14 September 2013

Developing academic writing skills: an introduction

Oscar Wilde ... “What is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is unreadable, and literature is never read” ... A statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Church of Ireland Theological Institute,

2 p.m., Saturday 14 September 2013

Hartin Room


Each month, I write a column for two diocesan magazines that runs to 1,800 words. On most months, the columns are the same, but sometimes I tweak them, and occasionally they have some major changes in them to give them local relevance.

For most people, it looks like 3,600 words, and over a year that amounts to 43,200 words. When someone asks how I manage to write that much every month or every year, I tend to respond either it takes more to write a book each year, or I make some dismissive asides about insomnia and being able to sit up all night writing.

Well, for most people it does seem like a lot.

Then, on top of that, there’s perhaps a sermon or reflection on average each week, no matter how short or long, commentary for a newspaper, or a paper for other publications.

And then, sometimes, people say things like: “It must come easily to you after all those years working as a journalist.”

Well, let me share with you two trade secrets of a writer:

● Firstly, it doesn’t come easy, ever.
● Secondly, having worked as a journalist for 30 years does not necessarily mean I am capable of writing well in other styles and genres.

The task of writing

Oscar Wilde once said: “What is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is unreadable, and literature is never read.”

Although Rebecca West once claimed “journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space,” some of my colleagues in The Irish Times were sub-editors but also well-known, critically acclaimed writers, regarded not as mere novelists but as key figures in modern literature.

TS Eliot ... “Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers”

TS Eliot rightly recognised: “Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”

And one of those colleagues gave me good early advice. He gave me two valuable tips: he got up early, and wrote for a set time, let’s say, two hours every morning. And he set himself a target: write 500 words a day.

Now, his books did not amount to 182,500 words a year. His average for a book was somewhere around 70,000 words. He admits that some of what he wrote each morning was thrash, only worth pulping. I remember writing my first book in 1984 on an old-fashioned, heavy typewriter. And so many pages ended up crumpled on the floor of my study.

But I wrote each day, and set time aside each day, even if all I started with was: “The quick brown fox jumped over the fence,” even if, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, I was sometimes reduced to typing nonsense sentences again and again: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

One of the most difficult tasks when sitting down to write is actually sitting down … to write.

And when you have sat down, the task of writing does not include getting up to make a cup of coffee, knocking on the next door to ask someone about last weekend or the weekend ahead, checking on your email or your Facebook page. Would you do that when you are praying?

Sit down, call up a blank screen on your laptop or PC, key in the title of your essay and assignment, go to the next line, your name, go to the next line, and key in the word “Introduction.” Believe you me, you have got past the first difficult hurdle.

Try to set aside a time each day when you can write, and set yourself a target, a manageable target, for what you would like to write each day.

If you leave every assignment until the week before it is due, none is going to be written properly.

If you start now, then you will be comfortably pleased, and physically comfortable, with what you produce.

Don’t write everything

There are two dangers to avoid, particularly when you have a limit on the number of words in an assignment. So: don’t pad it out; and don’t squeeze it all in.

You know what it’s like when a writer has entertained herself with her own recollections and her own ability to be clever. How often have you found yourself skipping parts of a book?

The American novelist and screenwriter Elmore Leonard says: “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.”

Sometimes I just write too much because I’m not focussed and disciplined enough. More focus, more discipline would allow me to say all the things I want to say. Sometimes less actually means more. Less verbiage on my part allows the reader to grasp more of my ideas.

Sometimes we just pack too much in, trying to show that we have paid attention, trying to show what we have learned.

And then we become thieves, stealing more space surreptitiously, by cramming more detail into the footnotes.

Sometimes we pad things out because we’re not focussed enough, not directed, because we allow ourselves to ramble all over the place. As a journalist I found it was more difficult to write a story in 300 words than in 1,000 words.

I remember one prima donna demanding more words to write a report, claiming: “I can’t explain it in less.”

“If you can’t explain it in less,” the page editor retorted, “how can I believe you really understand it?”

Writing within the limit you are given is an important discipline in writing. Blaise Pascal once wrote to a friend: “I have made this letter longer only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

It takes discipline to confine yourself to what you ought to say.

But padding it out to reach the required length is also an indication of a lack of discipline, and poor research.

Try to remember how many times you have listened to a sermon, and found yourself wondering why some of those boring, personal asides were dropped in while the sermon was being written?

Was it because he had to speak for 10 or 12 minutes, and didn’t have enough good, relevant ideas?

Don’t pad it out

John Ruskin once gave the advice: “Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or he will certainly misunderstand them.”

On the other hand, your first rector, hopefully, is going to advise you: “Don’t pack all your good sermons into one.”

If you have good ideas that you don’t want to lose, open a file where you can hold and keep them … for the future.

At an extreme level, journalists in the Sun were advised by their news editors: “Make it short. Make it snappy. Make it up.”

But there is a germ of truth in that. Say it simply, say it sweetly, and say it quickly. Use space for your ideas. Don’t use unnecessary adjectives and superlatives as a way of reaching a required length.

Mark Twain dealt with this problem by advising: “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’. Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

Be structured

The Red Queen advises Alice: ‘Start at the beginning, go through to the end and then stop’

The Red Queen advises Alice in Alice in Wonderland: “Start at the beginning, go through to the end and then stop.”

The secret of good story-telling remains paying attention to three details: a good story needs a beginning, a middle and an end.

As Maria advised the children in The Sound of Music:

Let’s start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with A-B-C
When you sing you begin with do-re-mi


Well, we’re all good at the beginning. We can set out the task we have to do. It’s like school exams: we were all good at writing our names down at the top of the exam paper.

But then we find ourselves all over the place in the middle, and run out of time at the end. Plan how much space you need for each part of your essay. Don’t leave it to chance and find you have only 50 or 100, or even 200 words for your summaries and conclusions. They tell me what you have not only learned, but assimilated and can apply. Don’t tell me you’ve learned little or nothing.

Be careful with punctuation

I hope you all know about the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynn Truss. She describes it as the “zero tolerance approach to punctuation.” The book takes its title from this joke on bad punctuation:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

“Why?” asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“Well, I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Do you all know about the grocer’s apostrophe?

[Discussion]

Do you all know the difference between it’s and its?

There’s also a wonderful Facebook page called: ‘Let’s eat Grandma!’ or, ‘Let’s eat, Grandma!’

Punctuation saves lives!

Punctuation matters.

Punctuation matters

Think of this letter from Gloria to John:

Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, and thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?

Gloria.


or:

Dear John,

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, and thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we are apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

Yours,

Gloria.


Watch your sentences

And even if you are good at punctuation, don’t use too many dashes and brackets.

A good idea, when you have written something, is to read it out loud, to yourself or, preferably, to someone else. That way, you share ideas, you learn collaboration, but your colleague actually hears what you wrote, not what you think you have written.

If it’s difficult for you to read out loud, then it’s difficult for me to read when it lands on my desk.

And if you lose your train of thought as you wrestle with dashes and brackets – and you know what you intended to write, how much more difficult is it going to be for me?

Write simply, write clearly, write with your own voice.

Watch your words

Anglo-Saxon words are always better that French or Latin words. You are more likely to understand them, and to tell me precisely what you mean, and they are easier to spell.

To repeat Ruskin’s advice: “Say all you have to say … in the plainest possible words, or he will certainly misunderstand them.”

Don’t rely on spell-check. Spell-check can’t tell the difference between their, there, they’re, and, if you speak like the Kerry politician Jackie Healy Rae, th(e) hair, t(he) heir, the air, and dare. Here, hear, ’ere …

It’s worth remembering: Spell-check may not understand you.

Watch your sources

Do not trust everything you find on the internet … even when it appears to come from a reputable academic source

The internet opens the world to us, and may provide you with wonderful, new and fresh insights and sources. But if you are referring in footnotes to web sources try to find another, second, preferably printed source that backs up and confirms what you have found.

And when giving web references, give the date you accessed it – because web addresses change, web pages or updated, and web pages may be taken down.

Do not trust everything you find on the internet, even when it appears to come from a reputable academic source. The Irish Times reported some time ago [16 September 2011] how a page for a fictitious lecturer went up on the website of the School of English in Trinity College Dublin [14 September 2011]. He was “Dr Conan T. Barbarian, B.A. (Cimmeria), Ph.D. (UCD), F.T.C.D., Long Room Hub Associate Professor in Hyborian Studies and Tyrant Slaying” – complete with research interests that include “Vengeance for Beginners,” and even a TCD email address.

Nor is Wikipedia a valid source to cite, as far as I am concerned. The year before last, Katie and I found ourselves in laughter when someone edited a Wikipedia page on the Apostle Philip, saying his father was a plasterer, and he was a time traveller who had made a guest appearance on Dr Who.

Reward yourself at the end

Reward yourself with a coffee and a read of the newspaper ... when you've finished the task in hand (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Give up each writing task while you’re still feeling good. If you end each writing task only when you’re frustrated, flustered or exhausted, you’ll hate getting back to your laptop the next assigned time.

Then reward yourself.

Give yourself that shot of coffee or that chocolate biscuit … not in the middle, but at the end, when you’ve finished. Then the next time you know there’s a prize at the end, and that it’s worth sticking to.

Psychologically … it works.

Read what others write

Finally, read what others write, see how they do it, and learn from them.

Share your writing skills with others, learn from how they map out assignments, deal with difficult phrases, clauses and sentences, and notice how they express themselves.

And don’t be afraid to ask why they wrote things that way.

You will be surprised how you can teach each other, and you can learn from each other.

And, do I need to say it, read for pleasure. I’ll say it again, and again. Read for pleasure, and you will then write with pleasure.

Read for pleasure and fun … including poetry and novels

Read newspapers … Karl Barth said the preacher should have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. If I don’t know how the world thinks, how can I address its needs in the light of the Gospel?

Read poetry … John Donne and TS Eliot teach me a lot about how to use theological categories in crisp, sharp writing. John Betjeman, who once observed that “hymns are the poems of the people,” a bond between popular culture and the Church, amuses me and chides me when I am in danger of taking the Church and churchy things too seriously.

In Westminster Abbey, by John Betjeman

Let me take this other glove off
As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England’s statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady’s cry.

Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate’er shall be,
Don’t let anyone bomb me.

Keep our Empire undismembered
Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,
Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,
Honduras and Togoland;
Protect them Lord in all their fights,
And, even more, protect the whites.

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots’ and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I’ll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

I will labour for Thy Kingdom,
Help our lads to win the war,
Send white feathers to the cowards
Join the Women’s Army Corps,
Then wash the steps around Thy Throne
In the Eternal Safety Zone.

Now I feel a little better,
What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
Have so often been interr’d.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.

Betjeman was concerned with the preservation of old churches in England, and with their “sympathetic” restoration. Reading his poem Hymn, look at the way he uses language to comment ironically on self-styled “preservationists” who take away church furnishings – either to furnish their own pockets or furnish their own homes.

Hymn, by John Betjeman

The Church’s Restoration
In eighteen-eighty-three
Has left for contemplation
Not what there used to be.
How well the ancient woodwork
Looks round the Rect’ry hall,
Memorial of the good work
Of him who plann’d it all.

He who took down the pew-ends
And sold them anywhere
But kindly spared a few ends
Work’d up into a chair.
O worthy persecution
Of dust! O hue divine!
O cheerful substitution,
Thou varnishéd pitch-pine!

Church furnishing! Church furnishing!
Sing art and crafty praise!
He gave the brass for burnishing
He gave the thick red baize,
He gave the new addition,
Pull’d down the dull old aisle,
– To pave the sweet transition
He gave th’ encaustic tile.

Of marble brown and veinéd
He did the pulpit make;
He order’d windows stainéd
Light red and crimson lake.
Sing on, with hymns uproarious,
Ye humble and aloof,
Look up! and oh how glorious
He has restored the roof!

Please do not think of submitting a poetic assignment. But you can see here how one points paints images, uses and stretches words, all within the framework of how we pray, where we pray, and the purpose and nature of the mission of the Church.

Read novels … Many of us grew up with John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, I hope many of you have read Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles. But when did you stop reading fiction for fun? Susan Howatch and Catherine Fox are theologians who write as novelists; they are academically sound when it comes to theology and church history, pastorally they are so insightful, as writers they truly know how to tell a story.

In Canada, Margaret Craven’s novel, I Heard the Owl Call My Name, has long been accepted as a sensitive and deeply spiritual work of pastoral theology.

If you want to start re-reading fiction, it will help you to write too, and to find ways of expressing yourself theologically in words and categories that make sense on paper, and make sense to ordinary people. During your time here, read Susan Howatch’s Starbridge trilogies and/or Catherine Fox’s three novels – Angels and Men (Penguin, 1995), The Benefits of Passion (Hamish Hamilton, 1997), and Love for the Lost (Penguin 2000) – in which she explores the themes of the spiritual and the physical with insight, humour, pathos and theological engagement.

Read theology – for fun … Janet Soskice is Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge, but her recent book, Sisters of Sinai (Vintage, 2010), has all the fun and pace of a novel.

I read it with fun and for knowledge by the pool on a recent holiday in Turkey. It is theology, church history and biblical studies all in one. And if reading theology can be fun, then writing it should be fun too. And it should be. You’ll be writing theology for the test of your life, for sermons, for parish notes, for book reviews, for communicating the Good News.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin. These notes were prepared for a research seminar with Dr Katie Heffelfinger on “Developing Writing Skills” for Year I-IV part-time students and Year I full-time students on the MTh course on Saturday 14 September 2013.

RM Gwynn Commemoration

The ‘Church of Ireland Notes’ in The Irish Times this morning [14 September 2013] opens with the following paragraphs:

Next Thursday evening Whitechurch parish, Dublin, will host a seminar as a contribution to the commemoration of the 1913 Dublin ‘Lock–Out’. This seminar will be held in Whitechurch Parish Old Schools (in the church grounds), commencing at 7.45 p.m.

The General Synod has established an Historical Centenaries Working Group, to mark the significant historic centenary dates on this island between 1912 and 1922. This autumn marks the centenary commemoration of the workers ‘Lock–Out’ strike. The context for this local commemoration is the fact that the Revd RM Gwynn, SFTCD and his medical doctor wife, Eileen, are buried in Whitechurch graveyard, in the church grounds. RM Gwynn gave significant support to the workers during the ‘Lock–Out’.

At 7.45 p.m. there will be a short commemorative ceremony at the Gwynn grave, prior to the commencement of the seminar at 8 p.m.

The speakers at this seminar will be Canon Patrick Comerford on ‘Gwynn the Priest’, the Archbishop of Dublin on ‘Gwynn the Educationalist’ and author Pádraig Yeates, on ‘The Lock–Out, 1913’.

Directions to Whitechurch parish may be found at www.whitechurch.dublin.anglican.org

A similar report appears on p. 20 of the September 2013 edition of the Church Review, the Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Magazine.