Getting It Down and Out: Strategies for Museum Writing
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Stressed about writing? Does the thought of having to produce text send you into a panic? Relax! Our panel of experts makes the process of getting it down and out much easier. Bring your most vexing writing problems to this session, and we will help you find solutions. Writing well is key to any successful career, but for the museum professional, communicating clearly is essential for fulfilling your institution’s mission of informing the public. Moderator: Susan Spero, Professor of Museum Studies, John F. Kennedy University Presenters: Katherine Whitney, Principle, Katherine Whitney & Associates Lauren Valone, Program Coordinator, Western Museums Association Chris Keledjian, Exhibitions Editor, Getty Museum View the corresponding notes to this presentation here: http://www.westmuse.org/getting-it-down-and-out-strategies-museum-writing
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Getting It Down and Out: Strategies for Museum Writing
- 1. Getting It Down and Out: Strategies for Museum Writing Susan Spero, Professor of Museum Studies, John F. Kennedy University Katherine Whitney, Principal, Katherine Whitney & Associates Chris Keledjian, Exhibitions Editor, Getty Museum Lauren Valone, Program Coordinator, Western Museums Association and Web Content Editor, MD Conference Express
- 2. SFMOMA, Jackson Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943
- 3. SFMOMA, Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960, 1960
- 4. What keeps you from getting your writing down and out?
- 5. Let’s talk about writing. Katherine Whitney
- 6. Writing is a process.
- 7. Sit down and write.
- 8. It helps to have a ritual.
- 9. It helps to have some scaffolding.
- 10. It helps to have some scaffolding. • Find a place to write. • Dedicate the time. • Make a plan. • Turn off the Internet.
- 11. Be less attached to the first words that hit the page.
- 12. Writing helps you figure out what to write.
- 13. Don’t be afraid to write too much.
- 14. Stay away from the Internet.
- 15. You don’t have to do it all in one sitting.
- 16. Do you have any writing routines?
- 17. Writing and Editing Strategies Chris Keledjian, Exhibitions Editor, J. Paul Getty Museum
- 18. Getting Started Is the Most Difficult Part of Any Writing Assignment.
- 20. What’s your thesis, man?!
- 24. Hyperbole Metaphor Metonymy Personification Simile
- 25. Bury Our Dead Metaphors and Similes
- 27. I fix flaws that imped reading and obscure meaning.
- 28. The Four Cs • Clarity • Concision • Consistency • Concinnity
- 29. Working toward Clarity •Write with a dictionary close at hand; consult it often. • Limit yourself to one idea per sentence. • Try to read your text as others might. And read it ALOUD. • If you think there’s the slightest chance you might be misunderstood, REVISE. • Root out and eliminate superfluous words, which tend to obscure meaning.
- 30. Concision Be concise! Omit needless words. Eliminate CIRCUMLOCUTION, “the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea.”
- 31. “It was through the medium of drawing that Klimt evolved the momentous themes of his art such as human suffering, longing for love and happiness, and the cycle of life from birth to death.” Revised “It was through drawing that Klimt developed his momentous themes of human suffering, longing for love and happiness, and the cycle of life from birth to death.”
- 32. Passive Two paintings were sold by Van Gogh during his lifetime. Active Van Gogh sold two paintings during his lifetime.
- 34. Consistency Credibility and trust flow from even the smallest details. How you style something in one part of your text has to match how you do it everywhere.
- 35. Concinnity “Harmony or elegance of design, especially of literary style in adaption of parts to a whole or to each other.” In other words, your parts have to cohere.
- 36. Some Cranky Advice • Always keep your readers in mind. Always! • Stay within your word limit! • Assert! Don’t equivocate, hedge, or waffle!
- 37. Are You Spell-Checking Properly?
- 40. Recommended Reading • English Prose Style, by Herbert Read (out of print; check your local library) • Garner's Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner • George Orwell’s Guide to Writing Well, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/73258/george-orwells-politics-and-english-language- guide-writing • Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing, by Claire Kehrwald Cook • November, an exquisite novel by Gustave Flaubert ostensibly about nothing but really about everything. • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, by William Zinsser • The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, masterful short fiction from the author of Lolita. • Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams • www.grammarly.com “Grammarly is an automated proofreader and your personal grammar coach. Correct up to 10 times more mistakes than popular word processors.” • www.writersdiet.com/WT.php “Is your writing flabby or fit? Enter a writing sample of 100 to 1000 words and run the test.”
- 41. Everyday Storytelling Lauren Valone, Program Coordinator, Western Museums Association and Digital Content Manager, MD Conference Express
- 43. Storytelling! Writing may not always be glamorous, but it can certainly be done well and be interesting to readers.
- 44. Story is ingrained within people “Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to…Story is what makes us human, not just metaphorically but literally.” —Lisa Cron, Wired for Story Humans and their stories… • “…Involvement in fictional, imagined worlds appears to be a cross-culturally universal, species-typical phenomenon. • …Second, involvement in the imaginative arts appears to be an intrinsically rewarding activity, without apparent utilitarian payoff. • …Fictional worlds engage emotion systems while disengaging action systems. • …humans have evolved specialized cognitive machinery that allows us to enter and participate in imagined worlds.” —John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds?
- 45. Elements Within Stories Plot Story Setting Theme Characters Conflict
- 46. Captivating an Audience “For a story to captivate a reader, it must continually meet his or her hardwired expectations.” —Lisa Cron, Wired for Story
- 49. Come Up With Your Ending First
- 50. Find the Essence of Your Story
- 51. Write! Back to the Basics: A True Cabinet of Curiosity | Western Museums Association ANNUAL MEETING COMMUNITY RESOURCES ABOUT MEMBERSHIP Back to the Basics: A True Cabinet of Curiosity By Lauren Valone As a recent transplant to the greater Los Angeles (LA), California area, I am surrounded by some of the most well respected institutions in the world. At the same time, I’m also surrounded by Hollywood and tourism. I find myself at an intersection of the high- and low-brow, kitsch and sophistication, recognized ivory towers and uncompromising realities. A perfect example: I live directly between the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Wax Museum. The International Council on Museums (ICOM) defines our organizations as, “… a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.” According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services there are 17,500 museums in the United States. We take our profession seriously and strive for the highest of standards possible for our respective institutions. However, museum professionals and the public alike often have a preconceived notion of what a museum should be, items that it should collect, who should manage or ‘own’ it, and the people that it should serve. Being at the geographical and intellectual crossroads that I am, I often wonder why do we celebrate conventional museums and their topics and discredit those that feature oddities? Who decides what is legitimate and what isn’t? Where does this notion of legitimacy come from? More than being a for-profit organization, why are some museums even considered more legitimate than others? All across the United States there are examples of these ‘oddity’ museums, many of which I had the pleasure of visiting on my travels from the East Coast to LA – the Pizza Museum in Philadelphia, American Celebration on Parade in Virginia, Graceland, the National Knife Museum in Tennessee, the museums within Dollywood, and the International UFO Museum in New Mexico, just to name a few. I recently had the pleasure of visiting a true cabinet of curiosity in my own backyard, the Museum of Death in Hollywood, California. While the Museum may seem to just be a tourist-only destination, I found my experience unique, interesting, and informative. Visitors start their self-guided tour in the captivating Serial Killer Room. One would expect there to be books, movies, and other pop-culture depictions of these criminals – and those items were definitely there. As I read through the various plaques describing these www.killers and westmuse.their crimes, I began to realize org/that blog I was in store for much more. What made me realize the depth of information included in the Museum were actual artworks by and correspondences with these killers. Seeing these took me by surprise, as they were something that I would never imagine to be available to a collector or museum.
- 52. Further Reading • John Tooby; Leda Cosmides, “Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, Fiction and the Arts.” SubStance, Vol. 30, No. 1/2, Issue 94/95: Special Issue: On the Origin of Fictions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. (2001), pp. 6-27. • Lisa Cron, Wired for Story • Emma Coats, Story Shots, “22 #storybasics I’ve picked up at my time at Pixar” http://storyshots.tumblr.com/post/25032057278/22-storybasics-ive- picked-up-in-my-time-at-pixar • Pixar images from: http://imgur.com/a/fPLnM
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Welcome to Getting it Down and Out: Strategies for Museum Writing. I am Susan Spero and these are my colleagues Katherine Whitney, an independent museum writer at Katherine Whitney and Associates; Chris Keledjian, Editor, Collections Information and Access at the J. Paul Getty; and WMA’s Program Coordinator, and blog editor, Lauren Valone. This morning we want to have a conversation about writing. To do this we are going to intersperse the panel presentations with quick discussions designed to spur thought about writing and editing. I will both guide and time our discussions. Before we get talking, I want to open with what feels more like a confession in part because I am going to reveal some realities about my very messy writing process.
- People who know me well, and in particular my students, have on many occasions heard me say that my mind thinks like a Jackson Pollock painting. It’s true. My thoughts run around all over everywhere; it is a very noisy place inside my head. The grandfather figure in my life once told me that I was highly “ideaphoric” –meaning that I am someone who has quick and plentiful ideas. This trait is fine and dandy until you have to sit down at a keyboard and settle it all so that you can find a coherent, linear thread. Arranging my simultaneous thoughts into a clear order takes lots of energy. For me, writing, has been a huge self-imposed burden. On more than one occasion, is has been downright tortuous. I am not a born writer. A writing coach once helped me put this into perspective when she quoted critic Dorothy Parker who said: “I hate writing, I love having written.” I often agree with Dorothy: I too am one who loves having written. I often plead with myself, please, don’t make me write! For a very long time I even carried magical notions about the writing process, “Please dear gods, can the work just magically appear?” It sure seems like it just does for others. Over the years I’ve been attracted to highly linguistic people many of whom are writers who appear to like the act of writing. Early on in my journalism career—in reality I was a photo-journalist, not a writing journalist—I often witnessed a guy I had a huge crush on just sit in the noisy newsroom and pound out a story. With a few editing snips of his scissors and press of tape, voila: his story was done. From witnessing this my sense about writing was: you just sit down then words flow. For a very long time I thought this was the way it was supposed to work. Yet when I would sit down, words never flowed. And often the ones that I got down onto paper were not inherently coherent. My words needed much rewriting. Now, its not like I haven’t written: thanks to the development of word processors I have written a dissertation, been a productive journalist, contributed articles to a museum journal, produced museum curricula and well, I have even written blog posts for WMA. But as I have been indicating—the process is not pretty. Along the way there have been plenty of tears.
- Late last year, I decided to figure out a better way to write as I actually had, and still have, things I want to say. By this point I had also become very tired of my writing drama. I wanted sort out my writing process out, and make it more enjoyable, perhaps, even fun. Last January I made a New Year’s resolution: When writing, I would work to morph my Jackson-Pollock-style of thinking into a thinking style that more resembles a Mark Rothko. I wanted to find “writing calm” so that I can get my words down and out to the world. I’m proud to say I’ve changed my tone of working. I’ve found at least some calm that I now use in my process. Several practices changes have made the difference: 1) First I finally gave up on the notion of that writing is a magical gift from the gods. Others have figured this out. So I searched for and then actually read some very good books on writing. These books give me models that helped me better understand how to shape my thinking into a linear form. Writing is work that turns into a gift to oneself, and not a gift from the gods. 2) Second: I discovered the conditions I need around me when I write. Some of these include: Finding a quiet place to write and finding a block of sacred time than typically begins first thing in the morning when my head is most clear. Key is that I just let my struggle with messy sentences happen. I now realize that my ideas will get sorted as I work forward. Perfection has been an enemy: I now tell it to shut up in the early stages. 3) And the most important change in my practice is that I found writing buddies to cover my back. Writing buddies have helped me realize when my written thoughts are too chaotic and confusing for others to understand. These editors are priceless as they guide me into shaping my words into a coherent thought-after-thought way. I have learned from their suggestions: with each piece edited the next writing moment comes easier.
- I’m Katherine and I write for a living. I’m an exhibit developer, which means I write concept plans, exhibition outlines, exhibit labels, the occasional journal article or exhibit critique. I like to write, which is why Susan asked me to be on this panel. But not all of us like to write. Or feel confident about it. Yet we still have to do it. For school, for our job, to get our words out there… My son, who tells great stories, hates the sitting down to write part. When he was really little, before he learned to read, he’d dictate stories to me and insist that I write them down. He knew that writing had some sort of power. He watched closely as I wrote down his words. But in elementary school, I had to sit quietly next to him at the kitchen counter. When he got distracted and looked around I would put my finger in front of his eyes, and lower it back to the paper. Focus. He’s like a lot of us. Even me.
- It took me a while to figure this out. Writing is a process, with a number of different steps to it. And to be successful at writing it helps to develop your own process.
- This is the first step in the process. OK, this seems kind of obvious. But it’s the single biggest obstacle to writing. There are hundreds of books on writing, and they all address this point. Even established, famous, award-winning writers struggle with it. And they come up with rituals and structure that help them to sit down and write. Ernest Hemingway wrote in the morning, “as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it’s cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.” Maya Angelou rented a hotel room in her home town and had staff remove all paintings and stimuli from the walls. She’d go there around 7 in the morning and work until 2 in the afternoon. When I was in graduate school, I had a thesis to write. And I was having a really hard time with it. My wise advisor (Susan Spero) said something that still resonates: “Katherine, just sit down and write something every day.” So simple, right? So every day I took a deep breath and went into the tiny closet in my tiny San Francisco apartment where the boxy grey Macintosh computer was and wrote about visual literacy for at least an hour. Every day. Eventually I got my thesis done. Whenever I have a big project to do, I still hear Susan’s words in my head: Katherine, just sit down and write something every day.
- What a lot of writers have in common, the thing that gets all of them sitting down and writing, is a ritual. The dancer Twyla Tharp, in her book The Creative Habit, writes: I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 am, put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and the weight training…the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual. She goes on to refute anyone’s suggestion that something so mundane can constitute a ritual, and then she writes: Thinking of it as a ritual has a transforming effect on the activity. Turning something into a ritual eliminates the question “Why am I doing this?”
- It helps to have some scaffolding – some structure, some organizing force. These are the things I do when I have to sit down and write. Find a place Place – it helps to have a place where you can write uninterrupted. Maybe you can go to the library, or a café. Close the door of your office or your bedroom. Some people like to be alone. Some people like to be in a public area, where the eyes of strangers helps hold them accountable. Dedicate the time I like to set myself a concrete block of time. You might need to tell people you’re unavailable for half an hour or an hour or half a day, do that. Put a note on your office door. Put an auto respond on your email if you need to. It helps if you know that you have this certain amount of time to work on this specific piece of writing. And nothing else. Focus. There’s this time management system out there called Pomodoro – like the tomato. You can look this up on the Internet if you’re interested. The the basic premise is that you use a timer to break your work time down into specific intervals – they recommend 25 minutes – and then you take a break. During the time you’re working, you don’t allow any distractions. The magic of the system, in my eyes, is that you have a limited, defined block of time where you don’t allow yourself to be distracted – and it’s not too long, so you know you’re not going to miss anything while you’re working. Make a plan. In addition to finding a place and setting aside the time, I find it helpful to have a Plan. The best thing to do is set a realistic goal for the writing. You want to outline the basic points of an essay. You want to get a decent first draft. You want to get at least half of that article done. You want to write without interruption for half an hour. If the goal is attainable, you’re more likely to have success and you’ll feel good at the end of the writing session. And you’ll be more likely to come back and do it again. Turn off the Internet. And your cell phone, and all your digital distractions. We’re so lucky to be living in this day and age to have the Internet, because all that information out there really helps inform our writing. But our digital devices also hijack our concentration and interrupt our writing, or in the worst case prevent us from getting to it at all. And in case we are in denial about that, there is a lot of brain research to back this up! OK – so now we’ve set the stage. We are in a place where we feel like writing, we have a set time during which we aren’t going to be bothered, and we’ve turned our devices. Now I like to remind myself of a couple thing about writing that help me get over the hump of starting.
- I remind myself to Be less attached to the first words that hit the page. This is what Anne Lamott says about first drafts in her book on writing Bird by Bird: Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. It’s like the first pancake. It’s never as good as the one to follow, right? There’s some kind of magic that goes on bewteen that first pancake and the griddle. And all the pancakes that follow are better. Think of your writing like that. You have to make the first pancake—there’s no avoiding it—but you don’t have to eat it. When you’re writing, you have to get those first words out there. But you don’t have to show them to anyone. I think that part of the “magic” here is getting your brain warmed up for writing. A couple years ago I signed up for a fiction writing group. I was a little nervous, because I hadn’t written fiction since the seventh grade. Once a week we went to this woman’s house in Berkeley. She served us a little tea, and cookies, and then we settled into our chairs. She told us to take out our notebooks, and she gave us a prompt, like: “I closed the door and sank into the chair.” Then we had to write on that for 20 minutes. Sometimes I drew a blank, and I wrote “Oh god, I have no idea what to write, but I’m too embarassed to sit and stare into space so I’ll just keep writing.” Eventually something would come to mind. And then I’d write the prompt again.. I closed the door and sank into the chair. I never thought my neightbor was the one who was stealing my rose bushes. He’s such a sweet man. And off I’d go. The act of writing loosens up our brains. Just like we stretch out our hamstrings before we go for a run, warming up our brain with writing helps the writing flow. Now I know that a lot of you are thinking –I don’t have the time to do a writing warm up! And while I think it’s a great exercise, I am not saying that it’s a necessary step. The point is not to expect that your first words will be your last. Think of those first words as your warm up. Give those first words less importance.
- This is one of the amazing things about writing. And I think it’s true for everyone, not just “writers.” I think one reason many of us don’t have this experience is we don’t give it a chance it to happen. For me it was a great revelation: that the process of writing actually helps you figure out what it is that you want or need to write. I don’t know any writer—even those who make their livings as writers—who sits down and hammers out a finished piece of writing in one draft. We have this image of words from the head dumping out and arranging themselves on the page. We want to sit down, bang it out, and be done. This does not happen. But this is a hard concept to accept. Especially for people like my son, who wants to get it over with as soon as possible and go tear up the sidewalk with his skateboard. So how do we get there? It helps if we’re not afraid to write too much.
- When we talk about writing, we often talk about wearing two hats – the writing hat and the editing hat. When you’re writing, you have to write – and keep writing, whatever comes to mind. The editor is the critic, who thinks the writing is stupid, who declares that no one will want to read this drivel. The editor gets in the way of the writer, boxing her in, critiquing word choice, imagining other people reading these words and cringing. Ignore the editor and write too much. Because when you write too much, eventually the right words will come out. As you write too much, things occur to you. Realization happens. As you write too much, you start figuring out what to write. Then you can go back, as the editor, and cut out the ones that don’t belong.
- Yup, this again. Like the editor, the Internet gets in the way of your writing. Now, like I said before, the Internet is incredibly valuable. But it’s important to give the Internet it’s own time and place. And I’m talking about the Internet in the service of your writing right now, not the Internet that distracts you from it all together. Writing time is writing time. I have a couple things that help me avoid the Internet when I’m writing. Sometimes I come to a place where I think I need to do more research. I tell myself “I can’t go forward with this writing until I know which part of the brain responds to an incoming text!” It’s hard to resist the lure of Google. But I know that if I dive into Google right now it’s highly likely that I’ll get distracted by some “limited time only shoe sale on Zappos.” So instead, I write a little note in the text in a different color: “this is the place where I’m going to cite that brain research that I read about in that New York Times article about how the internet hijacks our attention like crack.” And I keep writing. Now, I’m not sure if you noticed, but I just wrote the first draft of the sentence without going to the Internet. It’s absolutely not true that you can’t continue the writing without doing the research. Try it. I know this because a long time ago—and this was before the Internet—I was writing that masters thesis I told you about earlier. And I told my advisor that I couldn’t start writing yet because I was waiting for that critical book from Interlibrary loan. And she said “Katherine, you know more than you think you do.” And she was right. Her advice forced me to just SIT DOWN AND WRITE.
- Finally, you don’t have to do it all in one sitting. In fact, your writing will be better if you leave it and come back to it. Budget time for this. I like to schedule smaller blocks of time over several days, rather than try to get a piece of writing done all in one sitting. The way I like to think of it is that the writing needs time to marinate. But actually it’s your brain that needs a break. Neuroscientists have found that putting down your work, reflecting, daydreaming leads to insight and creativity. I read it in the New York Times… Also, the time in between writing sessions is a good time to do that research you were too disciplined to do while you were in writing mode.
- I think most of us would agree with that statement. My first paid writing assignments were reviewing photography shows for Artweek—in 500 words or less. Two typewritten pages. A daunting task, especially for a neophyte. Composing those first 25 to 30 words was painful. But then I hit on a method to get started. [click]
- Remember this guy? Dumbo and the magic feather that allowed him to fly, or so he thought until he lost it in mid-flight and his mouse pal had to convince him in a hurry that the feather was just a ploy, that he really could fly without it. I needed a feather, a talisman, a ritualistic process to get started. And this is what I came up with. When I was in college, a friend and fellow English major received an essay back from the prof with this scrawled at the top [click].
- I adopted this gruff question as my talisman. I began ritualistically inscribing it at the top of my yellow legal pad as a way of beginning each writing assignment. WHAT did I wish to convey? Then, because I was a journalist from fifth grade until senior year in high school and well-versed in the five Ws, I would methodically make a list of the who, what, when, where, why, and, for good measure, the how, which formed the essential ingredients for the review I was about to cook. Pretty soon I internalized this ritual and after many repetitions it became second nature. So, I recommend finding your own ritual, your own talisman, that will help you get started and eventually fly. [New subject] Good writers and editors are built from avid readers. My earliest reading tutors were these guys [click].
- When I was a kid, comics were considered junk reading and a sure path to ruin. Ha! Any reading that sparks your imagination will lead to a craving for more.
- For me, the “more” came in the form of James Bond. My aunt and uncle visited me in the hospital the night before my tonsillectomy and brought the gift of Dr. No. Pretty racy stuff then for a fifteen year old. Over the next month and a half I ripped through all thirteen original Bond novels.
- And then I was introduced to this fellow. That’s when I flipped from journalism to English Lit. You want an assignment that will blow your mind and supercharge your writing? Try this: choose one of Shakespeare’s plays and identify the five most basic figures of speech as you read.
- This challenging exercise will give you new insights into the power of words and accelerate your progress as a writer. While we’re on the subject of figures of speech, let’s take a vow to
- “DEAD as a door nail” may have worked for Shakespeare, but it means nothing to us now. Also, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” What? If you’ve HEARD it or READ it before, don’t use it. Doing so is lazy and unimaginative. If you want your writing to have any vibrancy or a distinctive voice, stop defaulting to the clichés and metaphors in common use. Invent new ones. OK, let’s imagine you’ve produced a couple of drafts of your text and managed so far to keep the harsh internal critic/editor in check. You’ve let it FLOW. You’ve followed Hemingway’s advice…[click]
- I have no doubt he meant that literally, but I think we’d better apply it figuratively: Write AS IF drunk; edit sober. OK, let’s edit. My job description can be reduced to the following:
- And by doing that I hope to achieve…
- Let’s take them one by one. We all know there is no communication without clarity. But how to ensure it? Well, at the very least you should…[click]
- 1. While composing those early Artweek reviews, I obsessively looked up words whose definitions I was pretty sure I knew. I was surprised how often my assumptions were wrong. 2. Knotty sentences result when writers attempt too much for one sentence. Readers shouldn’t have to perform mental gymnastics to sort it all out. 3. Most writers I’ve edited have difficulty recognizing how their sentences might mean something more or something less than they intended. As editor, I have to find ways to communicate the many possible interpretations. And reading ALOUD can reveal many ills, including repetition of words and thoughts, mind-numbing succession of prepositional phrases, and wordiness. And when we recognize that wordiness, let’s practice concision.
- Here’s a minor example. [click]
- I get sentences like this all the time and much worse. The first and third items in red in the original are useless. They SERVE NO PURPOSE. I deleted them. “Evolve” is one of the most overused and misused words in museums. You can’t “evolve” something. Things evolve but you can’t MAKE them. So I substituted “developed.” I didn’t turn this sentence from passive voice to active because I wanted to retain the rhetorical emphasis on “drawing.” Here’s a quick reminder of passive versus active.
- You generally want to employ the active voice. Turn the sentence around so the subject performs the action of the verb.
- Obviously, there are an infinite number of ways to imped readers. Here are two that I thought were interesting and somewhat out of the ordinary. In the first sentence, the writer originally employed both “suppression” and “repression.” My comment was “If we use both…in the same sentence, even the most astute reader will pause to try to remember what the difference is, and it’s not enough to warrant using both.” In the second example, the writer has coupled factors arbitrarily, causing the reader to stop and ponder why they’ve been joined.
- Still working our way through the four Cs, here’s # 3. One day I was standing in front of two works by the same French artist whose name consisted of three parts. One label had the hyphen between the first and second parts and the other, less than a yard away, had it between the second and third parts. That tiny mistake can sow doubt about the reliability of your scholarship. Practice extreme vigilance.
- The fourth C. A beautiful word I discovered by accident while searching another word in the dictionary.
- 1. You’re writing for them, after all, not your colleagues. 2. You lose control of your prose when I’m forced to cut it. 3. Qualifiers like “perhaps,” “somewhat,” “maybe,” “in a sense,” etc. make for weak prose and leave the reader wondering what to think.
- I always click on “Ignore All.” It’s the best way to catch variant spelling of proper nouns.
- While creating this PowerPoint, I realized my writing process has been seriously flawed for a long time. Working full-time fixing other people’s texts and in need of a respite from words at night, I usually don’t have the luxury of blocking out hours to write. So, in stolen moments, I scribble ideas or a few sentences on any handy piece of paper. Then I end up with a mess like this, scattered everywhere, fragments that need to be sifted and collated. What a waste of time! So, from now on, when I’m working on a project, all my thoughts pertaining to it will be recorded in one notebook [pulls out notebook]. With my contact info inscribed in it to limit the chance of loss. One more caution though: don’t do what I once did with that PRECIOUS notebook [click].
- I can’t help but wonder whether the last few puzzle pieces for my unfinished and perhaps forever stalled novel are locked inside. Thanks for listening!
- We are often asked to write things that we are not comfortable completing. In a previous life I have had many roles as a writer: I was a reporter and photo editor for my college newspaper, I was a reporter for the Kodiak Daily Mirror in Alaska, I’ve written an article and copy-edited for the Journal of Museum Education, and I was a designer and production manager for a medical publishing start-up where I was responsible for e-marketing campaigns. I am currently the digital content manager for that same medical publisher (no longer a start-up), and continue to write and manage their social media. I am also the Program Coordinator for WMA - if you’ve gotten an email from WMA in the past 2 years or subscribe to its social media, chances are I wrote it. When I look back at all of these seemingly random experiences, I think about those assignments that I was uncomfortable writing, and my experiences in Alaska definitely come to mind; I was responsible for writing daily articles about the salmon season while the normal reporter was away for the summer. At first, even finding something to write about was a daunting task. So how have I been able to manage?
- How can we write about topics that we are not necessarily passionate about, you ask? Storytelling! As museum workers, we all tell stories. Whether it is for curatorial, education, marketing, or any other type of text, stories are an integral part of our job descriptions. Stories and storytelling are ingrained in our social fabrics, as well as our lives.
- Author Lisa Cron in her “Wired for Story” notes that story is the most crucial point in our evolution. She elaborates, “Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to…Story is what makes us human, not just metaphorically but literally.” Neuroscientists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides take this idea further and explain that there are elements of human evolution that cannot be explained. One of these is the human attraction to stories and imagination. Gathering and telling stories is a cross-cultural, rewarding activity that creates an emotional experience. And humans have the unique ability to do this!
- The structure and various elements of a story are important benchmarks. You may be familiar the idea that there are 5 elements to a story: setting, plot, characters, conflict, and theme. In school we are taught to come up with these story elements in a linear fashion. When I think about the articles, blogs, academic papers, etc. that I’ve written in the past, I realize that there was a turning point for me: When I started writing and creating things in a non-linear fashion. This has allowed me to compile all of the elements of a story and then create the structure, rather than holding myself to a structure that may not be compatible with the story I want to tell. This is how I was able to write compelling materials without (initially) understanding all of the content. For example, while reporting for the Kodiak Daily Mirror I was always looking for stories and ideas. When I would put my articles together I would decide on content then reach out to experts to help fill those points. A weird fish was caught and delivered to a cannery? Great! Wait, that fish is from warmer waters? Let’s call a NOAA scientist and find out why it’s in Alaska. After a while, I had met a lot people, and after building relationships with and gaining their trust they began to suggest stories.
- It’s also important to remember some psychology and educational theories. People like to be able to frame the information that surrounds them, much like the constructivist paradigm. It is important to develop materials that people from all walks of life can construct a personal connection with. People are also nosey and enjoy a bit of conflict here and there. Finding the conflict in the story you are telling is an absolute must. Lisa Cron also explains, “For a story to captivate a reader, it must continually meet his or her hardwired expectations.” Some of you may be familiar with this idea of meeting expectations in your role at your museum. Cron goes on to explain that people are looking for a reason to care; stories aren’t just about what happens to someone or something. She states, “A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.” With that in mind, one of the nuggets of wisdom that she leaves with her readers is this: “Myth: Beautiful writing trumps all; Reality: Storytelling trumps beautiful writing, every time.”
- I’m going to switch gears a bit now and talk about some of my tips for storytelling based on my experiences. In 2011, former Pixar designer Emma Coats came up with her list of “22 #storybasics I’ve picked up in my time at Pixar” We all know these beloved stories like Up, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Monsters Inc. While you may initially think of them as just for children, they are captivating for all ages. They inspire people and get an emotional response. They meet their viewer’s expectations. On a modern spectrum, they inspire many Buzzfeed lists and quizzes (please not the amount of views for this quiz!). While I encourage you to look through Emma’s list, I am going to pick apart some of her points and relate them to my writing experiences.
- This can be a bit of a hard lesson because we inherently want to share what we are passionate about. There are a lot of people in the world who have many different opinions and tastes. As a writer, we should never take offense to this. That said, there are different ways to tailor content so that will be interesting to your targeted audience. I got my first taste of this as the fisheries reporter for the Kodiak Daily Mirror. I was the test for this – the content wasn’t necessarily the most interesting to me, but I always tried to form each article into something that was readable and relatable. More recently, I have found this particularly relevant when writing social media posts for both the medical publisher and for WMA, topics I may or may not be passionate about. This is a story too – I think of WMA posts as telling the story of museum professionals in the West; whereas the medical posts tell the story of the frontier of research. If you think something is weird and unique, chances are others will too. We can also put this into perspective when creating lesson plans at museums. My favorite object may not interest a 5 year old, but a 15 year old may be able to relate to it on an intensely personal level. If you are unsure about your audience, my strong suggestion is to ask questions. Museum educators work with school teachers to develop interesting and appropriate lesson plans. I reached out to fishing industry experts to determine what were the most relevant topics in Alaskan waters. I look at social media statistics and web content click rates to determine the types of posts and other content readers like the most. Take the time to investigate!
- Ask yourself, where do you want to take your readers? What is the lesson you want people to know about? This idea goes back to my earlier point of determining a story in a nonlinear fashion. Deciding on the ending first is more than having a theme or objective to what you are writing. This is the process I use when I write something, particularly more personal or creative things. I develop a thesis, then an ending statement, and then come up with the topic sentences for each paragraph that will take me from point A to B, etc. This method helps me ensure that all of the points and paragraphs I am including work towards that specific goal. This method proved to be particularly useful when I wrote an article for the Journal of Museum Education. My article for JME was based off a paper that I wrote in grad school about user generated content. Because of this, I knew the ending – the article was about Cooking: The Exhibition Chefs and the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey, and I knew that I thought that it was a great and revolutionary experiment for other museums to learn from. The question then became, how can I show people it’s value? How can I take educational theory and apply it to an online realm? Over the course of my varied experiences as a writer, I have written many great paragraphs that I have had to scrap because they weren’t “productive.” This is also one of the biggest things that I notice while editing. Sometimes there are great ideas in an article, but they seem random and out of place because they do not work towards the ultimate goal. I strongly suggest saving those paragraphs and using the ideas for a later writing piece. Over the course of your lifetime you will have many inspiring ideas. Those do not need to be all included within a 1000 word article, though!
- Once you have your structure and the A to B and everything in between, you can start to fully develop the interesting aspects of your story. I wrote a blog post for WMA about the Museum of Death in Los Angeles. I initially went to the Museum thinking that I was going to write a simple review for a fun and kitschy Halloween post. At the museum, though, I was struck by how many artifacts there were and how the museum really told the story of death as we know it. It took me a bit, but I eventually came up with the unexpected essence of the story which was: “…I often wonder why do we celebrate conventional museums and their topics and discredit those that feature oddities? Who decides what is legitimate and what isn’t? Where does this notion of legitimacy come from? More than being a for-profit organization, why are some museums even considered more legitimate than others?” I had found my focus for the story, which Cron defines as the synthesis of the protagonist’s issue, theme, and plot, and is also how readers are able to gauge the meaning of your writing piece.
- So with these thoughts, my presentation is going to come to an end. I want to encourage you all to write, though. Experiment. Do not be afraid. In a not-so-shameless plug I encourage you all to try your hand at writing for the WestMuse blog. I am the editor for the most part, and I promise you that I am not scary. I think of the blog as a platform to help museum professionals find and then expand on their voices.