. "Fffffffffffffffeeexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx eeeeeeeeeeeet," they would hiss, "fffffeeeeeex eeet!" He wished nothing more than for a simple way to remotely insert a blue Bic biro into someone’s eye. They were not all such cerebrally deficient specimens. Some were quite keen and bright eyed. They were the younger of the intelligent ones. The elders had grown older than they deserved, through simple repetition. They were still sharp but now just through the act of practice. These creatures could no longer be repurposed. Their eyes had grown dull. He was accepted as one of them but would not accept it himself. He would watch the digits of the clock tease him. A couple of times a day it would show the right numbers but in the wrong order to let him go home. The digital display had learned to rasp at him.
Slaughterhouse 5 is a great book. I'm glad to apparently have written it. Your results:
Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz... I've decided to write some prose just to keep myself in practice. Will probably be a load of stream-of-consciousness bollox, but anyway.
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