Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor

My two kinds of writing

Platodidn’t like writing. Writing, he said, was what his rivals, the Sophists, did because whatever truth they attempted to find was not written within their souls. They had to rely on the written word to remind them of what it was. But writing, according to Plato, was not very bright. If you went back to it to find out what it contained, all it could do was to repeat the same words over and over, like a dumb student. And we must remember that Plato himself didn’t write. His Dialogues, what we can read today, were written down by someone else.

Well, a lot has happened since Plato’s day, and we all inhabit a world of the written word. Though with social media developing as fast as it is, and with other ways of communicating becoming so prevalent, many people are wondering how much longer that will last. Still, for the moment writing, in one form or another, is a crucially important tool. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen in recent political times, it can be a double-edged tool, a means of disseminating falsehood or bigotry (genuinely ‘fake news’), as much as a medium of truth and respect.

The employment of writing for these negative purposes is probably as old as writing itself. But today we’re facing a situation where millions of people get their news and ideas from blogs, Facebook posts, tweets etc, rather than from trustworthy sources. This is reflected in the decline in the Western world of traditional news media. People are more and more inclined to be informed only by those with whom they agree, neglecting and remaining ignorant of any dissent or counter-argument. The parallel with Plato’s argument against writing should be clear – many people today are only asking for, and thus only receiving, whatever they already know or approve of, whatever reinforces their preconceptions. They are getting the same words, or the same ideas and prejudices, over and over.

But of course writing can also be the medium for truth, genuine debate and clear thought. As such, its importance has never been greater.In my own case, this has involved two very different kinds of writing. You could almost consider them to be contradictory, though I believe – well I certainly hope, anyway – that they arrive at the same destination.

The first kind of writing I’ve done all my professional life is commonly called expository. In my case, that has been literary criticism. That term covers a very wide field, but at its core is the practice of engaging with a pre-existing text or set of facts. Of course there are many other forms of expository writing, such as writing history, or social or political analysis, or biography etc. Regardless of what kind of research is involved, the prime requisite of this kind of writing isan accurate and precise engagement with the object of your attention.

To write accurately thus entails knowing exactly what you’re writing about, having a clear idea of it, and what you want to say about it. That’s why research is crucial – without adequate research your writing can be muddled, muddied and misleading. (The three Ms.) In a longer work, such as a thesis or a book, this can often lead to contradictions or indirection, which then usually involve a lot of re-writing, extra work and a waste of time. This was my experience when I wrote a book on Australian poetry. I knew exactly what I wanted to say about each of the poets I was writing about, and thought I could write the book in a bit less than a year.

But I discovered that when writing the book my thoughts grew, and gave new and unanticipated perspectives on the poets I’d already written on. I had to re-think, revise and rewrite. (The three Rs.) The book was much better for that. But it still doesn’t contradict what I’ve already said. Re-writing and editing are essential, but they can be kept to a minimum if you’re clear in your mind at the start about what you’re discussing, and what you want to convey about it.

Precision, on the other hand, is a writing matter. There is no single English Language. What we call English is used all over the world in numerous societies, from Australia to the Caribbean, Scotland to the USA, you name them. Each has its own English, and none is ‘better’ than any other. But if we’re writing in an agreed social context, it’s best to write in a way that’s understood unambiguously.

This isn’t easy to do. It involves a clear understanding of English grammar, to start. Let’s face it, English grammar is a mess, like its spelling. I learned this while I was teaching English to students in Rome. In one test I asked my students to build a short sentence along the lines of ‘Is he happy? No, he isn’t.’ One student wrote ‘Is he running? No, he run’t.’Well, it’s logical, but it just ain’t right.

But it’s not too hard to get grammar right. After all, we’ve been using it ever since we started to speak. Written grammar though has to be far more precise and clear than how we speak. (Just read the transcripts of politicians’ bumbling pronouncements on your phone, for example.) Forget about old fashioned proscriptions such as ‘never split an infinitive’ or ‘never end as sentence with a preposition’. (I think it was Churchill who said ‘That is a form of pedantry up with which I will not put’.)But it’s useful to know the difference between prescription and proscription, for example, and how to punctuate properly. Good punctuation is dead easy, though what’s called good can change, like language itself, over time and according to fashion. But good punctuation, like a clear understanding of the meaning of words, and a grasp of intelligible sentence structure (aka syntax), are essential aids to precision.

So much for that! But I’ve also spent all my writing life working on a very different kind of writing. Creative writing. I’ve published many books of poetry, and the kind of writing involved in this is quite distinct from what I’ve just been describing.

The Swiss artist Paul Klee once described his painting as ‘taking a line for a walk.’ I think that’s what I do when I write poetry. Some people, I know, have a fairly clear idea in advance of what the poem will be like when they’ve finished it, but I think such poets are in the minority. I can never plan a poem out from start to finish before I start writing it; in fact more often than not I don’t even know what the poem is going to be about. I only find that out in the act of writing it, by finding where the line is taking me. So what starts a poem in the first place, if it’s not some idea of what it’s going to say? In my case, it often starts with a rhythm, or a cadence, or a phrase, something that won’t let me go and entices me to follow.

This would seem to be a rather unsatisfactory way of going about writing, quite the opposite of what I’ve advocated earlier. But a poem is a living thing, something that grows as you work on it, and not something already thought through that needs simply to be put into words. And the same goes for fiction, even novels. I know novelists who say their plans for their novels are pretty vague (though if they’re writing a tightly plotted thriller things may be different). One of Australia’s finest novelists told me that when he stops writing for the day he doesn’t know for sure where the next day will lead him. And it’s common for novelists to say that as their characters grow they begin to take over the novel’s plot and the direction.

So this is where editing and rewriting come in again, because the line you’re following can lead you astray, even to a dead end. You have to be prepared to take that risk. Novelists can rewrite whole novels five or six times. I can work on a poem for weeks, on and off. Sometimes months. Until I get it right.

And how do I know when I’ve got it right? Don’t ask me, because I don’t know. WH Auden said that a poem is never finished, it’s just abandoned. What I do is get the opinion of someone else: my wife, who’s my toughest critic, or a friend, or another poet. And editors. After all, they’re my readers, and their opinions are invariably helpful.

Oh, one final thing. I always read everything I write aloud, no matter how long it is. You can read it to the cat if there’s nobody else around. And if you don’t have a cat, you can read it to yourself. Why? Because speech and writing, while not the same, are close siblings. If you can’t comfortably read aloud what you write, whether it be prose of any kind or poetry, you’ll feel that there’s something wrong with it. And if you can feel that and don’t fix it, other people will feel it too.

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