December 7. 2009 by Dick.

Last week, I began what will become a four-or-more-part series on writing. As I wrote, I didn’t realize that my pedantic need for encyclopediana would pop up here. A friend’s comments brought me up short immediately after I posted, “My job as a writer is to get it right.”

My friend expressed surprise at “a bunch of white guys defending Sosa’s skin bleaching.”

Unfortunately, that piece was about writing. Equally unfortunately I broke two rules, one of which is my own.

About a century ago in Internet time meaning in about 1997, Inklings Magazine commissioned me to codify the rules of editorial writing. The result was a pretty good article (if I do say so myself), Dick Harper’s 10-1/2 Hot Tips for Small-town Op-ed Writers .

Tips doesn’t explicitly say “Write so well that your readers understand you.” Tips does explicitly say:

2. Keep to exactly one (1), uno, single point.
Multiple arguments in an op-ed confuse the reader, the editor, and, probably the writer.

Regular readers know my strong points do not necessarily include staying on task. In Writing — It’s Not Just Cosmetic Anymore I blew the stay-on-task rule because I introduced three points in that piece: (1) writing well, (2) “problematic” portraits of people of color in literature and, indirectly, (3) Sammy Sosa’s relative blackness.

Some readers noticed the diversion into writing while black or white. Other readers thought my mention of Sammy Sosa’s name meant I had taken Mr. Sosa’s side. Or, perhaps, Mr. Pitts’. Not enough readers recognized that I wanted only to talk about writing well.

Means I must not have done that. I’ll try to do better next time.

I have edited the original piece in this series to remove some of the ambiguity. Next I shall look at wilful disregard on both the writer’s and reader’s part as well as at “writing while black.”

Posted in Writing, Sociology, Arts, Random Access | 1 Comment »

November 30. 2009 by Dick.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., broke the first rule of writing yesterday.

A Pulitzer Prize winner for opinion writing, Mr. Pitts is a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist; I read him in the Miami Herald where his column runs every Sunday and Wednesday. He writes extensively about race, politics, and culture. He has won writing awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Writing awards?

[Special Note: This piece was edited December 7, 2009, to remove some of the ambiguity. See Writing — It’s Not for Sissies for more.]

Mr. Pitts devoted his column yesterday to answering an email from a reader named Dunbar. The reader had complained that an earlier column “on Sammy Sosa’s skin cream use is off base and sends a wrong message. The issue is the man’s character — not the color of his skin…”

“I’m intrigued that you ‘think’ you know what point I was trying to make,” Mr. Pitts replied. “The fact that you have to guess, that it wasn’t starkly obvious to you, suggests that what we have here is a gulf between life experiences. It brings to mind a parable to the effect that the rabbit and the bear will never agree on how threatening is the dog.”

Writing awards?

The first rule of writing is not Don’t call your reader an idiot. (That’s not a bad rule, though.)

I empathize with Mr. Pitts’ anguish that his white readers did not understand his Sosa column although I find his belief that only a writer with one leg can explain the life of an amputee condescending. The bigger issue is, “The fact that you have to guess …” thus bringing to mind the parable of the rabbit and the bear and the dog.

Sorry, Mr. Pitts, but it does no such thing.

Mr. Dunbar’s comment brings to my mind the concern that if Mr. Pitts’ writing generates perplexity from a broad spectrum of his readers, it may not be his readers’ understanding we should question. It may just be that he didn’t explain it well enough the first time around for those readers to understand what was so obvious to him.

I emailed Mr. Pitts this morning to tell him his “blaming the reader” dog don’t hunt.

He thoughtfully disagreed: “Even that failure on my part would still spring from a gulf of life experiences,” he replied. “As someone for whom this issue is an ever-present reality, it would not immediately occur to me that anything other than a cursory explanation was required.”

WASP that I am, I am perhaps too white to have that perspective. I am not now and have never been black or Hispanic. Nor have I ever been a major league baseball player. Nor a drunk. Nor a woman.

However, comma.

My job as a writer is to get it right.

I work hard to craft characters who might be black, Hispanic, drunk, female baseball players just as my northern neighbor, character-driven novelist Chris Bohjalian , did with the baseball players of Past the Bleachers and the trans-gendered woman of Trans-Sister Radio.

For the record #1, Mr. Pitts does “believe a writer with all four limbs can explain the life of an amputee just fine (I would hope so, since my new novel deals with a man who loses his arm), but the key difference is that the people he is explaining to can’t be reflexively defensive about amputation. They have to be open to, and want to, understand. Where race is concerned, I’m afraid that’s not always the case.”

For the record #2. I read the original column, Has it Made You Happy, Being White, so my critique is simple. Mr. Dunbar didn’t get it. And that is just what I’m talking about.

The first rule of writing is quite simply, Write so well that your readers understand you.

Posted in Writing, Sociology, Arts, Random Access | 3 Comments »

February 17. 2009 by Dick.

The Arts should uplift us in times of trouble and they do. Sometimes the Arts also needs to clothe the Emperor. Or to point out that he is naked.

This is one of those times.

Unlike less than 28% of Americans polled and 60% of the United States Senate, I recognize the Stimulus Package as the Generations Ransack America’s Financial Trust Act.

Many experts, including Congress’ own Congressional Budget Office, say the stimulus bill will at best do no good.

Many experts, including me, say the stimulus bill will hurt the economy in the long run.

Apparently common sense makes more cents in the Arts than in Washington. I had some infinitesimally small hope that Congress would do what Congress does best: lock the grid and spend the remainder of this session worrying about Alex Rodriguez’ steroid use. Nonetheless the House vote was 246-183 and the Senate voted 60-38 to spend more in a single bill than the total cost of the War in Iraq. Interestingly, the G.R.A.F.T. Act is expected to cost less than the total cost of World War II, adjusted for inflation. President Obama signed the measure in Denver today.

The bill includes some potentially good news for the Arts since the $50 million of National Endowment for the Arts funding dropped earlier was preserved in the final version of the package approved by both houses on Friday.

Truth be told, I’d rather give up the stimulus and go back to the normal funding scramble. After all, the NEA appropriation is not “new” money; it is simply a restoration of an item that was cut.

The New York Times reported that Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-NY and Congressional Arts Caucus co-chair, said, “If we’re trying to stimulate the economy, and get money into the Treasury, nothing does that better than art.”

Arts advocacy groups report that every dollar of NEA money generates an additional seven dollars from public and private supporters. And every dollar in the local Creative Economy improves life here in Franklin County.

That means the NEA appropriation could have stood on its own merits as it has in past budgets.

Posted in Politics & News, Arts, Random Access | 4 Comments »