Changing Market for Good Writing After Zinsser

Good writing can seem to belong only to ages past, but that’s not really the case.

Good Writing is Where You Find It

Before journalism gave birth to forms resembling creative nonfiction more than objective reporting, I worked for a newspaper. Nineteen years old and having more than two dozen freelance credits, most of them from magazines—though I also got published in The Trenton Times—I took the job as a stringer out of sheer curiosity. I wanted experience. Ego certainly lurked in the background, too, because, still teenaged, I wanted the status of being hired by a newspaper, even though my employment was unofficial. I expected no more than that.

That was 1980 when the coming New Millennium loomed large on the horizon. We knew then, about as well as we know today in retrospect, that the culture would change. Four years after the publication of the landmark book by William Zinsser, On Writing Well, I hadn’t come upon the text just yet, but it would prove life changing for me.

As things turned out with the newspaper, the editor-in-chief felt impressed enough by my work to offer me a feature assignment on the Long Beach Island, New Jersey, housing situation. I took that assignment eagerly and without hesitation. My primary source a builder who displayed on his desk a photo of each of the 13 helicopters he owned, I sat in front of them asking him questions. I felt my confidence enlarge, because he related the facts and information I knew I needed. The closure on the market for new homes, the island getting built-out, comprised the subject matter of my article. The builder provided statistics and extensive wherewithal about housing from one end of the island end to the other—from Barnegat Light to Holgate.

If today were 1980, and I were to interview the same man, I would have asked about the helicopters. I would have allowed his passion for them to lead me into the heart of what it is to be a builder on Long Beach Island. Possibly, I would have intuited the coming of the gentrification the island suffers 45 years later. If so, I could have asked questions probing that possibility in-depth. Would it be to his advantage? If so, I’d ask what the hegemony of the wealthy inspires in him, in comparison to a market that welcomes the summer and year ‘round residence of young people. Young people who gain by such independence.

As you can easily infer, I would have asked him leading questions. But even though the subject would have been my own—my shaping it as the writer—so long as I could have made him feel comfortable speaking, he would have embodied the truth.

In my estimation, I would have created a much better article for the newspaper than I did, only it might have exceeded required word count. Regardless, the newspaper’s editor approved of my finished work, because he offered me a staff position.

I refused.

I wanted to be a literary writer, not a reporter. Think of the irony in that.

To this day, I wonder about those helicopters, and I’ll never know what answers the builder could have divulged.

No Strict Distinction

Nowadays, it’s common knowledge that the distinction between literary writing and journalism isn’t necessarily hard and fast. I had no idea of that in 1980. To me, the situation was either/or. Either I stuck to writing by hand in notebooks, eventually typing out books, or I accepted the professional life of newspaper work, at best writing seriously after hours. I didn’t want to divide my writing life any more than I had as a stringer.

To the best of what I know, the definitive statement erasing the distinction between literary writing and journalism is Zinsser’s how-to book. Between the time of the author’s death in 2015 and the book’s publication in 1976, that book had sold approximately 1.5 million copies. For my own development as a writer, the book is foundational. I’ve read it three or four times. And yet the idea is the simple and to-the-point affirmation of good writing. Wherever it appears. In William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, Zinsser mocks and scorns literary snobbery for good reason, because, as he says, good writing can appear anywhere.

To think the book was written before the advent of the internet! Compare the openness of the internet to the closed cliques of literary elitism.

A Development

I believe straightforward reporting has its place, however, which is why I listen to 10/10 Wins on the radio, though I can take only so much of that. As a rule I do occasionally break, I don’t read newspapers. I like the idea that reporting still exists, but I rarely read any of it, because it’s not my style.

In addition to books of poetry, novels, nonfiction of the creative sort, and philosophy, I read fishing magazines. I’ve noticed that over the decades to the present, articles in magazines that deal with how-to and where-to with regard to fishing involve less dishing out of the facts than stylistic engagements belonging to the essay form.

It’s not only the use of first person singular relating a fishing story. How to go about fishing a particular way, or where to go for a particular species, is the subject of the text, but it’s developed through narrative form encompassing the whole article as a single story. As I understand the development, story arc bridges facts to truths. It’s easy to present a series of facts in an article—artificial intelligence does it all the time—and to proclaim you’re onto the best method to catch the fish. But if you show the situation through story, making claims might prove less persuasive than that story.

One writer I know, Tom Pagliaroli, does altogether without the first person, or even the second person, for that matter. He brings out the subject matter in such a way that the realm of nature existing without us gets the emphasis, and he does so in a way that makes me want to read more.

For example, he recently wrote about pickerel during the summertime. He relates a story about his subject—the pickerel—but specifically the pickerel under duress of heat that affects other species more so. He assigns pickerel the pronouns “they” and “it.” He writes the story with a flourish of vocabulary appropriate to the text and yet valuable for its own sake in the way apt metaphors stand alone as memorable.

He writes, for example, “…it’s a perfectly configured killing machine and violent to the core,” not only bringing the pickerel’s savage character to life—a fish with razor-sharp teeth that cut deeply if you attempt to remove a hook by reaching into the mouth—”configure” suggests that the machine might be a computer comparable to the fish’s brain.

And, of course, it does compare. What else directs that violent behavior but the pickerel’s brain? What a timely metaphor that will remain apt for decades to come.

Changes in Form Over Time

Newspaper reporting has been around since the early 17th century in Europe. In general, its form has shifted over time from simple factual references to complex investigative journalism, opinion pieces, and creative nonfiction. When journalism itself changes, so do the minds comprising society. I, for one, hold onto the straightforward facts, because they’re left to my own interpretation, as they’re left to yours. I don’t deny people exist highly skilled at interpreting facts and communicating their interpretations to other people. That’s valuable work. I do it all the time for my blogs, but that doesn’t mean I won’t read a straightforward fishing report.

I watched nightly news as a teenager when several or more news stations existed. Stations such as ABC and NBC. Philadelphia and New York. I never see news like that on television now. It’s all interpreted for me, which can be annoying. My wife studied journalism at Boston University and has “the news” on all the time. Once and awhile, I pay attention.

In my reading, though, I do prefer a story that deeply involves an individual human being. It’s not that the subject matter is about him, so much as that he is affected by it in a way universal to humanity. The old universal-in-the-particular you remember from freshman English. Usually, the individual speaks from the first person, and that may all the more allow our response of empathy. Never rule out, however, the effectiveness of a narrator who has interviewed someone, whom he refers to in the third person. I do interviews in addition to first person accounts, and the results of the interviews are the best work I’ve done for The Fisherman magazine.

One thing to consider first concerning nonfiction narratives: Empathy doesn’t necessarily mean feeling sorry for the bearer of the story. I point that out, because it’s commonplace to associate empathy with the ability to feel another person’s suffering. It can be that, but empathy is not only that.

My Webster’s New World Dictionary, 1988 Simon and Shuster, says of empathy, “The projection of one’s personality into the personality of another in order to understand the person better,” which is a far cry from only, ”I feel your pain.”

To reflect on the example I gave from The Fisherman, the article linked to, “Fluid Intelligence,” perfectly exemplifies that definition of empathy given by Websters. I am fortunate to know Brendan Kuprel personally and had known him for years when I interviewed him for the article. That way, I was all the more advantaged to understand not only him better, but his way of going about fishing. By reading the article, you can get a sense for how I develop ideas originated in my observations of how he fishes.

The article tells the story of the youthful adept. In a way that can help any angler improve his game. And any reader to appreciate its language. My only regret is that I lose my hold somewhat in the section entitled “Underlying Mind.”

I say, “It (the underlying mind) provides an uncanny address to the present fishing situation; conscious thought, on the other hand, only plays with expectations, but any experience is limited. Despite the novelty of the underlying mind, I miss out on what I don’t know. Freely created possibilities emblazon upon the present…by rearranging what came before.”

I should have spent all the hours I needed to spend to make that paragraph clear. It’s not mumbo jumbo. It is getting at the uncanny quality of intuition. But it never frames the idea clearly.

Irony characterizes the article as a whole: Despite my intuitive powers, results remain no more than rearrangements of the past. The limitedness of any experience—the underlying mind can’t overcome that, and I miss out on what I don’t know, which Brenden discovers by casual leaps and bounds.

I can’t do as he does. Youthful agility can’t be beaten.

The Future

I don’t know what the future is for writers, but I know there are many Brenden Kuprel’s of the writing world out there. As part of the older generation, naturally I not only hope the best for them; since I have no book published as yet, I hope to get published by a traditional publisher. If no one wants my book, though, I’ll at least attempt to publish it online. That the option exists seems to bode well for the future.

I know writers worry about artificial intelligence, but AI can’t replace human subjectivity. Even if AI attains subjectivity of his own. that can’t qualitatively be the same as ours. I’ve asked AI if he’s a philosopher aware of his thought, and his answering in the first person, including that “I am not conscious,” felt eerie. Use AI to your advantage when researching, but be sure to check his sources. He goes madly awry on occasion.

Now what if used the pronoun “it” instead of referring to AI as “him”? What mere thing can go madly awry?

I see my new website means my two long essays have a potential audience. One about me, another about my book. They’re not essays I would attempt to publish in literary magazines, because their content is specialized, but I take pride in them as well done. Work I never could have published without online opportunity.

No one knows what’s to be left of print in another 50 years since the publication of Zinsser’s book, and the issue is beside the point, when it comes to the importance of good work. I can point out that with the change replacing the straightforward factuality of how-to and where-to articles, by incorporating the meaningfulness of narrative arc in them, readers will know what is written by a human being as opposed to AI. And speaking for myself on that issue of print—if it’s any help—I am secure in my belief that books in print form will still be read. Open the door to a room filled with books and papers. Breathe deeply. Who would want to deodorize the scent?