No pictures, thousands of words

THOSE OF YOU who visit this space regularly will know that, strictly speaking, this is not a blog. It’s a column. The word blog is an abbreviation of web log, which signifies a kind of personal diary, a record of your recent comings and goings and happenings and emotions, all published for the world to see on the world-wide web. (All the world that’s interested, that is.)

A column is quite another matter. This a column for readers, and by readers I mean people who can assimilate more than 140 characters at a time — people who can read several contiguous sentences without having to pause to feed their brains on eye candy.

This column is called Mainly about Boats, although you’d probably not know that unless you read the small print at the bottom. You will, however, have noticed that this column almost always appears without illustrations, something that is very unusual in the electronic publishing business these days. In fact, if it were a blog it would be a blingless blog, which apparently is not the way to attract traffic. Too bad. I happen to prefer words to pictures.

Words, on their own, are quite tricky enough to manage without having to bother about pictures. When I was editing books for International Marine they came up with a very professional manuscript by Migael Scherer, of Seattle. It’s called A Cruising Guide to Puget Sound. I could find no fault with her copy, except that she constantly referred to those places where small boats are placed in the water as “boat launches.” I knew full well that everybody around here calls them boat launches, but when it came to the printed word I found it confusing, because a launch is a type of boat. Webster’s New World describes it as “an open, or partly enclosed, motorboat” or (formerly) “the largest boat carried by a warship.”

So I changed “boat launch” to “launching ramp” about a million times, after having carefully considered such alternatives as slipway, marine railway, etc.  Migael wasn’t happy about that and wanted me to change a million “launching ramps” back to “boat launches.” But in the end I prevailed, mostly on the grounds that such a classy book deserved language with the highest degree of clarity.  “Launching ramp” might have been fuddy-duddy, but it was certainly clear.

And, talking about that, it is interesting to note how difficult it is sometimes to use clear words to describe the simplest of objects or emotions. On the same page as “launch” in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, is the world “laugh.” Have you ever tried to describe a laugh?

The COD makes heavy weather of it:

“laugh (lahf) v. & n. 1. make the sounds and movements of face and body by which lively amusement, sense of the ludicrous, exultation, and scorn, are instinctively expressed; have these emotions.”

Webster’s dives even deeper into these muddy waters, adding definitions for laugh, chuckle, giggle, titter, snicker, and guffaw.

In other words, it’s far easier to laugh than to describe it.  And it’s far easier to fill a blog with pretty pictures than with interesting words.

Today’s Thought

The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind.

— Hortense Calisher, Extreme Magic

Tailpiece

“Any Royalty in your wife’s family?”

“No, but she had an uncle who was a Peer.”

“Really? I had an uncle with bladder trouble, too.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

The writing business

The 15-foot Albacore

I WAS THINKING the other day about mankind's most desperate desire. I was reminded that mankind's most compelling urge is not to make money, make war, or make your neighbor sick with jealousy over your new sit-on lawn mower. It's not to romance your boss's wife or make a million on eBay. Mankind's most urgent desire is to change what other people have written.

I know this because all my working life I have written words for money; and all my life a certain species of human called a copy editor has pounced upon those words with glee and changed them, willy-nilly, without justification, and for no good reason whatsoever.

It doesn't matter what you write, or whether you're an amateur or a professional, somebody always wants to change it. Somebody always knows better. Somebody is always ready to believe you're an idiot who never learned no grammer and can't spell no how.

It was with more than the usual trepidation, therefore, that I e-mailed my latest offering to Joshua Colvin, editor of a nice little magazine called Small Craft Advisor. I have to admit that Josh has always been kind to me. Unlike most other editors, he seems to be equipped with a heart. But this time I may have gone too far. I may have provoked him.

You see, one of the things an editor likes most is to be told how many words a forthcoming article will contain. This is so that he can estimate the space needed, and so plan a place for the article in his magazine. They're always planning, these people, and always having to re-plan at the last moment when their first plans don't work out.

My offering was a nice little story about a newly married couple here in Bellingham, Wash., who spent their honeymoon sailing and rowing to Alaska in an open, 15-foot Albacore racing dinghy. It took Michael Kleps, a practicing attorney, and his wife, Elizabeth MacDonald, a qualified commercial electrician, seven weeks to cruise the 900 miles to Juneau, sleeping almost every night among the bears and other wildlife in a small tent pitched on whatever wilderness spots of beach or rock they could manage to land on.

The trouble is that I told Josh rather brashly that I could squeeze the story into 1,000 words. We professionals are good at stuff like that. That's why we are professionals.

So I was at first astonished, then disbelieving, and then chagrined, when the little word-counter on my computer told me that the story had come out at 2,000 words, not 1,000. Of course, you can't rely on word-counters too much. They lie. I have often found that. So I counted the words myself. Er, yes. Two thousand. And no way could I shorten that article. Every word was golden, every phrase a gem. Nothing was wasted or repeated.

So now I know Josh will have to change it and squeeze 2,000 into the space he left for 1,000. The only thing that consoles me is the fact that this is a symbiotic relationship. It is the job of a writer to pour out everything he has learned. It is the job of the editor — nay, his primal urge, his greatest delight — to change everything, to slash and cut and purge like Attila the Hun, leaving bleeding nouns and wounded adjectives littered all over the countryside to die painful deaths.

This is how we live. This is how it has always been. Writers create. Editors slaughter. It's too terrible for words.

PS: The sweet little Albacore is for sale in Juneau, Alaska, for $500. She's ready for the return trip next summer. If you're interested, click on Comments below, leave a phone number or e-mail address, and I'll put you in touch. Your details won't be published.

Today's Thought

The reason why so few good books are written, is that so few who can write know anything.

— Bagehot, Literary Studies: Shakespeare

Tailpiece

Here’s a hint for beginning gardeners on how to distinguish weeds from proper plants:

Pull everything out. Those that come up again are weeds.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)