Several Short Sentences About Writing

Concentration, attention, excitement, will be part of your working state. Daily. Flow, inspiration—the spontaneous emission of sentences—will not. That distinction is worth keeping in mind.

Every sentence could have been otherwise but isn’t.

You don’t have to write short sentences forever. Only until you find a compelling reason for a long sentence That’s as clear and direct as a short sentence. You’ll be tempted to say, “But short sentences sound so choppy.” Only a string of choppy sentences sounds choppy. Think about variation and rhythm, The rhythm created by two or three sentences

You be the narrator. Let us be the readers. You’ll discover that being the narrator is not the same as being yourself. It’s a role, and a dramatic one. Absorb it and inhabit it.

“And then one day.” You know exactly how those four words feel. You know exactly what they do. When you get lost in your writing, remember them. Don’t use them: think about the possibilities they contain. The ability to gather and redirect, To rise above the level of the prose and look around, As if you were standing in a crow’s nest Looking out ov

Prose is the residue, the consequence, of the writer’s choices, Choices about the shape of each sentence And how each sentence shapes the others.

The familiarity with which we know our own lives is sometimes disabling. Writing is a special instance of that. In responding to your own prose, you’re responding in some sense to yourself, And no matter how hard you look, you’re almost invisible to yourself, Camouflaged by familiarity. One basic strategy for revision is becoming a stranger to what

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. Learning to do this will take some time.

It’s always worth asking yourself if you can imagine saying a sentence And adjusting it until you can. Just as it’s always useful to ask yourself, “What exactly am I trying to say?” The answer to that question is often the sentence you need to write down.