My first three or four drafts are handwritten on legal pads. For later drafts, I use a typewriter. I write by hand to slow myself down. People don’t believe this about me: I’m a very fast writer, but I want to write slowly.
When I was a student at Princeton. I took a creative writing course with the literary critic R.P. Blackmur. Every two weeks, I’d give him a short story I’d produced usually at the last minute. At the end of the semester, he said some complimentary words about my writing, and then added, “Mr. Caro, one thing is going to keep you from achieving what you want—you think with your fingers.”
Later, in the early 1960s when I was at Newsday, my speed was a plus. But when I started rewriting The Power Broker, I realized I wasn’t thinking deeply enough. I said, “You have to slow yourself down.” That’s when I remembered Blackmur’s admonition and started drafting by hand, which slows me down.
January 18, 2018
Writing fast or slow.
Robert A. Caro, in a new interview in the New York Review of Books:
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65 comments:
It takes time to be brief.
IMHO, good advice.
I would just add: try writing with a fountain pen.
I write quickly also. I learned in high school to always write a rough draft and then edit it. I should do that more often when writing on blogs.
Neal Stephenson, I seem to recall reading writes with a quill pen for a similar reason.
I go the opposite way. I want to get as much on the page as possible. Then, like Michaelangelo with a piece of marble, remove everything that doesn't look like David.
I often write 2000 words as a first draft for a 1000 word article. It is always shite. Then I start editing and rewriting.
I am a big caro fan so can only say it seems to work for him.
John Henry
My Princeton adviser told me this: "Easy writing is hard reading. And vice-versa".
Shelby Foote wrote with a fountain pen.
Foote: “You have to communicate sensation, the belief in what life is, what it’s about, and you do it through learning how to handle a pen. That’s the reason why I have always felt comfortable with the pen in my hand and extremely uncomfortable having some piece of machinery between me and the paper—even a typewriter let alone a word computer, which just gives me the horrors."
The pen reciprocates.
At first I thought it was a reporter for the magazine saying he writes too fast and needs to slow down.
Reporters are reporters because they can't handle intellectual rigor. They are clearly slow people. Especially at any publication that begins with New York XXXXXX.
I gave up the idea of writing a novel, or even a long short story, when I realized everything I wrote I could edit down -- and did. It worked for Haiku / but the Planet has enough / amateur Haiku.
My wife and I have listened to the Caro books several times on audio while driving.
I can understand why the Johnson people stopped talking to him.
I don't comment anymore because it got too nasty but I skim the posts.
I'm now listening to Kim Strassel's book, "The Intimidation Game."
It's excellent. Also a biography of Genghis Kahn. That was also excellent.
Slightly OT: does Kahneman really establish empirically that one type of thinking is "fast" and another "slow"?
I had to do a lot of writing in my career (scientific papers, grant proposals, reports, lecture notes). i never learned how to “type”; just two finger hunt and peck. It’s never been an impediment and, in fact, I’ve always considered it a mild advantage because I can still type faster than I think.
That's some face.
Michael K contradicted himself while pontificating...
I don't comment anymore because it got too nasty but I skim the posts.
Aww, I really miss reading about personal minutiae. How're your bushes?
@Michael K, well I miss your comments.
Welcome back, MK.
Cleaning out my office, I recently ran into my first NIH R01 proposal (which was funded). Long hand on yellow pads, which a secretary typed up. A long time ago.
I copied most of my readings sentence by sentence into notebooks to slow me down, in e.g. Derrida, that were helped by it.
Caro is brilliant. I wished he hadn't wasted so much of his brilliance on such a despicable character as LBJ. Though I wish the country wasn't so stupid to vote for the guy in 1964 (Johnson counted on 1964 being a sympathy vote for Jack). Or that JFK was so hogtied to have chosen him for the veep spot which put him in LBJ's cross hairs. Yes, LBJ and the deep military state did it.
I write very slowly, but still have the ability to produce absolute dreck.
Interesting. I think I work (write) faster when my first draft is pencil on paper. If I've got things more or less in final form before using a computer I don't spend as much time screwing with it on the computer. Now bring in an editorial chain of command and since it's all "on the computer" and edits are easy they keep coming!
Sometimes I get both fingers going on the keyboard at the same time and my typing gets way ahead of my thought process.
I miss Dr. K's comments as well. Especially the ones where he drew on his medical background.
I have heard others give similar advice. Some even say that there's something about pen and paper that stimulates the brain better than fingers to keyboard.
Is Genghis Kahn the Jewish brother-in-law of Genghis Khan?
"Aww, I really miss reading about personal minutiae. How're your bushes?
1/18/18, 1:24 PM"
One reason why I quit.
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
Provincial Letters: Letter XVI (4 December 1656)
Literally: I made this one [letter] longer only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter.
--Blaise Pascal
Great advice about slowing down and giving yourself enough time to think, and in Caro's case the results prove it.
Not just writing. When I ran a department I told my people, "When the going gets tough, the tough slow it down and think." And if you remember the first line in Kipling's "If," that isn't often easy to do.
Maybe part of our current problem in journalism is that as news staffs have shrunk they don't think anymore, they just churn it out. That would explains some things, like the items on Trump's "Fake News" awards list.
Big Mike said...
@Michael K, well I miss your comments.
1/18/18, 1:26 PM
Original Mike said...
Welcome back, MK.
1/18/18, 1:27 PM
+1 Doc. Never mind the haters, it's all they've got.
Michael K.
Don't let the idiots annoy you. That's just what idiots do and there is nothing you can do about it.
I had a (consulting psychologist) boss who used to say, "Don't try to teach pigs to sing. It just hurts your ears and annoys the pig".
Welcome back.
From the interview it sounds like Caro is never going to finish his Johnson epic. Age 82. Hasn't started Vietnam or gotten past 1965. Is his wife young enough to finish for him?
Also, I wonder why he never turned some of the deleted parts of the Moses book into articles. Like the Jane Jacobs story, for instance. Or published uncut version now that it's in its 51st printing.
I noticed when I was writing notes in Christmas cards that my penmanship - especially my cursive - would not win me any gold stars from my 2nd grade teacher. It has really deteriorated during the past 10 years or so. I have letters my mother wrote me when she was the age I am now and her handwriting was just fine. I'm not having any issues with typing or manual dexterity, so I assume that the decline comes, not from age, but from the fact that I rarely write anything in longhand these days. I jot down grocery lists and notes for handymen and once in a blue moon, I write a check - and that's it. Even my signature on checks is sloppier than it used to be. Has anybody else noticed that?
I liked letter writing when I was a teen and had quite an array of stationary. I enjoyed the process of flipping though various stationary boxes before deciding that this was the one I felt like using today, and pulling out and admiring the crisp clean page before I started writing. And once I began writing, I didn't want to wreck the page with cross outs, so I took care to write neatly and carefully.
Quite a contrast from fingers flying on a keyboard, with the ability to delete or correct or move words around in a few seconds. It's also no wonder my ability to see errors or typos before I hit the "publish" button has declined as well. ("Preview" you say? Not I!)
At least 20 years ago (when my cursive was much neater) I found I had to print when I wrote messages in cards for my nieces and nephews. They couldn't read cursive.
I'm a very slow, deliberate reader and writer. I can actually type very fast, but when I'm composing something original it seems to take me an inordinate amount of time. And even though I'm slow I still manage to make all sorts of mistakes, lots of spelling and grammatical errors.
As for actual penmanship, one of my great shames is that I've never taken the time to properly develop my signature. It's an inconsistent disaster when I sign something. I don't know what to do about it.
HOW ABOUT WRITING LOUD?
Using the fingers was also Aziz Ansari's achilles heel.
How about 30,000 hours to write 30,000 words? https://goo.gl/8cWYCW
Re: Handwriting decline. Yes. My handwriting used to be legible, but is no longer. I blame spending all day typing into an electronic medical record. I also find I am more likely to use the wrong word while typing. "There" for "their" or "they're."
I have a Galaxy Note, and I am getting more and more hooked on the stylus. Originally, I only used it to sign documents sent to me as PDFs. Now I like to make notes with it and my handwriting is improved with it, for some reason. It’s like the stylus is better than a pen.
@Henry
Shelby Foote is a terrific story teller for a historian. After seeing him on the Ken Burns Civil War series, I started reading his books.
For about five years, I became obsessed with books on the Civil War.
Shelby Foote and a fountain pen ... it makes sense!
Foote not only wrote with a fountain pen but a dip pen requiring even more care. Here he is on the topic: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/11/17/tools-of-the-trade/
I do miss reading about "personal minutiae.
Welcome back Dr. K!
When writing professionally, I feel very strongly that I have to avoid writing things down in full prose too early. Particularly when considering and analyzing factual information, I find that I experience a kind of verbal overshadowing effect when I've recounted facts in a particular way. Really, writing things out fully makes me stupid, so I try to postpone that as far as possible. Keep my draft sparse and rough until I've really thought everything through. For me, at least, he massaging of the rough draft that comes after is mostly just shallow rhetorical play. Important! Since people are swayed as much or more by shallow rhetoric, than by logic and accuracy. But a very different kind of work.
Of course, as anyone can tell, I don't bother with that when writing comments on blogs. Here, it's stream of consciousness all the way.
Sounds right. As a trial lawyers we learn that there are no quick ways to figure out a case theory to argue and the questions for the witnesses, yours and theirs, and details upon details that are evidence.
You owe it to your client to think about their case for weeks. Just stop, sit here and and think about it, over and over. Billing time to think is not welcomed by arrogant clients, but it is what they hire with the big Retainer that the best Trial Lawyers demand and get.
A writer of History should do as much.
I prefer Churchill's method of writing... sleep until late morning, get lit on a full day of champagne for lunch, afternoon whisky, more champagne for dinner, after-dinner sherry or claret, and then have an army of secretaries transcribe my 4 to 5 hours of 'writing' via well-oiled recitation. Rinse/repeat...
“I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me”
Martin: "Maybe part of our current problem in journalism is that as news staffs have shrunk they don't think anymore, they just churn it out."
Journalists have to "feed the beast," filling empty pages at newspapers or endless hours of cable TV. When I worked as a newspaperman in the 1960s and early 1970s, I often wrote three to seven stories a day.
Staff writers usually write the easiest story. Gather three or four quotes from politicians, bureaucrats, academics or activists, tack on a lead (some people these days like to spell it lede), and you're done.
I notice two problems today (beyond the obvious political bias of many journalists):
1. Journalists are making too many assumptions. (Erroneous assumptions lead to bad decisions. If your mother says you were born in Madison, ask to see your birth certificate.)
2. Too many staff writers are writing essays, not straight-news articles. (Editors used to tell cub reporters in the old days: "Nobody gives a damn what a reporter thinks."
"Shelby Foote is a terrific story teller for a historian. After seeing him on the Ken Burns Civil War series, I started reading his books."
Yes, he was a wonderful writer and a great storyteller. The clips with Foote were the best parts of "The Civil War."
Of course, he was a white Southern male who put in some good words for Lee and the average Johnny Reb, so Burns would never include him if the series was made today.
”One reason why I quit.”
Don’t be so thin-skinned. Consider the source.
I started out as a reporter/editor and became a chef. Years of toiling in the kitchen and pain of my arthritis in my hands have rendered any other choice but typing moot. I miss printing in all blocks (as my father did and I emulated) but it hurts too much.
Chicago Latino Writer's Initiative Facebook offered a listing of websites for writers. https://thewritelife.com/100-best-websites-for-writers-2018/
Dr. K,
How did Chernow's "Grant" finally impress you?
Speaking of writing, perhaps as compared to opening Grant's memoirs to the first page and reading just the opening paragraph?
Did not know Shelby Foote wrote novels. I am going to have to look those up!
DeVos pulls no punches and talks about the failure of the original education initiatives crafted by a coalition of George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy. That approach was, as she put it, focused on the stick. Conversely, Common Core was oriented almost entirely on the carrots. Neither produced results and, as a result, countless dollars were flushed down various rat holes while producing few tangible results in public school systems.
For significant writing projects:
1.) Outline ideas with pen and paper. Spitball, not necessarily in order yet.
2.) Type the outline in word processor. Begin to put in order.
3.) Draft each individual outline bullet point section with pen and paper.
4.) Type each bullet point section in word processor.
5.) Edit document.
Come back any time Doctor Kennedy. Your comments are original and thoughtful.
Wankeritimi non carborundum !
When deciding whether to write fast or write slow, I'll go with Louis Armstrong's advice: "Not too fast and not too slow - just half-fast"
The problem, is constrictiviat approaches like those in the original nclb
(Ignite) or common core which is the 2.0 model is not about imparting knowledge but shaping narratives.
@Georgia Lawyer -- or Duke Ellington: "If it sounds good, it is good."
@Fullmoon:
Part of the problem is that everyone realized that Common Core was just the latest "thing" and that in about five years something new will come along as it always does. After all, all the education bureaucrats, consultants, textbook publishers have to protect their phony baloney jobs.
We need to go back to the basics: phonics, memorization and tracking. But nobody makes any money off of those....
I'm not a fast writer and I edit severely because I value concision.
I once described how to genetically engineer a tomato in 100 words.
Nietzche's aphoristic style takes much rewriting and he used an early typewriting machine.
Word processors were a boon to me, because my mom suggested I take typing in high school, although it was considered declasse for college prep.
Ha, ha, Mom was right and all my friends who didn't get typing training regretted it when word processors and computers came along.
It is true that all good writing is rewriting. And if you are committed to good writing, it's best to let a draft "marinate" for a day or two before you go back to rewrite it. I've written for national special interest magazines and club newsletters.
During my legal career as both a litigator and as a corporate transactional lawyer, I wrote a lot of documents, either singly or as team effort (with the lawyer representing the client on the other side of the deal). I'm not certain that word processors with a track changes function represent an improvement over the earlier model where a document under negotiation might be marked up with 20 pencil changes, corrections and insertions on a page. What you gain in speed with word processing, you lose in clarity of thought--done the old way.
EMyrt: "Mom was right"
I took typing in the eighth grade because of my mother. Typing probably saved my life in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Using a manual typewriter, I tested three words short of the world's record. Nobody in my chain of command wanted to see me with a rifle in my hands.
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P.S. I turned down an offer to attend Officer Candidate's School because I was a young writer. (I started selling magazine articles to "girly pulps" when I was 15-years-old. Afterward, I worked for a tabloid newspaper for three years before my enlistment in the military.) Every young writer needs to see a war as an enlisted man.
Correction to me comment at 10:01 PM: The last sentence should read: "Every young MALE writer needs to see a war as an enlisted man."
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Military service is a good idea for young female writers, too. (My mother was in the U.S. Navy during World War II.)
When I write scientific papers, I always draft in longhand. It gives you better command of the language and helps you write the equations faster, so that you don't disrupt your chain of thought with formatting commands.
The Foote story is interesting. His books have a wry sense of humor and gentle irony that remind you more of Edward Gibbon than any contemporary historian.
There are several points in his history of the Civil War where he starts describing some general's ambitious plans for a campaign completely straight faced and you start rubbing your hands in anticipation of the epic fiasco that's coming. And he has a genius for description:
His companion Slidell was five years older and looked it, with narrowed eyes and a knife-blade nose, his mouth twisted bitterly awry and his pink scalp shining through lank white locks that clamped the upper half of his face like a pair of parentheses. He was New York born, the son of a candlemaker who had risen, but he had removed to New Orleans as a young man to escape the consequences of debt and a duel with a theatrical manager over the affections of an actress. Importing the methods of Tammany Hall, he prospered in Louisiana politics. Though not without attendant scandal, he won himself a fortune in sugar, a Creole bride, three terms in Congress -- and an appointment as Minister to Mexico on the eve of war with that nation, which event prevented his actual service in that capacity. He was aptly named, being noted for his slyness. At the outbreak of hostilities, back in the spring, an English journalist called him "a man of iron will and strong passions, who loves the excitement of combinations and who in his dungeon, or wherever else it may be, would conspire with the mice against the cat rather than not conspire at all." Possessing such qualities, together with the ability to converse in French, New-Orleans style, and also in Spanish, Empress Eugenie's native tongue, Slidell seemed as particularly well suited for the atmosphere of the City of Light as Mason, with his rectitude and cavalier descent, was for London.
The object of that character sketch wasn't a main character in the Civil War, but he had a recurring bit part. He was an ambassador sent by the Confederacy to lobby for French recognition. He and his companion were seized from a British ship departing Cuba by an American naval vessel. This offended the British so much that it almost got them to intervene in the conflict. Lincoln eventually chose wisdom over valor and let both ambassadors go to Europe rather than fight over the right to keep them. Then, after reaching Europe, they were unsuccessful. They had some luck spreading around Confederate bonds that would only pay off in the event of foreign recognition, but had a great deal of difficulty getting an audience with anyone who mattered.
What I love about this excerpt is how Foote points out Slidell's flaws as an ambassador without tipping his hand about how they will play out in the future. It's pretty clear that once he gets to Europe he's going to try to bribe people. He's going to be so obvious about it that no foreign minister can afford to give him a meeting. But Foote doesn't break into the narrative to tell you this, he just paints a portrait of a man with a tragic flaw and lets events unfold.
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