BOOK BRIEF: A Primer for Memoirists

Music Is My Mistress by Duke Ellington. (New York: Doubleday, 1973). 538 pages.

Whenever someone asks me how to start an autobiography, I ask in return, "Do you have a lot of people to thank for making you who you are and getting you to where you are?" I ask these questions because I've read too many self-obsessed autobiographies by people who think they alone are responsible for their achievements and blameless for their failures. How could any of us gotten anywhere without the help of an endless stream of angels?

Now that I have just finished reading Duke Ellington's aptly titled Music Is My Mistress for the second time, one other time long before I started this blog, I feel I should simply ask would-be memoirists, "Have you read Music Is My Mistress?" This book is without question a masterpiece of memoir, as he describes with always with respect and often with humor hundreds of musicians, producers, friends, and family members who influenced his life. He writes with a candor and grace that reflect his legendary oratorical skills. Just listen to any of his talks on YouTube. By pointing to those who helped him, Ellington reveals so much about himself.

I consider Ellington the greatest musical composer, arranger, and bandleader ever. Yes, he had help from collaborators, most notably Billy Strayhorn, but his towering genius is evident, from his jungle sound of the 1920s to his sacred concerts of the 1960s. Scanning the nearly 50 pages at the end of the book detailing his awards and discography (and many more of both surfaced after his death in 1974), leaves one awestruck. How did he manage so much while keeping a band in business for more than a half-century? 

As fot the structure of the book, it is divided by eight "acts" and further separated by great moments of his career, "journals" recounting his numerous foreign tours, and a recurring Dramatis Felidae, in which he praises jazz giants and lesser-known people who extended even the slightest courtesies to him. Ellington's stories are amusing and often hilarious, and his vocabulary uniquely and exquisitely his own. Yes, that's the way to write a memoir. 

Reading for Writers, Part 7: From Process to Product

In "How to Improve Your Business Writing" by Carolyn O'Hara for the Harvard Business Review, you will find a practical summary of the writing product (your completed emails, analyses, reports, and proposals) and the writing process (the method you use to transfer ideas from your brain to your computer screen or paper). 

Even though the article appeared nine years ago, it covers enough ground to serve as a primer for developing business writers. O'Hara concludes with two relatable case studies to reinforce the principles she raises, such as planning messages thoroughly, writing clearly and concisely, practicing continually. For a five-minute read, that's a heap of worthwhile information.  

Reading for Writers, Part 6: The Writing Process and Product

In addition to reading my article on writing in the sciences for the Amrrican Chemical Society, "Crafting Articles: Guidance ot Authors for ACS Chemical Health and Safety," develooing writers would benefit from reading "The Skill of Writing" by Bryan S. Judge, available to readers on PubMed. While my article is primarily product-oriented, Judge's is primarily process-oriented.  

I would recommend starting with Judge's article, as it focuses on the psychological aspects of writing from conception to completion. I cover that aspect as well, but my main focus is on improving the quality of the finished product. If you are not a science writer, you will still benefit from reading the universal approach of both authors.

Reading for Writers, Part 5: The Reading-Writing Connection

My insistence over the years on this website about the powerful, indispensable link between reading and writing finds support in Lisa Fink's brief article "The Relationship Between Writing and Reading," for the National Council of Teachers of English website and in a more extensive essay, "The Reading-Writing Connection," by the International Literacy Association (formerly International Reading Association), appearing in the Electronic Registration Infomation Center (ERIC) website.

If you overlook the emphasis of these articles on elementary and secondary school students, you will see how much their ideas and suggestions apply to business and technical writers as well.

Reading for Writers, Part 4: Tutorial

If you want to test your knowledge of commonly confused words, sentence structure problems, and punctuation, visit Effective Writing Practices Tutorial, courtesy of Northern Illinois University. You will have numerous opportunities to take automatically graded quizzes that challenge your command of a broad range of writing-related issues.

This post is the fourth in a row that features a university writing center. That fact alone might keep away people who consider themselves serious business or technical writers. They would be mistaken. In fact, they might be hard-pressed to ace all the quizzes. Try them and see if they help. These exercises for writers are no different from a professional athlete's warmup or a musician's playing scales. Practice!  

Reading for Writers, Part 3: Editing Tips

WORDS ON THE LINE continues its drilling good writing practices into the minds of developing writers. This third article of the series, Editing Tips for Effective Writing from the University of Pennsylvania, is the longest yet. 

This latest link provides some information you might have read in part one from Hamilton College and part two from Hunter College, so you may make the mistake of thinking it's redundant. But it's not. Plenty of new content is there in the Tips for Effective Prose and Avoid Dumb Mistakes sections. Among them are avoiding passive voice, using vivid nouns and verbs, avoiding awkward sentences, knowing your possessives, and knowing your plurals.

Yes, academic content shows up, some of which can be arcane, but just read the parts that will teach you  writing ideas you might not have known and reinforce the good practices you already have.   

Reading for Writers, Part 2: Qualities of Good Writing

Developing writers, WORDS ON THE LINE continues throwing good ideas your way. This new cheat sheet, Five Qualities of Good Writing, comes from Hunter College of the City University of New York. If you think this brief read apparently applies only to essay writing, think twice. The concepts of focus, development, unity, coherence, and correctness emerge in all my writing classes. They relate to messages as basic as emails and as advanced as proposals and white papers. I especially like the organization of these qualities, which is why I selected this three-minute read for you.