During the interminable Covid lockdowns, I wrote a long essay about noticing things. Every day for a week I would take note of what I could see around me - the particular shapes in my back garden, a silent heron, a glimpse of a room where someone was painting late in the evening - and then write about it.
It was inspired in large part by the work of Rob Walker, who has a book and Substack newsletter about noticing things as you take part in the world. I was deeply inspired by how he noticed extremely tiny things which told big stories about how people live. The Covid period was a perfect incubator for that sort of thinking, as everyday felt very ‘samey’. But when I stopped to notice, my bland world got that bit more textured.
The essay was originally destined to be printed in a journal, but in the end it wasn’t, and I didn’t have any luck placing it anywhere else. The first letdown was annoyingly obtuse, but the second was helpful, as the editor pointed out there wasn’t really a through-line in the essay for readers to follow. He was right.
Looking back at the essay today, I’m not happy, either, about some of the language I used in it, some of the turns of phrase. I learned while writing my book Social Capital that my first draft can err towards cliché, and that my second draft is about digging further into what I actually mean, and how to use different, less stock words and phrases to say that. I blame part of my use of clichés on journalism, and the need to get across ideas succinctly. We end up leaning on trusty old phrases to help prop our ideas up, and that’s fair enough I think. Writing the book was a way of coming face-to-face with acknowledging my bad habits when I write.
When I first got my author copies, I nervously cosied up with one on the couch one night. Just me and Social Capital, getting to know each other afresh. Seeing my chapters in book form showed me the gap that lies between ‘manuscript’ and ‘book’, and where I had successfully traversed it, and where I hadn’t. While it was a bit annoying to spot the bits where I felt I wasn’t so successful, overall I realised that recognising these moments would help me for the next book.
But I can still see the cracks in what I wrote, and judge myself for having specific habits. One thing I often focus on is not using the same words repeatedly in the same sentence (not so much common articles like ‘the’ or ‘and’, but words which would stick out a bit for readers).
On that point, I noticed something today while reading a story by Elizabeth Bowen in Cutting the Night in Two, a collection of short stories by Irish women writers (I’d heard about it from Sinéad Gleeson and found it in a charity shop a few years ago).
The interesting thing was in Bowen’s opening paragraph.
Can you spot it?
It’s the use of ‘along’ twice in the opening sentence. If I’d written that, I’d immediately have changed it after spotting it, and figured out which ‘along’ to adjust. I’d have done that because I’d have believed to have two ‘along’s in one sentence was ‘wrong’ and would have looked odd to readers.
It made me think: Bowen (one of Ireland’s great writers) would have read her story multiple times, and no doubt would have noticed those two ‘along’s. But she didn’t remove them. The second one could undoubtedly have been changed for something else, but it wasn’t. Because she didn’t think it was an issue.
Now, part of that could have been to do with writing habits when it was written. But still, this felt like a small lesson on what we notice about our own writing, and how sometimes we can get hung up on the wrong things, or get so fixated on the small stuff that the bigger picture is obscured. I jumped to assume the sentence could have been better because I was so used to examining every sentence when I write, afraid of getting it all wrong.
Bowen’s story is about two women who meet on a tram in Dublin, and is about Irish attitudes to WWII. The aim of the opening is to describe the city before we meet the characters. So what if there are two of the same word in there? Plus, you could also argue that the two ‘alongs’ help to hurry the sentence on, and the sameness highlights the constant motion of the tram journey. But you only think that when you get the chance to see the words in situ. In thinking more deeply about something that jarred with me initially, I could find new perspective on both my writing and Bowen’s intent.
When you spend your writing life aiming to write something that feels fully-formed and ‘good’, you can fall into a mode of focusing on tiny elements of a greater whole, terrified of making a mistake. You can follow all the writing rules and presume that will make your work better. But while doing that, you can forget about the greater vision of what you are creating - and the fact you’ve created it at all.
Analysing my instinctual reaction to the Bowen sentence led to me feeling a little less caught up with the idea of my writing having to be word-for-word perfect. It’s never been and undoubtedly never will be. But can I reach a higher level of ‘good’ writing without losing track of the bigger picture? And can I push against the rules of writing to create something meaningful?
That feels like a more important focus for me right now. What am I trying to say? What will the experience be like for a reader? How can I use words differently? If I step back and look at my writing from a different angle, what can I see?
It’s tempting to draw a greater message out of this: focus on the big picture, don’t sweat the small stuff (and other clichés). And I could, but for now I’ll use this little lesson in the area where it appeared, and see whether it helps my writing practice. Let me know if it works for you.
My book Social Capital is out now - here’s how to order it.