this book is ♥

Yesterday, I found a wonderful book in the library called Writing Well: The Essential Guide. Instead of rereading the assigned novel for our English class, I took a break and asked a willing classmate to borrow the book for me since I didn't have my library card with me.

Synchronicity really seems to work wonders for me. Recently, I have been taking baby steps to sharpen my writing skills. Like this week, I decided to leave my stagnant old blog for good and make a fresh start through this writing blog. Heck, I even started attending my English Journalism classes this week as well, and I intend to continue doing so until the school year ends. So yes, I found the book greatly relevant to the  recent turn of events this week. 

I like writing, no doubt about it. I sometimes encounter resistance when starting a story, essay, or  whatever, but during lucky moments, my pen somehow finds a way to outwit the monsters that block my creativity well. Sometimes, though, I notice that my writing style is way too dependent on flowery words (instead of powerful verbs) and overused cliches (instead of cleverly-placed metaphors) It's wordy, frilly, and at its best, falsely profound.

I found the writing style of the author interesting since I felt that it provided a stark contrast to mine. I liked that he used the fewest words possible to convey his thoughts without sacrificing style, and in effect, wrote with commendable grace and thrift in words.

He mentioned in his book that writing is similar to our daily activities more than we think. Talking is very much similar to writing, except that in the latter, the coarse turns into fine, and  words are "compressed, clarified, enriched, heightened by thought and art, and set down on paper." Which is true, actually. I realized some of my bad writing habits, such as using a highfalutin word or wordy phrase when the simpler version could have done the job just as well.

Singing, according to him, can be compared to writing as well. Of course, I found that part more interesting than the others.

"In song, it's how you sing, not just what you utter, that counts. And so it is with writing. You do it and do it again; you're making a work that takes a finished form, that lasts, that plays again each time it's read; and it's not just what it means but the way it means that holds or loses your reader. The message is in the music. So make a beautiful noise. Still, writing isn't song exactly. If it's music, it's more Beatles than Beethoven; it's more Woody Guthrie than Giacomo Puccini."

And now, that's really something. Content is king, yes, but creating something beautiful also entails a lot of work in the form of proofreading, rewriting, revisions, and making final touches. There has got to be some balance between rhyme and reason, for if one drowns the other, the work either fails to move hearts and inspire because of extreme pedantry (oh no I'm doing it again), or gets trashed for lack of more decent structure.

Anyway, I still do not have enough time to read the book thoroughly for now, for it seems that the huge pile of requirements is getting the better of me now. Next week will not be more pleasant either, but I shall  find a way to read the chapters chronologically somehow soon.