Writing Well: Craft and Wellspring

Well, it’s tough

“Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.” This quote is attributed to both John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647–1721) and André Breton (1896–1966); however, I do not intend to make any issue of the results of my internet search.

Writing well can be viewed as both a wellspring and a craft. At least, this became my reading of the quote, not as a sign of wisdom, but as a recognition that the willingness to express oneself and the choice of expression have won changes in areas that seem intractable.

Over the last few weeks, the teams in which I work have found themselves subject to management's pressing inclination to seek statistical successes with little consideration of the effort involved that does not show up in the figures. It has been nigh on impossible to communicate the difficulties in our battles to tackle the problems we have encountered.

Well, Bad Faith

At one point, in what was clearly a breach of trust and confidence, we were both threatened and bullied. It was a particularly low exercise of managerial control, oblivious of everything but meeting some arbitrary target. It rankled so much that I even found my voice fading in agitation, anger, and angst whilst challenging the various ungallant uses of office.

Much as I appreciate that people in authority might be caught up in the illusions of power and demands, they cannot defy the reality of the practical elements necessary for achieving what they want. It is against this backdrop that I entered the fray of another push for targets without a sense of effort.

My goal, expressed a few days before, was for management to reward those putting in the most to achieve the target, even if the seemingly impossible target could not be met and the goalposts shifted in the meagre rewards they were offering. A difficult exchange ensued that first challenged the premise, then conditioned the situation, before adjusting the focus.

Well, Write Well

Fetching from the writing well of wisdom, gauging the time to interject and pressing the case, I first exposed the numbers malady before setting the perspective. This was presented in an inadvertent comment from a manager; my response was a case of writing well for effect.

It put the purpose on the defensive and led to a reassessment of the goal, but I held back from responding further. The ordered use of words is a skill demanding the scalpel blade of teasing rather than the machete of chopping. What ensued included receiving a slight rebuke, but the bruises of battle are part of being in a fight, though it rarely feels like one when the other party needs to exert authority.

The initiative eventually came without my suggesting it directly. Whether the target is met or not, the best-performing member of the team will be adequately rewarded. This should have been done the week before, beyond empty platitudes. Is it any wonder morale is so low?

Well, Just Write

The writing well is a resource from which I have dug deep to fetch the fresh water of writing well in the art of persuasion. The wounds matter less given the many victories won through time. I don't even bother to celebrate the wins, except in appreciation of the gift of writing well.

I suppose this is why this blog exists. Of all the mediums of expression available to engage us, writing has the potential to exist long after interest has been lost in hearing and watching people perform.

Caught in the act of keyboard bashing again

The incurable itch

There are times when I delude myself into thinking I am a writer, but the reality might suggest that all these years of blogging are pretensions to an ability I barely possess. "An inveterate and incurable itch for writing besets many, and grows old in their sick hearts." The Roman poet Juvenal's Satires X.

However, the translation from Latin suffers from so many kinds of paraphrasing and interpretation that it has become the more popular variation: "Writing is an incurable itch that affects many." Whilst I might have that occasional itch, it has become quite benign. I cannot be bothered to scratch it, nor is it so serious that I need a salve for it.

It is like learning to live with an infirmity; the inadequacy rings loud in your head, urging you to stop and pursue something else that belies a modicum of talent. On the other side, perhaps persistence counts for something. You do it long enough, it becomes practised, and you grow better at it. You gain the confidence that the little you manage to express can pass muster.

When I woke up just 25 minutes ago to think of something to write before the day's end, I felt it might be a jumble of incoherent words landing in an order that might suggest lucidity, but is clearly a malady bordering on insanity. Who really cares? Just bash the keyboard with your thoughts and see how itchy you really can get.

A whoosh moment

Coffee Gets Milky

The wind lifts the leaves and sends them dancing. What a thing it is to feel that sea breeze against your face, salt-sharp and bracing. This is Cape Town in all its contradictions: the water we adore from a distance, too dreadfully cold to ever step into, lapping at shores of the beach we walk but never wade.

Morning breaks, and somewhere in a sanctuary, someone reaches for their second cup before the first is fully drowned. Here, beneath vaulted ceilings that will echo with songs, the beans speak their own benediction, at hands one mirroring another.

The milk froths to an airy resurrection, poured into waiting darkness until the black turns cloudy with grace. It's communion of a different sort, but no less sacred for its secularity.

Notes Get Windy

In the dreaming hours, when consciousness drifts between waking and sleep, a figure moves through half-lit streets. From her handbag tumbles a scatter of notes, and in that suspended moment before she reaches down, the wind stirs with intention. You call out, to warn of the loss she's about to suffer, as dream-logic speaks in your voice.

Then the child appears, whimsical and wild as wind itself. From his lips comes a sound, a playful whoosh that blurs the line between breath and breeze. The notes lift, caught between gravity and air, between currency and sound, everything suddenly, impossibly airborne.

It's the kind of moment that clings to you after waking, vivid and strange, the sort of thing that makes you wonder if wind has always been this mischievous, this alive.

The shibboleth of fluency

Strangeness in the familiar

The languages we use in communication can determine how our use of words, structure, grammar, and style makes us winners or losers.

Conversation is a kind of interaction where we innately know the rules that confer belonging, distinguishing us from those who fall foul of them. However, it is placenames that defeat the foreigner in ways almost insurmountable.

When I lived in Holland, it was the beach town of Scheveningen that set the allochtoon apart from the autochtoon, until we eventually mastered the pronunciation. Any American visiting London would easily stand out whilst looking for Leicester Square or Southwark. When I do not hear 'southern' as 'surthen', I know who has travelled from afar.

Twinning the dissimilar

In South Africa, my Dutch exposes my foreign background; the placenames I pronounce in Dutch are barely recognisable to the locals.

This is where the identical needs closer observation to notice the difference. The twin test works like a linguistic shibboleth. Present someone with two nearly identical siblings and ask them to distinguish between them. The local spots the difference immediately; that distinctive mole, that particular smile, whilst the outsider sees only sameness. A casual glance reveals similarities, yet that tiny detail remains the tell.

So, it is with language. Just as twins operate in near-perfect synchrony, bewitching you with their sameness, you might navigate an entire conversation in flawless grammar. But stumble over 'Scheveningen', and the shibboleth has caught you. South Africans hear my Dutch-inflected Afrikaans and immediately spot what doesn't belong, differences imperceptible to my ear yet glaringly obvious to theirs.

Speaking so good

Tongue-tied to the point of speechlessness, you imagine running your hand through their curly hair. They smile and suddenly, as if possessed, or rather inspired, the utterance from your lips is a fluency in Afrikaans for which a shibboleth would fail to ensnare. Sometimes attraction trumps the test; inspiration defeats the very mechanism designed to expose you.

Language draws the pictures in the mind, and even if we say the words wrong because an accent defeats us, there's probably enough in it not to be misunderstood.