Writers and publishers generally talk about selling books, choosing a path for printing and distribution, the importance of professional editing and design, and technical matters pertaining to grammar and style. But what about the path one takes to become a writer? Certainly, we must all learn about semicolons and apostrophes, but that journey is often inspired by an earlier and more profound one. From whence comes the call to translate vivid life experiences and ideas—the sublime, the horrific, the transcendent, the transformational, the imagined—into a form that can be shared? What does it mean to live the writer’s life—as opposed to the publisher’s?

A friend suggested I take a look at KatieAndJessieOnABoat.com, a blog created by Katie Smith and Jessie Zevalkink—two young women who made a long journey on a small boat. After turning a fixer-upper sailboat into a humble home, they made their way from the Great Lakes down the Mississippi and its tributaries to the Gulf of Mexico. Destination: across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. Their site is a chronicle of their thoughts, adventures, friends and photographs gathered along the way.

Back in the 1980s and 90s, I took off in a small sailboat with an even smaller amount of money to go find my own stories. I had remarkable experiences cruising solo in the Bahamas and crossing the Atlantic to Gibraltar. I had some of the best and worst times of my life on those voyages and today, I look back on my past without an ounce of regret over things I “should have” done.

Those were days before GPS and the Internet, before digital cameras, before Facebook and Flickr. I took photos (remember 35mm film?) and even created my own tongue-in-cheek edition of “Captain Dave’s Nautical News,” but recording and sharing my adventures was much more difficult then than it is today. Nevertheless, I had some inkling, even as a young man, that I would one day wish to write about my journeys. With that in mind, I took a few more chances and explored a few more blind alleys. “What can I do today that will be worth writing about?”

Before those voyages, back in the late 70s, my high school friend Gene Flipse introduced me to boating and Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Today, Gene runs Conscious Breath Adventures—one-week excursions to the Dominican Republic’s Silver Bank to swim with migrating humpback whales. His weekly cruise reports offer astounding views and descriptions of whales in the wild.

Katie and Jessie and Gene offer an important reminder for those of us who spend countless hours marketing our prose. The writer’s life—or at least a critical part of it—is not about publishing. The writer’s life is about stepping off the sidewalk into the woods, paying attention to details, and placing a certain amount of faith in the premise that because you survived all the days preceding this one, you’ll likely survive whatever you encounter today. Why not go for it? The writer’s life is about living a life worth writing about—even if you never set pen to paper.

Two decades after my sailing voyages, I’m still tapping away at the keyboard polishing up my old stories. But a few years ago, I decided I’d been away from the water too long and I bought myself a fifteen-foot open sailboat. It feels good to be out there having aquatic adventures again—even if they don’t span months and thousands of miles.

Your adventures may be different—not smaller, but different: parenting, adopting a stray animal, losing your job, starting a career, getting lost in an unfamiliar town, having a vivid dream, getting married, getting divorced, going blind, inventing something important that nobody will pay attention to—but these experiences are the stuff from which great literature is made. Publishing is a great adventure in itself and a noble endeavor, but of all its dangers and pitfalls, perhaps the greatest is the possibility that the demands of turning our books into products might distract us from the far more important process of having experiences and turning them into stories.

What can you do today that will be worth writing about? As the old saying goes, “you’re either talking about it or you’re doing it.” As your story transitions from experience to manuscript to book, don’t forget to live the writer’s life. There is none better.

Two-word clichés are perhaps the least obvious kind. Unless we’re vigilant, they sneak into our prose, steal color, mask our individual writer’s voice, and make us sound like millions of other writers who mindlessly employ the same worn out word combinations. I find countless examples even while editing the work of accomplished authors.

I explored traditional clichés in an earlier post, suggesting that writers who employ phrases like “loose cannon,” “fly off the handle,” and “bitter end” should do so with an understanding of their origins. A loose cannon could do tremendous damage on a rolling ship. An axe head that flies off its handle could easily kill someone. Hanging on to the bitter end of a rope is prerequisite to fastening it (to the bitts or cleats) on the dock. Every cliché has a story, and writers who understand the origins of clichés use them in more meaningful ways.

The two-word cliché is a different animal. Though it may have historical roots (or be a useful-but-tired metaphor like “low-hanging fruit” or “level playing field”), it’s usually comprised of two words that have stuck together and fallen into popular use—often an adjective and a noun. These pairs become inseparable to a point where writers rarely use one word without the other.

Redundant Writing Clichés

Some two-word clichés are redundant. Sticky glue, colorful paint, sandy beaches, and towering heights can survive just fine without their useless adjective parasites. When a character shares her inner thoughts, is it necessary to differentiate them from her outer ones? Are dark caves an anomaly? I haven’t seen any well-lit ones. When you hire a qualified professional and he botches the job, does that person become an unqualified professional or does it make more sense to drop the professional designation altogether? Terrible wars? Are there pleasant ones? Has anyone ever intentionally built a penetrable fortress? For that matter, has anyone successfully built an impenetrable one? And to stay on-topic, how about those tired clichés? Have you heard any fresh, new ones lately?

Popular Partners Writing Clichés

Other two-word clichés are random word couplings that have become popular. Thriving economies worship the mighty dollar. Hardened criminals in cramped quarters face dire circumstances with grim determination. Brutal dictators greet throngs of ardent supporters with wild enthusiasm. Inveterate do-it-yourselfers publish their own books, seeking golden opportunities. Are seas really rough, or is that a better way to describe sandpaper?

Writing Clichés: Fixing the Problem

If the horizon is worth mentioning, it can probably be assumed to be an expansive horizon. Can you find a different adjective that isn’t used by every autopilot author? Why not abandon the overused adjective and let the horizon “embrace the sea” or “challenge one’s significance?” Don’t try to build art from prefabricated parts. Try a different twist on “deadly” and aim with molecular accuracy.

A silvery moon rose over the expansive horizon. Lying low on the sandy beach in the driving rain with the rolling hills of France behind him, Vincent inhaled the pungent aroma of Europe’s terrible war. Acrid smoke rose from the battle site. Holding his fallen comrade’s dogtags in a deadly grip, he swore a solemn oath that by morning, he would find a way into the enemy’s impenetrable fortress.

The example above is technically correct. It sets a scene with descriptions of sights and smells. It concisely describes a character’s circumstances, explains his mission, and sets up the challenge he’ll overcome in the narrative that follows. Developmentally, it’s good storytelling, but the prose is burdened with two-word clichés. How many millions of writers use these same descriptions?

In the example, the two-word clichés, stripped of their adjectives, reveal the passage to be little more than a simple list of elements—moon, horizon, beach, rain, hills, aroma, war, smoke, gripping, oath, fortress—padded with fluff. Why not rebuild from this foundation by finding better adjectives or expanding on some of their roles?

A yellow moon rose over the lip of the sea. Entrenched in the sand before the dark contours of the French countryside, the stench of war clawed at Vincent's throat. Smoke rose from the battle site. Madding rain drummed on his helmet, roaring in his ears, slipping cold tendrils down his neck. Clutching Rick’s bloody dogtags between his rifle stock and palm, he swore that by morning, he would find a way into the enemy’s fortress.

So often we reach for predictable pairings. Like logo designs that offer globes and swooshes, the comfort that comes with familiarity blinds us to the fact that these elements do nothing to differentiate us from other writers (or businesses). Here are some more overused word pairs:

noble challenge

honored guest

sweet revenge

burning question

cold cash

deadly accuracy

fluffy clouds

deep blue sea

cozy fire

comfortable cottage

undisputed master

pretty picture

stone dead

warm welcome

simmering stew

winding path

passionate kiss

sparkling diamonds

triumphant return

slippery slope

brutal honesty

burning desire

In a medium where overlap is a given—we all use the same English words—finding your individual voice is a challenge. And if we stray too far from the pool of popular language, we alienate readers. The goal is not to remove every “popular pairing” from our writing (I’m sure my work is full of two-word clichés and someone will inevitably point to one I’ve unconsciously dropped into this article). Any rule that purports to govern the “right way to write” will fail. Key is to develop awareness—an ability to spot patterns and cliché forms so that we can apply conscious decision-making. Most writing style problems occur because the author is unaware that s/he’s using the same tired patterns that millions of other writers toss mindlessly onto the page. As you read, consider whether your word pairings are merely comfortable or if they’re colorful representations of your expressive writing ability.

For more tips on writing style, read my web-based eBook, The Writer’s Guide to Powerful Prose.

Verbs are the engines that move your writing and your readers, but many authors don’t spend enough time choosing the right ones. If your writing was an electric guitar, your verbs would be the volume, tone, and distortion controls that shape the music of your sentences.

Verbs of Being versus Verbs of Doing

One of the most common elements in boring writing is “static verbs”—verbs of being that substitute for stronger verbs of doing. The only thing these verbs do is assert existence—which is the most generic of actions. And too often, static verbs cling—like just-dried socks to a wool sweater—to prepositions like I, we, they, he, she, and it. Prepositions have their place, but use them consciously.

   He was a tall man with a white Stetson hat.

   I am a graphic designer.

   Bill’s friends were waiting for the next available table.

Constructs like those used above are fine for a rough draft, but use your word processor’s Find function to locate every static verb. Question whether to leave it or change it. There is no right way, except to make a conscious choice. It’s “autopilot” writing that will kill your prose, not the use or avoidance of a particular style. Moreover, the way you “fix” the above sentences will reveal your unique writer’s voice. Often, plugging in a better verb will only take you so far. Rewrite the sentence when needed. Convert bland factoids into powerful storytelling tools.

   Jaco’s white Stetson hat rode high above the heads of the crowd.

   Graphic design captivated me at a young age.

   Bill’s friends milled about the lobby, waiting for the next available table.

Participial Verbs vs. Flying Direct

Partipial verbs end in —ing. They tie your verbs to prepositions in an awkward three-legged race. They have an important place in your writing, but writers often misuse them.

   The team was sprinting toward the finish line.

   Ducks were paddling leisurely about the pond.

   Jack is aspiring to become a published author.

But these speedbumps are unnecessary. Simpler tenses add clarity and directness.

   The team sprinted toward the finish line.

   Ducks paddled leisurely about the pond.

   Jack aspires to become a published author.

Use participial forms when there is a change of state. Let the past tense action interrupt the participial action that came before it.

   Martha was considering law as a profession but opted for juggling.

   The fish were swimming lazy circles about the reef when the shark’s appearance startled them.

   I kept encountering the same style errors in my clients’ manuscripts so I decided to write this article.

Imperative Verbs Motivate and Inspire

Participial verbs suck power out of lists of objectives. If you’re offering a course or writing a book, explaining its benefits to students and readers is standard marketing practice. Here’s a list of benefits associated with a workshop:

   • Improving your wordcraft.

   • Avoiding clichés.

   • Revealing hidden patterns in your writing that interfere with effective storytelling.

   • Polishing your prose without losing your individual author’s voice.

   • Finding out why even professional editors work with professional editors.

But though these takeaways are clear and simple, stating them this way is a missed marketing opportunity. These benefits can be stated as calls to action—the marketers favorite tool—by using imperative verbs.

   • Improve your wordcraft.

   • Learn how to avoid clichés.

   • Reveal hidden patterns in your writing that interfere with effective storytelling.

   • Polish your prose without losing your individual author’s voice.

   • Find out why even professional editors work with professional editors.

Unless your list is very long (probably too long), consider using a different imperative verb for each item. Explore. Learn. Discover. Improve. Increase. In marketing talk, you are reframing the pitch to sell the benefits instead of the features. In storytelling parlance, you are selling the transformation instead of just tools for overcoming conflict. Implied is that the person on the receiving end of your message will end up doing something instead of just reading about it.

Come to Your Senses

Writing teachers encourage us to engage the mind and senses. Describe sights, smells, tastes, sounds, feelings, thoughts, and tactile experiences to appeal to the reader’s imagination on every possible level.

In concept, this is excellent advice. In practice, the advice often gets taken too literally. Think of “saw,” “heard,” “felt,” “tasted,” “smelled,” and “thought” as a special category of boring verb. Use them, but use them consciously and sparingly.

   After so many days of hot, endless sand, José saw green mountains rising above the horizon.

   Ben awoke in a bright room, unable to recall how he got there. “I must be dead,” he thought as he listened to distant choral music.

   Maria stared at the pile of crumpled one-dollar bills and felt ripped off.

   George smelled barbecue and rushed over to the grill.

These sentences describe characters and what they’re experiencing, but they’re weak because the narrator is relating the sensory descriptions. Remember another piece of classic writing advice: let your characters tell the story. Build direct relationships between your characters and your reader by keeping the narrator’s voice from getting between them.

This advice can be expanded. Let the settings and objects in your scenes tell the story. Inanimate objects and places can rise, wave, beckon, impose, threaten, welcome, suggest, produce, radiate, and even speak. As always, balance is key. The transference of human thoughts and feelings onto inanimate objects should honor certain intuitive boundaries. Mountains might “call to” or “look down on” José or “rise” before him, but they shouldn’t “jump for joy” or “ask for his email address.” [Prose.com doesn’t allow different type styles or sizes. I italicized previous examples but left these in Roman text because some have italic sections within them. Examples are indented.]

   So many days of hot, endless sand. At last, green mountains rose above the horizon.

Presumably, we already know José has been walking in the desert. The reader will assume that whatever you describe is what José sees.

    Ben awoke in a bright room, unable to recall how he got there. I must be dead. Choral music filtered in from some distant place.

Focus on describing the stimuli rather than on describing what Ben thinks about them. The italics reveal his reaction without having to tell the reader, “Here’s how he reacted.”

   Maria stared at the uninspiring pile of crumpled one-dollar bills.What a rip-off!

Again, the italics provide the character’s unspoken inner voice, but by adding an adjective (“uninspiring”) to describe the bills, the reader understands what provoked the reaction.

   The sweet, tangy, smoky scent of barbecue wafted through the open door. George rushed to the grill.

George’s reaction is a no-brainer. By emphasizing the stimulus (the scent) instead of the response, the reader will beat George to the hibachi.

Describe the perceived rather than the fact that it was perceived to draw readers directly into your characters’ experiences.

Conclusion

Addressing writing style patterns like static, participial, sensory, and imperative verb forms is one of the easiest and fastest ways to add music to your writing. With not much practice, you’ll learn to see style patterns as you write—which saves editing time. By searching for prepositions or instances of “ing,” with your word processor’s “Find” tool, you can quickly locate and consider whether or not to change potentially weak usages.

Learn more (did you catch my imperative verb) about writing style in my book, The Writer’s Guide to Powerful Prose.

There are days

words fall easily

litter the page

like a pale shade

of october's

collapsing color

the dull copper

and brittle brown

gently brush

against bare sheets

still

they never fill

an empty womb

they become

small stars

that lay upon

my windowsill

and wither in

their pallid death

I slip my hand

beneath the pane

so they know

that I’m here

and I will wait

even when the

air is too thick

with attic footsteps

and unheard voices

even when I

feel the paint

peeling back

eyelids to

haunt these

vacant lungs

yes, even then

lah  3.7.12 ©®

Rest in Peace Jason & JonThomas. Mommy loves you. ❤️

His roommate calls him imo, the potato,

just another hick flailing

in the city, caged

in his tiny shithole apartment,

the unpacked boxes collecting dust.

He sleeps in the closet where

the futons are kept, at night

walking back from work,

he dodges careless elbows

on streets zebra-striped with crosswalks,

the herds

of bodies all color motion murmurs

over traffic.

He gapes at skyscrapers

looming steel walls all around him

and sees in them the mountains

of Toyama, its swells of pine,

sees the rice fields

swaying in the narrow streets

and turns to the murky night his blank face,

the city lights bright as the stars

in a quiet dark.

Yes, we blinked and it happened again, dear Prosers. It’s Friday. And what a day it is, as it’s the time of the week that we get another Proser’s information. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. Yep, I quoted 1984. 

Anyway, this week we get to meet one helluva guy that if you don’t know on Prose, then you really should. It’s @MarkOlmsted

P: What is your given name and your Proser username?

M: They are one and the same - Mark Olmsted. But I do have a slightly interesting story about my name. I am half-French, and my mother named me after my grandfather, Marcel. But my dad was afraid I would be teased for sounding “foreign” (it was 1958), so he made sure it was spelled “Mark” was on my birth certificate. When I grew older, I started to use “Marc” for all my writing, even using MarcOlmsted.com as a website. 

When Facebook came on the scene, I friended another Marc Olmsted, who turned out to be a fairly prominent San Francisco poet. He eventually told me he was starting to get asked at readings how prison and HIV had affected his work (audience members had googled him and stumbled on my history.) So I offered to switch back to my legal spelling permanently, and even gave him my website. I didn’t really mind – it ends up being easier to use the same spelling as the one on your license anyway.

P: Where do you live?

M: Hollywood, California.

P: What is your occupation?

M: I transcribe movies and TV shows, as well as edit film subtitles. (They come to me in English, but they often are not perfectly translated or have grammatical or spelling errors, so I fix them.)

P: What is your relationship with writing and how has it evolved?

M: I majored in screenwriting at NYU Film School, and that was my focus for 15 years. I came very, very close to getting a movie made, but two directors died on me in a row and I took what turned out to be a very long break. I then switched to magazine writing, and edited a national publication for gay men. Then I stopped working because of HIV, and got into drugs, but did keep writing poetry. In 2004 I spent 9 months in prison, and wrote letters home rather prolifically. They formed the basis of my memoir, Ink from the Pen. After my release, I blogged extensively, both personally and as a journalist. I got a M.A. in Creative Writing in 2013, and my Master’s Thesis was a screenplay, The Exiled Heart. Through it all, I have always written short stories, the best of which are in Lost and Found in the Prose Bookstore.

P: What value does reading add to both your personal and professional life?

M: They say a good writer is a good reader, and I think this is true. But it’s also a challenge for me to read as much as I’d like because I often feel I should use that time to be writing. (I’m 58, and way behind schedule!) That’s why I do most of my non-internet reading on the stationery bike at the gym. It’s amazing how many books you can read in a year just by devoting 90 minutes a week to it.

P: Can you describe your current literary ventures and what can we look forward to in future posts?

M: Completing Ink from the Pen was huge for me, and I’m trying to find a literary agent to shop it to traditional publishers. I will keep adding pieces to my other three books in the Prose bookstore, and will continue work on the prequel to Ink – which documents the long and gradual arc of mendacity and addiction that lead to my incarceration.

P: What do you love about Prose?

M: Well, first the community – it’s amazingly supportive. I have yet to post anything that does not get read and commented on favorably – which I also try to do for others as much as possible, particularly the Poets in Prison.

But it is the bookstore that has put a great anxiety of mine to rest. I have finally found one repository for all of my eclectic work. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I know my work will live on forever on one bookshelf on the internet. And if I never write a bestseller in this lifetime, who knows, I may become a sensation in some Star Trekian world of the future, where a vast intergalactic computer scans literature from the previous 3000 years for every reader’s taste.

P: Is there one book that you would recommend everybody should read before they die?

M: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It is a perfect book.

P: Do you have an unsung hero who got you into reading and/or writing?

M: My fourth grade teacher, Miss Mitchell, assigned us to write a short story as our semester assignment. I was pretty sure after finishing mine: The Black-Framed Letter (about the French underground – which amusingly, I thought was actually located underground), I knew I was going to be a writer.

P: Describe yourself in three words!

M: Funny. Clever. Compassionate.

P: Is there one quote, from a writer or otherwise, that sums you up?

M: “It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'”

–W. Somerset Maugham

P: What is your favourite music, and do you write or read to it?

M: Movie scores – Alexander Desplat in particular I really love to write to. And of course sometimes you just have to take a break and dance to Marvin Gaye.

P: You climb out of a time machine into a dystopian future with no books. What do you tell them?

M: I’d ask for a pen and paper and start writing one, of course. (Everybody must say that.) I suspect I’d call it: “The Super Brand-New Testament.”

Of course, I might have to teach them to read and probably re-invent the printing press, so it could take a while.

P: Do you have a favourite place to read and write?

M: My computer is in my bedroom office. As a matter of practicality, it’s the only place I write. But I like it fine because I have a horrific case of A.D.D. and need to check Facebook, Prose, and Twitter every 7 minutes.

P: Is there anything else you’d like us to know about you/your work/social media accounts?

M: Read everything I post on Prose and like it. Retweet everything I post on Twitter (@marquismarq). Follow me on Facebook and slavishly comment on every post, only saying worshipful things. And buy my book. Lots and lots of copies.

Well, you heard the man! Follow him! Read him! Adore him! Seriously, go check him out, you won’t be disappointed. Get those eyes opened up to stuff you may not know about.

And again we implore you: we want more Prosers for this feature, so if you like it, then please suggest people, and even volunteer yourselves. Prose wants you to feature in future Friday Features. So c'mon, get busy and get in touch on paul@theprose.com

we march to the rhythm of artillery:

clockwork men don’t tire.

we trample over vain empathy,

and hail death in the line of fire.

we shoot to the rhythm of our last heartbeats,

drop shells to burn and break.

we trample over love and joy

for life is ours to take.

we fall to the rhythm of our marching feet

we, killers of another name,

we trample over pride of returning home,

for greed is a treacherous game.