Book Review: On Writing Well

It's impossible to teach someone how to be a good writer. You can explain split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and talk about the importance of a good opening until you're blue in the face, but you'll never be able to tell them exactly how to write something great. As a journalism major, I am frustrated by the intangibility of a "craft" that is so subjective and abstract. If this is something that takes a lifetime to get good at, how can it be a college major?

But I love to write, and though I've mostly abandoned the idea of doing it professionally, I'll always have that creative itch to share what I see, hear, and think. My love of writing extends to reading about writing, and for anyone who's with me, I'd like to point you toward William Zinsser's On Writing Well.

This is the most cleanly written, accessible guide to writing available. If only Newhouse professors could teach like Zinsser. He covers all of bad writing's most egregious faults: clutter, poor usage, lack of unity, you name it. The best part is he tells you exactly how to fix them. He makes the case for clean, simple prose and shows the difficulty in reading verbose, flabby writing. Every time I read this book, it makes me want to go through everything I've ever written to prune and re-arrange it. Maybe that's just me.

Any writer, whether professional or recreational, will love Zinsser's dedication to the principles and methods of writing. But my favorite chapter is titled "Enjoyment, Fear, and Confidence." One enduring memory of my j-school classes will be when a magazine professor told us that every writer doubts herself, and that at one point or another, is convinced everything she has ever written is crap. That came as a relief to me. Zinsser echoes my professor's sentiment, and offers advice about sticking it out in order to get good. He emphasizes the importance of writing about what really interests you, and staying curious. A favorite quote: "Living is the trick. Writers who write interestingly tend to be men and women who keep themselves interested. That's almost the whole point of becoming a writer." This also sounds to me like an excuse for freelancers to step away from their computer and go to the beach. Living is the trick.

So, to all my dear friends who are sallying forth into the journalism world, read this book if you haven't already. I am slightly ashamed to say this is one of my favorite things to read before bed, because it eases me into a tranquil state of contentment. As impossible as it is to teach writing, Zinsser comes as close to perfect as humanly possible. I'd offer to let you borrow my copy, but I love it too much.

Songs that make your heart sing: Big Band edition

This song is my default ring tone. "Sing, Sing, Sing" by Benny Goodman. Also known as "The Chips Ahoy Song."

Antiquated jobs I wish I could have

The abysmal state of the economy, combined with my crippling lack of professional self-efficacy has led me to consider some alternative career options. Unfortunately, we are no long living in the 1800s, and many of these desirable occupations are no longer available. Nevertheless, here's a short list. Let me know what you think I'd be best at, and whether modern alternatives exist.

1) Apothecary- I frequently wax poetic about my desires to perform complex medical procedures. For some reason I thought it would be more worth my time to spend four years getting two almost worthless degrees instead of going to nursing school or something similar. So here I am, 21 years old, clutching my reporter's notebook in one hand, and an Excel spreadsheet in the other, but all I want to do is see how quickly I could perform a rudimentary appendectomy. My interest extends into all areas of medicine, and back in the days of yore, local apothecaries did everything from mixing and prescribing medications, to delivering babies and doing surgery. Heaven, is that you calling?

2. Town crier- I don't consider myself a particularly gossipy gal, but imagine how wonderful it would be to stand in the town square, dispensing the day's news and tidbits. I could perform in haiku, or take up the banjo and sing, or perhaps attempt delivering some stories in interpretive dance. In these days where no news exists anymore, and we know everything on the front page before the paper even goes to press, wouldn't it be nice to get your news the old fashioned way? That is, from a vaguely homeless looking girl with a penchant for puns and a knowing gleam in her eye?

3. Telegraph Operator - Another way for me to be all up in people's business, but also under the guise of a legitimate profession. Also, after I transmitted a message, I could save the handwritten copy for my own personal collection. Remember that time I wrote about how much I loved to read other people's mail? This is exactly like that.

Is it fate or the gingersnap?

I, like everyone, have my quirks. One of these involves a family tradition passed down from my maternal Scottish ancestors. Perhaps you've heard of making wishes on lost eyes lashes, or birthday candles. My family? We make wishes on gingersnaps.

It's okay if you need to read that twice. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Let me explain how this works. You select a cookie, hold it in the palm of one hand, and use your elbow to break it, making a wish while you do so. If the gingersnap breaks into three pieces, your wish is granted! Don't do this with Oreos, or Girl Scout cookies, or anything else. Only gingersnaps provide the robust texture that make cracking it into three pieces such a satisfying challenge.

I have been known to eat entire boxes of gingersnaps in a day waiting for my cookie to crumble just right. My mother taught this tradition to me, and I've taught it to my friends here at school. My explanations are often met with alarm, but also curiosity, as everyone puts their fate in the hands of Nabisco. It is strangely exhilarating.

This is really my only superstition. Every time I eat gingersnaps, I have to make at least once wish, and more than once, I have credited a certain happy event to a three-part fortuitous fragmentation. My grandmother broke an elbow making wishes on ginger snaps. We don't mess around.

Please tell me some of your awkward family traditions in the comments to make me feel better about my own.

What do carbon monoxide, sandra bullock and halibut have in common?

I picked a bad time to launch another 20 posts in 30 days initiative. Schoolwork picked up, my computer lost its mind, and I took ill with a particularly draining head cold. But I’m here now. I hope you all appreciate the blood, sweat and tears I put into this frivolous exercise I call blogging. Nevertheless, I’m pessimistic about meeting my goal, but I hope you’ll still support me in my effort.

As promised, here’s my TOP FIVE LIST OF (MOSTLY IRRATIONAL) FEARS.

5. Sustaining injury to my right eye. I am legally blind in my left eye. If someone shoots an arrow and it lands in my good eye, or I contract some sort of David Patterson-esque infection that ruins my optic nerve, I’m screwed. I can see somewhat out of my left eye, but I couldn’t read, drive, or do most things I take for granted now. It’s possible my vision would strengthen if my left eye was all I had, but it gets increasingly unlikely as I get older. Would anyone be my Anne Sullivan?

4. Gas leaks. As a child, I watched absurd amounts of Rescue 911. Stories of old people dying from gas leaks in their motor homes were featured frequently, and I became preoccupied with buying a carbon monoxide detector for our house. I tried to drop casual hints to my mother, but she felt a lot less threatened by the silent, odorless gas than I did. Consequently, every night before bed, I would open my window and hungrily gasp in as much fresh air as I could. I figured if I started the night with clean air in my lungs, I would be more likely to survive an overnight leak. Sometimes, when I was very afraid, I even slept with the windows open in the dead of winter. This fear is a lot less intense now, but the radiator in my First Aid class hisses maniacally, and I can’t help feeling like we’re about to blow up, or maybe someone will come up to our remote fourth-floor classroom and discover 15 dead bodies.

3. Driving a bus. Whenever I tell people about this fear, they always say, “Oh, so you’ve seen Speed?” No, I haven’t seen Speed and now I know I never should because it could be years before I get another goodnight’s sleep. In order to drive a bus and do it well, you must drive so close to objects that it seems like you’re going to hit them, and you must have an incredible sense of the size of the vehicle you’re controlling. I consider myself a good driver, but I know the bus is entirely beyond my capabilities. It’s unlikely this scenario will ever present itself, but if it does, I hope all of the other cars are off the road that day. What if I am driving a bus with a gas leak? That would be the worst day ever.

2. Having an intersexed child. I have seen many a documentary when a child was born with ambiguous genitalia, or due to a medical error, had his genitals damaged. It was a common procedure to “turn” the child into one sex or another by surgically altering whatever was there into girl or boy parts. This method was met with disastrous results when children grew up feeling that they were born in the wrong body, and identified with the opposite gender. The psychological and physical torture that results is incomprehensible, and I am terrified that I could be faced with the decision to determine a child’s gender. As many as 4 in 1,000 children are born with issues like these. Luckily, medical knowledge and technology have improved a lot since cases like Dr. Money’s infamous experiment, but the fact remains that you can’t raise a genderless child, and difficult choices get made. Just another reason to adopt!

1. Fish. This is probably the most illogical of my fears, and that is saying something when you look at this list. Strangely, sharks, sting rays, and other legitimately threatening aquatic creatures do not bother me in the least. Instead, it is guppies, trout, and those hellish demons that look like oceanic dinosaurs that make my skin crawl. I hate fish. They are barely even animals. You can ask my brother Michael B., and he will tell you that I ruined his first ever catching time a fish because I had an anxiety attack the second he reeled it in. We were fishing in Maine when he snagged a little sunfish, brought it into the canoe to admire it, and it flopped off the hook and directly under my feet. My screams echoed through the cove while he paddled furiously back to our dock. Pictures of the event show my terrified face, ankles raised high in the air, paralyzed by the idea that the fish would somehow jump onto my face. So no, I do not like fish. And don’t get me started on restaurants that think it’s charming and serene to put a 50-gallon fish tank next to my table. I’d rather find a spider in my food.