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Chiasmus: A Rhetorical Device I Love to Hate, Or Hate to Love

Given how much I love a well-written speech and how much I hate motivational quotes that are plastered all over Facebook and Twitter, I have a love-hate relationship with the chiasmus.

Chiasmus is a rhetorical device where two or more clauses are reversed in a single sentence or paragraph.

  • Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. (John F. Kennedy)
  • But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first. (Matthew 20:16)
  • In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away. (Shing Xiong)
  • Quitters never win, and winners never quit. (Anonymous)
  • “If you do not master your rage—” “What, your rage will become your master?” (Mystery Men)
So? I used to work for the f—ing President. Float that opposite.

It’s a great rhetorical device, because it’s ear-catching, it’s memorable, and it can zap some life into a dull phrase. When it comes from the mouths of master orators, it’s lyrical and moving. When it shows up in my Facebook stream, I want to punch Facebook in the neck, because it’s being used like the star wipe of motivational quotes.

It’s called the chiasmus because of the Greek letter X, or “chi” (like the “kye” in “sky,” not “chee” as in “tai chi”). Basically, the two parts of the statement cross over like the X, which lends itself to the name. Or, as Toby Ziegler mistakenly called it in an episode of West Wing, the “floating opposites.” (When I was a speechwriter, I searched and searched for more information on floating opposites, and the only references I could find at all were to that West Wing episode, which means it’s not a real thing.)

While it can be a powerful device, it’s often greatly overused by the same people who discovered the Drop Shadow filter on Photoshop 10 years ago. And that’s where the use of chiasmus in motivational quotes becomes so annoying.

It’s such an easy device to use that it gets overused. When all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. In the hands of some, the chiasmus is just one big claw hammer that is used to pound emotion into every Facebook update this side of “Hang in there, Kitty, Friday’s coming.”

Just remember, if chiasmus is a spice, it’s garlic, not salt. A little garlic goes a lo-o-o-ong way, and should not be sprinkled liberally into every piece you write, let alone every paragraph. Or status update.

Save the chiasmus for a special occasion, when you know it’s going to make a big difference to what you’re writing. Not when you’re exhorting your Facebook friends “You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.” (Bleah!)

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The Tortoise and The Hare on Writing a Book

There are two ways to write a book — at least, two effective ways. I’ve written nearly five books with one method; I’ve wanted to write a book with the other. Which kind of writer, books or otherwise, are you?

The Tortoise

This is the ideal writer. He or she writes every single day. You don’t have to churn out a lot of material, you have to churn out material consistently. Write 600 words every day — that’s about 1 word processing page — and at the end of six months, 180 days, you’ll have a book.*

(* Nerdy tech specs: This is based on the ratio of 1 word processing page equalling 1.5 trade paperback pages, like Branding Yourself or No Bullshit Social Media. This will be slightly different/more for regular paperbacks, and I couldn’t even tell you what it equals for the big computer Dummies-style books.)

Of course, most biz-tech book publishers are slave driversinsistent about their schedule, and they give you four months to get your book done. So you’d actually need to jump up your output to 2 pages per day, giving yourself weekends off.

Still, if you can write 1 page per 60 – 90 minutes — again, slow and steady — you’ll be doing okay. You just can’t slack off or skip a day, because you’ll need to double-up on the next day.

The Hare

This is how I write books. It’s how I studied in college. It’s how I face a lot of projects that I have to do. (Unless you’re a client. Then I work on your stuff all the time, and think about it, and you, constantly.)

The Hare waits until a day or two before the deadline, and races through all the pages needed to meet the deadline.

When Kyle Lacy and I wrote Branding Yourself, I could generally do 1 chapter, about 10 – 12 pages, in 4 hours. Of course, that meant a lot of late nights, fast typing, and serious editing before it was finished. I got smarter when I wrote No Bullshit Social Media with Jason Falls: I took 4 days to write a single chapter, not because it was harder, but because I didn’t want to give myself such short deadlines and long hours.

You Need to be a Tortoise

I cannot stridently stress enough how important it is that you write like a tortoise, not a hare. I like to call the hare’s approach cram writing.

Cram writing is not for the novice writer, or even the person who has been writing for a couple years. Cram writing should only be done by someone who has been writing for a long, long time, and even then, you’d better be prepared for extensive editing and rewriting. There’s no one-and-done in cram writing. Anytime I’ve done it, I’ve had to edit everything twice before turning it in, and even then, my editors still had comments and questions.

Compare that to famed humor novelist, Christopher Moore, who is lucky if he finishes 2 pages in a single day’s writing. That’s 1200 words in about 5 – 6 hours, and it’s his job. He’s a trained professional with more than a few best-selling books to his name, and he can barely finish 2 pages in one day.

On the other hand, he rarely, if ever, has to edit his work.

Think of it. No rewrites, no edits, no typos, no mistakes, no snarky comments from editors. Nothing. Write it once, wait for the galley proofs, and you’re golden.

I try to avoid cram writing whenever possible, and I do recognize the difference in my writing when I give myself a few days to meet a deadline, rather than racing to beat it. I’ve managed to give myself extra time for the last couple of efforts, and have appreciated the difference.

If you’re thinking about writing a book, or an extra-long piece for publication, unless you are a seriously-trained professional who knows his or her limits and capabilities, I do not recommend you try cram writing.

Plan out your schedule, work at a comfortable rate, and pace yourself to be productive over the long haul. If you have to rush to get everything done, look at your time management and see if you can figure out where you’re falling down.

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Making the Case for Writing Every Day (a #BlogChat response)

There was a big debate on #Blogchat last night about whether one should blog every day.

“Yes, you absolutely should,” say the every-dayers, the sloggers, the do it until it’s righters.

“No, because why would you want to turn out less-than-good,” say the inspirationists, the wanna-bes, the do it when it feels gooders.

I am not a fan of slacking, of inspiration, or of doing what feels good. I’m a professional writer, and that means I go to work every day, whether I feel like it or not.

You can tell the difference between the good writer and the average writer, the professional writer and the amateur.

The ones you’ve heard of and the ones you haven’t.

I am a firm believer in writing every day, and blogging every chance I get. And while I don’t blog every chance I can on my own blog, I’m blogging somewhere, on someone else’s blog. Some days, it’s on here, some days (especially Sundays), it’s on Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, it’s my own humor blog, and many days, it’s for clients and not for me at all.

Blogchat screenshot

(Believe me, it’s not lost on me that I’m advocating for daily blogging when I go for a week or more without touching this one.)

But I’m still a firm believer in writing — not just blogging, but writing — every day, and that writing needs to be in whatever genre or tool you use. If you’re a fiction writer, you need to write fiction every day. If you write magazine articles, you need to write nonfiction every day. And if you’re a poet, you’d damn well better be writing poetry every single day.

Otherwise, you’re never going to get any good.

This holds true for bloggers as well. If you want to be more than “good enough” at this form of communication, you need to be blogging on a daily basis.

I don’t hold with this idea that you should write only when inspiration strikes, or that you can get by with only writing a couple times a week. If you don’t mind toiling in mediocrity and anonymity, then by all means, write whenever the mood strikes. Because the mood will strike when it’s not convenient, like in the middle of a meeting, or while you’re in bed. And if you wait for the next inspiration to strike, you’re going to miss a crucial opportunity to 1) share a cool idea, and 2) get better.

But if you’re practicing your craft on a daily basis, you’re going to be good enough that you can wait for inspiration to strike and you can hit a home run. Otherwise, your moments of brilliance will go unseen and you won’t have the impact you were hoping for.

You may not need to post on your own blog every day, but if you’re not writing and blogging every single day, you’re not going to be any good at it.

(For another side of the argument, read Patrick Pillip’s “Write Every Day. Unless You Can’t. He makes a valid argument for taking a day off once in a while, and calling them mental health days. I can’t argue with that. And if I were smarter, I’d take one.)

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Do NOT Write for Free for the Jackson, Miss. Clarion-Ledger

It’s Friday afternoon, I’m tired, and I want to relax on the couch. But Ben Pollock of the National Society for Newspaper Columnists just made me leap up and race to my computer.

It seems the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger is looking for some new columnists. The hitch? They’re not willing to pay you for it. Here’s the invitation from their website:

ClarionLedger.com is looking for Mississippi’s next great columnist. Those with an interest should know from the start, however, that the position is a labor of love – the perfect hobby for someone who cares deeply about the state and its people and who also has a passion for writing.
…
In return for your hard work we will deliver a one-of-a-kind platform – a seat on the front row of the biggest news forum celebrating the great state that we call home. As a ClarionLedger.com columnist, you can write about whatever comes to your mind. Some areas we hope that hold your interest include: politics, family, leadership, community care and involvement, and education.

Anyone who is dumb enough to fall for this one is exceeded in their idiocy only by the person who thought asking writers to write for free was a good idea.

Good writers do not write for free. And good newspapers wouldn’t expect their writers to work for free either, would they?

I guess I just answered my own question, because, you see, the Clarion-Ledger is a Gannett owned newspaper. Gannett, owners of USA Today, the Indianapolis Star, and many other newspapers, is known for cutting staff positions around the country so their CEO can earn the slashed salaries as a “performance bonus.”

But I’m angered by the hypocrisy of this request, and I think it mocks the very tenets of journalism that publications like the Clarion-Ledger (hopefully) cling to, even if their parent organization does not. Here’s what I mean:

  • Real journalists do not write for free. This is their job. They get paid to do it. They get cranky when you no longer pay them to do it. And they go on and on about how they’re highly trained professionals who deserve the money they get. And yet these journalists are asking other people to do their job for them in exchange for no money. If I were a paid staff writer for the Clarion-Ledger, I’d be offended.
  • They’re asking for bloggers and citizen journalists. Most journalists I know hate bloggers and citizen journalists. Bobby King, president of the Indianapolis Newspaper Guild, once referred to us as “the animals in the blogosphere.” King’s attitude is not uncommon in the professional journalism world. But this means that the Clarion-Ledger is now consorting with animals and non-professionals. Does this mean their standards are slipping, or are we better than the journalists want to give us credit for?
  • Good writers get paid. We produce things that many people are willing to pay for. Good writers don’t do this for free, because they recognize the value of their skill. This means that the Clarion-Ledger will most likely get shitty writers. Shitty writers = fewer readers = more cost-cutting = more good citizen journalists = fewer readers.
  • Gannett already makes plenty of stupid money decisions. The last round of major layoffs that hit the Indianapolis Star, Clarion-Ledger, and other newspapers lead to a $1.25 million bonus for CEO Gracia Martore, as part of her $8.1 million salary in 2010. If they want to really bring out the good writers, Martore would a) quit taking bonuses made from blood money, and b) the other executives would take a pay cut to keep professionally trained writers on staff so they wouldn’t have to make such an insensitive, distasteful request like asking unpaid writers to replace the paid writers they fired.

The Clarion-Ledger has acted in bad taste and bad faith. Any writer who is worth his or her salt needs to refuse to write for them. All you get for writing for the Clarion-Ledger is the “exposure” of putting your name on your own work on their website. But make no mistake, they will own the work you create for them, and you will not be allowed to benefit from it any further.

If you want to write for free, put your time and energy into your own blog. At least with that, you have the possibility of turning it into something profitable down the road, like a speaking career, a book or two, or even a sought-after information channel that people will pay to advertise on. But don’t fall victim to the Clarion-Ledger’s scam.

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Ten Signs You’re a REAL Writer

After my previous blog post, “Six Maxims of Writing for a New Writer,” I started hearing from people who began tentatively wondering whether they were really-and-for-true Writers.

That’s Writer with a capital W.

You can always tell a roomful of writers. You just can't tell 'em much.

They had hesitated to call themselves a Writer, because they didn’t think they had done it long enough, didn’t think they had earned the title, or were afraid to say it out loud because other real Writers would laugh at them, the way the bully laughs at the weak kid who tries to surf/do karate/do rap battles.

Believe me, most Writers aren’t like that. We’re the ones on the other side of the line, beckoning you to the dark side the party. Mostly because we’re lonely and unhealthily humble about being writers that we need the newbies’ optimism to feed off of feel better about ourselves remind ourselves of why we got into this business — no, “feed off of” is right.

How do you know whether you’re an official Writer or not? There’s no ceremony where a Mont Blanc fountain pen has been carried lovingly on a red velvet pillow to Annie Lamott so she can tap you on the shoulders three times with it.

For writer/Butler U creative writing teacher, Bryan Furuness, it was after he published his first story. “As soon as I said it, I was shocked and embarrassed,” Bryan said.

So, in light of that, and because we can never sync our schedules for an official Writer-knighting ceremony, here are the signs that you are an official, really-and-for-true Writer of the Realm.

If you do at least seven of these things, then you have this profession’s official permission to tell people, “I’m a Writer” without stammering, stuttering, putting a question mark at the end of that statement, or ducking your head and scuffing the toe of your shoe in the dirt.

  1. You have been “vetted,” meaning you have submitted something to perfect strangers and been accepted or rejected. (Cathy Day, author, creative writing teacher at Ball State University)
  2. Have a designated writing space in your home. (Cathy Day)
  3. Approach your tools of the trade with a seriousness and dedication. (Allison Carter, writer and marketing professional)
  4. Carry a notebook or notecards with you everywhere because you’re constantly being struck with new ideas. (Erik Deckers)
  5. Feel compelled to write even when no one is asking you to (as if it’s something you must do). (Cathy Day)
  6. Spend most of your professional work day writing. (Kate Shoup, professional writer and editor)
  7. Regularly study the nuts and bolts of writing through books and workshops. (Allison Carter)
  8. Got published for the first time in a real print publication. (Leslie Bailey, freelance writer)
  9. You have a regular practice and schedule of writing. (Bryan Furuness) . . .even when you don’t have to for school or deadlines (Cathy Day)
  10. You wrote today. (Bryan Furuness)

So that’s it. If you’ve done 7 of those things (especially #10), you now have permission to call yourself a writer. Pick up your pen from the valet outside.

And tell him you can’t wait to read his novel.

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Six Maxims of Writing for a New Writer

I was recently asked by a young writer about the best advice I could give him.

Since “take up accounting” is not something I would tell — or wish on — anyone, I decided to give him some actual advice. What I told him applies to everyone else who wants to, as sportswriter Red Smith put it, “open your veins and bleed.”

Here are a few tried-and-true pieces of advice — maxims, if you will, because that sounds more important than “pieces” — I’ve picked up over the years:

Carry a Moleskine and a Pilot G-2 pen with you everywhere you go, and write like mad.

  1. Write every day. That sounds easier said than done, and is almost one of those “let down” pieces of advice. (“Seriously? That’s all you got?”) In fact, I have always thought this was the stupidest piece of writing advice, and whenever I heard it, I rolled my eyes so far back into my head, I could see my third grade memories. But it really does make a difference. Just like anything else you want to get good at — woodworking, sports, music, art — you need to write every single day. In fact, as stupid as I thought this was, this has also been the most important piece of advice I have ever gotten. You’re only going to get better by writing on a constant, regular basis, not by reading books on writing, or only writing when you feel inspired. Your skills are going to develop only as long as you put energy and effort into it. Write every day, and you get better that much sooner.
  2. Read A LOT. Not just your favorite genres, but other genres, even ones you don’t particularly like. Find some favorite authors and devour everything they’ve written. Identify those things they do that make them your favorites, and see if you can incorporate a few of them into your own writing. You’ll discard a few of the techniques you borrowed, you’ll change and develop others, and you’ll create a hybrid style that is all your own. (That’s how those writers did it, and it will work for you too.)
  3. Avoid books on writing, except for Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
     (affiliate links). (Okay, there are actually three others I especially like, but those are for another day, after you’ve read these two.) Everything else has already been said, and it’s too easy to mire yourself in every single book on writing, but they’ll only delay you from actually writing. It’s too easy to read writing book after writing book, and say that’s part of your learning process, but eventually that becomes a crutch that keeps you from actually writing. Too many new writers hide behind their tall stack of writing books, saying they’re not ready to start because they haven’t read the 23rd writing book they just got from the library. Remember maxim #1; it’s not “read writing books every day.”

    The same holds true for writing exercises. Skip those. If you want to practice writing, write something. A real something, that will actually be read by real people. Write a blog post, write an article and submit it, write an essay and email it to people.

  4. Seek out one or two good mentors. Find people who will mercilessly edit your stuff and not give a shit about your feelings. Don’t connect with someone who wants to be mean, but you also don’t want the person who will pat your head and say you did a good job. So, don’t ask your mom. She loves you and wants to protect you. But you don’t need protection, you need education. If you ask your writing friends, they’ll be professionally jealous and will rip you a new one harshly enough to be helpful. Basically, if someone reads your stuff and says, “yeah, it’s pretty good,” they’re not good mentors, because they’re not giving you anything to improve or pointing out your weaknesses.
  5. Write even when you don’t think you’re doing a good job. In fact, that’s when you need to write. Never let your doubts sink your goals. Even if you don’t think you’re doing a good job, focus on your writing goals. Those feelings won’t ever go away — even the most successful writers have them — but you’ll get better every day. You just have to ignore the self-doubt and keep writing. Eventually you will outgrow the feelings, and learn to recognize the negative self-talk for what it is. You’ll learn to trust your abilities and your work, and know that your work is better than your doubts let you think it is.
    6. This is fellow humor writer and online buddy, Bruce Cameron. He writes very funny, successful books, and is more than happy to selflessly share advice and support to other writers. I hate him.
  6. Never EVER compare yourself to another writer’s success. “Never compare someone else’s highlight reel to your day-to-day stuff,” I read once. You’ll make yourself crazy. Years ago, I used to compare myself to Bruce Cameron, a fellow humorist and member of the NetWits, a humor writers group. I would see everything he was doing, and despair that I would never have that kind of success. I would get depressed every time I paid close attention to what he was doing.

    And despite what I just said, you’ll do it too. You’ll see their publications and their success and ask yourself “why can’t that happen to ME?!” It will. You just have to go back and do #1 and #5 more and more, and keep submitting your work, publishing blog posts, going to seminars, re-reading Bird By Bird and On Writing. One day, you’ll look up and realize you’ve done just as much as the people you were comparing yourself to all those years ago. You’ll also find that someone newer and younger than you is making themselves crazy, comparing themselves to your publications and successes. Just keep your head down, keep your eyes on your own work, and don’t worry about what anyone else is doing. Later, you can salve your wounds with sweet, sweet schadenfreude when you spot their books in a bookstore’s bargain bin.