Imagine Writing As A Purposeful Craft

“Imagine writing as a purposeful craft” is the challenge of Roy Peter Clark’s introduction to Writing Tools – 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. The book was a gift from a dear friend with the inscription “May your writing affect many…”

I enjoy writing; it is therapeutic for me, not because it comes easily but because it makes me wrestle with words and concepts. It forces me to think and attempt to articulate those thoughts or, in some cases, delete them. I enjoy the challenge of crafting a sentence for the purpose of resonating with a target audience.

I am committed to improving my writing skills so I read broadly in order to learn from other’s writing styles. I have reviewed English grammar books so many times that on occasion I dream of being attacked by giant verbs and nouns. Grammar was not my strong-suit in college.  I had to take remedial English twice and it was not because I was the professor’s favorite student.

If you can relate to my life story then Writing Tools will be a worthwhile purchase. My copy is dog-eared because I have referenced it repeatedly. The 50 topics are practical and instructional, and Clark’s humor is engaging. Some of his chapter titles are:

• Be passive-aggressive.
• Establish a pattern, then give it a twist.
• Play with words, even in serious stories.
• Tune your voice.
• Write from different cinematic angles.

In his chapter “Let punctuation control pace and space” he makes the analogy of controlling traffic flow. “The period is a stop sign. The comma is a speed bump; the semicolon is what a driver education teacher calls a ‘rolling stop’; the parenthetical expression is a detour; the colon is a flashing yellow light that announces something important up ahead; the dash is a tree branch in the road.”

This book is a “tool box” for writers or would be writers. Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, gave this recommendation, “Writing Tools offers advice and lessons that will help me, my students, and anyone with the dream of becoming a better writer.”