Verlyn Klinkenborg's Several Short Sentences About Writing goes against the grain of conventional classroom theory to embrace the simultaneity of creativity, thought, structure and grammar in shaping the writer's craft. "Part of the struggle in learning to write is learning to ignore what isn't useful to you and pay attention to what is," Klinkenborg advises. Learning to write involves learning to form sentences--trusting instinct and personal reflection to develop a style and cadence that reflects the personal wisdom within.
Orthodoxy and dogma, he argues, have stunted the growth of creativity and poetic mastery of the language. Returning to a purity of sentence structure requires forsaking what one has learned, ditching the mix of "half-truths, myths and assumptions" of the classroom for experiential learning from the world around writers. Writing also requires a mastery of all aspects of language, such that one can converse with authority to the reader and trust the reader to follow. Writing is work that demands persistent practice, clarity of meaning and development of style, a chore best understood when considered from the point of view of a reader, who must interpret the author's prose to derive his or her own meaning. "Prose is the residue, the consequence, of the writer's choices," Klinkenborg says, "choices about the shape of each sentence. And how each sentence shapes the others."
Klinkenborg's book is meant to be read, savored and digested until thought and process become one--and from this, he says, successful writing will come from saying what one means and meaning what one says. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer