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Roy's 'Toolbox' is filling up
I hope you've been reading Roy Peter Clark's "Writer's Toolbox" series. I plugged it at the end of my first "Training Tracks" column, which was posted in May. Roy's next column will put him at the halfway mark of the 50-column series, so I want to plug it again. If you haven't been following the series, you can catch up here: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=61811
If you have been following the series, you might enjoy Roy's answers to my questions (I've inserted notes into his answers, identifying the tools he's discussing):
When did you do
your first 20-tool toolbox?
It occurred to me about a decade ago that I really did have a toolbox.
It came at a time when I realized that for about 100 years writing teachers
were saying the same kinds of things. So I wrote down my list of 20 and
shared it at an National Writers' Workshop event in Portland, Oregon.
Then I began to write them down in the shortest possible forms and use
them in my teaching.
When did you expand
to 30?
The expansion came a couple of years ago. I Googled myself (is that a
sin?) and marveled at how far and wide these tools had traveled. A professor
in Europe translated them into Italian! This emboldened me. These tools
were really working, so why not add a few more until we got to 30. I hope
to reach 50 within the next year.
As I recall, both
of those were lists. Is this the first time you've done columns on each
tool, or did either or both of the earlier toolboxes also become series
of columns?
I would hand out my tools at workshops and then answer questions about
them. So I had developed a "rap" on each one, sometimes using
journalism as examples, sometimes music, sometimes Shakespeare. As often
happens, teaching was building up my reservoir of knowledge and anecdotes.
I wanted to do some special things for my 25th anniversary at Poynter,
so I gave myself the assignment of writing brief essays on each tool.
These have now been translated into about a half-dozen languages, and
I just gave an Egyptian editor permission to translate them into Arabic.
Which tool excited
you most when you first started using it?
My friend from the University of Delaware, Dennis Jackson, taught me about
"right-branching sentences," about the power that comes from
putting subject and verb together at the beginning. (Tool #1, http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=62027)
Then Don Murray taught me how to put emphatic words at the end. (Tool
#4, http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=62972)
Together, these tools work magic.
Which tool is rustiest
(or hardest to use) in your own toolbox?
Hayakawa's ladder of abstraction is a great tool, so great it takes a
long time to master. (Tool #13, http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=65978)
It's one of those magic tricks you wouldn't let a Hogwarts student use
until the upper grades. I understood the top and bottom of the ladder,
but it was Carolyn Matalene who warned me of the dangers of the middle,
where the language of policy and bureaucracy breeds.
Do you have a favorite tool that you use so readily that you worry
you might use it too much or use it sometimes when another tool would
work better?
I am a ruthless adverb cutter. (I first wrote this: "I cut adverbs
-- ruthlessly.") (Tool #3, http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=62969)
I'm starting to worry that I'm being unfair to the poor old adverb, that
I've become an anti-Adverbite. Also, in my original list I had a tool
that said: "Remember, that three is the magic number." Then
it occurred to me that three was A magic number, but that one had magic,
and two had magic. That led to a serious revision of that tool. (Tool
#17, http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=67835)
I love that moment when I learn that a favorite tool is inadequate, that
I've got to forge something new.
Writing a series of 50 weekly columns strikes me as a pretty daunting
task. Unless you wrote all of these in advance, you must be writing some
of these on deadline or when you're distracted or struggling with a particular
topic. Which tool(s) have been most helpful in writing the toughest toolbox
columns?
At one point, I was about six weeks ahead, now I'm only two weeks ahead.
But I'm over the hump. More than half-done. Downhill the rest of the way.
Breaking big projects into the smallest parts will be one of my later
tools. It's how I work. Don Murray taught me "A page a day equals
a book a year." A liberating notion.
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