Finding Inspiration in Art

Hayley Young's exhibition, Orchid Fever      
at the 5-50 Art Gallery, through July 20.         

There's not a thing we humans can't write about. All we need is inspiration. Today I got a cosmic jolt to my imagination when I went to the opening of artist Hayley Young's exhibition, Orchid Fever, at 5-50 Gallery in Long Island City, New York. I've been following Youngs for several years now and continue to marvel at her evolution. In her paintings, I see more motion, rhythm, and symmetry than I am likely to see walking down a midtown Manhattan street at rush hour, with one exception: inYoungs's work, serenity defines the movement. Although orchids inspired Youngs to create the 14 pieces of this exhibition, what I experienced was a lesson in how color and shape can form a vast harmony of water, earth, air, flora, fauna, and humanity that I just can't find in any other form of communication. Yet her art inspires me to try to replicate what she does through words, and while I might not get there, creativity is more about the journey than the destination.

When I posted in this blog 13 years ago a four-part series on finding inspiration, I was trying to explain that a single evening in one's life holds multiple sources of inspiration, in my case a walk, a dinner, a look at Times Square, and a play, on March 22, 2012. During the pandemic, many of us even were inspired by sights we had taken for granted when walking in isolation in our neighborhoods. 

The 5-50 Gallery is a cool space, no more than 200 square feet of a converted garage in a hip area of the city. For a quick subway ride, the first stop in Queens from Manhattan (Vernon Boulevard and Jackson Avenue on the number 7 train), you can find inspiration through July 20 at Youngs's show. Look at the paintings a long time to get the flow and musicality of her work. You'll dance.

Lighthouse International Film Festival at LBI

I have been staying in Beach Haven, New Jersey, for the seventeenth annual Lighthouse International Film Festival. While the weather has not been kind to visitors this year, the movies have been. You could do worse than watch a movie on a rainy day. I've done just that many times over by watching 60 films: 3 feature-length narratives, 3 feature-length documentaries, 43 short narratives, and 11 short documentaries over five days. 

The LIFF is an internationally renowned juried event that screens excellent independent movies from around the world. I will not review any of them here. Enough to say that they're worth watching. You can get a brief description of all of them here. 

But I do praise the festival itself. It is well organized, reasonably priced, and content rich. The 200-plus staff  members are gracious and accommodating, and the venues are comfortable. It doesn't hurt that the LIFF takes place on Long Beach Island, commonly referred to as LBI, a barrier island legendary for its spectacular beach the full length of its 18 miles. The restaurants, bars, and shops are plentiful, and you can take early morning beach walks even in the June drizzle. The LBI vibe is positively chill. You'll feel a cool sense of community and as much entertainment as you can handle from Wednesday to Sunday. Remember the LIFF for next year.

Background Music

When cooking, washing dishes, or cleaning the toilet, I find that listening to music and singing along make the tasks not only tolerable but pleasurable. (Yes, I do pity anyone within earshot.) 

What about playing music when writing? A lot of research is available on this topic. If you start at "Should We Turn Off the Music? Music with Lyrics Interferes with Cognitive Tasks" a study appearing in the National Library of Medicine website, you will find the results, while mixed, point to lyrics posing distractions to thought processes. 

I would not say that I listen to music when I am writing. But the music is on. I call it background music. I hesitate to share the music I play for two reasons:

• I do a disservice to the great musicians, whose talents are worthy of my complete attention. When I do listen to them play, I am moved emotionally and even spiritually.
• The background music of choice depends on the phase of the writing process I am engaged in. Am I planning, drafting, or rewriting?

Having made those disclaimers, I listen almost exclusively to jazz, and occasionally classical, but never to vocals, unless they're of the Philip Glass non-lexical sort. Indeed, Glass's music can be quite focusing. Bill Evans, one of my favorite pianists, is great to have in the background, and greater when paying close attention. Even unorthodox pianists like Thelonious Monk and Lennie Tristano make for helpful background music.

For me, the problem with listening to music with lyrics is capturing the right rhythm of my sentences. That's the very reason why having instrumental music in the background enables me to craft rhythm in a passage. 

Another disclaimer: I wrote this post in a public park, where the background music was a symphony singing birds and screaming children. So enjoyable. 

Remembering on Memorial Day

Since May 5, 1868—some would argue unofficially before then—the United States has set aside Memorial Day as a time to honor its nation's fallen military personnel who sacrificed their lives for their country. No one can be more worthy of a national tribute for their bravery in the face of danger and for their role in changing the world. 

It has surely crossed most of our minds that Memorial Day means to most Americans just a day off from work, a downtown parade, a barbecue, and a lot of traffic. I try to avoid those sentiments by memorializing people who were once in my orbit and changed my world. I can think of my parents, father-in-law, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, bosses, coworkers, and artists who are no longer here in the flesh. I make a point of talking about them to others, to let them know how these people influenced and inspired me with their courage, wisdom, insights, humor, and vision. I shall always remember them for their role in making not only my world, but our world, a better place. These champions, these kings and queens, encourage me to be a better human being and to do my share in paying forward whatever I can.

When I go to that Memorial Day parade or barbecue, I will remember those spirits who still lead me to the clearing. There are so many to remember and to be grateful for.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

I remember playing softball when I was 13 years old in the PS 100 schoolyard across the street from the James Monroe Housing Project in the Bronx. My team was up by one run in the bottom of the ninth inning facing an opponent with runners in scoring position and two outs. We needed only one out to win. I was playing second base hoping a line drive would come my way to make the final out and go home victorious. In fact, the batter hit the ball well over my head directly to the right fielder, our team's weakest defensive player. What would have been a routine catch for all the other players on the field went past the right fielder. Our team lost on a walkoff error. Eight of us were good ball players and one was not. So we lost. That moment might have been the time I learned the meaning of "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link."

The truth of that expression has emerged time and again throughout my life. The time one fearsome bully in my high school English class threw a rock at the teacher's back, causing us all an afternoon of detention because no one dared snitch on him. Or when I could not suspend my disbelief while watching a staged play because only one actor from an otherwise outstanding cast of eight was hamming it up, ruining the whole theatrical experience. Or the one customer service agent from an employee workforce of ten thousand who acted rudely, spurring me to never again buy from her company. Or the forced lyrics of a song for the sake of rhyming without regard to the verse's underlying meaning, transforming the song from ethereal poetry to mere doggerel. Or the lone wolf bad cop trampling on a citizen's civil rights, reflecting poorly on his entire precinct. These weak links fail to do the right thing. Whether willfully or thoughtlessly, they mess things up for the rest of us. And we must share some responsibility for that.

But some links might be the weakest in the chain through no fault of their own. Think of developmentally disabled individuals, paralyzed war veterans, innocent victims of physical attacks suffering permanent physical injuries, all of whom cannot do the tasks of their more physically capable counterparts. Or survivors of terrorist incidents, who suffer permanent trauma. Or hardworking but poorly paid laborers who cannot afford to make their children look as refined as their wealthier classmates. If it is true that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link—and we know it is true—then we are a sorry society if we, the supposed stronger links, do not do our best to care for these souls, and then we ourselves are weak.

Perhaps you have an aging father who cannot function without your help, or a child who needs your protection and guidance, or a mate slowly recovering from invasive surgery, or beloved relatives unable to speak the language of the country in which you and they live. I have met people who detest illegal immigrants, yet they themselves are the offspring of illegal immigrants; people who demand retribution against criminals, but not when that criminal is a family member; people disgusted by the homeless but whose heart goes out to a homeless person who aided their mother when she fainted from heat exhaustion on the street; people who hate those on public assistance but gladly accepted public assistance if some disaster befell them.

I say all of this because our world is in a strange time. Not one political party, but all of us, look the other way when people in government break the very laws they created and are sworn to enforce. We do not seem to mind that those laws apply in the harshest terms toward some of us and do not apply at all to others. We are living in a paradoxical Catch-22 situation, teeming with hypocrisy, contemptuous of morality, scornful of common sense. I am not romanticizing the old days, abundant with  gratuitous military actions, segregated school systems, marginalized women, and institutionalized disabled people. But in those times, advocating for ending the Vietnam War in the face of a million corpses, marching for Black Americans in light of lynchings and coloreds-only water fountains, calling for legislation on behalf of women's rights in view of inequitable treatment, and protesting for individuals with disabilities upon consideration of their second-class status appeared even to the most reticent among us to be responsible exercises of civil duty at best and  definitive proof of civil rights at worst.

What has changed? It is not a question of what our predessors had that we do not. It is the precise opposite. What did they not have that we do? The answer is technology. The pervasiveness of social media makes everyone an author. Anyone can broadcast on their favorite apps what now passes for news, and it's uninformed news fabricated to vent frustration, resentment, anger, and animosity. People  believe those dangerous lies out there because they speak to their basest prejudices and fears. And we're becoming worse for it.

What can we do about this dystopic world where disinformation flows into our minds at perpetual tsunami force? Three practices come to mind. These endeavors take some effort, like exercising, dieting, praying, studying, or childrearing. We can act decisively in our capacities as consumers, communicators, and citizens to recapture our better selves.

As consumers, we can cancel subscriptions to social media that allow stories and commentaries based on unfounded information. It’s easy to decide what information is based on reality. When a Facebook ad laments the passing of your favorite celebrity, simply go to an alternative source like the New York Times or Wikipedia to corroborate it. This does not mean you should trust the New York Times or Wikipedia. Fact-check them too. I have given up entirely trusting any news source. BBC, a news service frequently cited as reliable, recently devoted the entire half hour of one of its broadcasts to the irrelevant Prince Harry’s plea for monarchy support at a time when Ukraine was torn by war, innocents were dying in Gaza, and oligarchs were enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else. I do not support any one source. If you do not want to cancel social media subscriptions, you can at least not spend one second of your scrolling time stopping to view a ludicrous, fictitious story passing as reality. Doing so will make these stories fade away. Ignoring works wonders with amoral technologies concerned only with impressions, likes, and screen time.

As communicators, we have two responsibilities: what we say and what we hear. We can speak the truth. When we hear something we know to be a lie, we should call it out. When we are not sure whether what we are hearing is true, we can simply ask our phone: Did so-and-so die today? Who recognizes the Gulf of America? Has the United States deported its citizens? How many people were killed in Gaza? It’s not hard at all. As listeners, we can avoid sources that commonly lie about or exaggerate facts. Here we should consider not only news outlets and social media but acquaintances too. I am not saying to stop being friends with such people, but to limit conversations with them to matters like “Do you think the Yankees will beat the Dodgers this year? When is trash pickup day? How much do eggs cost in your town?” Small talk has its place. At least we won't lose friends over it. 

As citizens, of course we can demand more from our representatives. But that’s just talk. In truth, we must demand more of ourselves. We are part of this problem. It’s not someone else’s fault; it’s ours. Still, we can wonder aloud—to be heard by others, allies and adversaries alike—why the situation is so out of hand. Once our fight for the truth is loud and clear, our representatives will join in that fight for us. Positive change will then be inevitable.

I was uncharacteristically at a rock concert the other night. The music was blasting from the speakers from where I was sitting 40 feet away from the stage. A toddler, perhaps the child of a stagehand or musician, was allowed onstage and directly under the stage for the entire 90-minute show. As I was shaking my head in disbelief, my friend said, “By the time she’s twelve, she’ll be deaf. Who the hell are those girl’s parents?” True. But it takes a proverbial village, baby. If we continue to do nothing when someone flicks a lit cigarette in a draught-stricken forest, we will burn in it.

"Please call me if you have questions."

Have you ever noticed that some people call you with questions even if you did not close your message with "Please let me know if you have any questions"? And how many thousands of times have you written "Please let me know if you have any questions" without getting questions from your readers? Contrarily, have you observed that sometimes people don't call you with questions when they should, because they clearly don't understand what you told them or mess up on what you have instructed them to do? For all these reasons and a few more, I wonder about the value of that overused closing. 

If you have been in the work world for a while, you know that the daily messages you write could number in the hundreds. We're on autopilot, some of our responses running a single word, like "Done," "OK," "Yes," or "No"; some cutting and pasting previous comments; others embedded in the previous message. We know all the shortcuts. We must, otherwise we would never finish our work. Who has time for anything else? 

I no longer see the point in closing a message with "Please let me know if you have any questions" or its hybrids. I can understand a closing that says, "I look forward to receiving your response" to accentuate the urgency of a message. Or "I will be at meetings all day but at my desk for the rest of the week" to indicate your availability. Or "Since this new procedure will likely require a learning curve, you can click here for the Help Desk" to express support. Or "This proposal will stay in effect for 30 days" to encourage your client to act. Or "If we do not receive a response by Thursday, 12:00 p.m., we will close the case" to cover yourself. Give some thought about the next step for the reader. 

Of course, your reader will contact you with questions, even if you don't tell them to. You might think "Please let me know if you have any questions" is better than nothing. I think not.

Audience Awareness, Part 2: The Dialogue Method

 A way to address your audience's concerns is what I call the dialogue method. Consider yourself in a dialogue with every possible reader. For example, let's say you wanted management to hire an expert organization to provide customer service training to your Call Center staff, and ten executives show up to your pitch in the conference room. Here are some questions they might ask:

Chief Communications Officer (CCO): How do we sell it to the Call Center?

Chief Information Officer (CIO): Is IT affected?

Chief Business Officer (CBO): Will it grow the business?

Chief Talent Officer (CTO): Are we training the right people?

Chief Legal Officer (CLO): Are there any liability issues?

Chief Research Officer (CRO): Where did you get your supporting data?

Chief Operations Officer (COO): What's the plan to keep the business running?

Chief Financial Officer (CFO): Do we have the budget for it?

Chief Security Officer  (CSO): How much security clearance does the trainer need?

Chief Executive Officer (CEO): What's the return on investment?

Of course, any of the officers could ask any of those ten questions, and any of them could ask numerous other questions. Why do the Call Center staff need the training? How pressing is this problem? How long has it been a problem? Is a lack of training the root cause of the problem? Are there alternatives to training? How long will the training take? What makes the suggested training organization so expert? Where will the training take place? How will we measure results? Will staff revert to previous behavior? And many more. 

I like this technique because all of us frequently ask and answer questions, so listing the questions and answering them seems as natural as speech. It's a good way to jumpstart the writing process.

 

Audience Awareness, Part 1: What is it?

Our writing is purposeful when we understand what we want our readers to know or do. But purposefulness is just half the story. If you were an IT analyst, would you tell your president how to complete an online procedure the same way you tell a fellow subject-matter expert? If you were a salesperson, would you describe the product or service you are selling to your customer the same way you would to your production supervisor? If you were a project manager, would you explain the contractual process to your concrete contractor the same way you would to your in-house inspector?  Of course, the answer in all three cases is no. Accepting this reality is the first step to becoming aware of your audience's concerns, knowledge, and needs.

Now here comes the hard part. What are their concerns? Is it only price. I doubt it. What do your readers know? Are they at a beginner level? Probably not. What do they need? Chances are, those needs are not exactly what our needs are. For these reasons and others, we should perform an audience analysis before spinning our wheels by flying through a pointless draft with several logical or contextual holes in it.

I often hear, "What if I don't know the full range of readers? I'm writing a report for my manager, but I'm not sure if the executive staff, legal department, or regulatory agencies might read it." Then assume the executives, lawyers, and regulators will read the report, and write it to your least informed reader. 

Still, I admit, that answer is easier said than done. This is why I use a self-made Audience Analysis Worksheet for complex documents that go to readers at multiple levels of an organization and even outside the organization. For instance, a worksheet for a project status report might look like this:

1. Who will read this report? List your readers' names and titles.
2. What is their relationship to your report? Some readers may need just to be in the loop for informational purposes, others may read the report to update their team, which may be tangentially engaged in the project; others may need to troubleshoot the issues you are reporting.
3. Who are the stakeholders? Who else might read the report only when a success or hurdle you mention affects their vital interests? 
4. What questions would they have? Consider questions like, Why are we engaged in this project? What phase of the project are you up to? What problems have you encountered? What caused the problems? How long have they been problems? How did you discover the problems? How did you attempt to resolve the problems? How did you determine the approach to solving the problems? How many staff hours were involved? What crafts or disciplines were involved? How successful were you at addressing the problems? What is the status of the problems now? What have you done to ensure the problems do not recur? What is your mitigation plan? What is your work plan for the next phase? What human, fiscal, equipment, and real property resources will you need? When do you plan to complete the next phase? When will you release the next status report or completion report? If you think these are heaps of questions to answer, I can think of many, many more. If you think I've missed some, list them in your own audience analysis.
5. Do any of my readers need to do anything? If yes, should I write to those individuals separately in addition to supplying them with this report? 

The challenge as a business or technical writer is to reckon with the fact that each message may require different readers, therefore, to answer different questions. Sometimes, we discover new questions as we draft our message, but there's nothing as intimidating to writers as a blank screen when their mind is all over the place. That's why reflecting on your audience will at the least turn that blank screen into ideas we're likely to include in our message.

"I hope this message finds you well."

"I hope this email finds you well ... I hope you are doing fine ... I hope you are having a good day ... I hope you had a good weekend ..."

Ugh! Who are we kidding? We all know how disingenuous those openers come across. Besides, they have nothing to do with the message that follows. I recently received this email starter from a client:

I hope this email finds you well. We are cancelling your class next Thursday due to insufficient space. 

Really? She just ruined my day! 

I admit that I have felt compelled to use that sentence myself when I am working for one of several corporations or government agencies whose leaders have made clear to me their expectation for staff to open written messages that way. But who says a CEO is infallible? Most of us correctly read that sentence as timewasting, thoughtless, insincere, and useless, even incongruous or ridiculous. I usually don't open that way and prefer not to.

I am a big proponent of using courteous language. A tone-sensitive opening of "Good day" or a specific comment connecting you to your reader, such as "Thank you for attending the meeting this morning," would work better. I really do hope my message finds you well, but there are better ways to express that sentiment.

Is the Human Writer Dead?

Technical writers, script writers, and even novelists might seek a new endeavor after reading an article like "AI and the End of the Human Writer" by Samanth Subramanian, which appeared in The New Republic already a year ago (April 22, 2024). The most common questions I get as a corporate writing consultant these days revolve around artificial intelligence. Do you use AI? (Yes.) Can AI help me write better? (Yes.) How accurate is AI? (Very.) How reliable is AI? (Very.) Should I let my school-aged children use AI? (Yes.) Should AI be banned from the classroom? (No.) Will AI replace my job? (Maybe.)

My article, "Using AI to Improve Writing Creativity, Productivity, and Quality" for ACS Chemical Health & Safety, describes many ways that AI can help on-the-job writers. Programs like Google's Bard, Microsoft's Copilot, and OpenAI's ChatGPT can help you plan, draft, rewrite, or translate a document:

•  Planning – Tell AI to "list features to include in a house description," and it will give you more details than you might have thought of under the categories exterior, interior, outdoor space, amenities, accessibility, and location. If this content is not enough, simply ask it, "Anything else?" and it will immediately list finer details, such as alarm system, safety locks, flooring, interior decor, smart home features, high-speed internet, laundry room, basement, attic, and community benefits. Ask it again, "Any other ideas," and it won't give up, providing other information, none of it redundant.  
• Drafting – Give it a list of ideas for, say, a country description, such as the square miles, geography, population, political system, religion, customs, cuisine, and folklore of Malta. In seconds, it will generate a 1,000-word essay including footnotes. If the depth of content in that draft won't do, ask it for an expanded version, and you'll get one, again in seconds.
• Rewriting – Drop in a document riddled with grammatical, diction, spelling, and punctuation miscues with the simple prompt, "Correct this," and AI will render a virtually error-free message. While AI does not yet organize ideas as effectively as it corrects mistakes, it is a reliable editing partner for basic documents.   
• Translating –  AI translating services may not have the high-minded attention to style as have human translators of fine literature, but it does a sufficient job with basic business writing. At the prompt of "Translate this into Spanish" (or many other major languages), your English text will be accessible globally. 

But is the human writer dead? If we are, we remain far from useless in the workplace. We still depend on human interaction to transact deals, investigate incidents, interview job candidates, deliver presentations, supervise staff, operate and repair equipment, and numerous other tasks—all of which require some type of writing, or at least dictation. Besides, as technology evolves, so do we.

On Not Playing It Safe

"I would write, but I can't take rejection."

"I always wanted to write but doubt I have the talent."

"I want to write but don't have the time."

"I don't have a good place to write."

"I would write if it weren't for my job."

"I'll write when I retire."

These are the excuses I have heard for a half century from people who claim aspirations of writing. They should read Nobel Prize laureate William Faulkner's 1956 interview in the Paris Review. Faulkner famously said, "An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't know why they choose him and he's too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done." 

As a writer, Faulkner was ruthless, and his prodigious output proves that he did not suffer fools, failures, or frenzies to stop him from writing. Even our ego should be worthless to us once we write:  

Interviewer: Then could the lack of security, happiness, honor, be an important factor in the artist's creativity?

Faulkner: No. They are important only to his peace and contentment, and art has no concern with peace and contentment.

Interviewer: Then what would be the best environment for a writer?

Faulkner: Art is not concerned with environment either; it doesn't care where it is.

Now if those aren't words to frighten away the pretenders, then I don't know what are. For the rest of us still hanging in there, we must remember Faulkner's point. There are no excuses. Just do it. Get to work.

Giving Away the Store, Part 12: Practice

I have been coaching a woman who has just begun writing at age 39. Her prose sparkles in places, and she paints radiant pictures of her characters and settings throughout her narrative, so encouraging her continued writing is an easy task for me. Nevertheless, she has expressed concern that her story does not have direction and goes nowhere. My response? So what!

This writer's lament brings to mind how little final product any endeavor yields. Professional sprinters who run in, say, six 60-meter and six 200-meter indoor races, and ten 100-meter and ten 200-meter outdoor races per year—quite a busy schedule these days—perform only eight minutes a year despite practicing on the track, in the gym, and in the weight room seven days a week with little exception throughout that season. Artists sketch endlessly in their studio but do not present everything they do as a completed artwork. Musicians do their scales all day long for their two 75-minute concerts per week, not including those periods when they have no gigs. Any expert independent contractor who gets paid by the hour, as I do, knows about the hours of unpaid preparation time they must dedicate to their craft. In my case, as a writing consultant, everything I read and write and view contributes to my consulting expertise, institutional knowledge, and performance skills. Why should writing be any different? Writers do far more than write. They read, research, interview, attend meetings and conferences, and record. So much goes into the work, and, as the prolific author Irving A. Greenfield once told me, "There are no shortcuts." I'll take the word of a writer of nearly 400 books.

The key to working as a writer is to write every day. And don't beat up yourself if you miss a day or two. Stuff happens in our life that we cannot control. Write about those interruptions too—write about anything—just keep practicing. You'll see big dividends! 

  

Giving Away the Store, Part 11: Travel

When I suggest that developing writers travel, I do not necessarily mean they go on a costly worldwide tour or even on a flight to another country—although those experiences would be great. But I also don't mean a staycation. Staying home on vacation surely has its perks. It's an opportunity to walk in your hometown at times when work prevents you from enjoying that opportunity. But staying home can be too easy. 

The travel I'm talking about could be an overnight trip to a forest if you live in the city, or to a city if you live in a forest. It could be a weekend at the shore. Or a visit to a national park, historic site, or monument. What's important is that you look at the trip not as just another opportunity to live it up in a karaoke bar or run around an amusement park. Write about your reactions to the different environment. What distinguishes this place from home? What would you miss about home if you were to live in this new place? Are people there any different from where you live? Would you like to be there with someone who is not with you? Why? What would it be like to live there? What adjustments would you have to make? How different would your life be? The more you dig into the scene, the more you'll learn about it. Before you know it, you'll drum up characters for a new story or create a topic for an essay. 

Take a notebook with you. If you're a laptop type, that will do just as well. Dedicate specific times of day to record your reflections in solitude. Don't feel you have to write "I did this and I did that." Write about the graffiti on a building wall. Write about that stray dog that followed you halfway down a city block. Write about the drone disturbing the geese as it hovers over the lake. Write about a delivery woman who sang Beyoncé's "Formation" as she drops off a package. Write about that ever-smiling six-year-old boy in a wheelchair under an oak tree. Write about whatever you like, or not like. When you return home, read what you wrote. Some gems may be lying in the middle of a paragraph or at the end of a sentence. By the time you make this activity a habit, you'll be connecting ideas from your last trip to previous ones. Now you're brewing.   

Giving Away the Store, Part 10: Experiment

Experiment! I'm working on a sestina right now. A sestina is a 39-line, 7-stanza poem with six 6-line stanzas and one final 3-line stanza. Invented nine centuries ago in France by Arnaut Daniel, the sestina uses the six words ending each line of the first stanza to repeat in alternate positions in the following line endings of the next five stanzas, and the last 3-line stanza contains two each of those words per line, one at the middle and one at the end. 

The sestina is the type of poem that might put off readers as too repetitious and irk writers as too complex and restricting. But poets should practice as many forms as possible in deference to their predecessors and in honor of the craft. I have written one before, 47 years ago, which appeared on the National Council of Teachers of English website in 2014. Notice the repetition:

 On Living Near The Bronx Zoo: An Urban Sestina

This block where we live in the heart and the soul of The Bronx
You’d say is the last place you’d find any culture or art.
Eleven miles down the IRT tracks, the world
So lavishly watches the latest Shakespeare-in-the-Park,
A Mozart festival opening in Carnegie Hall,
Or a Jackson Pollock at the Whitney Museum. The streets

In what they call The City ain’t our streets,
Ain’t our city. We who live here in The Bronx
Don’t say New York’s where we’re from. Our screaming halls
Are us. Our neighborhood, yeah, is all about art,
From paisons playing softball on the asphalt park
To amigas taking the stoop as if it’s their world,

None too far from that fabled zoo, its monkey world
Screeching in sorrow but not as pained as the street,
Where hitters stalk hookers as darkness takes the park
And dropouts pipe ashcans in mailboxes. Our Bronx,
With blaring boom boxes making a nuisance of art,
Lives and dies like echoes through those empty halls.

And heading west you’ll find another Hall,
This one of Fame. It shows folks of another world,
Their busts marred with graffiti and bubble gum, this art
The boys be doing when they’re wilding the street
As off-duty cops drink pitchers in Chuck’s Bar. The Bronx
Belongs to these boys, they own the streets, the park,

The halls, and everything else but the animal park,
Where mandrills ape each other in the monkey hall,
The elder dragging his nipples through the dirt of The Bronx,
Face blue and red, conjuring still another world
Thousands of miles away without the streets
Covering the dankness, the rot. This human art

Of entombing earth so we could live; the art
Of growing trees from all the world in one park
To remind us the world is bigger than our fabled streets—
The mountains, the deserts, the oceans—as if our halls
Were not enough, as if the natural world
All boiled down to what you wouldn’t call The Bronx,

But it does: the ultimate art, the footsteps and echoes down the hall,
The breaking of benches in the park, the nickel-and-dime world
We call our community’s streets—that’s what we call The Bronx.

Another rarely used form is the pantoum, originating from Malay. The pantoum usually contains four 4-line stanzas with repetitive alternating lines in specific positions. Here is one I wrote 46 years ago,  as soon as I learned of the form. It appeared Motherbird in 2001. Again, notice the repetition.

Back at the Ranch: A Pantoum

One birch bends, the other splits in two.
Upon both trees one cardinal nests;
A tabby scales both trunks in rue
And claws the roots and never rests.

Upon both trees the cardinal nests
Far from the tabby’s reach;
He claws the roots and never rests
And blanches the bark of each.

Far from the tabby’s reach
The cardinal flits from branch to branch
And blanches the bark of each,
Disturbing all the ranch.

The cardinal flits from branch to branch.
The tabby scales both trunks in rue,
Disturbing all the ranch.
One birch bends, the other splits in two.

The point is that writers need to practice, and practice appears in many forms. Research them. And keep experimenting.

Giving Away the Store, Part 9: Go Back

Go back can mean a lot of things for a writer. It can mean go back to your last draft and try to improve it. It can mean go back with a family member or friend to an episode you experienced in common to get their take on those moments. It can mean go back to a restaurant or museum or sports center to compare experiences then with now. In this post, I note three other go-backs that I do periodically. They usually inspire some creativity.

1. Go back to your roots. For me, going back to my roots means two places: the Bronx, New York, where I grew up, and Mgarr, Malta, where my parents grew up. When I go to the Bronx, the James Monroe Housing Projects in particular, I could swear I see my ten-year-old self racing friends around the apartment buildings, playing in the softball field, and hanging on the bench with my childhood friends. When in Mgarr, as I'll be next month for the eleventh time in my life, I see the police station where my father served as a police officer. I see the fields where my mother, as the eldest of 11 children, fetched water from the well for my grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Stories are behind my every step in these places.

2. Go back to something you've read. I am fortunate to have read books like John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat and Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea to my grandson Delano. These are fiction pieces I read in high school or college, and as I read them a half century later to my grandson between his eighth and tenth years, I not only connected with him—always a good thing—but I got new perspectives as a senior and from Delano, 10 years younger than I was when I read them. There's a story somewhere there, right?  

3. Go back to something you've written. I can go back 52 years in my journals, and I often do. I am the same person I was back then, but I am not too. My attitudes and inclinations, even my politics, have changed. I am less hopeful than I was then, but also less anxious. I was angrier then, and I am more tolerant now. Some people who know me may read this and disagree, but what matters to a writer is his own mindset. Regardless of how I feel or felt, I can tap into a reservoir of ideas from those notebooks. And I do.

Giving Away the Store, Part 8: Review Your Entertainment

An easy way to keep writing is to compose reaction pieces of any movie, play, concert, ballet, or art exhibit you might attend, or any book or article you might read. Even a song you hear on the radio, or your music player will do. Forget about the rules of what should appear in a reaction piece. This isn't school. You can compare what you just read to another story, including a personal one. You can explain what a song you just heard means to you. You can note how a painting reminds you of someone you love. There are no rules. This activity is for you, as a means of kickstarting the writing process or  recording an experience. Nobody's business but yours.  

You can find any point of entry into such writing. The more personal, the better. Say you heard a new version of a song this morning that struck you in some way. For instance, I remember the first time I heard Ray Charles sing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!" by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Before that moment in the early 1980s, when I was preparing a family meal, I thought of that tune as little more than a decent Broadway show opener. But when Ray's voice burst through the radio in his singular way, soaring high and descending fast like an eagle after its prey, my breath was taken away. I just had to stop cooking and write down some notes about how Ray Charles can recreate the most ordinary tunes into soulful celebrations of life. I've heard his rendition hundreds of times since as a pick-me-upper. 

More than once I experienced watching a play I had already read that astonished me because of its staging and acting. I can think of Colleen Dewhurst performing as Josie Hogan in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten in 1974, her husband George C. Scott playing Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman the next year, and F. Murray Abraham as Krapp in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape just a week ago—a full half-century later. Their performances were so special that I was sure they added lines to the original script. But upon reviewing the scripts once I got home, I realized I was wrong. That's the power of a great performance. The actors make you hear the lines for the first time.

I could write similar stories about musicians. The first time I heard Billie Holiday sing her forlorn rendition of "Love for Sale," or Stephane Grappelli bend notes on his violin for "Nuages," or Michel Camilo's piano thundering through "On Fire." I could name many more musicians. Or artworks, like when I first saw Chuck Close's "Phil," a 6-by-9-foot black-and-white acrylic on canvas portrait of Philip Glass. Or when I first stepped into the Museum of Modern Art room dedicated to Claude Monet's giant water lily paintings. Or my impression of monumental books like Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.

Writing summary reviews is also a good way of compensating for any guilt you might feel over watching too many sitcoms. Write about everything you watch. You'll find a gem in your notes just waiting for you to expand into a poem, story, play, or essay. Just do it. 

Giving Away the Store, Part 7: Speak to a Decedent

I don't think I have ever cried at a loved one's funeral, and I have been to many. But recently I have cried with laughter when remembering some clownish antic of my father-in-law, Peter Kostares, dead 30 years. Not long ago, I have laughed like a madman as I walked down Broadway in New York City over some irreverent remark by my father, Francis Xavier, gone 28 years from this earth. I have cried over the loss of my mother Lucy's unconditional support, who passed away 26 years ago. I cry thinking that I could not communicate with my paternal grandmother, Carmela, now gone 54 years, because we spoke different languages before translation technology bridged such a boundary. 

I cry a lot, almost always when I am alone, and far from finding myself in the depths of despair, I become overwhelmed with joy, glowing with gratitude for being alive with such remarkable forebears to guide my walk through life. I continue to speak to these decedents, as well as grandfathers Philip and Carmelo, grandmother Elizabeth, uncles Emmanuel, Reno, and Fotios, aunts Katherine, Theresa, Salvina, Josephine, Rita, Katherine, and Maryanne, cousin Mario, friends Danielle, Tony, Tom, Victor, Deborah, Lucille, Ann, and Nancie, former employers Ida, Harry, and Mickey, and many more people whose names would run a dozen more pages.

If you are a writer struggling with something to write about, rely on your decedents. They are a source of rich material. They will never let you down. Talk to them. Ask them questions. Listen to their responses. They are wiser than we will ever be in this lifetime.

 

Giving Away the Store, Part 6: Do Something New

My college journalism professor assigned the class to interview someone we did not know and report about it. During this time, the early seventies, New York City's streets were teeming with homeless people much like today. I decided to interview a homeless person. 

In those days, I was living in the James Monroe Housing Projects in the Bronx. That neighborhood, a euphemism if there ever was one for the projects, was a drug haven, so I had seen plenty of gang members, dealers, junkies, pimps, and prostitutes. But homeless people were scarce in the projects. Riding the graffiti-covered, unwashed, fetid subway cars from the Bronx, where I lived with my immigrant parents and siblings, to Manhattan, where I studied and worked, was an adventure, frequently a scary and dangerous one, replete with vagrants, panhandlers, gangbangers, and muggers. During nighttime rides home, I would act crazy, pacing back and forth on the train platform and talking to myself loudly enough to be heard in the hopes of keeping everyone at a distance. Those were strange times for an 18-year-old man. The specter of being drafted into the Army to serve in a battlefield 9,000 miles away to kill strangers or die myself lay heavily on my mind, but sometimes I wanted to get away so badly that I thought about enlisting in America's war machine.

I don't recall why I chose to interview a homeless person. I'm sure I wouldn't have without the prompt from my journalism professor. I did pay close attention to homeless people whenever I emerged from the number 6 train at Twenty-third Street and Park Avenue South. Whether they were sleeping on the sidewalk against a storefront, pulling down their zipper or lifting their dress to pee in plain sight, screaming at invisible demons, or dragging their possessions in a shopping cart with a missing wheel in the midst of rush hour traffic, I was always shaken by their circumstances and feeling privileged to be in my own humble, relatively fortunate, situation.

With an hour to kill after classes before heading to work, I walked to Madison Square Park, two blocks away from Baruch College, where I was a student. The park is far more attractive today than it was in 1972. The benches were occupied by the nameless, the crazed, the hopeless, the wasted, the forgotten. Most businesspeople would walk a long detour around the park, which stretches from Twenty-third to Twenty-sixth Streets between Madson and Fifth Avenues, rather than make a beeline to their offices by walking through the park. Not I. I was young enough, curious enough, foolish enough, romantic enough to walk out of my way to enter the park whenever I could. I wanted to observe, to bear witness, to the most miserable humans on Manhattan Island amid some of the wealthiest real estate on Earth. The contrast got to me. I wanted to write about it.

I'll leave this post here for now. It's not important how many times I was unsuccessful in getting a coherent, cooperative interviewee before I met a forty-year-old Korean War veteran named Sal. It doesn't matter to the point of this story where Sal was from, what he did before his residence became Madison Square Park, or how he descended into such a desperate situation. I have long forgotten the angle of my writing assignment or the grade I received. But I do know that the assignment I chose changed me. Everything we do changes us. That's what writers do. Experience. Report. Change. Repeat.

Giving Away the Store, Part 5: Ask Questions

Writers ask questions. They are among the first people who will ask questions about someone or something that piques their curiosity. Why did your parents give you your name? At what age did you l arrive in America? Why have Black men held the 100-meter dash world record over the past 65 years? What are the first and last places on earth to see the sun rise? Are typewriters obsolete worldwide? How did a grand piano get into a tiny basement jazz club? What do the colors of the Timor-Leste flag signify? How often to do you visit your family in Bangladesh? Can people who speak Mandarin and Wu understand each other? Why are five years necessary to graduate from architecture school? Why do most people consider this person more attractive than that person? 

Of course, questions can get too personal. We should not be surprised if someone we question out of pure curiosity answers, "It's none of your business." Worse, we might become victims of the inept ethics police. But the problem is everything is a writer's business. Asking questions may not necessarily get us the answers we seek, but the imaginative journey is all about asking questions. Carson McCullers might have asked, what if people saw a man's deafness as a mighty advantage, which led her to writing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Ernest Hemingway might have asked, can an old, poor, defeated man endure even more than most of us while remaining true to his principles, before writing The Old Man and the Sea. Alice Munro might have asked how can a woman reconcile her love of someone she believes to be a murderer, sparking her to write "The Love of a Good Woman."

Almost any good story probably comes from a writer asking questions, and the stories they write engage their readers, not necessarily by answering those questions but by making their readers ask questions as well. 

Giving Away the Store, Part 4: Living in Libraries and Bookstores

Writers read. Reading fuels writers. It feeds their perception, jumpstarts their animation, sparks their inspiration, ignites their innovation. While electronic media increasingly make research and reading accessible and immediate, writers still call libraries and bookstores their home. I passed one today, the Book Trader Cafe in New Haven, and found there a long-sought used book in excellent condition at a deeply discounted price. 

The title of the found book is irrelevant for the purpose of this post. What matters is that writers are continually on the lookout for information: data to interpret, stories to adapt, ideas to cultivate. They capture this content from what they read. (They also find source material in the art they see, the music they listen to, and the people they meet; these wellsprings will serve as topics of future posts in this series.) 

Wherever I go, I visit the libraries and bookstores, many of which I have mentioned in WORDS ON THE LINE over the past twenty years. I am a card-carrying member of two city and three college libraries. I feel rich. If you are an aspiring writer, I suggest you go home, to a library or bookstore.

Giving Away the Store, Part 3: Perverse Punctuation

Great writers don't follow rules. They don't look up in a style book how to use a comma. They invent their own rules. Some don't even care about the standard subject-verb-object order of English if they can create a dramatic effect, as in by the grace of God go I. Here's an example of an exceptional writer, whose name has often appeared in this blog, who defies conventional punctuation rules:

One sees that most human beings are wretched, and, in one way or another, become wicked: because they are so wretched. And one's turning away, then, for what I have called the welcome table is dictated by some mysterious vow one scarcely knows one's taken—never allow oneself to fall so low. – from James Baldwin,  No Name in the Street in Collected Essays (Library of America, p. 374)

Most writing teachers would suggest that a dash should replace the colon, and a colon should replace the dash. To which Baldwin would surely say, "I don't care what you suggest." Baldwin was a born rebel, a fierce social critic, an American treasure, a global original, and an extraordinary writer, among the many other reasons why his life and work have resurged nearly four decades after his work. He has been the subject of notable documentaries, biopics, biographies, and plays. (For my money, he has never receded into the shadows of world literature.)  

Back to my point. Writing by the textbook requires us to use colons for announcements and dashes for emphasis. Baldwin seems to apply those rules in reverse. But why fuss over rules when you want people to focus on your ideas, not your understanding of grammatical edicts? Be on the lookout for rule breakers in your reading of masterful writers.

Giving Away the Store, Part 2: Word Smarts

If I find a website that contains more than a half dozen answers to questions students have frequently asked me, I'd have no choice but to refer it. Word Smarts is such a site. 

Word Smarts offers an extensive list of grammar, diction, punctuation, and style tips. You will learn something about our spoken and written language, as well as find the reading entertaining, whether you are looking for the standard uses of an ellipsis, difference between fewest and least, purposes of the past participle, or origin of "how come." 

You can also subscribe to the site to receive periodic email updates.

Giving Away the Store, Part 1: The Value of Reading Aloud

A fellow writing consultant once told me, "Don't tell your clients everything you know because then they won't need you." I never accepted such wrongheaded advice. I decided she was insecure, limited, selfish, and ignorant. Any consulting business built on such a model cannot succeed. 

Since I have been in this business, I have tried to use my education and knowledge to bring people in, not to keep them out; to lift them up, not to put them down; to move them forward, not to hold them back. How could I embody my mantra without giving my all to whomever I could whenever I could and wherever I was? I believe that the more you give, the more you get. The past three decades have proven me right. I am still here doing my thing.

In this spirit of giving, I will give away the store. I will dedicate all of 2025 to promoting sources other than my own to help people cultivate their writing craft. I start with this simple yet powerful suggestion from "Reading Aloud" by Melissa Kirsch writing for the New York Times. As far as I remember, I understood the benefits of reading to children. But this article also underscores the delights and rewards of being read to. By listening to a reader, we practice concentration, listen to the rhythm of a language, and build a bond with our reader. With a skilled reader, we also learn the meaning and pronunciation, or additional meanings and pronunciations of words. We also get insights into punctuation, hearing the slight pauses of commas,  longer pauses of periods, dramatic emphasis of dashes and colons, and minor interruptions of parentheses. This article is less than a five-minute read with a terrific reference to Harvard Sentences. It's definitely a worthwhile read.

Twentieth Anniversary of WORDS ON THE LINE

I figured I would keep this blog alive for a year. Or two. Then five. Maybe ten. After 1,162 posts and 20 years of WORDS ON THE LINE, I'm still here. I have written most of these posts in half of the United States (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Colorado, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, California, and Hawaii), but I also wrote some of them in a dozen other countries too (Canada, Cuba, Iceland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece, India, China, and Australia). 

WORDS ON THE LINE has focused on writing at work, school, and home. In a sense, you can see this blog as a professional autobiography, as I have written about many of my activities, ideas, interests, and goals. The topics listed on the sidebar offers numerous tips on a wide range of writing-related topics, including book reviews, diction, grammar, and style. Searching a topic in the Search This Blog bar will reveal the depth of information I've collected over these past two decades. You can also write me at Phil@PhilVassallo.com if you have questions about writing.