Despite his military and political accomplishments, Napoleon wanted above all to be a writer.  He wrote memorials, histories, dialogues, even a short novel.  When he wasn’t writing, he talked of writing as when he addressed his troops after Waterloo, “…that I may further serve your glory…I shall write of the great things we have done together.”  Why would a man who so thoroughly directed the course of history want so badly to record it, and even more strangely, to write fiction; to record a world which doesn’t exist?

Napoleon knew that his actions would end, but that the memory of them would continue in the hands of writers and storytellers.  He was ambitious, and not content with the transience of his heroism, he wanted the longevity, nay, the immortality which only the poet can offer.

Why would a maker of history want to write fiction?  Because more than factual historical recordings, great fiction tells an even deeper truth about us which is even more long lasting.   We peer into the soul of the ancient Greek and know him not so much by historical accounts, as by Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and the plays of the tradgeans.  We envision the founding of Rome through Virgil’s Aeneid , the story of India through the Mahabharata, Romeo and Juliet not as historical characters, but through Shakespeare as the fictional symbols of all human love and passion.

Because writing was considered so important to the Romans, the Emperor Caligula felt that good writing should be rewarded and bad writing punished.  Caligula held contests in eloquence wherein the losers not only had to buy the winners their prizes, but also had to make speeches in praise of the winners.  If the speeches were not good enough the artless loser was thrown into the Rhone River.  To the Romans if a writer was deemed intelligent and eloquent enough to articulate the soul, or at least the history, of a people, then worst of all was pretence.  Bad writers according to Caligula needed to be thrown into the river.

Annie Dillard said that the world needs good shoemakers more than good writers.  Jorge Borges said that the world needs good readers more than good writers.  Of course both writers proceed to discuss and praise the craft of writing.  (I recommend Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.)

The fact is, the need to write something arises nearly every day for many people.  But no matter how mundane the task there is always something magical in the act of writing.  Of course most of us are not writing a seminal history or a work of fiction to speak to a generation; but every time we write, we record something, we crystallize a thought or action and bring something new into the world, and there is always magic in this.  Whether our words are recorded for eternity or soon obliterated by the delete button, whether a petition to save a man’s life, or to sell a product, the art of writing carries with it the importance of giving something shape and content and putting into the memory banks of civilization some hopefully worthwhile account of something.  Every written word conjures the spirit of the first poet recording the first hero.

So write well lest ye are thrown into the river.

I was in a Chinese restaurant in Spain and as if their troubled translation of the menu into Spanish wasn’t bad enough, they had also translated it into English.  Next to some of the menu items there were asterisks.  I looked to the bottom of the menu were the asterisks were explained and expecting to see the word spicy or vegetarian I read this: “These dishes are no longer in existence”.

Ok I’ll admit there’s nothing really wrong with the grammar here.  It’s just so outlandish.  What is most compelling to me (nothing to do with writing) is that these people reprinted their menu and rather than take the items off, they chose to memorialize them.   If the phrase had read, “these dishes are no longer served” it would have been very pedestrian, very normal.  But “existence” balls us over; it elevates the phrase to the level of poetry.

As writers we should employ strategy in the use of our words.  There are times to be very clear even predictable and other times when it is nice to surprise or shock.  The element at work in the phrase on the menu is surprise and the effect is humor.  What makes the word “existence” so powerful is the context.  If it had been in a speech about lost lives the word would have been merely factual.  But existence for a menu item – it’s hilarious.

Another example of a surprising word choice is when a Venezuelan girl said to me, “My leg is dreaming”.  Of course I understood her meaning but what a difference between the words dreaming and sleeping.  The poetic suggestions in her innocent mistake were delightful.

In Morocco I read a sign hanging from the wall of a craftsmen’s shack: “We fix watches at the fast moment of waiting.” We fix watches fast, or while you wait is what my eye wanted to see but the screwed up order of the words forced me to really think.  Fast moment of waiting – I know poets who would be happy to have come up with that line.

The point here is that proper word choice can either make something clear and straightforward by using the appropriate or predictable word, or it can shock us into humor and other avenues of thought.  The element of surprise in your word choice can also alleviate boring writing.  Here is a tip.  Any time you use three adjectives in a row be sure the third one is surprising or charged.  Note the difference between: The happy, playful, curious cat jumped on my lap… and… The happy, playful, predatory cat jumped on my lap.  The word predatory is not expected.  It is the difference between boredom and a living sentence.

My desire to write this 5 part blog on WRITING comes from an awareness that despite our highly technical and visually oriented culture things still seem to pivot on the written word. Even for something non-literary like a TV show someone has to write the script or cue cards; someone has to write the advertisement and promos, the legal contracts, the emails, the memos etc.

When needing to communicate with a prospective partner, a high tech software company is reduced to making sure there are no sentence fragments, or dangling participles in their mission statement. In the legal world I recently read a quote stating that, “more litigation results from bad drafting than you can imagine.”

Another reason for this blog is the need to address a shocking barrage of mediocre and incompetent writing in supposedly professional forums. With regularity I have seen run-on sentences and fragments in the London Times and I have seen just about everything on the internet. The prose on the blogosphere, as one feisty blogger puts it, tends to be “slapdash, fragmented and drearily prolix.”

My intent with this series is not to complain but to entertain and give tips for better writing at a variety of levels and for a range of different genres.

• The first two installments, So it is Written, So Shall it be Done and To Write or Not to Write are fun pieces on the history of writing.
• The third blog, Everybody’s Doing It, will be about the modern importance of writing, detailing the basics of good, solid writing. We need to be aware of the fact that from cover letters to resumes to mission statements our written word usually precedes us in this modern world.
• The fourth installment, Write Well or Die, will discuss style and will give advice on how to give your writing a more personal voice and how to put a bit of art into the effort.And the final article, Real Story-Telling, looks to great works by great writers to show us what great writing can be.