{"id":24745,"date":"2016-11-09T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T17:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/on-writing-thinking-toward-the-reader\/"},"modified":"2016-11-09T09:00:25","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T17:00:25","slug":"on-writing-thinking-toward-the-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/on-writing-thinking-toward-the-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"On Writing: Thinking Toward the Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

I been out in the desert, just doin\u2019 my time<\/em><\/p>\n

Searchin\u2019 through the dust, lookin\u2019 for a sign \u2014Springsteen<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At lunch the other day, my good friend Bill Dillon and I were talking about our respective writing schedules. I don\u2019t have one. But the conversation led me to consider a question I hadn\u2019t thought of before. When do I do my writing?<\/p>\n

Most of the time I write in my head, not at the keyboard. I write when I\u2019m out at Eagle Beach with my dogs Molly and Murphy, early mornings before sunrise, wandering along the river or out to the edge of low tide on Lynn Canal.<\/p>\n

Or when I\u2019m lying in bed gabbing with Michelle about any of the multitude of things married couples gab about on their way to sleep. Or when I\u2019m out on the bike in the glare of morning sunlight.<\/p>\n

Or when I\u2019m painting the house \u2014 until I start to get sloppy. Or midnights when I can\u2019t sleep and Michelle has already dozed off and I\u2019m still in gabbing mode. Or when some ailment has gotten ahold of me \u2014 some cold or flu or any of the accumulating aches and pains of age \u2014 and the only way I can escape the slings and arrows is to get out of my head.<\/p>\n

Getting out of my own head: that\u2019s how I think of writing. And come to think of it, I\u2019m writing pretty much all the time.<\/p>\n

And I notice a subtle but substantial difference between times when I\u2019m just thinking, trying to figure something out, and when I\u2019m thinking to write. Simply put, it\u2019s the difference between trying to understand something and trying to explain it.<\/p>\n

In my career as a technical editor, when I was reading some document that was badly written and not at all clear or precise, there was always that initial process of figuring out what the writer was trying to say.<\/p>\n

(And sometimes I just had to give up and call the author on the phone or visit her or him in person, and have them explain it to me in person \u2014 which they were usually able to do easily and with a clarity and precision that escaped them on the page. And my response was usually the same: why didn\u2019t you just say that?)<\/p>\n

But after that initial process of understanding, my brain shifts gears when I\u2019m trying to explain something. There\u2019s another variable thrown into the analytical mix: the reader. The reader forces a subtle shift, a slight adjustment in direction, in the way my thoughts are tending. Now, suddenly, I\u2019m no longer trying to explain something to myself, but trying to explain it to someone else.<\/p>\n

That new variable brings with it new questions \u2014 those three essential questions that need to be addressed in thinking through the problem, those three essential questions that all writing has to start with, that we have to answer before we start to write:<\/p>\n

Who am I talking to?<\/p>\n

What am I trying to say?<\/p>\n

And why?<\/p>\n

\u2014 Who am I talking to?<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s my reader? The general public? Can I shake off that abstract non-entity and put a real face on my reader? Can I imagine that I am writing to a friend, a spouse, a skeptical acquaintance \u2014real flesh-and-blood readers whose faces are going to go through a farrago of contortions if I just start throwing words at them.<\/p>\n

\u2014 What am I trying to say?<\/p>\n

Even if I have gone through that initial process of understanding my topic, the process of writing is going to force me to understand even more precisely what I\u2019m trying to say. Even the question of whether or not I need a comma or two here or there should be forcing me to think more clearly about what I\u2019m trying to say.<\/p>\n

\u2014 And why?<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m writing about something for an article in a newsletter, I\u2019m going to be writing it much differently than if I\u2019m writing about the same subject in a memo to the boss or in the preamble to a new proposed regulation published in the Federal Register or in an environmental assessment to satisfy the formal requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.<\/p>\n

These three questions have to be where we start, have to influence our thinking when we begin trying to write. In trying to communicate with readers, we are trying to know something not just through our own eyes but through their eyes. We\u2019re not just thinking about the reader; we\u2019re thinking toward the reader, thinking through the reader, letting ourselves be led by the reader, the only one who really counts when we\u2019re writing. That should lead us to a different kind of thinking.<\/p>\n

Thinking toward the reader \u2014in my experience, it\u2019s a state of consciousness that distances me momentarily from that nebulosity of ego called Jim Hale. Only the more I get outside myself, the more I seem to find myself. And that hint of paradox makes me wonder if that ancient aphorism \u201cKnow thyself\u201d is really only possible in our communion with each other.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve said that writing is philosophy. I\u2019m beginning to suspect that it\u2019s theology, too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2022 Jim Hale can be contacted at jimhale821@gmail.com or through his website, jimhalewriting.com. The Alaska Press Club in 2016 awarded him the Suzan <\/em>Nightingale Award for Best Columnist.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I been out in the desert, just doin\u2019 my time Searchin\u2019 through the dust, lookin\u2019 for a sign \u2014Springsteen   At lunch the other day, my good friend Bill Dillon and I were talking about our respective writing schedules. I don\u2019t have one. But the conversation led me to consider a question I hadn\u2019t thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24745"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}