Tips for Becoming A Better Writer
from A Writer
NEW YORK, November 6, 2012 – Writers and editors periodically ask me if I have any advice about writing and I usually, actually always, say hell no. Writers, speaking mostly of fiction writers, don’t like to be told.
We don’t like rules and we don’t like tips. We are all different and respect must be paid for the uniqueness in all of us.
That said, as a public service and free of charge, here are some tips and rules gathered from my years in the trade.
Jack Engelhard’s Tips and Rules
to Become A Published Writer
GET TO THE POINT: Get that hook going right at the top. This is how it works in journalism. We want to grab the reader’s attention immediately if not sooner.
TAKE YOUR TIME: When writing a work of fiction (or fact) remember, you’ve got all the time in the world to win the reader’s attention. There is no need to get it all said right at the start. You’ve got plenty of pages to go. Don’t get fooled by people who tell you that the hook is how it works in journalism. You are writing a book.
WRITE SHORT: Short, tough sentences always succeed. Think Bukowsky, Fante, James M. Cain, but most of all, Hemingway. He learned how to condense from Scriptures and from Gertrude Stein. Fitzgerald’s dreamy type of writing is old hat and it is Hemingway who is now regarded as our greatest writer.
WRITE LONG: Every writer has his or her particular style, so it makes no sense to heed advice from anyone who tells you that writing short, clipped sentences is the way to go. Ridiculous. Today, it’s Fitzgerald who is regarded as our greatest writer. Hemingway is old hat.
KEEP YOUR READERS IN MIND: You want to reach a wide public. People are waiting for your first or next book. So unless you are writing a diary or a laundry list, you want your work out there, to be appreciated by all. You want to cover all the bases so that you can please as many people as possible.
WRITE FOR YOURSELF ONLY: If you write with your readers in mind you are cheating both yourself and the reader. You will never make everyone happy, and you shouldn’t even try. Remember, people are not waiting for your first or next book. Nobody cares. It’s a jungle out there, believe me.
GO TO SCHOOL: Learn from the experts, first high school, then college. Let the professors tell you how it’s done.
FORGET SCHOOL: Professors will scuttle every original thought that runs from your mind to the page. They are killers. It’s all about grammar and punctuation with those people. Our best writers never went beyond high school and this includes Hemingway, Faulkner and Salinger. Fitzgerald stayed at Princeton for maybe a cup of coffee. If they had gone to college you never would have heard from them again.
DO NOT WORRY ABOUT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: Say it all. Don’t be afraid!
BE AFRAID: Editors will accept only so much boldness and controversy. If you really write what you think you have no shot. If it’s politics, think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as your editor. (Say it all anyway. This is still America…until the United Nations lords it over your Internet.)
GET AN AGENT: Traditional publishers will accept your work only if it is submitted to them through an agent. Agents are easy to find online.
NEVER MIND AN AGENT: Literary agents are impossible. They can not be found and when they are found, they never respond. If they do respond they do so after you have aged by some three to four months. After this, they will tell you that your work is quite wonderful – but not quite right for them. Then they will wish you “good luck” but they don’t really mean it.
GO DIRECTLY TO A MAINSTREAM PUBLISHER: Fat chance. There are only seven publishers left in the United States of America and each time I check the list, I find that the number has been reduced – so that by the time you read this there may be only three or two left, or maybe one. Meanwhile, there are a thousand opportunities by going Independent – and this, small press and e-book publishing, like Kindle, this is the future. Truly great writers like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman self-published.
SO FORGET MAINSTREAM PUBLISHERS: Period.
GO MARKETING: If you get published, you are sure to land on TV and get big sales.
FORGET MARKETING: Sure you ought to try. But chances are you won’t get on TV unless you are a TV personality and have your own show.
LET YOUR SPOUSE OR MOTHER REVIEW YOUR BOOK: Good idea.
LET YOUR EX-SPOUSE OR MOTHER-IN-LAW REVIEW YOUR BOOK: Not a good idea.
TAKE ALL THE ADVICE YOU CAN GET: Learn from other writers, especially those who have succeeded.
NONSENSE: Go it alone…and besides, all writers have mostly failed…but never give up!
The Obit Uris Never Got
NEW JERSEY, July 1, 2003 – Leon Uris deserved better. The obits were a disgrace. They read more like a spiteful book review, rather than an appreciation for the man who gave us the romance of Israel. But let’s not be fooled -- for these obits were an attack upon the Jewish State, not Uris, who merely served as a prop, a decoy.
The cheap shots came from intellectual stormtroopers who decide for us what is good, what is bad, what is high-minded, what is low brow... Like this, which appeared all over the news media: “Uris is not well regarded by critics, many of whom consider his writing crude and simple. People who think Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Cynthia Ozick are major Jewish writers would say he’s just a popular writer... He tells a good story, but he’s not of lasting literary value.”
Huh? This belongs in an obituary?
For my money, Uris towers over Bellow and others on the strength of Exodus alone. And if Exodus is not of lasting literary value, I don’t know what is.
Oh, I know what they’re talking about. He was no stylist. First of all, there is no such thing as style. Of course there is, but that’s for us, the readers, to decide. There is no Supreme Court to rule on style, and anyway, style is no factor in deciding a book’s greatness. Dickens (in my view) was a terrible stylist, as was Dostoevsky, and James Jones was a terrible writer, but a great novelist by weight of From Here To Eternity. These were all great novelists.
No, the snotty obits were reprisals upon Israel, and had nothing to do with literature and everything to do with politics.
How many writers “created” a nation within the pages of a book? Non-Jews by the millions (never mind Jews) know and love Israel only through Exodus.
Uris died at the wrong time; anti-Semitism is up, Israel is down. Today it is not proper to glorify Israel, as Uris did. Today it is proper, it is fashionable, to slap Israel around.
Here’s a secret: Newsrooms carry obits well in advance for people of achievement. As I write this, there’s news that Katharine Hepburn just died, but you can be sure that the obits for her were written years ago. Back a generation, someone was in such a hurry to present his beautifully-written obit on Hemingway that he got it published all over the wires while Hemingway was merely recovering from a plane crash.
Hemingway, very much alive, said he loved what was said about him. Uris would not be so pleased.
Surely, over the years Uris’ obit kept being rewritten in reflection of how the world viewed Israel and the Jewish people at the moment. Back then, a guilt-ridden world embraced the romance of the Jewish people returning to the land of their Fathers and Mothers. The mood has changed. The mood is ugly and the obits on Uris symbolize that change and that ugliness. Our tenured intellectual elite (think Oxford, Columbia, the BBC, NPR....) have fallen in love with homicide, terrorism, anti-Semitism.
Uris showed us David winning against Goliath, but this world covets Goliath... Hence the scorn upon the man who wrote Exodus.
In a class that I visited as a lecturer, a student mocked Proverbs. “Anyone can do that,” he said. “Go ahead,” I said, “write one.” Of course, he was stumped.
I say the same to Uris’ scholarly critics. “Go ahead, write me an Exodus.”
We have lost a great man, a great writer, and he deserves to be hailed.
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Jack Engelhard, Slot Attendant
Slot Attendant Page 23
