I’ve spent much of this week working on I Dare You, Teacher, a book I first wrote years ago and have now substantially revised.
Some of the work has involved large questions. What is this book really trying to say? Where does it sound too much like the courtroom lawyer I once was? Am I trying to understand the teacher who disagrees with me, or am I merely constructing a better argument against him?
But a few days ago I found myself thinking about one word.
The word was examine.
Somewhere in the back matter of the book, I had described The Pencil-Driven Life as a practice of paying attention, questioning honestly, examining what we think we know, and revising when a better mark becomes possible.
Nothing terribly wrong with that sentence.
Still, examine bothered me.
The practice we’ve developed elsewhere is simpler: Notice. Question. Revise.
Three words.
If questioning honestly includes examining what I think I know—and surely it does—what exactly was examine adding?
I couldn’t come up with much of an answer.
So I took it out.
That’s hardly a dramatic moment in the life of a writer. Nobody is going to buy or reject I Dare You, Teacher because I removed one word from a page near the back of the book.
But I’ve kept thinking about it.
Maybe because I’ve spent a good part of my writing life doing the opposite.
When something didn’t seem clear enough, I explained it again. If I worried that a reader might misunderstand a sentence, I added another sentence. Then perhaps a qualification to make sure the additional sentence wasn’t misunderstood.
I’ve been a lawyer. I know how to cover the bases.
I’m beginning to wonder how often covering all the bases keeps the reader from seeing where the ball actually is.
I see this in my fiction too. A character does something that reveals what he’s feeling, and then I have the almost irresistible urge to tell the reader what he’s feeling. Or two characters have a conversation that carries the meaning perfectly well, and I add a paragraph afterward explaining what the conversation meant.
I’m getting better at catching myself.
Not always.
Sometimes the explanation really is necessary. Removing words merely because fewer words sound more literary can become its own kind of foolishness. I don’t want a reader struggling to understand something I could have made clear with another sentence.
But that’s different from adding another sentence because I don’t trust the sentence that’s already there.
I think that’s the distinction I’ve been noticing.
And, as so often happens when I’m writing, the thought has followed me away from the manuscript.
How often do I keep talking after I’ve already said what I needed to say?
How often do I explain a decision because I’m uncomfortable simply making it?
How often does an apology acquire three paragraphs of justification?
How often do we add rules because we don’t trust judgment, add instructions because we don’t trust attention, or add language because we’re afraid simplicity will be mistaken for shallowness?
I don’t know.
I do know that removing examine made the sentence better.
Not because examine was a bad word. It wasn’t.
The sentence simply didn’t need it.
There is something appealing to me about that test.
Does this need to be here?
I’ve been asking it often while revising these manuscripts. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes I discover that what looked unnecessary was actually carrying more weight than I realized.
But every now and then I delete something and read the passage again.
Nothing is missing.
In fact, I can finally see what I was trying to say.
Maybe that’s another reason I’ve grown so attached to the pencil as an image. We usually think about what a pencil allows us to put onto a page.
It also has an eraser.
I suppose both ends are part of writing.
Maybe both ends are part of thinking too.
Writing continues to teach me that.
Continue with The Pencil’s Edge
A Pencil Practice
Think of something you’ve been trying hard to explain—to someone else or perhaps to yourself.
Write the simplest version of what you’re trying to say.
Then read it and ask:
What am I adding that doesn’t need to be here?
Erase one thing if you can.
Then read what’s left.
When you have finished, the practice is complete.
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