Write and Wrong

Most of us know who the muckrakers were: a commemorated group of journalists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who investigated societal issues such as conditions in prisons, slums, and insane asylums, thereby exposing the ‘muck’ of their time.

Muckrakers usually aimed their criticism at the establishment, often in a sensationalistic style that some labelled ‘yellow journalism’ – though this was not always the case. The muckrakers defended the common people, the middle and lower classes, the unrich or unwhite. Muckraking was a product of the progressive era, but this form of investigative journalism continued to be prevalent well into the 21st century.

But who were the muckrakers? Well, for starters, there was Ida M. Tarbell, who single-handedly took on Standard Oil, a huge corporation that controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force.

Through a series of investigative reports, Tarbell exposed many shocking behind-the-scenes activities, the publication of which led to anti-monopolistic reform, including the Clayton Anti-trust Act, which declared that trusts in restraint of trade are illegal.

In his collection of articles titled The Shame of the Cities, renowned muckraker Lincoln Steffens exposed public corruption in major cities around the United States, using passionate prose and appeals to ethos and pathos to provoke public outcry and promote reform.

Why are the muckrakers important? They are the writer’s defense. There are those in this world who view good writing as useless talent in the 21st century. That which needs to be said can be said simply, bluntly, without prose.

We writers know this to be false. They do not understand.

Like the muckrakers before us, we writers write because we have something to say, some important message to deliver to the people. We delve into, we expose, and we strive to understand the workings of society; we right wrongs.

Ray Stannard Baker was the first noted journalist to report on the racial divide in American in his book, Following the Color Line (1908), which focused on Jim Crow laws, lynching, and poverty.

Writers like Tarbell, Steffens, and Baker shaped ‘writing for a cause’ and ‘writing for change’. If they don’t expose corrupt, defective, or harmful people, products, or organizations, then who will?

So go forth: write. If you have something to say, say it, and say it LOUDLY! Your passion, your sense of justice may someday save lives. Ralph Nader is a prime example: he clearly saved lives when he wrote Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, exposing the resistance of car manufacturers to the introduction of safety features like seatbelts, and their general reluctance to safety improvements.

WE can save the world, if only by writing wrongs.

Sources:

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0834319.html

http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JbakerR.htm

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2002/tarbell.html1/Baker/index.html

http://tarbell.allegheny.edu/

http://www.multied.com/bio/people/nader.html

Photos:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.westirondequoit.org/dake/Keefe/Progressive%2520Newsletter/index_files/bosses.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.westirondequoit.org/dake/Keefe/Progressive%2520Newsletter/&h=545&w=540&sz=279&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=wGWQexGfb0MvwM:&tbnh=133&tbnw=132&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmuckraker%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

http://www.explorepahistory.com/images/ExplorePAHistory-a0a6h5-a_349.jpg

http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Design/Gartman/Books/Book_Front-cover_Nader.gif

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

Passionate love.

Violent hate.

Crushing sorrow.

 

     These are the wood for the fire, the wind through the flute, the beat of the writer’s heart. Without feeling, without passion, the words flowing from the ink-pen are nothing but just that – words. Their essence is lost from the page, swept away by the tide of flowing, bombast language.

    Think of good writing as having direction, even ambition. The words must not necessarily know where they are headed, but them must be going somewhere. Write furiously, write stunningly, and do not stop until you are done saying what you wanted to say. Speak your mind, your heart, your arms and legs and toes and fingers. Give yourself to your writing, let it exhaust you. And then, write some more. William Wordsworth said it most poetically: “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

     What do you love? An orange, perfect in its uneven, spotted shell? A shoe yearned for in childhood, finally earned, and revered? The saying goes, ‘Write what you know’; I say you should write what you love. “Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens…” These things – beautiful in your eyes – are the fuel.

     What do you hate? What stirs you blood, flares your nostrils, stamps your feet? Is it an uncompromising splinter? Or a deceitful friend? Or Republicans? Dust? Scratched glasses! Truculent waiters! Ignorant people! Long lines! Anger and frustration are fuel, as Stephen King knew when he said, “You must not come lightly to the blank page.”

     Sorrow you must be careful with. It cannot take over as the others do; do not let it reign free, lest it consume you and emit only the meaningless drivel of a saturnine singer. It is communication, not self-expression, that readers want to read. When carefully controlled, sorrow can act as fuel.

     The word ‘emotions’ makes me cringe in total horror. It sounds cheap, tinny, and somehow, clichéd. And yet, emotions are the essence of writing, not exceptional talent, nor a wide vocabulary – feeling, raw and uncut, is the foundation for writing. Sometimes it hides beneath the surface of a rosy cheek, in the drop of a tear. Sometimes you must chop away at it, grab it, and run. Find something you “feel strongly” about, let it inspire you. Let it catch your eye, stay your breath, flex your mind. Remember this too: writing is risking. It risks wasted time, it risks rejection, it risks disappointment. But a writer afraid of these things cannot truly be a writer. Passion is there; it supports you, it comforts you, and it fuels you. Do not let the fear hinder your passion. “Our greatest glory”, said Confucious, “is not in never failing, but it rising up every time we fail.”

Sources:

Zen And The Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury, Random House, Inc.

Oranges picture: http://www.hickerphoto.com/valencia-oranges-spain-12927-photomug.htm

Dog picture: www.dropthatsock.com/content/2005/07/index.php

Wordsworth quote: http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html

Song lyrics guote: “My Favorite Things”, The Sound of Music, Rogers and Hammerstein

Stephen King Quote: http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/writing/

Confucious quote: http://koti.mbnet.fi/pasenka/quotes/q-writ.htm

A Thousand Words

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Conversely, isn’t it true that a word can be worth a thousand pictures? Take, for instance, the word ‘tree’. How many trees can you think of? General trees, like the ones one draws in third grade with apples on them; specific trees, the willow by the pond at your cousin’s house. If a concrete word like ‘tree’ evokes countless images in our minds, how many does an abstract word, like ‘beauty’ dig up? Perhaps you think of a person you love; maybe you imagine a sunrise scene over the mountains. Because words can be interpreted in thousands of different ways, their visual representations can be come similarly vast.

As a writing exercise, you may look at this image. What emotions does it evoke? Can you, in any way, relate to it? Are there any minor, hidden details that may be relevant to what is happening in the image?

These questions can be asked not only of a picture, but of a written scene. Imagine, for a moment you are not a photographer, but a writer, and your story has just come to a point where the main character observes an old man playing violin on the streets of Prague. You want your reader to see and feel what your character feels, for the image to form as perfectly in their minds as it does in yours. How can this be accomplished? Descriptive, or illustrative, writing.

These are just a few techniques in illustrative writing:

• Vivid, sensory language (smell, taste, touch, sound, sight, and, of course, emotion)
• Rich, lively detail that includes colors, forms, and movements
• Figurative language such as hyperbole, metaphors, similes, and personification.
• Showing a scene rather than telling it; challenge the reader to see what you see.

Here are some ways a writer might utilize these techniques in describing a scene.

1.) Sensory language: “As I trotted down the quaintly uneven cobblestone street, the sun warming my neck and legs, I caught the sound of a fiddle, or violin being played close by. The source of the music was revealed moments later as I rounded the old stone corner and saw a similing, whispy-haired old man playing exuberantly for a small but quiet and attentive crowd. Curious, I halted, feeling the weight of my backpack on my shoulders ease as I undid the straps.”

2.) Detail: “Behind him, against the scuffed stone wall, sat a black, weatherbeaten case. Its beige interior contained many small, copper and silver coins, and even a few crumpled purple and pink bills.”

3.) Figurative language: “As I stood there, all alone and looking rather friendless, the old musician looked up at me and smiled like a child whilst the erratic summer wind blew his hair in circles about his head. I chuckled – what an unlikely picture! – and dug into my bag, searching for a camera and some spare coins.”

Illustrative writing is not accomplished merely through the abundant use of adjectives and similes. The key to presenting an image to a reader is imagining how you yourself would feel and think about that image. In your own mind, you wouldn’t describe a memory to yourself as “fun”; more likely, you would remember why it was fun, what made it fun, what the air smelled like or how your clothes felt at that time. As E.L. Doctorow once said, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

Sources

Photo: Sonja Nikel, Prague, June 2003

Web Addresses:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_modes

http://www.montanalife.com/writing/descriptive_writing_techniques.html

http://koti.mbnet.fi/pasenka/quotes/q-writ.htm

When You Lose Your Muse – Writer’s Block

It happens to every writer. There you are, scribbling or typing away happily, contentedly, when all of a sudden…WHAM! The ideas become clogged. The words stop flowing. Somewhere between your brain and your pen a door has been shut, locked, and its key tossed out…or so it seems.

Plenty of paper, thousands of pens…no ideas. What do you do? Wander around aimlessly? Sleep the writer’s block off? Cry?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I’ll tell you what you do. Come closer, it’s a secret.

               Keep writing.

Don’t force it, though. Take a break if you need to – go for a run and get some fresh air. If the weather is appropriate, take a notebook or laptop outside, and continue writing there. The main thing is, don’t give up. And stop stressing out. We all know how writers agonize over every word, so reluctant to let even one dry one escape; the thing is, when you have writer’s block, dry diction may be all you have, and, get this, that’s alright. Cut loose your inhibitions and just write. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation do not matter (for now). Much of what you will write now might be useless – that is normal…save your worries for the editing.

The goal in “unblocking” is to thaw the brain, to loosen the mind and thought process. Conceptually, imagine an actual block of wood. Somewhere in the center of this block of wood is your creativity. Think of unblocking as carving away the wood that traps your creativity.

One way of ‘carving’ is called The List. This exercise was first suggested by author Ray Bradbury, in his book Zen In The Art Of Writing. All it is, is making a list of nouns preceded by the word ‘the’. Begin with a noun of your choice and then just keep listing them, without thinking about which will come next.

For example, here is my list, beginning with “The window”:

The window. The door. The doorknob. The bed knob. The broomstick. The twig. The air. The frost. The rain. The cloud. The train. The steam. The forest. The snow. The lynx. The leaves. The tracks. The hunt. The chase. The bow. The arrow. The feather. The bird. The cold. The wind. The howl. The wolf. The predator. The prey.

How, you may ask, can one find inspiration in those words? These words are basically my train of thought, each one evoking a different set of memories. ‘The train’, for instance, conjures up an image of my mother travelling through Europe during the summer, short on money but happy and free. A story could easily develop from this, the tale of her adventures that summer.

You see how the nouns can bring up long forgotten memories. The best part about Listing is that one doesn’t know where one is headed. Any word could be next; the writing is frantic and frenzied and perfectly spontaneous.

So carve away, my friend! Do not lose hope in yourself, nor in the sacred art of writing. For the ideas will come to you – I promise.

Sources:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/567/01/

Zen In The Art Of Writing, Ray Bradbury, Bantam Books, 1990

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sarahblankstudios.com/images/blog/060924_2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://sarahblankstudios.com/blog/2006/09/&h=336&w=400&sz=34&hl=en&start=13&tbnid=Jt7aepFPdfAZGM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dantique%2Bkeys%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.lclark.edu/faculty/jsmiller/objects/idea_bulb.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.lclark.edu/faculty/jsmiller/&h=375&w=500&sz=49&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=R45v1xZ0ibC2nM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Didea%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

How To Drive Yourself Crazy And Then Become Sane Again In Just Two Easy Steps!

Step One – Getting mad, frustrated, and breaking your pen…also known as Editing Your Own Work.

It is a well-researched, scientifically proven fact that nobody actually enjoys editing their own work. Not only does it take time and patience (things writers sometimes lack), but it also tends to have negative effects on a writer’s morale. Often in reading one’s own writing, one finds the ultimate truth of one’s linguistic capabilities – such as how limited they are. (And how stilted a sentence becomes when one uses ‘one’ over and over again.) Sure, there are a few genious-writers here and there, descendents of Shakespeare, probably, who will look at what they’ve written and think, “Hey, that’s actually pretty corking“. But let’s face it: the rest of us mortals’ writing generally stinks to the third degree. Due to this, editing becomes discouraging. Faith is lost. Tears are shed. You need help.

Step Two – Sitting back with a cup of tea and listening to soothing music…also known as Letting Someone Else Edit Your Work.

Sure, it looks like you’re being lazy. That can’t be helped. In reality you are simply occupying your time until some person finishes helping you edit.

Finding another human being to edit your essay/book is important for two reasons. One: it gives you breathing room from your writing. Up until this point you have likely been devoting much of your heart and soul to consuming paper and ink. Friends and family have probably been forgotten. Go back to them (temporarily). Tell them you love them! Get them to read your work! And critique it! A little time away from your writing is therapeutic. 

The second reason for having someone else edit your work is palpable. They, unlike you, have not been reading the same forty pages over and over again until they are memorized. They do not know all about the main character before they read the first line. They begin with a blank slate, and are more likely to catch mistakes – spelling, punctuation, grammar, etcetera - than you are. Also, if your writing tends to be stilted, or comma-happy, or your metaphors are overly flowery, another person is likely to notice this more swiftly than you do.

There is always someone there to help you. Believe it or not, critiquing something you yourself haven’t created can be fun (especially if you are into grammar). A close friend (who can read) is often a good critic. He/she is the most likely person to be brutally honest, and that, though you may not like it, is a quality you want. If you are particularly self-conscious about your writing, a family member or someone unjudgemental is ideal.

Go Forth and Edit.

As a final thought, remember this: just because getting help in editing is more comfortable than self-editing doesn’t mean you should resort to only this. Self-editing is an equally important learning experience that must not be jumped. Reading aloud, buying a thesaurus, and ruthlessly killing commas are all good ideas you should consider when you self-edit. Don’t settle for just “okay”. You’re a writer, great! Now you need to be an editor too. Don’t think of editing as a chore. Think of it as a pertinent step on the way to publishing your work. At the risk of sounding clichéd, just do it.

Sources: www.bbc.co.uk/blast/writing/articles/editing_your_own_work.shtml, http://home.earthlink.net/~jdc24/selfEdit.htm, www.copyblogger.com/edit-your-writing-2/

The Main Idea

Shut Up And Write is a scholastic blog dedicated to teenagers who love to write - fiction, nonfiction, poetry, fantasy, short stories, long stories, all the time, or once in a while – but don’t know how to continue on with their love of writing. On this site will be links to author homepages, publishing houses, teen writing groups or sites, and general information about writing. Issues like writer’s block, confidence in writing, plot development and technique, researching, and the difficulty of getting published will be dissected, classified, and commented on.

Why bother writing about writing? Simply put, I love to write, but most of my stories don’t continue on past the first chapter or two. I dream of writing and publishing an entire novel – seeing my name on the front of a bound book is probably the greatest thrill I can imagine – but often lose motivation or confidence in my ability. I know I’m not the only seventeen-year-old writer out there who experiences this! This blog is meant to act as a sort of tool of inspiration for other teen writers who know how I feel.

‘Inspiration’ and ‘perspective’ are probably the key words that set this blog apart from other teen writer blogs and sites.  Unlike good tennis, music, and math, good writing is fueled 100% by inspiration. That’s why lacking inspiration is a bit of a setback. Shut Up And Write is like an idea box that stays unlocked 24/7. One link will offer websites with inspiring stories. Can’t think of a name for a character? Go to the ‘Names’ link, which will lead you to websites specifying in names from many languages. The perspective of this blog is unique because I, like most of you who’ve read this far, am a writer and a teenager and have a pretty good idea of the difficulties teen writers face.

So if you like the look of it, come back! Comments are greatly appreciated!