Several short sentences on writing

Robin Rendle

This is the sort of book I usually hate. By law books about writing are so desperate to explain the world to me that I struggle to keep my eyes open. I don’t have much patience when I feel someone’s talking down to me, with them having figured the universe out already. Isn’t it always more exciting when a writer is on the tip of their toes just a half step ahead of you? When you’re invited to participate rather than being yelled at?

Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences on writing slips into that mode from time to time but has enough useful advice to recommend it. Like this first banger:

A writer’s real work is the endless winnowing of sentences,
The relentless exploration of possibilities...

Excellent, yes! But okay — how do you do that?

The answer is simple.
Your job as a writer is making sentences.

That’s not earth-shattering advice, but it’s helpful for me. The size of a project can be overwhelming and cutting the problem up into sentences frees me from the burden of all that future work that has to be done.

Or, as Verlyn puts it:

I’m interested in the genre of the sentence,
The genre that’s always overlooked.
Many writers seem to believe we live in a universe of well-defined literary forms:
The memoir, the profile, the feature, the first novel, the book proposal...

I like this! It’s a good reminder to focus on each sentence microscopically, to ignore everything else beyond that. Because who knows if I’m writing a poem or a sci-fi novel when I start a project? Just take care of the sentences.

Perhaps the strangest thing about this book is that it isn’t just writing advice, as I kept thinking about how these suggestions can be applied to design work, too. For example: when working on a big design project I never work on the whole thing all at once. At the beginning I’ll focus on the smallest part of it: the sidebar, the navigation, a single button or action or feature. I think of these as “sentences” or what I once called the smallest possible bit. Each change in the design modifies all the other changes. So I’ll constantly revise my prototypes as if I’m a brutal editor, demanding revision after revision, but because I’m working on a small piece of the puzzle it’s much less intimidating. Who can make 50 versions of a sidebar? Anyone can!

Designers often struggle with this lack of focus on the “sentence” of interface design. But I struggle with it more whilst writing. I get overwhelmed with all the possibilities and my drafts folder is littered with dead projects because I forgot about the sentences and all I could see was the plot or the genre or anything else.

But how do you get good at this though? This relentless focus? Here’s what Verlyn recommends:

The urge to write is so strong.
Aspiring writers want so badly to be pouring something out of themselves.
You need a place where you can practice noticing and making sentences—
[...] Is it possible to practice noticing?
I think so.
But I also think it requires a suspension of yearning

Sorry to interrupt you Verlyn, but !!!

First: I’ve felt this yearning to be a writer and a designer deeply in my bones. But I’ve avoided the writing, the sentence, the interface design, and the actual work in favor of bragging about being a writer or a designer. It’s easy to let the titles and the ego get the best of you. But the sentences are what matter most.

Second: this blog has always been that place for me to notice things. I write publicly because knowing that strangers will read this thing helps me winnow each sentence.

But when it comes to design it all needs to be locked up, private, sent into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. The ideas are too embarrassing, too naive at the beginning. So early last year I started to keep a daily journal and began to fill it with junk: terrible, unforgivable ideas and scribbled drawings with words that make next to no sense. It’s a relief though, to have somewhere to notice things without it all being in the public record.

Anyway, I quite like what Verlyn has to say about cutting longer sentences into shorter ones because I’ve always struggled with the need to show off in my writing, to prove I can write a sentence that never stops. Verlyn argues this is due to fear and maybe that’s true. Perhaps I’m afraid to put a full stop somewhere because it’s hard and I’m an undisciplined writer, because I fear that folks will stop reading if each and every sentence doesn’t do a backflip-720-no-scope:

The obsession with transition negates a basic truth about writing,
A magical truth.
You can get anywhere from anywhere,
Always and almost instantly.

I love this! You can get anywhere from anywhere. Each sentence is a portal. Each sentence has potential. This is very exciting! Who knows where the next one will lead!

But I also like the idea that cutting up long sentences isn’t just for the reader. A lot of Verlyn’s argument in the book is that writing isn’t solely to woo strangers. Instead, this act of revision should help us think more clearly:

We assume that thought shapes the sentence.
But thought and sentence are always a collaboration...
[...] At first, what you mean to say will emerge
By setting aside the things you don’t mean to say
As well as trying to say the thing itself.

And and and:

Finding flaws is how you learn to make better sentences.
[...] Some flaws do a wonderful job of hiding.

I can’t help but connect this writing advice to software design again: bad ideas hide themselves until I make a prototype and find them. Every sentence is a prototype, too. Trying a thing, testing an idea.

Bad design does a wonderful job of hiding.

I like that for a couple of reasons. I like it because I don’t believe in the traditional design process. I think great design, like great writing, is a total shit show. There’s no stages, no linear clunk, clunk, clunk of progress. It’s all terrible until suddenly it isn’t because you’ve revised it ten thousand times.

Or:

You have no idea what you’re going to say
Until you discover what you want to say
As you make the sentences that say it.

Every sentence is optional until it proves otherwise.
Writing is the work of discovery.