Book Review: How to Write Short

This 2013 book by Roy Peter Clark, which is subtitled “Word Craft for Fast Times,” is apparently already considered a classic text. Somehow, I didn’t discover it until 2024. (Well, not “somehow,” I was busy practicing what it preaches.)

gordon meyer hold book

When I spotted this book on the shelves at Unabridged, I was immediately hooked by the title of the introduction: When Words Are Worth a Thousand Pictures. Now that’s a philosophy that I can agree with!

Clark begins the book with the advice that a test reader or editor can come to the writer’s rescue for the final polish. I was always delighted when my editors — Wendy and Susanna in particular — would cut an additional word or two from my own work.

The book is made up of short chapters that discuss and demonstrate each strategy, and which end with writing exercises that drive the points home. In all, there are 35 chapters. It would be difficult for me to narrow down the list to my favorites; I enjoyed each of them.

Writing short, Clark teaches, is the result of wit, focus, and polish. These are the literary values of textual brevity:

Remember that great writing in an informal style is the product of a set formal practices, including the intentional deletion of function words; the use of contractions and other abbreviations; and the employment of slang dialect, and other idioms.

Here are just a few of the many tidbits that spoke to me:

  • Practice writing plain sentences that contain a grace note — one interesting word that stands out.
  • Miss Belinda Blurb is an eponymous fictitious character whose exaggerated praise was used to sell books and magazines.
  • Silence — or white space — creates the canvas on which the best work can stand out for full appreciation.
  • While reading, notice how patterns of two and three emerge. Two elements divide the world for analysis; three expand and encompass the whole.
  • The shorter the passage, the greater the value of each word.
  • Brevity comes from selection and not compression.
  • SEO is killing the craft of writing and is replacing it with algorithmic blandness.

I highly recommend this book for any writer. Your local bookshop probably has it, but you can also find it at the Amazon, of course.

PS: Note how the clever design of the cover utilizes forced perspective to create an optical illusion.


Why I didn’t send you a postcard from Disneyland

vintage 1985 disneyland postcard

I recently visited Disneyland, and I meant to send you a postcard from there, but I couldn’t. Literally.

Much to my disappointment, there are no more postcards available at the Disney compound. Not at the Magic Kingdom, not at California Adventure Park, not at The Grand Californian, not at the Disneyland Hotel, and not in any of the Downtown Disney stores.

Zip. Zero. Zilch.

I searched. I asked. I couldn’t believe it. There are plenty of mailboxes around, but these are clearly just left over from a bygone era.

I did find some postcard-like objects that are better described as “art prints.” They could be mailed, but they’re oversized and would require First Class postage, and they cost an eye watering $8 each. (No kidding.)

Such a shame.


Your garage door control pad has a battery

Garagecontrol

No, really, it has a battery that needs periodic replacement. All my life I have assumed that the outside-on-the-wall garage door keypads are wired into the garage door opener.

Nope, it turns out they are just an extra remote control stuck to the wall.

Who knew?

Not me. Fortunately, I figured it out before I embarrassed myself by calling in a service technician.

On a related note, today I discovered that my garage door control keypad lights up when you push the buttons. (Provided the battery is not nearly dead.) Will wonders never cease‽


Apparently, “wanted to buy” is a thing

A good friend of mine wanted to buy a used thingamajig, so he posted that desire on Facebook starting with the phrase “Wanted to buy: thingamajig.”

When I saw this, I thought he made a typo and meant to write “Want to buy,” and I told him so via Messages.

Nope, he replied, that’s what people write these days. Seriously‽ (But he did acknowledge that it’s ungrammatical.)

Not wanting to believe him, and exhibiting a naive faith in humanity, I checked Google, and sure enough, it’s common. I also searched Google ngram, and though it was more common in the 1940s, it is also experiencing an uptick in the printed word.

Goddamnit, he’s right. Also, you kids stay off my lawn!


Day One journal silently alters location data

I’ve been using the Day One journaling app for ten years. It’s where I keep track of my daily Story Cube writing exercises (occasionally shared on my Instagram account), and it’s also where I maintain a travel journal.

I ignore most of Day One’s numerous features (Too many, frankly) but the one that matters to me the most is automatic location metadata logging. Being able to recall where I was when I created an entry is why I started using Day One all those years ago.

But in a recent update, Day One began changing the location of journal entries that I had made several days before. It was doing this on its own, and was frequently changing them to an incorrect location!

This was completely unacceptable to me. Day One tech support was not helpful — when they eventually responded to requests — and my plea for help to the users’ forum on Facebook mostly garnered responses from company sycophants.

Eventually, though, a fellow frustrated user suggested that the cause might be a new feature called “Auto-Apply Points of Interest.” (This setting is turned on by default. It is buried in the “Location History” pane of the app’s settings.)

When this feature is turned on, Day One will decide that even if you carefully and specifically set an entry’s location, if that location is near a landmark it knows about, it changes the location to that of the landmark. Crazy, right? But here’s how it gets worse: the app goes through old entries, which you’ve never gone back and edited, and it changes those locations too!

So that note you created while standing in front of a great restaurant now says, after you save the note, that you were standing a few blocks away.

Turning off “Auto-Apply Points of Interest” fixed this problem for me. How in the world did Day One decide that silently altering old entries would be a good idea? If you’re having similar difficulty (and you probably are but haven’t noticed it yet) turn off this misguided feature.