Eat the Elephant

Since I hang around writers, I regularly hear these laments:

"I still have to write my synopsis."

"I haven't been able to write chapter 3."

""My article is due, and I haven't started it yet."

            Etc.

This is heady, frustrating stuff. I always feel pain, the same kind of pain I feel when it is my synopsis or chapter or article.  How can anyone take on such a frightful task, composing elegant, engaging sentences suffused with meaning that magically come together in a lyrical whole that amuses people and rouses them to action? How do you get the damned thing done?

Because you read the title, you know how. Just as you can't swallow an elephant whole, some tasks can't be done in one action. You need to break them up into manageable bits. 

So a few dozen milliseconds after my stomach wrenches at the prospect of, say, writing a commencement speech in three days, I begin to think about how the task can be broken up into smaller bits. What are my key questions. Which people should I talk to? Which Web sites should I visit. How do I dig into the history? What are the possible themes?

You don't have to get the whole job done in creative sweep. You can do a little work on this, and then on this, and… then it's done.

I once got an editing assignment for a book that was half written and stalled. The deadline for a draft was six weeks out. The publication date could not be moved. I had no expertise in the subject area.  

I immediately put aside all concerns post-draft work (proofing, editing, illustrations, etc.). I'd get to those later. Focusing on the draft, the number one thing was an accessible structure. (This is true for almost all nonfiction.) My first jobs became:

• reading through existing material
• talking with the author about his intent
• investigating structures that achieve the intent

Each of these jobs is specific and limited. I was lucky to get great cooperation from the author, including his agreement to my doing rewriting and adding a considerable amount of new material. Looking for smaller tasks made the assignment -- delivering the draft in six weeks -- possible, and, ultimately, the book was done on time and well-received. When you shrink the work down to size, it gets easier.

What do you do to break up the writing tasks you face?

Draft 3 - How to choose the best reader to write to

Last time, I wrote about the importance of addressing your first draft to one specific person. But who should that person be? What are the criteria for choosing the initial proxy for the vast hordes you hope will treasure your work?

When I'm writing a speech, the fastest way to the answer is a conversation with the host:

• Tell me about the worst speech ever to this audience and why it went so badly, and
• Tell me about the best speech ever to this audience, and why it worked.

The responses to the first are immediate and invaluable. The speaker's language was too simple/complex. The speaker talked about what he/she was interested in, not about why we invited him/her. The speaker talked about facts without any emotion or point of view. Etc.

I probe on these, getting the specifics (without revealing who the hapless speaker was), and I have a wealth of information on what does not work. There is always something that would have appealed to me had I been in the audience, and that is a good reminder that a speech written that only delights me can be an ineffective speech.

Getting a response on the best speech usually is not as automatic. Here I really need to exercise my skills as an interviewer, often helping them put themselves back into the audience on that happy day. The specifics of what worked are usually easy for me to abstract, and they are gold nuggets for my own work.

My final step is to imagine who I know who would have hated the worst speech and loved the best. This person is my audience.

I've taken similar approaches with nonfiction books and articles, and editors have been extremely good at providing advice for these. Reading successes and failures helps for both fiction and nonfiction.  Ultimately, you want to find someone you know who:

• Has similar interests to my ideal audience,
• Is comfortable with their vocabulary,
• Has about the same attention span,
• Is similarly knowledgeable,
• Has about the same "hot button" tolerance (regarding sex, religion, violence, politics),
• Has similar values and perspectives, and
• Will accept you as the source on this topic to a comparable degree.

Such knowledge will direct your pacing, word choice, examples, and means of engaging the reader. If you win with your proxy reader, you will probably succeed with your target audience as well.

Draft 2 - Write to Someone Specific

Vonnegut wrote every novel with one person in mind - his sister. Decades after she had died, she was still his primary audience. This idea is powerful for any writer. One reason why stories, speeches and articles often seem to be unfocussed is because the author had multiple audiences in mind from the first draft on.

Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of having a clear understanding of who might be the reader or audience from the beginning, especially when I write a speech. But nothing beats the power of creating (at least) a first draft aimed at one, specific person. The piece can and should be looked at more broadly in later drafts, but a version that is definite and specific and grounded provides an unbeatable foundation.

And it actually is less work. Think about it -- which is easier, writing a letter about how your day went to your best friend or writing such a letter to the citizens of New York? With your friend, you know what he/she is interested in and might find amusing. You have a sense of vocabulary and diction from the beginning. You also have a good estimate of how slowly or quickly you should develop your points. And you know what it might take to engage and persuade your friend. Try that with NYC.

There are two important points that should not be missed: The person you choose to write to should be someone you know well, and this person should be a good proxy for the ultimate intended audience. So choosing who you are writing to is likely to vary from work to work, and it will be one of your most important decisions.