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OPINIONS AND EDITORIALS |
Rewriting
Our Reality Why
write? I’ve often asked myself that question. At times it seems
as if there’s nothing on earth more frustrating, more sweaty,
with so little to show for my efforts. Essentially a risky proposition,
writing offers no guarantees. Yet few endeavors offer greater rewards for creating in pursuit of truth, beauty, and the best within us. Writers
are compelled to play God. We get to remake the universe in our
own image, selecting the players and the setting and the rules.
Shakespeare consigns a Danish prince to the center of a scandalous
intrigue, while Baum whisks a Kansas girl impossibly far from home
with only a yellow brick road to guide her back. In our travels
with these characters we laugh, cry, are entertained and informed.
Because of the writers’ courage (or wonderment or desperation
or who knows what?), we are swept along into previously uncharted
territory. This skill at navigation illumines some aspect of the
human condition, making us better somehow for the knowing. Nonfiction,
just as surely as fiction, involves the creation of illusion. We
impose viewpoint and structure, artfully (we hope) rearranging various
elements of reality to convey information or insights. The "universe"
defined in this highly individual way can be that of a championship
basketball game, brought to life in a biography of one of the game’s
most inspiring coaches. Or it can be a comparison of organizational
styles among Fortune 500 firms, analyzed in a study of management
policies. Yet
writers have the audacity to attempt making sense of it all, even
that which appears entirely senseless. A
New Script Certainly
all of us — including those who don’t consider themselves
"writers" — have engaged in this type of re-creation.
In our private monologues, deliberate or not, we tend to relive
moments from the past or design a more attractive scenario for the
future. "I should have said … " "If only she’d
looked the other way … " "Next time I’ll try
to be more … "
In the privacy of an internal landscape, we have the luxury of rewriting
the story. We can pick a different role, one more to our liking,
one truer to who we want to be: the successful entrepreneur, the
acclaimed actress, the prize-winning researcher, the gutsy good
Samaritan who braves the flames and saves a child’s life. Heroes
of all colors and stripes. The imagining becomes the reality. Any time you put a part of yourself in what you’re doing — investing your thought, energy, time, talents, feelings — you are rewriting your own reality. You’ve become a writer: someone who celebrates life not only by observing it, but also by leaving your own characteristic mark upon it.
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Things That Make Me Go, "Hmmm … " By Karen Risch Copyright © 1995 by Just Write Literary & Editorial Partners What’s
fascinating to me is how technology will change the way we think.
For hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, we have defined intellect
by the acquisition and application of knowledge. Knowledge —
more than raw data, more than sheer information — is that refined
ability to integrate and analyze a subject. So what happens when we remove the arduous task of obtaining facts and figures? What happens when, with the push of a button, we have access to everything we want to know? Will our intellect then be defined by something other than erudition? One
of the most enjoyable parts of my work is the hunting and gathering.
What’s a good game for learning long division? What period
of geologic time did the Pleistocene Age span? Where does Bush stand
in public opinion polls? Do I know? No—but I can find out.
It’s the "finding out" I love. It’s the chase,
a race to get to the bottom of things faster and more directly than
anyone else would. It
should be no surprise to you, then, that I wonder what will happen
to my games when such devices as an "intelligence chip"
become readily available. This is the technological promise of a
computer chip we can have implanted in our brains, which will make
us instant experts on any subject. Want to learn a language? Here
ya go — instant fluency. Want to know geography? Comin’
right up — everything from Aachen, Germany to Zwolle, Netherlands. The
Future’s Technological Know-it-alls I
suppose there will always be those who don’t care to know more;
there always have been. Yet maybe by removing the "pain"
of learning, more people will be interested. In my own self-centered
way, I’ve always thought the only reason more people don’t
share my passion for learning is that we haven’t found a teaching
method that is pleasurable for every individual. It is unfathomable
to me that someone would decline to know more if the process were
guaranteed to be enjoyable, or at least painless. For
me, the possibility of knowing it all is at once exhilarating and
threatening. I must admit that part of me is an elitist — I
don’t want anyone to be smarter than I am without having to
work for it — but then I have to stop and consider whether
effort is more important than what comes afterward: the responsibility
to use what we know wisely. Here’s the exciting part: Once intellect is redefined by technological advances, each of us will be called upon to use our resources to be innovative, ethical, philanthropic—more so than ever before. The measure of our intellectual mettle will be our humanity and creativity. Ideally, this means people will better appreciate the value of collaboration, synergy, and partnership while we strive individually to offer more of genuine merit.
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When
my son Joel was seven, a fifth-grader told him there was no Santa
Claus. Joel asked Gary and me to either confirm or deny the rumor.
I confirmed it. Joel broke into a wide grin and proclaimed, "I
knew it! Does that mean the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are
fake, too?" A
few days later, it became apparent that Joel had revealed the inside
scoop to his little brother, Gabriel, who was four years old. I
took Joel aside. "What happened? I thought you weren’t
going to tell him!" Kids
are quick to cut to the chase. Make-believe occupies a large part
of their time, but that’s because it happens to be one of the
most effective ways of fulfilling their primary task as children:
finding out about the world. Closing
the Gap Doing
a good job for our clients requires that we strike a balance, giving
them the reality check they need as well as appreciating their vision.
No matter how wide the gulf between the ideal and the real, we do
our best to close that gap and merge the two. This
came home to me a week or two after Joel had exposed Santa Claus
as a hoax, when Gabriel approached me with further questions. It
seemed that Gabe still wanted and needed to believe in the jolly
old elf, at least long enough to carry him through that Christmas.
Together we agreed that Santa really did exist after all. Was
I a liar? Yep. But I figured it wouldn’t throw Gabe that much
of a curve. It was my temporary vote on the debate that’s preoccupied
the ancient Greeks and other heavy thinkers throughout the ages:
What’s more important, Truth or Beauty? A
Timeless Pursuit Ultimately, though, I believe truth is more important, while beauty is one path (perhaps the best path) to it. Seeking the truth can be scary; sometimes it looks ugly and we’d rather not face it. But if we won’t even look at it, how can we begin to change it? My mission as a writer is to employ art in service of truth, so that a greater truth may eventually emerge. My charter as a parent and a human being is the same.
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There
is nothing I respect more than the creativity of the author. To
me, an author is someone who courageously confronts a blank page
or microphone in hopes of creating something new. I believe, however,
that what makes material new is not necessarily just what is said,
but how it is expressed through the author’s own unique voice. Because
of my background in acting and readers theater, I especially love
working with authors in the creation of audio tapes. Good spoken
and written communication are very different, as anyone who has
ever tried to read a book out loud or transcribe a speech into book
form knows! Once
these questions are answered, collaboration can begin on a script
that will preserve the character of the author’s words and
language patterns. We
work together until the author is totally comfortable with the script.
When recording, the author should feel as if he or she is speaking
spontaneously—but with great clarity and ease. Conversely,
when the spoken material is transcribed to the page, the goal is
to make sure the eye of the reader is as delighted by the material
as the ear was by the verbal presentation. Reading is a visual as
well as auditory experience. While the author’s content may
remain the same, the style will almost certainly change. Every
Voice Is Unique! The
bottom line is that no one has ever said what the author is saying
in this particular way. It’s my job and my joy to foster, preserve,
and assist the author’s unique expression of his or her own
particular message.
The mechanics of editing are simple. You need 1) a sharp pencil
or dexterity with computerized editing tools, and 2) a working knowledge
of grammar, punctuation, layout, and appropriate style. Combine
that with an eye for noticing where a manuscript is inconsistent,
and you’ve got a good copyeditor. But the art of editing comes
from intuiting what the author truly wants to say and asking the
questions, "Is this the most effective way to communicate the
author’s meaning?" "Ideally, is this how he or she
would say it?" My passion is to combine the mechanics with the art of editing, to ensure that the author’s unique voice resonates clearly in every sentence.
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Toward
a Common Cause Collaboration
is the name of our game. In 1998, we realized the key element in
the services we provide — developmental editing, publication
consultation, project management, copyediting, and more — is
collaboration. To us, there may be no higher professional calling
than to join forces with authors, experts, and others in the hard-fought
pursuit of their particular Holy Grail. Because
a collaborator means different things at different times to different
people, each of our clients has offered us a unique way in which
we can contribute. For example, one author with whom we have a developmental
editing relationship is quite emphatic about what he wants to say
and how he wants to say it. The main assets we provide in the writing
phases of his books are greater clarity, organization, and refinement
of language. In the production phases, we act as the go-between
with the publisher, advocating his point of view in such issues
as cover design and marketing copy. Another
client is an industry expert who tells us his broad expectations
and parameters in one or two planning meetings, then sets us loose
to do the actual writing. At predetermined milestones we check in
with him to receive specific feedback on the drafts we provide.
Yet
another client of ours, a teaching and speaking team, engages in
full-fledged creative sessions with us to write a novel. Through
brainstorming, debate, and eventual agreement, we explore the nuances
of character and the mechanics of plot: Do we actually like the
protagonists, and are they flesh-and-blood creatures rather than
cardboard cutouts representing "good"? Are the motivations
of a particular antagonist believable given what the reader knows
about him so far? How can we move characters from the Valley of
the Kings to the artists’ quarter in Montmartre in ways that
are fresh and compelling? Lest
this picture of creative collaboration be confused with writing
by committee, I want to point out that it’s actually something
quite different. The distinguishing feature is purpose. We’ve
all seen committee-produced works in which it appears that one hand
didn’t know what the other was doing: business proposals patched
together from three or more department heads, each written in an
entirely different way … big-budget Hollywood films showcasing
technical proficiency in costume design or special effects, yet
completely lacking in story line or characters you want to root
for. In these cases, either there was no single overriding intent
to begin with, or it was lost along the way. Unifying
the Vision In
working with clients, we generally provide one primary point of
contact who does all or most of the writing, project management,
etc. Other Just Write partners assist with various editing, proofreading,
and production functions as necessary. At all points of the process
we remind ourselves of the purpose of the enterprise, asking such
questions as, By rewriting xyz phrase in this way, do I succeed
in making the author sound more authoritative — or would that
go too far and make the author sound pompous? What alternate metaphor
could be used to convey the point and be more consistent with the
theme? What’s the overall impact of this work? Is it accomplishing
what was intended? Keeping a project on track with its purpose is precisely the type of collaborative support we are committed to providing. Whether it’s conceptualization, creation, or follow-up, the collaboration process is a joint labor of love that’s well worth the effort, and achieving the common cause is a true joy.
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