The Elegant Variation: Oh, the Things that get Asked of Writers!

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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."

September 04, 2008

Oh, the Things that get Asked of Writers!

A lot of people complain about the business of blurbing, and there's certainly much to complain about. But it's here to stay, and most of us writers have benefited from it, so it's our duty, it seems to me, to give back. And if someone doesn't want to blurb at all, it's their prerogative. But no writer has reason to be offended when asked for a blurb. If a publisher sends you a book and you don't wish to read it, you don't have to.

Something else, though, seems to be at work when the request comes not from a publisher or a writer with a book coming out but from a stranger who meets you at a party, say, and who, upon learning you're a writer, confesses that he has a 500-page manuscript he has been working on and would you mind taking a look at it and letting him know what you think? Years ago, I had a manuscript-consulting business where I charged a per-page rate to read and critique people's fiction. I teach fiction writing and am very committed to it, and I think of myself as quite generous with my time, so I'm confounded by the number of otherwise reasonable-seeming people who think it's OK to ask a stranger to read and critique your novel as a favor to them. Is there any other profession where an equivalent request gets made? Yes, doctors and therapists complain about people sidling over to them at parties and asking their professional advice ("Hey, doc, do you think there might be something wrong with my liver?" "Do you think my sister might be depressed?"), but would anyone ever say to a doctor, "Hey, I have this tracheotomy I need performed. Might you be be able to do me a favor and perform it on me?"

Posted by joshua henkin at 09:21 AM in Guest Bloggers | Permalink

Comments

The argument seems to be non-sequitor. Isn't it equivalent to ask a writer to provide an opinion on something you wrote as it is to ask a doctor to provide an opinion on a physical ailment. It isn't as if you asked the writer to practice his craft and write your novel.

Posted by: bog | September 04, 2008 at 11:48 AM

The difference is that when a doctor is asked by a stranger at a party whether s/he thinks the person who asks might have something wrong with their liver, the question, though an intrusion, can be responded to (or shunted aside) rather rapidly (unless, of course, the person asking wants an actual physical exam performed next to the sherry and the canapes, which is another matter entirely). The writer, by contrast, when asked for an opinion about a person's novel, needs acutally to read that novel, which takes many, many hours if done carefully and is therefore much more akin to a request from a stranger to actually perform surgery gratis.

Posted by: Joshua Henkin | September 04, 2008 at 11:58 AM

Oh yes, my goodness, we writers are a frail and beleagured lot! Sometimes I have to lie down with a cool cloth on my head from the terrible stress of it all. I wish I did some sort of work with a shovel instead. How delightful to be out in the sun and air!

Posted by: Jack Pendarvis | September 04, 2008 at 10:12 PM

I do find that odd. I've had people say: "Why should I pay $100,000 to do an MFA when I know an established writer and can get my work critiqued for free?"

Posted by: Helen DeWitt | September 06, 2008 at 11:57 AM

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September 04, 2008