What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. Samuel Johnson
In the spring of 2012 I attended an HD broadcast of Verdi’s La Traviata performed by the New York Metropolitan Opera and starring the brilliant coloratura soprano Natalie Dessay. We had seen Dessay in other Met productions and were very much looking forward to experiencing the power and beauty of her voice in La Traviata. In addition, La Traviata is one of Verdi’s most beloved and memorable works. Unfortunately, on that afternoon the diva’s voice was marred by a cold and she failed to hit one of the high notes in an aria in the first act; in a later performance she was forced to withdraw altogether as she was unable to overcome the effects of the cold on her voice.
While the production, taken as a whole, was original and beautifully performed (Dessay recovered from the missed note and sang wonderfully in the second act), I remember that broadcast of La Traviata primarily for its one flaw.
The missed note in La Traviata was an unfortunate but unavoidable faux pas committed by a highly trained, exhaustively rehearsed professional, a world-renowned opera star. Because the performance was live, there was no opportunity for her to correct or “edit out” the flaw in her performance; she simply had to move beyond it and continue singing.
Think of the figure skater, the baseball player, the professional chef: one simple mistake can be a “game changer”; too many mistakes can end a career.
I wonder if we writers might benefit from regarding our work as a kind of performance art.
I happen to be both a writer and an editor. As a writer, I usually think the first draft of what I have written is good enough to be published; in fact, because I edit as I write, I often do not re-read a piece I have written. As an editor, I cringe when I am working on a text that has not been re-written; sometimes it’s my own work (which I do re-read once it has been published—to stroke my ego) that makes me cringe.
While writing* may be intended to inspire, to criticize, to persuade, to praise, its fundamental purpose is to communicate. But good writing does not just communicate in the rudimentary sense of passing information on to the reader; it communicates feelings, impressions, insights, perspective, and much more. Good writing draws the reader into an encounter with the world that the writer has created, an encounter that remains in the reader’s memory long after the article has been set aside. In the space of a few hundred—or a couple of thousand—words, a complete experience has been generated.
If a writer desires that the reader be fully engaged in this communication process, he or she must make the effort to ensure that the experience is not degraded by carelessness. “Making the effort” means re-reading the piece critically and re-writing as necessary, often several times in order to render to the careful and sincere reader the gift of a pleasurable read.
As a reader, admittedly one now afflicted with an editorial eye, I am distracted by flaws in some of the pieces that I read. These distractions include misplaced or “dangling” modifiers, pronouns without clear referents, misuse of words, unnecessary repetition of words and phrases, the use of clichéd expressions, lack of agreement between subject and verb, misuse of the apostrophe (it’s misuse being all too common). This list is by no means exhaustive.
I have read countless articles, essays, and books that were characterized by fresh ideas, a unique voice, thorough research, passionate dedication to a worthy cause, or brilliant humour. But in too many of them the outstanding qualities were marred by careless writing.
I recall that as a graduate student I attended a weekly seminar, led by my thesis supervisor, in which each student was required to review a major work by an important contributor to our field of study. I was given the anxiety-inspiring honour of reviewing the latest book written by my supervisor. Despite the ground-breaking research the content reflected, the book was so poorly edited that it was barely readable. Thus I was presented with a dilemma: Do I take the safe path and focus on the important ideas in the book while ignoring its many flaws, or am I obliged as a reviewer to include those editorial shortcomings in my comments about the book? In the end, I did bring them up in my presentation and my embarrassed professor acknowledged that indeed these errors were a significant impediment to a successful encounter with the work.
Many of us are fortunate to have editors who review our work and correct the errors they find within it. (I suppose my supervisor’s editor was on vacation when he submitted his manuscript to the publisher.) But the editor is like a doctor: she cannot cure all of the patient’s ills. An editor cannot come up with a fresh expression to replace a clichéd metaphor; she cannot always determine which noun a pronoun refers to (in fact, often there is no specific noun to which it might refer); she is not always able to find just the right word to replace an unnecessarily repeated one. In such cases, all an editor can do is to point out these shortcomings so that the writer can correct them himself.
We who write are fortunate in that our performances are not “live”; we have time to revisit what we write, to reshape it and refine it, and to correct the errors that can make it memorable in all the wrong ways. Is it not our responsibility, then, to use the opportunity that time affords us, an opportunity not given to other professional “performers,” to create for our readers the most pleasurable experience possible?
* In this article I am talking only about the writing of non-fiction.
Image Credit
“La Traviata” by kjiek. Creative Commons Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Recent Ross Lonergan Articles:
- The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Four
- The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Three
- The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Two
- The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part One
- Bullying, Fear, And The Full Moon (Part Four)
Well said Ross. My big issue is that I can get bogged down on editing a piece to the point that it is unrecognizable from my original point. And because it has been many, many years since I’ve had to know what a dangling participle is, I do not concentrate on sentence structure I just keep rewriting the piece without looking at the original…it makes for a long process which usually doesn’t work out well. In the past It stopped my creative flow and stopped me from even considering letting someone else read my stuff. What do they call it? Paralysis through analysis.
So a few months ago I decided to stop rewriting fifteen times and have now been worrying about getting things as clean as I can without trying to butcher the piece, and hope that someone who does know what a dangling geranium is will pick it up for me. ;). Thanks for that!
Hi Gab:
Thank you for your comment. I hear what you are saying and I think that every writer should adopt the writing process that works for her. Too many of us are carrying baggage from bad writing classes and from writing teachers that we would have loved to consign to Devil’s Island for life.
Having said this, I am still convinced that regardless of our process, “creative flow” is only part of the overall writing enterprise. The other big part is revision.
Perhaps “rewriting” is too loaded a term. To use another analogy from the art world, a sculptor does not “re-sculpt” her work; rather, she painstakingly, carefully, meticulously – and lovingly – chisels, chips, grinds away at the crude shape she has created until her masterpiece appears. In this process she is not butchering her piece; she is refining it into something beautiful. And when she has finally created her work of art, it may not entirely match – or even resemble – her original idea but it will be what it was truly intended to be.
Funny you should mention dangling geraniums; they are exactly what my next article is about.
Excellent analogy…I’ll have to remember that!
I think the real issue is whether or not the piece is what the writer set out to accomplish. Writing is more than just an idea, or a good sentence or word choice, rhythm or an image. It is all of these and more whether of the piece ever sees the light of day. I also shoot images and in that area it is a zero sum.If it, what ever it is that inspired the the photographer to press the shutter, is there, it is there and not much else need be done. On the other hand well produced banal crap( look at the great sunset sort of thing) may be personally satisfying but not terribly interesting as work. I think that what i am saying that is that performance or not, the work has to be done rightly, in all its aspects. If no one ever saw it but the artist it would still have to pass muster otherwise, why bother?
Hi Michael:
You make an excellent point. I would add only this: In order to accomplish the desired result or to do the work rightly, the writer (or photographer) needs to have mastered the essential skills of his or her craft or art. The bottom line, as you know, is countless hours of hard work (work that is done with great love).
Hi Ross,
Quite right! An opera singer or classical musician, of even a folk singer singing a well known tune who misses a lyric … has nowhere to hide!
As for balance, I just meant to use that as one example of things I have seen people say, or the way some judge a piece of writing, or even a piece of music preformed by a new/young player.
I do agree with you that if we are to call ourselves serious writers, we do indeed have an obligation to hone our crafts, and care for details. I guess I have just seen some “this is my first attempt at writing” type writers … get shredded, and it saddens my heart. Some of these folks don’t have much help and some have very little education, and yet, they have an interesting story to tell. Encouraging them will go a long way towards them believing that they could be a serious writer one day. Because I am getting to know you (and am grateful for that), I also know that you know this intrinsically.
Now … I am going to spell check my comment before clicking sumbit!
😉
Hi Gil:
I agree with you completely: we must encourage young/new writers, and if we are in a position to do so, we must also help them to upgrade their skills and to see value in the process of revision. There is truth in the old adage that art is ten percent inspiration, ninety percent perspiration.” Unfortunately, as I will show in my next post, it is not just young/new writers who need to be reminded of the need to revise their work before publishing it.
In the meantime, I want to tell you that I am grateful to you for always smellchecking your work.
LOL .. I try I try!
I will look forward to your next piece!
Cheers,
Gil
Hi Ross,
I agree that as writers, we should indeed pay attention to detail. The wonderful thing about publishing work online is that it can be fixed after the fact. Alas, too many folks use that as an excuse.
On the other hand, I read a very personal and inspiring piece recently written by a brave soul. It had one typo. A reader lambasted the writer saying: “If you spent time editing your work, people might take you more seriously.” This reader had missed the whole point of the story. As in all things, the word balance is important 🙂
Now … as to the unfortunate missed note! As a jazz/rock guitar player, I often improvise. One trick I learned when making a mistake in a solo is to play it again! The listener hears the mistake and thinks … oh, he made a mistake. If I play it again they think … oh!! where IS he going with that! If I play it one more time … they say …
“Wow … he’s a monster!”
Jazz … you gotta love it!
Cheers,
Gil
Thank you for your thoughtful comments, In both of the examples you cited, you referred to “one mistake” or “a mistake.” Thus it appears that both the writer and the jazz musician spent a great deal of time working on their “pieces” in order to make them as close to perfect as possible before allowing them to be seen/heard by the public. It is also likely that the writer and you have thoroughly studied and practiced your craft; there are few true prodigies in the world. So your mistake and that of the writer were like Dessay’s: an unfortunate occurrence. An experienced and skilful jazz musician can indeed cover up a mistake, but for an opera singer performing a familiar aria, there is nowhere to hide.
I disagree that the issue here is balance, in the sense that I believe you are using this word, as the reader who made that comment simply had an axe to grind and would have found some other fault in the piece even if the spelling – or grammar, or word usage, or whatever – had been perfect. What I am trying to say is that if we call ourselves serious writers, we should be no different from other professional “performers” who master the technical aspects of their craft or their art before they put it in front of the public, many members of which are both knowledgeable and discerning.