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How to write without really trying
from Undercurrent Affairs.
The Star, Saturday, 2nd August 1980
Facts are sacred, but comment is free - so free you can't even give it away these days.
I have a horrible feeling I've just spawned an aphorism.
Anyway, this column is on strike.
The events of the week may in historical terms, prove more significant than anything that has occurred here since the student protests in Soweto in 1976. [2007 note: This refers to the municipal workers' strike in 1980 when all of Johannesburg momentarily shut down as the union struck in support of a wage that would reach the minimum subsistence level. Our editorial next to this column on Saturday August 2, 1980 said that "rough tactics" had been used by the police to suppress the strike and that the justified complaint of the black municipal workers' union had been shrugged off by the authorities. A dangerous situation had been defused - but more troubles could be expected if the authorities would not listen, our newspaper predicted.]
Every development needs reporting, analyzing and recording but if I hear one more gratuitous opinion on the matter (including my own) I shall join you in a scream.
So no comment. Instead, let us adumbrate on the art of writing.
Writing is the lazy person's answer to work, and it works strikingly well if you know how. (Hey - another aphorism!)
What then should you do to be a writer?
The first thing is: do nothing. It may be difficult if you're not a natural or practised scribe, but you must force yourself to be idle in order that inspiration may come tip-toeing into your head. This may take years, so you should look to your spouse, partner, family, or social welfare officer for more than moral support.
Persuade them that patience and fortitude are the qualities most needed by good writers (and those who feed them).
But why should I go to all that trouble when John Kenneth Galbraith has already done it so well? Professor Galbraith is in my view not only one of the world's better economists he is also one of the more elegant and witty writers of the second half of this [20th] century. He has, to the joy of many of us, just produced a new book*.
In it he follows the best traditions of the writing art by craftily creating the bulk of the content from his old lectures and essays. He avoids unnecessary additional effort and at the same time provides some delightfully refreshing reading. It ranges from economics and politics to art and autobiography. It also includes some thoughts on how to write.
By quoting him here I shall not only fill this column. I shall simultaneously review a book and at one stroke save myself several other chores. (Readers who appreciate such technique. will certainly admire Mr Galbraith's).
* * *
Here are some Galbraithian thoughts on writing.
First, on the subject he knows best, writing about economics:
"Any specialist who ventures to write on money with a view to making himself intelligible works under a grave moral hazard - he will be accused of over simplification. The charge will be made by his fellow professionals, however obuse or incompetent, and it will have a sympathetic hearing from the layman. That is because no layman really expects to understand money, inflation or the International Monetary Fund. If he does, he suspects that he is being fooled. Only someone who is decently confusing can be respected."
Prof Galbraith adds later: "Complexity and obscurity, on the other hand, have professional value; they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders; keep down the competition, preserve the image of the privileged or priestIy class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticised less for his clarity than for his treachery."
Some heavy thoughts on light writing:
"Reluctantly, but from a long and terrible experience," he confesses "there are grave risks in a resort to humour. It does greatly lighten one's task. I've often wondered who made it impolite to laugh at one's own jokes, for it is one of the major enjoyments in life. And that is the point. Humour is an intensely personal, largely internal thing. What pleases some does not please others, One laughs, another says: 'Well, I certainly see nothing funny about that.' And the second's conclusion has just as much validity as the first, maybe more. Where humour is concerned, there are no standards.
"Also, as Art BuchwaJd has pointed out, we live in an age when it is hard to invent anything that is as funny as everyday life and because the real world is so funny, there is almost nothing you can do, short of labelling a joke as "a joke" to keep people from taking it seriously."
But, seriously, in place of humour there is brevity.
When an editor writes "this can go!" invariably it can, says Galbraith. "It was written to please the author and not the reader."
The matter of money (not writing about it, but making it from writing):
AIl authors should seek to establish a relationship of warmth, affection and mutual mistrust with their publishers in the hope that the uncertainty will add, however marginally, to compensation."
In search of the Muse
"All writers know that on some golden mornings they are touched by the wand; they are on intimate terms with poetry and cosmic truth. I have experienced these moments myself. Their lesson is simple: they area total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for them. Such is the horror of having to face the typewriter [this was in 1980] that you will spend all your time waiting. I am persuaded that, hangovers apart, most writers, like most other artisans are about as good one day as the next (a point that Trollope made). The seeming difference is the result of euphoria, alcohol or imagination."
Some fruitless advice about non-fruit juices.
"Nothing is so pleasant (as alcohol). Nothing is so important for giving the writer a sense of confidence in himself. And nothing so impairs the product. There are exceptions . . . (but) anyone who wants to do his best against a deadline should stick to Coca-Cola."
And finally some generalisations - and advice for people like me:
Nothing is so hard to come by as a new and interesting fact. Nothing is so easy on the feet as a generalisation. Evocative and deeply percipient theory I avoid. It leaves me cold unless I am the author of it myself. My advice to all young writers would be to stick to research and reporting with only a minimum of interpretation. And even more this would be my advice to older writers, particularly columnists."
Annals of an Abiding Liberal. by John Kenneth Galbraith
(Andre Deutsch. It cost R15 in 1980! ).
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