#BTSpeakingOut – A reading list for writers

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Adrian Sobers

“Writing is a vocation, and there is a body of professional literature out there—which is uneven in quality, just like every other kind of book. Read a lot of it anyway.” – (Douglas Wilson)

“The language of a nation, like the land it lives by, needs constant cultivation and weeding. Degeneration can go far.” – (F. L. Lucas)

If we agree to take the advice of Wilson and Lucas, I would recommend a few titles (if I could be so forward), that, if taken seriously, can not only stop, but possibly reverse the degeneration of language (and by extension thought).

A reading list for writers if you will (from which readers can also benefit). If you are looking for grammatical rules, or a reference manual, look away now. These titles, like the very best writing, focus more on soul than syntax.

John McPhee (Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process) talks about writing as selection and the “crude tool” he uses: “When I am making notes, I throw in a whole lot of things indiscriminately, much more than I’ll ever use, but even so I am selecting.

“Later, in the writing itself, things get down to the narrowed choices.” In the same vein, the titles mentioned here are the result of what writing inevitably boils down to: selection.

That’s for starters, but how do we know we’re done and can move from selection to submission. McPhee says, “What I know is that I can’t do any better; someone else might do better, but that’s all I can do; so I call it done.” It’s that simple really, and it’s the same with this list.

I can guarantee you that someone else could do it better, recommend better books, but this is all I can do, so I will do just that and call it done.

As in life, so it is with writing, more often than not we need reminders not revelations. Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style is just that, a good reminder that “the starting point for becoming a good writer is to be a good reader.”

There is no getting around this nonnegotiable. And we certainly cannot apply that godawful, muddleheaded slogan of convenience to it: true for you but you not true for me. Very well then: You can be an avid reader and not give two hoots about writing, but you cannot write anything of worth without being an avid reader.

Sense of Style is especially useful for those who have none or those who want to improve their current style. It is especially useful for “professionals who seek a cure for their academese, bureaucratese, corporatese, legalese, medicalese, or officialese.”

You know how it goes, the: leveraging, low-hanging-fruit, moving of goal posts, and lack of bandwidth. As the Prime Minister would say: Cut. It. Out. For the love of God, country, and to curb common nonsense.

Staying with style, F. L. Lucas (Style: The art of writing well), makes a useful observation about the audience, “If your readers dislike you, they will dislike what you say. Indeed, such is human nature, unless they like you they will mostly deny you even justice.” This observation pairs perfectly with advice from William Zinsser’s 30th anniversary edition of On Writing Well.

“But on the larger issue of whether the reader likes you, or likes what you are saying or how you are saying it, or agrees with it, or feels an affinity for your sense of humor or your vision of life, don’t give him a moment’s worry.

You are who you are, he is who he is, and either you’ll get along or you won’t.” If you pick one title let it be Zinsser. If you pick two, pair Zinsser with Louise DeSalvo’s The Art of Slow Writing. 

Also consider: Charitable Writing where the authors remind us that “writing is inescapably bound up with spiritual formation”; Sam Leith (Write to the Point); Douglas Wilson (Wordsmithy); and Benjamin Dreyer (Dreyer’s English). Whether you read all (or none), remember what F. L. Lucas said of language: men not only underestimate its difficulty but its appalling power. Let them underestimate. Your job and privilege as a writer is to keep writing.

Adrian Sobers is a prolific letter writer and commentator on social issues.