Eric Tian

Greatest painting? Mona Lisa.

Genius scientist? Einstein.

Composer extraordinare? Mozart.

The first answer to a question isn’t interesting because it’s automatic. It’s usually something we’ve heard said by those around us, which over time become the default.

These default responses are volunteer ideas. They’re thoughts that present themselves when they hear a familiar question, shaped from the voices of other people.

Volunteer ideas are low-quality; crudely shaped by conformity. The more interesting ideas are the ones that come with persistent deliberation – the winners from a chaotic internal debate. To base one’s views on volunteer ideas is to resign one’s capacity for thought.

Beware them.

As an amateur writer, it is natural to associate meaning to every single act of life; to turn brief observations into metaphors and “material”.

How can this be an allegory? What theme does that represent? What words best describe this feeling?

But the moment we attempt to capture a moment in words, the more we disappear from it. How ironic: the need for analysis dissociates us from existence.

The real goal is the opposite: to put our words, our phrases, as close as we can to reality. The one we are existing in.

Rushing to notice puts the cart before the horse.

Attention requires immense passivity.

I’ve been reading Several Short Sentences about Writing and it’s blowing my mind. It may well become my favourite book of the year. Because it’s taking up so much of my mental space, here are two ideas that I’d like to share.

1. Short sentences leave room for implication

Academic writing is boring is because it leaves no room for ambiguity. The sentences are long and the paragraphs are dense. Its nature forces it to be as thorough as possible.

Writing using short sentences is exactly the opposite. It is cut down to its pure necessity, giving opportunity for imagination.

“Every word is optional until it proves to be essential,
Something you can only determine by removing words one by one
And seeing what’s lost or gained…

Without extraneous words or phrases or clauses, there will be room for implication.

The longer the sentence, the less it’s able to imply,
And writing by implication should be one of your goals.
Implication is almost nonexistent in the prose that surrounds you…
That means you don’t know how to use one of a writer’s most important tools:
The ability to suggest more than the words seem to allow,
The ability to speak to the reader in silence.”

Writing long sentences is still a trap I fall into. It is tempting to correlate sentence length with intelligence, or the sophistication of an idea or thought. There isn’t one.

I have yet to fully grasp the power of short sentences.

2. Sentences are much more than just its meaning

“The purpose of a sentence is to say what it has to say but also to be itself,
Not merely a substrate for the extraction of meaning…

The sentence itself has a rhythm.
It has velocity.
It uses metaphor and simile
Or hyperbole or metonymy or alliteration or internal rhyme or one of hundreds of other rhetorical devices.
It helps define the dramatic gesture that you – the writer – are making in the piece.
It stirs or gratifies the reader’s expectations, on many levels.
It identifies the reader.
It gives the reader pause.
It names the world, using the actual names the world already contains.
Perhaps it renames the world.
And this is only the beginning.

You’re the curator of all these qualities in the sentences you make,
Which lie there almost unnoticed
If you’re interested only in extracting or depositing meaning.”

A book is more than its content. It is its nuances of language, its construction of sentences, its ability to drag a reader into a new world. This is why book summaries, no matter how thorough, will never hold a candle to an original text.

I wish I read this book when I first began my writing journey. It is one of those texts that saves you years of practice and stumbling.

Verlyn Klinkenborg, you are a legend.