TheWritersBag.com

I was walking down a street in Istanbul near the Hagia Sophia when loudspeakers atop an army of high minarets began blaring the Muslim prayers. I stopped, pulled a small audio recorder out of my over-the-shoulder bag (a manly bag, of course), and began recording the exotic sounds of the prayers and street noises. I then took my camera out of the bag and shot a few photos to accompany the sounds. When the melodic prayers were finished, I pulled my pocket-sized journal and mini-pen out of my front pant pocket and jotted down some notes about that moment in time – what I had heard, seen and thought. I knew I would not only need these notes for the travel articles I would write about my trip to Turkey, but for my own memory bank.

Not long after returning from Turkey I was sitting in a meeting with the directors of a business who had hired me to write the text for their glossy company publication. On the boardroom table in front of me were my notebook, my audio recorder and a camera. As the company’s leaders gave me the information I would need to complete the project, I took notes in my notebook and kept my audio recorder running to make certain I wouldn’t miss anything. The camera came in handy later as we toured the manufacturing plant and I took photos of the various process I would have to write about.

For writers, information is critical. Whether you are writing an article, a business project, a book or something just for yourself, you need information. You do not want to be within 15 minutes of the deadline for a business brochure and realize you can’t remember the name of that revolutionary new manufacturing technique being used, and you don’t have anything about it in your notes, and the only person who has that information is on a fishing trip in the wilds of Alaska.

Nor do you want to have your writing come to a screeching halt because you can’t remember what the name of that big mosque you were walking by during afternoon prayers and you don’t want to dilute your article by referring to it as “some big mosque” rather than “the world-famous Hagia Sophia.”

The trick is to take good notes.

The second trick is to take more than just text notes when it can help: take audio and visual notes. When you take text, audio and visual notes, you’re covering your bases and you’ll be surprised how much fuller and more robust your information will be. And that, in turn, will give your writing an edge.

It’s about capturing information, and today we have wonderful tools to do that – more than ever before. What do I use? For a notebook, it’s the pocket-sized Moleskine notebook – a little gem that is so cool it has attracted a worldwide cult following. When I die, I want to be buried with a bunch of Moleskines … just in case.

For an audio recorder, I use the digital Olympus DS-2200. It’s small enough to slip in any pocket and captures voices and sounds with amazing clarity.

The camera I use is the Nikon D50 digital SLR with the Nikon 18-200mm lens. The D50 is certainly not the top of the Nikon line, but it produces wonderful picture quality and is smaller than the pro series cameras, making it lighter and easier to haul around. The lens is the most popular lens in Nikon’s history, because its focal range and quality make it the only lens most people will ever need. I’ve taken dozens of shots with this camera/lens combo that have been published with my travel articles. However, I’m looking for a smaller camera to use as a visual note-taker when I don’t have to turn in magazine-quality photos. I believe in traveling light, and I am, after all, a writer – not a photographer.

Obviously, you won’t want to take all these note-taking tools with you wherever you go. But I will confess that I do take my Moleskine with me virtually everywhere to capture thoughts, ideas and other mental scraps before they get away. The little black notebook is always either in my pocket, on my desk or on my nightstand when I’m in bed. Truth be told, it even accompanies me to the bathroom, because you never know when something brilliant will pop out come to mind.

There are some mistakes in writing (and speaking) that will hurt you more than others. Using “ain’t” is an example. No matter how smart you are, when you use “ain’t” in your writing or speech, you might as well don a dunce’s hat and go sit in the corner. Unfair and judgmental as that is, it’s a reality.

Using “off” in certain contexts instead of “from” is another one of those damning errors. Here are a few examples:

• Mary took the big yellow sofa off Uncle Buck.
• She got the goldfish off Aunt Mary.

In each of the preceding sentences, the “off” should be replaced with “from.”

Don’t go overboard with this and start replacing every “off” with “from.” Even in the two sentences we just read, the use of “off” could be correct in certain contexts. For instance …

• Mary took the big yellow sofa off Uncle Buck. (After it fell on him when they were moving it.)
• She got the goldfish off Aunt Mary. (Her aunt had a fish fetish and liked to cover herself with goldfish.)

Excuse the quirky goldfish thing, but sometimes I have to stretch to illustrate my point. In coming posts, you’ll learn how to avoid other mistakes that will make you seem less intelligent that you really are.

PS. I’m now offering free weekly writing tip updates via e-mail (sort of a continuing education course in writing skills). Please take a few seconds to subscribe. You’ll find the sign-up form near the top left of this page. It’s quick and easy.

I recently ranted about acronyms. One of my problems with a great many acronyms is that they are unnecessary. Here are two:

i.e. = the acronym for “id est.” It is short for “that is.”
Peter is going to be playing in the best club in town, i.e., The Bomb.

e.g. = the acronym for “exempli gratia.” It means “for example.”
Sally hates playing all card games (e.g., poker, rook, bridge, solitaire).

When I say these acronyms are unnecessary, I think I’m justified. I mean, are you really saving that much time and effort by typing “i.e.” rather than just rapping out “that is”? By the time you figure out whether it should be “i.e.” or “e.g.” and put the periods in, I think not. Same with “e.g.” And yet we seem to be determined to reduce our beautiful language to a midden of word fragments. If this trend continues we’ll be SOL.

Another problem with these two pretentious diminutives is that they are often not understood by the reader, and even more often, are misused by the writer. The writer’s thought process seems to go something like this: “I think I’ll throw in an ‘i.e.’ or ‘e.g.’ here in order to demonstrate my intelligence. But which one should I use? Hmmm. Well, it doesn’t really matter. They’re interchangeable, right?”

Wrong. And so, the hapless writer goes about showing his erudition by writing “for example” instead of “that is,” and vice versa.

If you have to use these acronyms, how can you remember which is which? Try this: simply look at “e.g.” and sound it out. Sounds like “egg,” right? From “egg,” it’s a short step to “example” and then on to “for example.” By default, the “i.e.” must be the other one: “that is.” (By the way, I could have used “i.e.” in place of the colon in the preceding sentence, but that would have really complicated things. I could also have used the acronym “BTW” instead of “by the way,” but then you would have had the right to hunt me down and shoot me.

Or we could avoid all this foolishness, do our readers a favor, and spell out the phrases.