Steering The Craft Quotes

To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It’s worth it.

There are a limited number of plots (some say seven, some say twelve, some say thirty). There is no limit to the number of stories.

And here’s an example of deliberate violation of a Fake Rule:   Fake Rule: The generic pronoun in English is he. Violation: “Each one in turn reads their piece aloud.”   This is wrong, say the grammar bullies, because each one, each person is a singular noun and their is a plural pronoun. But Shakespeare used their with words such as everybody, anybody, a person, and so we all do when we’re talking. (“It’s enough to drive anyone out of their senses,” said George Bernard Shaw.) The grammarians started telling us it was incorrect along in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. That was when they also declared that the pronoun he includes both sexes, as in “If a person needs an abortion, he should be required to tell his parents.” My use of their is socially motivated and, if you like, politically correct: a deliberate response to the socially and politically significant banning of our genderless pronoun by language legislators enforcing the notion that the male sex is the only one that counts. I consistently break a rule I consider to be not only fake but pernicious. I know what I’m doing and why.

It’s dangerous to confuse self-expression with communication.

Collaborative workshops and writers' peer groups hadn't been invented when I was young. They're a wonderful invention. They put the writer into a community of people all working at the same art, the kind of group musicians and painters and dancers have always had.

Crafty writers...don't allow Exposition to form Lumps. They break up the information, grind it fine, and make it into bricks to build the story with.

Ultimately you write alone.

What it has to do is move--end up in a different place from where it started. That's what narrative does. It goes. It moves. Story is change.

THE POET CAROLYN KIZER SAID TO ME once, “Poets are interested mostly in death and commas.” Maybe storytellers are interested mostly in life and commas.

To break a rule you have to know the rule. A blunder is not a revolution.

[Calvin's Mom is driving him somewhere.] CALVIN: Mom, can I drive on the way back? CALVIN'S MOM: Of course not, Calvin. CALVIN: Can I just steer then? I promise I won't crash. CALVIN'S MOM: No, Calvin. CALVIN: Can I work the gas and brakes while YOU steer? CALVIN'S MOM: No, Calvin. CALVIN: You never let me do anything.

Ultimately you write alone. And ultimately you and you alone can judge your work. The judgment that a work is complete—this is what I meant to do, and I stand by it—can come only from the writer, and it can be made rightly only by a writer who’s learned to read her own work. Group criticism is great training for self-criticism. But until quite recently no writer had that training, and yet they learned what they needed. They learned it by doing it.

we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles.

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.

My use of their is socially motivated and, if you like, politically correct: a deliberate response to the socially and politically significant banning of our genderless pronoun by language legislators enforcing the notion that the male sex is the only one that counts. I consistently break a rule I consider to be not only fake but pernicious. I

A story that has nothing but action and plot is a pretty poor affair; and some great stories have neither.

The discipline of art is freedom.

It’s childish to assume people will understand unexpressed meanings. It’s dangerous to confuse self-expression with communication.

Morality and grammar are related. Human beings live by the word. Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” I’ve had that sentence pinned up over my desk for a long time.

Jack put his hands on his hips, surveying the scene with a satisfied nod. "That turned out much better than I'd hoped." "Please,let's leave!" "What's your hurry? Let's take a moment to bask in the satisfaction of a job well done." "I didn't want to do that!" "No?" He cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. "I thought you hated the fey." "I do,but that doesn't mean I want to run around the Faerie Realms lighting everything on fire!" "What's the point in hating something if you aren't proactive?" He put his arm around my shoulders, steering me to look at the inferno with him. "You can't tell me that's not satisfying, not after what you saw.Faeries care about very few things,but they're quite fond of their little trinkets. That boat was a particular favorite of hers,not to mention the entire lake. All the centuries she spent crafting this landscape,then poof! One excellently thrown firebomb, and you've made her feel anger and pain more deeply than she's probably ever known. And far less than she deserves to know.

A writer who wants to write good stuff needs to read great stuff. If you don’t read widely, or read only writers in fashion at the moment, you’ll have a limited idea of what can be done with the English language.

All you need may be a character or two, or a conversation, or a situation, or a place, and you’ll find the story there. You think about it, you work it out at least partly before you start writing, so that you know in a general way where you’re going, but the rest works itself out in the telling. I like my image of “steering the craft,” but in fact the story boat is a magic one. It knows its course. The job of the person at the helm is to help it find its own way to wherever it’s going.

Life was easy for exactly no one. Each of us had a face, a fate, words and hands to try to craft for ourselves a better life. But a girl’s words had less sway, since girls were so often hushed to silence, and a girl’s hands rarely could steer her own destiny.

Ultimately you write alone. And ultimately you and you alone can judge your work. The judgment that a work is complete—this is what I meant to do, and I stand by it—can come only from the writer, and it can be made rightly only by a writer who’s learned to read her own work.

I’m not going to discuss writing as self-expression, as therapy, or as a spiritual adventure. It can be these things, but first of all—and in the end, too—it is an art, a craft, a making. And that is the joy of it. To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It’s worth it.

I’m a little shy about telling anybody to go read Tolstoy’s War and Peace, since it’s quite an undertaking; but it is a wonderful book. And from the technical aspect, it’s almost miraculous in the way it shifts imperceptibly from the author’s voice to the point of view of a character, speaking with perfect simplicity in the inner voice of a man, a woman, even a hunting dog, and then back to the thoughts of the author . . . till by the end you feel you have lived many lives: which is perhaps the greatest gift a novel can give.

The art of staying motivated, being happy, and continually improving oneself is a dynamic interplay that shapes a fulfilling life journey. Motivation is not a fleeting emotion but a sustained commitment to finding purpose and inspiration in daily pursuits. Happiness, the compass of well-being, emanates from a life aligned with personal values, while self-improvement serves as the engine propelling you towards your best self. To be better and stronger necessitates resilience, a dedication to continuous learning, and the wisdom to discern toxic individuals and political ideologies that may hinder your progress. Surrounding yourself with positivity and steering clear of toxicity is not just a lifestyle choice; it is a deliberate strategy for crafting a life of fulfillment and purpose.

it’s one of the great sunrises in all literature. Mark Twain: from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . . . then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep, and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres—perfectly still—just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bull-frogs a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line—that was the woods on t’other side—you couldn’t make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness, spreading around; then the river softened up, away off, and warn’t black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along, ever so far away—trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks—rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled-up voices, it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by-and-by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there’s a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log cabin in the edge of the woods, away on the bank on t’other side of the river, being a woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from over there, so cool and fresh, and sweet to smell, on account of the woods and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they’ve left dead fish laying around, gars, and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next you’ve got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the song-birds just going it!

Writing a sentence that expresses what you want to say isn’t any easier than plumbing or fiddling. It takes craft.

Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.

Using the Net is easy, but getting your meaning across there is just as hard as it is in print. Perhaps harder, because it appears that a lot of people read more hastily and carelessly on the screen than on the page.

recommend to all storytellers a watchful attitude and a thoughtful, careful choice of adjectives and adverbs, because the bakery shop of English is rich beyond belief, and narrative prose, particularly if it’s going a long distance, needs more muscle than fat.

A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.

The origin myth of the Tukano speaks of the time, eons ago, when humans first settled the great rivers of the Amazon basin. It seems that 'supernatural beings' accompanied them on this journey and gifted them the fundamentals upon which to build a civilized life. From the 'Daughter of the Sun' they received the gift of fire and the knowledge of horticulture, pottery-making, and many other crafts. 'The serpent-shaped canoe of the first settlers' was steered by a superhuman 'Helmsman.' Meanwhile other supernaturals 'travelled by canoe over all the rivers and ... explored the remote hill ranges; they pointed out propitious sites for houses or fields, or for hunting and fishing, and they left their lasting imprint on many spots so that future generations would have ineffaceable proof of their earthly days and would forever remember them and their teachings.

There’s no such thing as “the passive tense.” Passive and active aren’t tenses, they’re modes of the verb. Each mode is useful and correct where appropriate. Good writers use both.

How, when all of us have had our hearts cracked and crazed, if not broken forever, can we still steer our leaky craft through the dangerous but necessary shoals of love?

Association of dissimilar ideas “I had earlier devised an arrangement for beam steering on the two-mile accelerator which reduced the amount of hardware necessary by a factor of two…. Two weeks ago it was pointed out to me that this scheme would steer the beam into the wall and therefore was unacceptable. During the session, I looked at the schematic and asked myself how could we retain the factor of two but avoid steering into the wall. Again a flash of inspiration, in which I thought of the word ‘alternate.’ I followed this to its logical conclusion, which was to alternate polarities sector by sector so the steering bias would not add but cancel. I was extremely impressed with this solution and the way it came to me.” “Most of the insights come by association.” “It was the last idea that I thought was remarkable because of the way in which it developed. This idea was the result of a fantasy that occurred during Wagner…. [The participant had earlier listened to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’] I put down a line which seemed to embody this…. I later made the handle which my sketches suggested and it had exactly the quality I was looking for…. I was very amused at the ease with which all of this was done.” 10. Heightened motivation to obtain closure “Had tremendous desire to obtain an elegant solution (the most for the least).” “All known constraints about the problem were simultaneously imposed as I hunted for possible solutions. It was like an analog computer whose output could not deviate from what was desired and whose input was continually perturbed with the inclination toward achieving the output.” “It was almost an awareness of the ‘degree of perfection’ of whatever I was doing.” “In what seemed like ten minutes, I had completed the problem, having what I considered (and still consider) a classic solution.” 11. Visualizing the completed solution “I looked at the paper I was to draw on. I was completely blank. I knew that I would work with a property three hundred feet square. I drew the property lines (at a scale of one inch to forty feet), and I looked at the outlines. I was blank…. Suddenly I saw the finished project. [The project was a shopping center specializing in arts and crafts.] I did some quick calculations …it would fit on the property and not only that …it would meet the cost and income requirements …it would park enough cars …it met all the requirements. It was contemporary architecture with the richness of a cultural heritage …it used history and experience but did not copy it.” “I visualized the result I wanted and subsequently brought the variables into play which could bring that result about. I had great visual (mental) perceptibility; I could imagine what was wanted, needed, or not possible with almost no effort. I was amazed at my idealism, my visual perception, and the rapidity with which I could operate.

Somehow is a super-weasel, a word that betrays that the author didn’t want to bother thinking out the story—“Somehow

The Vikings also devised a remarkable rudder. A stubby, modified steering oar, it was fixed to the starboard quarter of the craft on a large block of wood pegged so the oar would turn as a lever turns on a fulcrum. The helmsman used a tiller bar. Since the Norse word for steering board was stjornbordi, the rudder lent its name to the starboard, or right, side of the boat.

We sailed from Coquimbo with a strong northerly wind, and passed the latitude of Cape Horn in ten or twelve days from port, when, taking a strong, westerly gale, we scudded past under a close-reefed main topsail, and reefed foresail, with a fearful sea sweeping after, every wave having a most ominous look as it rose high above the taffrail, but our good barque seemed to realize the danger, and rose to each mountain of water as light and graceful as a bird. Squalls of snow and hail, beating fiercely upon us, followed each other in rapid succession, while two men at the wheel had all the work they could do to keep the barque before it, yet she was not a hard-steering craft.

Ethics and effectiveness are not adversaries but allies. Ethically crafted policies consider long-term societal impacts, fostering sustainable solutions that address core issues. Aligning with Maqasid ensures policies not only achieve their goals but also nurture the common good.

It's childish to assume people will understand unexpressed meanings. It's dangerous to confuse self-expression with communication.

Hence some of the pitfalls of writing on the Internet, highly visible in e-mail, blogs, and responses to blogs. The mechanical ease and immediacy of electronic communication are deceptive. People write hurriedly, don’t reread what they wrote, misread and are misread, get into quarrels, hurl insults, and use flame-throwers because they expect their writing to be understood as if they were talking.

A skill is something you know how to do. Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art. There’s luck in art. And there’s the gift. You can’t earn that. But you can learn skill, you can earn it. You can learn to deserve your gift.

Baldacci has crafted another terrific tale with two great protagonists. Just when the story line seems to veer into familiar areas, Baldacci steers it into another shocking direction. This is the best book yet in the series.”—Associated

The doctors did not even attempt cutting,” Vesalius wrote bitterly, “but those barbers, to whom the craft of surgery was delegated, were too unlearned to understand the writings of the professors of dissection…. They merely chop up the things which are to be shown on the instructions of the physician, who, having never put his hand to cutting, simply steers the boat from the commentary—and not without arrogance.

If I craft my own ethics, they will serve my agendas rather than guide them. And that is something akin to racing a car down a mountain road without a steering wheel and somehow assuming that all is well.

micro second, I could see Mishy and I doing an aerial somersault and being pinged like a sling shot off the bike, landing ungracefully  in the gutter, probably head first into a steaming pile of dog poo. Miraculously, (well not really, because I used my witch craft) Mishy was able to steer the bike to safety as her tyres magically ploughed through the bike on the ground. She kept saying over and over, “What just happened, what just happened? I thought we were dead!” I said to her, “Its ok Mish, you saved our lives.” “Sorry guys,” a timid voice popped out from behind the tree. “It was kind of lying against the tree when I left it. It must have fallen down. I hope you’re both ok.” As soon as I saw Kaitlyn sheepishly step out from behind the tree, it suddenly clicked as to what had been missing back at Koolbar. It was Kaitlyn. She wasn’t there and she was always dutifully there with Tiffany. Kaitlyn Ramsay was part of the princess gang, though she wasn’t as fake as the rest of them. Every Friday the four of them always sat in a corner of Koolbar, slurping on their shakes and getting guys to slurp on their every word. I don’t think I’ve ever been there on a Friday when the four of them weren’t huddled up together batting eyelids and preening themselves, whispering and fussing. Which is why it seemed so strange when I didn’t see her. As she stood under the branches, the sun sprinkling filtered light onto her face, I could see that her normally creamy colored complexion was blotchy, and her eyes were red and hazy. Her makeup was streaky under her eye’s with smudges of black casting shadows. She looked a little bit like Dracula’s daughter meets prom queen Barbie, but she put on this big phony smile as though nothing was wrong. As if! Did she think we were born under a rock? “So what’s happening guys?” She tried to sound cheery. “Nothing much, we’re just on the way home from Koolbar,” Mishy replied. “What about you? What are you doing hanging around a tree?” “Yeah Kaitlyn, we didn’t see you at Koolbar. What’s the deal? You’re always there on a Friday with the others.” Kaitlyn’s face crumpled momentarily when I questioned her, then just as quickly went a fake shade of happy again. “Agh, I didn’t really want to go today. I have aghh ….some other things I want to do,” she stuttered, searching for words. “Like bird watching?” Mishy giggled. “You didn’t want to go? That’s not like you Kaitlyn.” I added. “So are you two going straight home now?” Obvious change of subject from Kaitlyn. “Yeah I have to babysit my kid brother while my mom and dad go out on their date night. “Aren’t your parents married?” “Yes, they just like to have a date night once a week where they don’t have to be bothered by us kids. Apparently

A writer who wants to write good stuff needs to read great stuff.

EXERCISE ONE: Being Gorgeous Part One: Write a paragraph to a page of narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration,* repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect—any kind of sound effect you like—but NOT rhyme or meter.*

Every so often somebody writes a story or novel in the second person under the impression that it hasn’t been done before.

We cannot always know where the line exactly falls between justified and unjustified uses of state force. But both in crafting laws and enforcing them: when in doubt, err toward liberty. Better that the government let some offenses go unmanaged than seek to totally manage them all and, in so doing, intrude too far, upon the innocent. If for no other reason: it is far easier to right a crooked life than a crooked law. The former is free to change as soon as error is brought to light, while the latter—to borrow a metaphor from President Obama—constitutes a veritable aircraft carrier slow to steer back on course. We carve our opinions into the stone of the state at our peril, for human error is inevitable, and these are hard opinions to retract.

There are lots of ways to be gorgeous.

I don’t know what sort of savagery your ‘barbarian’ people instilled, but christening yourself war-like seems the height of narcissistic delusion. Let me enlighten you on the citizenry of planet Earth. We are a vicious sort, akin to the walking zoological abnormalities you slaughtered. However, human ruthlessness is not concealed beneath fluffy white fur; we are crafted of skin, sinews, bone, and guile. Express and admirable are we not; in action, how unlike the angels. Ignoble are we in our reason and insatiable in our lust. Steering this starship and hurtling it into the sun would be a more pleasant form of torture than being eviscerated while acclimating yourself to our ways.

This might have appeared strange to the Catamarans, and led them to believe that it was, in reality, a phantom ship they were hailing, and the gigantic figures they saw were those of spectres instead of men. But the experience of the ex-whalesman forbade any such belief. He knew the ship to be a whaler, the moving forms to be men,—her crew,—and he knew, moreover, the reason why these had not answered his hail. They had not heard it. The roaring of the great furnace fires either drowned or deadened every other sound; even the voices of the whalesmen themselves, as they stood close to each other. Ben Brace remembered all this; and the thought that the ship might pass them, unheard and unheeded, filled his mind with dread apprehension. But for a circumstance in their favour this might have been the lamentable result. Fortunately, however, there was a circumstance that led to a more happy termination of that chance encounter of the two strange crafts,—the Catamaran and the whale-ship. The latter, engaged, as appearances indicated, in the process of “trying-out” the blubber of some whale lately harpooned, was “laying-to” against the wind; and, of course not making much way, nor caring to make it, through the water. As she was coming up slowly, her head set almost “into the wind’s eye,” the Catamarans, well to windward, would have no difficulty in getting their craft close up to her. The sailor was not slow in perceiving their advantageous position; and as soon as he became satisfied that the distance was too great for their hail to be heard, he sprang to the steering-oar, turned the helm “hard a port,” and set his craft’s head on towards the whaler, as if determined to run her down. In a few seconds the raft was surging along within a cable’s length of the whaler’s bows, when the cry of “Ship ahoy!” was once more raised by both Snowball and the sailor. Though the hail was heard, the reply was not instantaneous; for the crew of the whale-ship, guided by the shouts of those on the raft, had looked forth upon the illumined water, and, seeing such a strange embarkation right under their bows, were for some moments silent through sheer surprise. The ex-whalesman, however, soon made himself intelligible, and in ten minutes after the crew of the Catamaran, instead of shivering in wet clothes, with hungry stomachs to make them still more miserable, might have been seen standing in front of an immense fire, with an ample supply of wholesome food set before them, and surrounded by a score of rude but honest men, each trying to excel the other in contributing to their comfort.

The thesaurus is invaluable when your mind goes blank on the word you need or when you really must vary the word choice—but use it discreetly. The Dictionary Word, the word that really isn’t your word, may stick out of your prose like a flamingo in a flock of pigeons, and it will change the tone.

As my knowledge of the real world is sketchy, I provide a fantasy subject. Don’t be afraid; it’s just an exercise. You can return to the real world immediately after and forever.

Be very noisy, or be hushed. Try to reproduce the action in the jerky or flowing movement of the words. Make what happens happen in the sounds of the words, the rhythms of the sentences. Have fun, cut loose, play around, repeat, invent, feel free.

A sentence has to hang together.

And the rhythm of prose depends very much—very prosaically—on the length of the sentences. Teachers trying to get kids to write understandably, textbooks of style with their notion of “transparent” style, journalists with their weird rules and superstitions, and bang-pow thriller writers—they’ve all helped filled a lot of heads with the notion that the only good sentence is a short sentence. A convicted criminal might agree. I don’t.

Anton Chekhov gave some advice about revising a story: first, he said, throw out the first three pages.

The story is not in the plot but in the telling. It is the telling that moves.

If it’s a complex subject, it probably can’t be expressed in any words at all except all the words of the story.

Too many people who yatter on about “you should never use the passive voice” don’t even know what it is. Many have confused it with the verb to be, which grammarians so sweetly call “the copulative” and which doesn’t even have a passive voice. And so they go around telling us not to use the verb to be! Most verbs are more exact and colorful than that one, but you tell me how else Hamlet should have started his soliloquy, or how Jehovah should have created light.

I feel like writing the last two paragraphs all over again, but that would be rude. Could I ask you to read them over again?

When the quality that the adverb indicates can be put in the verb itself (they ran quickly = they raced) or the quality the adjective indicates can be put in the noun itself (a growling voice = a growl), the prose will be cleaner, more intense, more vivid.

I developed a workshop called “Steering the Craft,” focused on the glamorous aspects of writing, the really sexy stuff—punctuation, sentence length, grammar . .

Our schools now often teach little of an essential and once common knowledge, the vocabulary of grammar—the techspeak of language and writing. Words such as subject, predicate, object, or adjective and adverb, or past tense and past-perfect tense, are half understood by or wholly unfamiliar to many. Yet they’re the names of the writer’s tools. They’re the words you need when you want to say what’s wrong or right in a sentence. A writer who doesn’t know them is like a carpenter who doesn’t know a hammer from a screwdriver. (“Hey, Pat, if I use that whatsit there with the kinda pointy end, will it get this thing into this piece of wood?”)

Some of the techniques and values of expository writing are irrelevant and even problematic in narrative writing; training in the elaborately irresponsible language of bureaucracy or the artificially impersonal language of technology and science can tongue-tie a storyteller.

The chief duty of a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence—to keep the story going.

A story is made out of language, and language can and does express delight in itself just as music does. Poetry isn’t the only kind of writing that can sound gorgeous.

One of the few things most writers agree on is that we can’t trust our judgment on our own freshly written work. To see its faults and virtues we need to look at it after a real interval: a day or two at least.