Draft No. 4 by John McPhee (April 2019)
My latest foray into the world of ‘writers writing about writing’ brought me to Draft No. 4 by John McPhee. I had no prior experience with his work (though it turned out I knew about a couple of works, including A Sense of Where You Are) but I was impressed enough with this book to add some of his other collections to my reading list.
I immediately applied a number of tips and tactics from this book to my writing (a method McPhee himself encourages when he defines development as reacting to excellence and incorporating certain things into one’s own style). The most notable idea was to use a dictionary instead of a thesaurus to find related words – a thesaurus simply includes too much filler whereas the few synonyms given in the dictionary entry are often directly related to the sentence under construction.
I liked his recommendation to use longhand as a way to unblock the mind. I’ll probably apply this tactic indirectly by working in different locations (I'm not writing anything in longhand) but I hope the broader idea that a new method or routine will bring forth new material proves true without resorting to yesterday’s tools. I had a similar reaction to his belief that writers discover the type of writer they are by trying different genres – I see the wisdom of the insight but I prefer to exhaust variations on form before moving to an entirely new style.
Finally, McPhee reinforces a thought I’ve heard elsewhere about endings. If there is a problem wrapping up, he advises the writer to review the work and look for the ending’s hiding place. If the ending is already there, all the writer can do is find a way to cut off the piece.
One up: McPhee writes briefly about interviewing and it led to a couple of fascinating comments. First, he points out that most people are generally uninteresting but that this is no excuse – in fact, it should free the interviewer to work at a relaxed pace to the degree that no advanced technology (such as a voice recorder) is necessary. Now, he's no dinosaur - he does concede that a voice recorder is useful - but he warns that the interviewer should pay attention to the answer as if it will be lost forever unless memorized. I suppose this approach would help the interviewer notice when the uninteresting subject makes a rare foray into the interesting…
A comment about writing that McPhee makes in an unrelated chapter may apply just as much to interviewing – how long should it take? As long as it takes.
One down: McPhee would hate these reading reviews – he gripes that ‘structural formalism’ is often a hint of a writer who is lacking for better ideas. To be fair to the man, I agree – I’m just not compelled to come up with a better idea.
Just saying: The observation that people rarely discard working products was made in reference to software but I think it applies to writing as well. A good sentence, paragraph, or chapter is a difficult thing to let go in the same way we all cling to our worn-out but trustworthy tools, products, or appliances.
Of course, what I’m describing is the very challenge of writing. As McPhee puts it so expertly – writing is selection. It’s not so much what goes down but what comes out that makes the work and it’s proven a great parting thought for me from Draft No. 4.
