Word Up!

I've now been blogging since about June or so, which is three months, maybe a little more. One reason I wanted to blog was to compel myself to practice writing. As I've mentioned before, writing blogs is a horrible way to write. I don't edit myself particularly well, nor are my thoughts always coherent. It results in sentences that don't make sense all in search of a complex twist of phrase or to use a word like solipsism, which I don't use in day-to-day life.

I should be inspired by the simplicity of Asimov, who liked to tell his stories simply, because his goal was to tell the story, not to exercise his mastery of the English language. Many, like fellow science fiction writer, Orson Scott Card, respect him for this. It takes work to present words that are simple and easy to read.

I can't help that I enjoy written pyrotechnics more. My inspiration for writing comes from an unlikely source: movie reviews. You'd think a Leonard Maltin review wouldn't yield literary fruit, but then I'm not talking about Leonard Maltin. I read Mike D'Angelo, and Theo Panayides, and Scott Renshaw, and Bryant Frazer. Mike, in particular, is particularly adept at, in Reader's Digest terms, writing picturesque speech.

They say you should learn to walk before you learn to run. This advice surely applies to writing as much as it does to ambulatory acumen, but I've been running and stumbling, all the while trying to sharpen my prose, all the while lacking fundamentals I so desperately need.

I write mostly by listening to what I write, seeing how it sounds, relying on years of experience listening to words as my litmus test for what passes muster. Really, though, I just write.

I've thought about an experiment. Gus Van Sant did a shot by shot recreation of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. During this exercise, he could, if asked, point to all the differences between Hitchcock's version and his own. I'm sure he gained a deep appreciation for how Hitchcock did what he did, even if critics argue it was a vanity exercise.

My experiment is far simpler. I just rewrite the reviews that my favorite online critics have written. What will this accomplish? After all, I've read these reviews enough times. There's something different writing something versus simply reading it. Making Psycho surely yielded far more understanding of Hitchcock than just watching it time and again. Ebert has done a shot by shot study of Hitchcock films. He's come the closest of anyone to understanding Hitchcock by a study of his films except for someone like Van Sant.

I must admit, the idea of writing down reviews sounds very much like a schoolkid's punishment ("I will not copy down other people's reviews!"), and yet, it's the simplest thing I can think of that might produce results.

The more I write, the more I realize the kind of skill writers have. Not only do they have the ability to phrase things better than I do, they have more inherent knowledge about what they're talking about. Even a entertainer/writer like Tony Kornheiser must keep up on all the latest Hollywood/music types so he's aware of who's who, and refer to them in his columns (which lately have shrunk to columnettes).

Wilbon said there's no deep secret to writing. You must write, write, write. I'd love to have an editor who knows what works and what doesn't so that I don't write blindly, trying to figure things as I go, never quite knowing if I'm headed to prose nirvana.