On Writing Well

So I have not been blogging much as of late as the transition to Vancouver has been quite an adjustment. However, in preparing for my dissertation writing course this January in St. Louis at Covenant Theological Seminary, I've been going through Zinssser's classic book On Writing Well. It may sound like "boring reading," but actually I have found much of it to be helpful and enlivening. Let me share a small excerpt that talks about the concepts of "quest, intention, character and values":

"The quest is the oldest themes in storytelling, an act of faith we never get tired of hearing about. Looking back, I notice that many students in my class, assigned to think about a place that was important to them, used the assignment to go on a quest for something deeper than the place itself: a meaning, an idea, some sliver of the past. The result was that the class always had a warm dynamic for a group of strangers. (Some classes even held reunions.) Every quest that a student embarked on found an echo in some search or yearning of our own. Moral: any time you can tell a story in the form of a quest or a pilgrimage you’ll be ahead of the game. Readers bearing their own associations will do some of your work for you.

Intention is what we wish to accomplish with our writing. Call it the writer’s soul. We can write to affirm and to celebrate, or we can write to debunk and to destroy; the choice is ours. Destruction has long been a journalistic mode, rewarding the snoop and the hatchet man (or woman) and the invader of privacy. But nobody can make us write what we don’t want to write. We get to keep intention. Nonfiction writers often forget that they are not required to acquiesce in tawdry work, to carry the trash for magazine editors who have an agenda of their own- to sell a commercial product.

Writing is related to character. If your values are sound, your writing will be sound. It all begins with intention. Figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it, and work your way  with humanity and integrity to the completed article. Then you’ll have something to sell.” (pp. 259-60)