Writing about Writing about Writing

I felt “That Crafty Feeling” was an interesting chapter because it was very clear that Smith uses certain strategies deliberately to get her points across. (What a vague sentence! It gets better I promise). This chapter is in a unique position as a work of writing. The fact that is was originally a lecture to college students and then adapted to a print essay means that she had to design the piece to be easily understood orally, the first time it is heard; a listening audience member cannot choose her own pace or go back and repeat parts like a reading audience. The first strategy I noticed was how Smith coins her own terms and then defines them, which then become the basis for the entire essay: A “Macro Planner” “makes notes, organizes material, configures a plot and creates a structure—all before he writes the title page” (99) while a “Micro Manager” “Start[s] at the first sentence of a novel and…finish[es] at the last” (100).   Another example is “OPD,” “obsessive perspective disorder,” a “compulsive fixation on perspective and voice” that happens at the beginning of writing her novels. These terms do two things: first they create a shared language between her and the audience so a mutual understanding can occur as she builds on these concepts, and second it provides a bit of humor and builds a subtle camaraderie with the audience as we are let in on her personally created terms.

Along with her coined terms, Smith sets up a view of writers delineated in a series of dualities: either you are a Macro Planner or a Micro Manager; either you can’t read anything while you are writing your novel, or you want to read everything. This is the only part of her essay that I wasn’t sure if I agree with. I’m sure for the purposes of a one time lecture that Smith created these types to illustrate common tendencies in writers and exaggerated them for effect, to highlight the essence of them. Yet I am not sure if every writer could fall completely into one category or the other. It seems more realistic for writers to gravitate more toward one or the other, as if they were on a spectrum rather than clearly defined pigeon holes.  

Smith also uses metaphors extensively to illustrate her points. While I know metaphors are very commonly used in all sorts of writing, I think these metaphors were crafted specifically for an auditory audience. By inviting the listener to create an image in her mind, Smith makes her concepts more concrete and easily understood by the audience. For example: “Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even” (103). She uses the kind if imagery that most likely everyone in her audience will understand and be able to imagine vividly.            

Most obviously, Smith uses subsections with headings to break up and organize her lecture on writing. Again, I feel that she chose subsections pointedly for an auditory audience. It is easy when listening to a lecture to lose the thread of conversation if you zone out for a minute, or become impatient if you are not sure how long a speech will last, so I can imagine that hearing these subsections with a title summarizing them would be very helpful. Reading a written essay, it is more conventional to let your clarity, logic, and appropriate transitions do the work of keeping your reader on the journey you want her to be on through your piece. As a written work, though, the subsections also give the piece more movement and are useful if you want to go back quickly and find a certain section. They playfully set the essay in a sort of writers’ self help category that is still very personally reflective of Smith’s own process.