How to Be a Person

by Lindy West

  Three Great Sentences and What Makes Them Great

  A couple years ago, while visiting San Francisco, I saw something in a storefront window. It was a paragraph photocopied and enlarged into a huge poster, the letters fuzzy and weird. It was the first paragraph of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Crack-Up,” an essay he wrote for Esquire 11 years after writing The Great Gatsby and four years before dying:

  Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside—the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within—that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick—the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.

  It’s not every day you encounter a paragraph like this while you’re walking down the street—who knows what it was doing there in that store window (San Francisco is magical). Fitzgerald’s sentences are jolting, the way feeding a fork into an electric outlet is jolting, and even though I’d read this paragraph in a book before, I stood there on the street jolting myself again and again, trying to figure out where the jolts come from. Later I wrote something on a blog about how “everything” you need to know about writing you can learn from that paragraph, which is kind of a stupid way to put it, although those sentences are packed with brilliance.

  Should we do a close read?

  “Of course all life is a process of breaking down” is great because the “Of course …” is so confidently conversational, hinting that what’s coming is light and easy, or at least something we can all agree to, but then what comes is so morbid. You go into the sentence thinking you’re going to get one thing, but right off you get something else, and it’s startling. If a reader thinks they’re going to get something in a sentence (or a character, or a plot) and then they do, they’ve been deposited into a cliché—which is not good writing. Good writing is: You think you’re going to get one thing, but you don’t.

  The rhythm and the alliteration that come next (“but the blows,” “do the dramatic”) are good because they’re subtle. They’re there if you’re listening, but they don’t stand out. They don’t put on tap shoes and go, “Hey everyone, check out how rhythmic and alliterative we’re being!” They just sound nice. Likewise, several of the words echo (“blows” appears twice, “come” appears twice, “side” before “outside”) without calling lots of attention to the echoing. The echoing just comes across as simplicity: Why reach for another word when what you mean is the word you just used? And—to keep going—making the words echo echoes the prevailing point about getting older, because the idea of an echo contains the idea of lapsed time. (A word appears early [in life/in the sentence] and then it appears again later [in life/in the sentence].)

  Another thing to marvel at (drool over) in that first sentence: the economy of “the ones you remember.” Makes you think of all the blows you’ve forgotten, without mentioning them. “And, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about” is an unexpected, funny, and concise critique of his friends, evoking a loneliness that would be maudlin to spell out. And “don’t show their effect all at once” is the sentence’s payoff, the final whiplash, which leaves so much unsaid, raises more questions, and draws you further in. Those seven words—“don’t show their effect all at once”—give off a funny feeling every time you read them, a funny feeling in the chest, like you’re being lifted up by them. You get this same feeling at the end of a lot of great first sentences. (Check out the first sentence of Joan Didion’s essay “Insider Baseball” sometime.)

  After all the subtle showing off of that first sentence, we get a very regular second sentence, not a complicated one or an alliterative one or one where the grammar echoes the meaning or whatever—it’s just strong and blunt. Fitzgerald’s saying: I realize that first sentence was super rich, have a glass of water now. It comes as a relief, and yet it’s very much in the mood of the first sentence, so there’s no interruption.

  Then there’s the third sentence with that insane em dash. As you know if you read Fitzgerald, he believed you can never be too rich or have too many em dashes. Notice how the em dash in the third sentence doesn’t function like em dashes usually do—at least it doesn’t function like the em dashes in the first and second sentences do. “The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick—the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.” On any planet, that em dash should be a semicolon. Or it should be a period. But those would slow you down, whereas that em dash is like a people mover at the airport: It slides you forward without you doing anything. It speeds you up, sending you right into the next thought, almost too quickly, against your will, as if you’re trapped in the forward-moving-ness of, well, you know, life, and getting older, and the process of breaking down, in spite of your every wish.

  What Not to Do

  DON’T USE CLICHÉS

  Clichés are useless, and they’re everywhere. Since everyone knows them already, there’s no point in writing them down. If you want to make the point that “you never know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes,” you have more thinking to do, because SHUT UP. It’s a cliché. It’s hokey. It’s boring. The secret to good writing is that it’s interesting, and used-up, dried-out, shopworn thoughts and phrases are not interesting.

  DON’T WASTE TIME

  The other thing about clichés is they waste time, and good writing doesn’t waste time. Describing the sky as “blue” is wasting time; describing someone as “quiet as a mouse” is three words longer than necessary; don’t write “as a rule of thumb” when you just mean “as a rule”; and never, ever write “for all intents and purposes.” You don’t want any words in your writing that don’t need to be there; they’re just junking up the place. Likewise, don’t use a long word when a short word will do. Long words are florid and showy and annoying. In that Fitzgerald paragraph quoted earlier, he uses “blows” instead of “calamities” or “letdowns” or “afflictions,” and then repeats “blows” instead of reaching for a synonym, and the paragraph is so much better—sharper, more memorable—because of it.

  DON’T OVERWRITE

  Don’t use “utilize,” just use “use.” Only douchebags and blowhards use “utilize.” As mentioned above, finding a synonym for the word you just used doesn’t make the next sentence better; it makes the next sentence overwritten. Don’t write “murmured” or “exclaimed” or “rejoined” when “said” works; come to think of it, always use “said,” no matter what. Anything other than “said” is desperate, thesaurus-y. I didn’t “pen” this chapter that you’re reading right now, I “wrote” it.

  DON’T USE FIRST PERSON UNLESS YOU HAVE TO

  Speaking of being annoying, don’t write “I” into sentences you don’t need to be in. “I think that movie is terrible” is not as good a sentence as “That movie is terrible”—the meaning’s the same, it’s clear an opinion is being given, but one’s got filler and the other doesn’t. Plus, “I think that movie is terrible” has a whiff of self-importance to it, as if we are supposed to know/care who this “I” is. (The people who write “I” a lot are the kind of people who always want to tell you about their dreams.) Finding ways to avoid self-importance is a useful challenge for a writer: You couldn’t get more self-important than that weepy paragraph by Fitzgerald about falling apart, and yet it doesn’t stink with self-importance because it doesn’t have the word “I” in it. Go ahead and use “I” if it makes a sentence funnier or if there’s just no way to write the sentence without the “I” because, say, you fell down a flight of stairs. You can’t really improve on the sentence “Then I fell down a flight of stairs.”

  How to Write a Colleg
e Paper

  Because so many people have potatoes where their brains should be—no matter how many times they hear something or see something, they don’t get it, they have nothing to say, they have no questions, hhhhhhhhhhh—because of these people, the college paper was invented. It’s to separate the potatoes-for-brains from people with the capacity to absorb information, apply it to other things they know about, and express a response. That’s all you’re doing with a college paper. You’re saying, I learned a thing, and here’s what’s interesting about it.

  You do this with sentences and paragraphs. If you have a question/prompt, give a confident answer (in the first paragraph) and support your point with examples/evidence (each one getting its own paragraph—what the example is and how it supports what you’re saying). Then, at the end, restate your point and why it’s interesting. And you’re done. If you don’t have a question to answer—if you’re in a literature class and you’re just supposed to respond critically to a text—well, that’s a fun one. That just means: Show off how you think. Go crazy. Come up with a specific question and then take a look at how the text answers it, and show your work, once again with each example getting its own paragraph.

  Reread your writing—preferably after letting it sit overnight or at least for an hour or two. Ways to make it better will be obvious.

  Don’t bore your teacher. Imagine how many boring papers that poor person has to read.

  How to Write a Cover Letter

  You’re overthinking this. You just write it like a normal person. Keep it short. Shorter. No clichés, no wasting time, no overwriting. Try not to be funny—trying to be funny is the worst in a cover letter. Keep it just: Here’s who you are, here’s why you’re writing. Then reread it. Did you reread it? It’s full of typos. REREAD IT! The Stranger received a cover letter by e-mail from someone who wanted to write a sports column. The subject line: “The Starnger Needs a sport’s Writer.” That person is not going to get a response. Likewise, cool it on the superlatives about how thrilled you are at the possibility of maybe getting an interview, because you’re just going to sound like a freak. You’ll end up like the poor woman who once sent a cover letter we’ve been reading aloud in the office ever since—a letter we framed and hung on a wall.

  It begins, “Your newspaper is brilliant, professional, progressive, enlightening, edgy, and so bitingly human that I could swear it bleeds.” Aw, that’s nice—she reads the paper and she likes it. Good to know. “All in all it offers the well blended and well aged voice that a modern audience craves. It is a staple in my Seattle apartment and I have been known to send sections of it back East to friends and devotees with great frequency.” Okay, so she reads it a lot and likes it a lot. “The Stranger has seamlessly tapped into the pulse of Seattle and has thus developed Seattle’s fingerprints and nuances.” Like, a lot a lot. “It is everything an alternative city newspaper should be.” Uh huh. “That is why I am at the cusp of my excitement to be your intern.”

  Those quotes are just from the first paragraph.

  There are five paragraphs.

  She goes on to state that working at a college publication “allowed me to fertilize the skill set necessary to create fluidity when pinned to the wall, poise when encountering formidable challenge, and consistency when working amongst chaos.” She adds, “My work ethic and devotion to professional development are irremovable aspects of my personality.” A few sentences later, she writes, “If these notations speak to anything I would hope they speak to the severity of my desire.”

  Then, later: “In addition to my vivacity, dedication, and competence, my personal symphony of written voice and exhaustless creativity should be highlighted. I offer them to you because I envision our relationship as being extremely mutually rewarding. I would be honored to invest in your riveting and entertaining journal. Please contact me at your earliest convenience …”

  No one ever did. Sometimes we wonder whatever happened to her, although we don’t wonder very much.

  How to Write Poetry

  Do you know who Emily Dickinson was? Do it like that.

  17. WHAT NO ONE ELSE WILL TELL YOU ABOUT HEARTBREAK AND DEATH

  BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT AND CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

  It is inevitable: Someone is going to break your heart, and someone you love is going to die (followed, inevitably, by another person, then another, etc.—hopefully not in close succession). It’s not going to be pretty, but you will get through it.

  How to Get Over a Broken Heart

  There’s baby-games sad-because-it’s-over, then there’s the real deal: Heart. Break. True heartbreak is unmistakable, because it hurts so much. It hurts like being sick—it hurts like you’re going to die. Nothing means anything, nothing is worth anything, because they don’t love you. If you’re not the stoic type, you have to carry Kleenex around because you never know when you’re going to start crying. If you’re the stoic type, the tears you don’t cry hurt just as much as the ones you do.

  But there is something—one thing—that will help. That thing is time. You’ll feel better with time. You don’t believe it right now. You think you’ll never get over this; you think you’ll never feel better; you are in the depths of despair, and you will dwell forever there. Not so, friend. Time heals all wounds, even the broken heart.

  How much time? Some people maintain that for every year you were together, you must suffer through one month of heartbreak. But even if you were together for only six months, you’ve still got some hurt before you start feeling better. If you were only together for a couple months, you may feel heartbroken, but you’ll probably realize later you really didn’t even know the person, and, conversely, they really didn’t know you. Which is somewhat comforting.

  Even if you were together for months and months, you might still find out later you had no idea what was going on. Say, for instance, your first love, clearly the love of your life—the person who loves old movies like you do, and is so funny, and who writes you love letters that you read over and over, and whose beautiful eyes you would live inside if such a thing were possible—breaks up with you, and you carry Kleenex everywhere, and you feel like you want to die. You call your mom—that’s how messed-up you feel—and your mom says, “Oh, honey. I’m so, so sorry. But you’ll feel better with time.” You cry some more, because you know in your extremely broken heart that she’s wrong, that a human being cannot recover from pain like this. But she’s right, and after you spend every hour of every day questioning what’s wrong with you and how can you be so unlovable and what did you do wrong and missing missing missing crying crying crying—eventually, slowly, you feel better. You’re shocked, but you really do. Fast-forward 10 years. You live in a different city. You have a pretty neat job. You’ve loved again! It’s like a miracle when it happens. And now you are or you aren’t seeing someone or in love or what have you. You hear from your heartbreaker—the first one, the one with the eyes—that they’re going to be in town and that your old mutual friend Philip is having a party and it’s an hour or so outside of town and do you want to drive there together? Sure you do. A part of you wonders, with a very real thrill, what might be rekindled; you remember the love you had for this person with a vividness that seems somewhat impossible, after all this time. The first time you met, and how they looked in the half light of the night outside the party, how crazily happy you were every time you saw them, the time you rolled around together in the still-warm sand. But when you get together now, riding in the car, just the two of you, your heartbreaker has lost their spark completely. Your heartbreaker starts talking about back then, and how much they drank, and how serious that was. “What?” you say. “Do you mean like you drank secretly?” you ask. Yes, that is what your heartbreaker means. You can’t quite believe this. Your heartbreaker goes on and on about themselves back then—and themselves now, and themselves in between—with you thinking all the while about how preposterous it sounds. How could you not have known this person you used to love
had a secret drinking problem? And: If only you’d known! This is total vindication! It really wasn’t your fault! You wish so, so much that yourself back then—the self you also remember entirely vividly, carrying Kleenex around and wanting to die, your poor, sweet, younger self—could have known this. At the same time, you’re having another realization: You never really knew this other person at all. The mind reels. Can you ever truly know what’s in another person’s heart? This is crazy. Your heartbreaker is still talking and now is saying that as part of their 12-step program, they’re making amends to those they hurt, way back a decade ago, and they want to make amends to you. “That was a long time ago,” you say. “You don’t have to do that,” you say. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” you say—and with a pleasant shock, you realize that you absolutely mean it. But yes, your heartbreaker says, they do have to do this, it’s important, and on and on and on. You repeat yourself: long time ago, not important, water under the proverbial bridge. Your heartbreaker clearly wants some very specific verbiage from you about accepting the amends-making, but the whole thing seems more about your heartbreaker than anyone or anything else. You’re on the side of your past self—the poor, sweet, heartbroken thing. So you never actually say you accept the amends. And it isn’t until more years go by that you do—you accept, and you say it out loud, to an empty room.

  But let’s back up: Your heart is broken. Only time will really help, but friends help a little. You might only be able to see them hazily through your pain, but spend time with them. They might bring you ice cream. (Note that when a friend of yours is heartbroken, you should be so, so nice to them, and also bring them ice cream. And refrain from too much I-told-you-so if you never liked the person they were with in the first place.) Meanwhile, it’s okay to dwell in bed for limited periods of time, but go outside. Take walks. Stay busy. Do something nice for someone else.