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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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July 28, 2005

WORDS TO LIVE BY

"It is a salutary discipline to consider the vast number of books that are written, the fair hopes with which their authors see them published, and the fate which awaits them. What chance is there that any book will make its way among that multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are well and carefully written; much thought has gone into their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thoughts; and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success." - W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919

(Thanks to Jim Ruland for the get.)

Posted by TEV at 10:10 AM |

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Comments

I dropped this under the Ehrenreich post by mistake. Here we go again:

Great, great stuff. I would venture, however, that the writer who has not come to this realization without reading Maugham, has not as yet, fully engaged the craft. To quote Marge Piercy, "For The Young Who Want To" (The Moon Is Always Female):

"The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved."

Posted by: the highway scribe | July 28, 2005 at 11:07 AM

Obviously these folks didn't have cripplng coke habits to feed.

Posted by: Scott | July 28, 2005 at 12:57 PM

...which is why you gotta get a job. Get a gig, anything you can tolerate, to support your crippling coke habit (I'm a book junkie, myself) since, as Maugham indicates, how many writers, even published ones, can solely support themselves through writing? Lit History (Wallace Stevens, Melville, et al) is filled with great works done in and around day jobs. The beauty part is, having another means of putting bread on the table can take some pressure off the need for that mythical million-dollar first novel advance (I'll settle for a fifteenth of a mil, myself).

And yes, you do "have to like it better than being loved" (what a great line!). My question is, how do we solve the little bitty problem -- the ego always being at the wheel -- of the conundrum that writing is meant, after all, to be read?...

Posted by: mernitman | July 29, 2005 at 06:53 PM

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