On Craft…
This one took me a long time to learn. I spent way too much time—and maybe I still do—trying to “write up” as opposed to write at a point. There was a point in my writing where I was too worried about what other writers would think of my work, as opposed to trying to communicate clearly with the reader. I was putting a few “hero” sentences over the narrative of my pieces. This was obviously wrong. I’ve since adopted the mentality of story over everything, and would like to share that with you.
Basically, the premise here is when we start out writing, we’re all so insecure and anxious, we forget we have readers. Instead, we think the only people interacting with our work are other writers—some of whom we probably look up to—and so we panic and overstuff sentences. We get overly ambitious and unwieldy. I am super guilty of this. The tone of my writing two or three years ago is almost comical in comparison to the tone I take now. I’ve grown to understand clarity of narrative is so much more important than sounding smart.
Too, when working on a longer piece or project, you need to keep your narrative theme in mind. Instead of trying to write out a banger of a sentence, or put together one superstar essay, think about your work as an evolving whole. You need everything in your piece or project to move in time with itself, always in service of the next sentence. It’s not a competition between sentences, but more of a conveyor belt style situation. Don’t get bogged down trying to make a “moment” of your work. Instead, let each portion of your writing serve the greater moment of the larger thing.
I read a lot of photobooks and zines where it’s obvious to me the photographer was after a “hero image,” as opposed to trying to communicate something greater to me in a series of pictures. Because of this pursuit, the book as a whole falls apart. The same can be said for a lot of essays and novels. I encounter so much art obsessed with a single summit of greatness, rather than trying to make a mountain range of success, if you’ll allow the image.
Remember: Your goal is to communicate effectively. Style and pizzazz are nice, but they’re not the core. If you’re writing an interview, frankly, no one cares about that one bursting sentence. It’s not about you—it’s about your subject. The same goes for an essay. Maybe that’s harsh, but I don’t see myself as anything other than a vessel for the more pertinent stories to whatever scene I’m blessed enough to cover. Partly, this requires setting aside ego. Partly, too, this requires knowing what is and isn’t advancing your work forward. That comes over time and through a lot of trial and error. But you’ll get it. It’s a mindset thing, really. And we’re already thinking about it.