Robert Cormack

7 years ago · 4 min. reading time · 0 ·

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Writing and the Art of Reduction.

Writing and the Art of Reduction.

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This isn’t about losing weight or getting rid of the clutter. This is about words. I can’t tell you how many words I’ve written in my career. Millions? Billions? I don’t know. Take 45 years, throw in long days and nights. What does that add up to? I haven’t the slightest idea. And I don’t care.

People keep asking, “How many words do you write a day?” It’s like asking how many times you’ve been kissed. The number means nothing. Some are good, some are bad, some are nothing more than a touching of lips. All that matters is the kiss that stays in your mind. The same applies to words.

If people don’t remember our words, we’ve written too much. I know Hemingway said, “You learn to write by writing.” He wasn’t talking about volume. He was talking about distillation. From the many, we value the few.

“Minarets stuck up in the rain out of Adrianople across the mud flats. The carts were jammed for thirty miles along the Karagatch road. Water buffalo and cattle were hauling carts through the mud. No end and no beginning.”

Dizzy Gillespie once told a young trumpet player, “It isn’t what you play, it’s what you leave out.” It’s the pause that sticks in people’s minds, the distance between notes. Silence can say a million things.

Have you ever been out in the country at night? You see thousands of stars and say, “Why don’t I see these in the city?” You listen to the silence, the sound of chirping, the breeze. You say, “Why don’t I hear this in the city?”

You don’t because of the noise, the vibration, the lights. They’re the clutter if civilization. They work their way into everything in our lives, our writing, our music, the shows we watch on television.

Gillespie — and all great jazz players — believed in the importance of notes. Miles Davis said he never gave everything in a performance. Notes were too important. What we got was a distillation of years, what Davis decided we needed to hear.

To him, the rest was immaterial, nothing but noise, vibration and lights. Only years of playing taught Davis what to leave out. How many notes? Millions? Billions? The number isn’t important. What he left out is all that matters.

I spent years distilling words for a living. I’d take hundreds of clinicals, turning them into a few hundred words. It was brevity for money. Along the way, I learned what many writers — including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Salman Rushdie—realized about copywriting: the economy of words.

Rushdie once said in a speech that a friend convinced him to go into advertising because it “was easy.” He soon discovered it wasn’t easy. When it’s a job with deadlines, with a client expecting something good, words don’t come as fast as you’d like. But you learn what it means to write, to reduce words, and know which ones sell.

“I wrote for Chevrolet,” Elmore Leonard once said. “Advertising’s hard because you’re confined to such a small space. It’s nothing like novel writing. There you can let your mind wander and words flow. Advertising is sticking to script. You can’t go off in different directions. You have to be very clear.”

When Raymond Carver presented his manuscript “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” to his editor, Gordon Lish, Lish reduced it by forty percent and rewrote six of the endings. Carver went along and the book was — and is — a masterpiece.

Years later, under the influence of friends and other authors, he sent Lish a letter: “I have always respected your opinion, but please, please don’t edit my work so much.” Lish sent back his reply: “So be it.”

That ended their association. While Carver would create some superior stories, like “Where I’m Calling From,” he also published a collection of his work in original form. For the most part, the stories were too explanatory, too rambling. He’d put back what he should have known to leave out.

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” will always be Carver’s definitive work in my mind. To compare it to jazz, it had the space, the distances, the notes that spoke millions of things. “Gazebo” alone says more in its six pages than entire novels.

“That morning she pours Teacher’s over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.”

Someone once described Charles Bukowski’s manuscripts as “typewriter keys practically going through the page.” He wasn’t writing to edit. His words were already edited in his mind. If there’s economy, it’s a writer trained in his own form of reduction, a voice saying, “I’ll give you what I think is right.”

“Robert’s first desire — when he began thinking of such things — was to sneak into the Wax Museum some night and make love to the wax ladies. However, that seemed too dangerous. He limited himself to making love to statues and mannequins in his sex fantasies and lived in his fantasy world.”

Before you say, all you’ve given me are men writing like men. What about women in advertising, or women writing in general? Haven’t they given us what you call “distillation of words”?

This is from Mary Wells Lawrence, possibly the greatest copywriter of her generation. Besides forming Wells, Rich and Greene, and creating the famous “I [love] New York” campaign, she wrote an autobiography that shows she’s still capable — at 83, no less— of clear, picturesque writing that respects the word and the “silences.”

“I was working at McCann-Erickson for the money, for the little black dresses that showed off my Norwegian legs, for my baby daughters’ smocked dresses from Saks, and for an apartment larger than I could afford, but then I met Bill Bernbach, and he made a serious woman out of me.”

Like everything she wrote, Mary Wells Lawrence never left a word out of place or a thought too loosely described. To me, she’s the epitome of the term “I meant every word I said.”

And, like her, we should mean every word we say, nothing more and nothing less. Why add to the massive tonnage of what’s already out there? When I said that Miles Davis only “gave us the notes we needed to hear,” I meant that as a calling. Every jazz musician, every writer of any note has taken their craft as a calling. It was never to show how many words you could write. It was how many words you could make count.

I’ll leave you with my favourite eulogy, a piece Hunter S. Thompson wrote for Rolling Stone on the death of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon. No writer of this or any other generation could champion the thoughts of so many in such a terse remembrance of a man we referred to as “Tricky Dicky.”

“Richard Nixon is gone now, and I’m the poorer for it. He was the real thing — a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout.”

Have you learned the “Art of reduction”? Do you believe we should all write “only the notes we need to hear?” Let me know at: rcormack@rogers.com

Robert Cormack is a freelance copywriter, novelist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Yucca Publishing or Skyhorse Press for more details. Coming soon, my collection of short stories “Would You Mind Not Talking to Me?” I’ll keep you posted.

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Comments

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #16

Thanks for reading, Lada \ud83c\udfe1 Prkic#19

Lada 🏡 Prkic

7 years ago #15

I am glad that the comment thread on Devesh's article, Writing Is about Writing, brought this post to my attention. I am not a person of many words and I do believe we should all write "only the notes we need to hear". These sentences resonate with me the most: "It was never to show how many words you could write. It was how many words you could make count. We should mean every word we say, nothing more and nothing less". Thank you for this buzz, Robert Cormack.

Devesh 🐝 Bhatt

7 years ago #14

Learn to write by writing. It resonates. Maybe when something worth.the stretch for meaning comes along i reach the point of getting it edited by someone else. For now, i will keep writing. Thanks

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #13

#13
More than a tweet, less than a ton. I think brevity is something you achieve, not something you aim for.

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #12

#12
Quite true, Praveen, but as I mentioned to Phil, I'm not talking about long or short. I'm talking about respecting what should and shouldn't be there. If it takes a thousand words, and you're sure it can't be said any simpler, then that's the length.

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #11

#10
My point isn't the length, it's understanding the "notes" that should and shouldn't be played.

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #10

Interesting stuff, Rod. Thanks.#9

Phil Friedman

7 years ago #9

Just to keep the pot stirred: Brevity is over-rated And short ain't always sweet. Sometimes the expression of a great idea Takes more than just a tweet. With all due respect to Robert. :-)

Phil Friedman

7 years ago #8

Longer isn't always wronger,

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #7

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/#4

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #6

#5
I'll check it out, @Rod Loader.

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #5

Sorry, . I was so close.#3

Lisa Gallagher

7 years ago #4

I never heard the quote about Nixon Before. Good read Robert Cormack

David B. Grinberg

7 years ago #3

#2
Yep. But wrong David...

Robert Cormack

7 years ago #2

It helps to keep it short Charles David Upchurch#1

David B. Grinberg

7 years ago #1

Nice buzz, Robert. Bravo for brevity!

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