Well, I swan!

Poet with a Day Job has gone and given me an award for Powerful Words. I’m almost at a loss for words. (Almost). Poet is someone who I met through NaBloPoMo, and as much as I sometimes feel like Fred the Baker in the old Dunkin’ Donuts commercials (”Time to NaBloPoMo”), the opportunity to meet and read writers like Poet is more than worth the effort.

The rules are that I am to “Name five people I would like to give this award to, and three things I believe are necessary to make writing good and powerful. Recipients, you do the same!”

So, three things that make writing good and powerful to me:

1. Truth. More than grammar, more than syntax, more than all the imagery in the world, honesty is key. Are you writing from the heart, in line with your internal compass? Or are you trying to write what you think others will like? It doesn’t matter what you write, if it’s not coming from a place inside you, it’s not honest.

2. Not being afraid of simplicity. Admittedly, I have a personal bias against highly-constructed language. I am a Billy Collins fan, not Keats. But the idea of simplicity extends not just to language– it also extends to the ideas you are trying to convey. There are lots of complex ideas out there, and it’s not always possible (or desirable) to express them in the terms of the lowest common denominator, but have you done what you could to identify the component parts of an idea, to try to see how they fit together, and then crafted your essay, your explanation, your sentence, accordingly? Or are your readers presented with a Gordian knot, that they’re left to untangle, alone? Is leaving them to untangle the knot the point of the writing? Or is having them understand and have their own thoughts about the idea (whether they agree or not?) the desired outcome?

3. Self-awareness. This is maybe part of honesty, but the concept is also important as its own thing. When you choose your words, are you doing so after reflecting on whether you’ve done as you say, or tried to do as you say? You don’t have to have succeeded– some of the best writing comes from an awareness of failure. But the awareness matters.

Five folks who have powerful words:

1. SheShe
2. NYJLM
3. NinjaPoodles
4. Moving Right Along
5. Chicken and Cheese