Approach to Policy

In the governmental policy world--in the State House of Maryland or Virginia or Alabama, or the White House--are speed and quality in conflict? To what extent?

And how is that different from the campaign trail? In political campaigning, are speed and quality in conflict?

I believe it was James Carville who said that "speed kills," and made the T-shirt. It seems to me that the 1992 Clinton for President campaign coined the strategy, "rapid response."

The invention of the mobile, practical cell phone and the Blackberry have quickened the pace of campaigns and policy offices since 1992, in my conjecture.

The Chiles Campaign Talks Renewable Energy

Bud Chiles, independent candidate for Florida governor 2010, has unveiled his plan for renewable energy in Florida. Chiles proposes that the Sunshine State utilize renewable sources for 20 percent of its energy, by the year 2020. The famous "20 by 20" rule. He also advocates energy conservation over the next decade.

Despite pressure to quit, Chiles insists he will push on and give these and other issues a voice.

Diction

"Diction," or word choice, is one of the basic tenets of writing. On that note, the word "elemental" is a fine synonym for "basic" and "fundamental." That fact that "elemental" reminds me of the script to Batman Begins is immaterial; what matters is that the other words are overused.

Draft 3

Making progress, about a third of the way through polishing up the third draft, adding more of my voice to the script.

A question, should a novel have a thesis? What about a biography?

Active and Passive Fronts

Of course, the conventional wisdom, per Strunk and White and Elements of Style, is that passive voice is bad writing...the extent of hyperbole on the subject tells you that it may very well be the root of evil. It "is" true that "to be" is a rather fluffy verb construction in the English language. The state of being is the stuff of fluff in all languages, I'd say. Mostly, it sets up adjectives in English. Of course, a poet or other creative writer might spice it with a noun or so, a la "Demography is destiny" or some such nonsense. But usually, we're talking about present tense and we're talking common, thin descriptors like "nice," "done," or "open."

But I think going far to the extreme of active voice can be just as dull. Instead of light and fluffy text you end up with dense, hard matter that readers can't get a look at for long. It becomes hard to concentrate. All nouns and verbs and no states of being can cause problems just as big as the converse.

No doubt, a surplus of active voice is a good problem to have. Once you've got a compact script rife with meaning, you can easily lighten it up.

It's like mixing a fruit juice and finding it too sweet. Just add water and you've got something delicious.

Yet another example, in a long line, of spots where moderation is a value of good writing.

The Thin Line Between Understatement and a Haymaker

Which is worse for a writer? Heavy-handed, punch-to-the-face argument? Or restraint to the extent that readers confuse it for disinterest and emotional vacuum? I'm not sure.

I think most writers are drilled so hard to avoid the didactic, we sometimes forget to speak. Most writing these days, whether on the back of a cereal box or on the internet, is indeed like a haymaker to the face.

There is a happy medium, moderation. And that's the aim for my final draft.

Understatement, reticence can be a marvel of coiled emotional power. Or it can bounce off the reader's psyche like a stone skipping along the water's surface. Understatement is a challenge for even masterful writers.

How to Write a Review

The pending publication of a book can conjure up nightmare scenarios for even the most sagacious and swaggering writer. What if my favorite reviewer/critic slices and dices my favorite excerpt? What will the The New York Times think? What if my reviewers write poorly but everyone accepts their scrawl as axiom?

Personally, I love film review as a genre. And I love film, of course. I love music and music criticism. Soundtracks have always enthralled me; Filmtracks is my favorite website for the skinny on what's good, new and old. The reviewers, in my estimation, use a sledgehammer to bash bad scores when necessary, but they can scribe lush eulogies, too.

Negative reviews can be downright hilarious, when they are intelligent--like this one of the Iron Man score.

Biographers and other writers can only hope to inspire such critical knifework when the great American biography turns out to be the literary equivalent of Hans Zimmer derivative fluff.