TheWritersBag.com

It’s a brand new year – time to make a resolution to work on your writing skills. One great way to do that is to participate in the weekly Word Shot exercises. A few days ago, Robyn Ciuro e-mailed me, saying:

“Good writing is not easy and I’m sure I’ve got a long way to go but I love seeing what the new picture is and waiting for the words to bubble out from my brain and down to my fingers. It’s like yoga for my brain.”

I like Robyn’s “yoga for my brain” remark. It’s true. The writing brain needs exercise, so pump a few mental weights with this week’s Word Shot. Here it is:

If you’re new to this, simply look at the photo (really look at it), think about it, let words come to your mind, write them down, and then submit them as a comment to this post. It’s as simple as that. You can submit anything from a single word to a full story. And if you participate in 10 Word Shots, I’ll e-mail you my three e-manuals on writing.

Thanks to you who took part in last week’s Word Shot. Keep up the good work!

You learned in school to avoid repetition in writing. But if you learned anything in school, you should have learned that you can’t believe everything you learned in school. Repetition (the previous two sentences are filled with it) can be used as a literary device. To strengthen my point, read the following stanza of a wonderful poem by William Butler Yeats entitled “When You Are Old”:

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Yeats used the word “loved” (or “love”) no fewer than five times in those four lines. Repetitious? Sure. Could he have avoided it with words such as “adored,” “worshipped” and so on? Of course. But he chose not to. I assume he felt that “love” is a good, powerful word, and that using it repeatedly would strengthen – not weaken – his poem. I believe he was right.

There is one caveat to using repetition as a literary device: Make sure it’s a conscious, well-thought-out strategy, and not just laziness.

Once in a while I stumble across wonderful writing in places I would never have expected. Take, for instance, a gem my daughter and I read on the local online avalanche danger report before heading out for some high-mountain, backcountry snowshoeing yesterday. Here’s an excerpt, as it was written:

Salt Lake Avalanche Advisory

Forecaster: Drew Hardesty

We suffered another fatality yesterday…. There’s this idea going around that we’re out of the woods. That things are stabilizing. A few days ago, it was CERTAIN you would trigger an avalanche. Now, you might get away with it. It’s Russian Roulette, folks. Nothing more, nothing less. With the checkerboard out there, the lingering slopes are hanging in the balance, waiting for the trigger. The slopes that slid during the cycle have reloaded and many are likely to repeat. Even the savviest have used up all the tricks in the bag and are reduced to skipping along slopes in the mid-20 degree slope angle range or walking ridgelines.

If you look at avalanche sensitivity on a bell-curve, I’d argue that it’s most dangerous not at the apex but along the sides of the ‘bell’ where conditions are (1) starting to deteriorate and then (2) “starting to improve”. Because it’s not all about the snow. It’s about us. Here’s what I wrote as we were starting this mess: “These are the conditions that will catch and kill people. No, we are not having a widespread natural cycle. No, we are not seeing more snow and blow. BUT, it is where you and the snowpack intersects on a line of desire and instability that will produce the accident.” And now, word’s on the street that we’re out of the woods. You might get away with it. But, it’s more likely that you won’t.

That’s what I call powerful writing – words that do the job they’re intended to do, and do it with panache. The forecaster used words and phrases like “fatality,” “Russian roulette,” and “catch and kill” with chilling effect, together with the seemingly paradoxical concept of danger being found where conditions are starting to deteriorate and starting to improve. He even used a witty and appropriate cliché: “out of the woods.” Later in the report, Hardesty referred to our mountains as “the war zone that is the Wasatch Range.” Thanks to the forecaster’s engaging, punchy, persuasive prose, we decided to take our avalanche beacons, probes and shovels. No, we didn’t have to use them, but we might have. And we made sure we chose one of the safer backcountry destinations. Hats off to you, Mr. Hardesty.