If a diet and exercise regimen deprives you of the foods you love and forces you to perform physical exercises you hate, you will almost certainly abandon it eventually. Effective fitness programmes promise no quick fix to render you fit and trim; instead, they inspire gradual, lasting change. The Writer’s Diet follows a similar philosophy. If you successfully edit one piece of writing but then return to your old habits the next time you compose something new, your prose style will end up no better off than before. The trick is to transform not only the way you write but the way you think about writing.
Nutritionists warn us to shun chips, candy bars, soda and other food items that contain mostly ‘empty calories’. But how can we resist their addictive flavour and easy abundance? Likewise, e-mails, text messages, blog posts and other ‘new media’ encourage us to write hastily, junkily, without regard to quality. The good news is that, in a digital culture where teachers bemoan their students’ illiteracy, young people are writing more prolifically than ever before. The bad news is that, just as pretzels and potato chips can dull our appetite for smoked salmon and fresh blueberries, ‘junk prose’ can dull our sensitivity to elegant language.
So how do we avoid the temptations of rubbishy prose? We can start by attending to the quality of the writing we produce and consume each day. Proponents of the international ‘Slow Food’ movement urge you to buy your vegetables fresh from the farmer’s market, prepare them thoughtfully, cook them slowly and savour your meals with loved ones. Similarly, you can maintain your taste for fresh, flavourful writing by balancing junk prose with words that count.
You can also improve your writing by striving for variety. Just as famous chefs love to dine out in other chefs’ restaurants, accomplished authors relish the work of other masters of the game. To expand your verbal repertoire, read widely and attentively in fields outside your own range of expertise. What can you learn from analysing a favourite author’s sentences? What happens when you vary the length and syntax of your own, or throw in a new vocabulary word, or experiment with metaphor and analogy?
Finally, remember to take pleasure in your writing. You need not waste time obsessing about the grammar in your outgoing e-mails; sometimes it’s okay to let junk food be junk food. Nor should you realistically expect that cranking out an overdue academic article or term paper will transport you into a state of rapture. But why not take time, at least occasionally, to revel in the written word? Compose a love letter. Craft a haiku text message. Send a hand-written note to a friend. Not only will your writing improve; so, quite possibly, will the quality of your life.
Shakespeare’s plays show us how a single author can experiment with a range of stylistic flourishes.
Be-verbs
I will be master of what is mine own:
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house …
Nominalisations
I crave fit disposition for my wife.
Due reference of place and exhibition,
With such accommodation and besort
As levels with her breeding.
Prepositions
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;
And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;
He murder cries and help from Athens calls.
Ad-dictions*
Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes
Whom envy hath immured within your walls!
Rough cradle for such little pretty ones!
Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow
For tender princes, use my babies well!
Waste words
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life …59