WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY?

Last time I wrote about how to become a writer. Since then, I saw an interview on PBS with Nikki Giovanni, and accomplished poet and teacher. She said something that was so intelligent, I’m embarrassed that I didn’t think of myself.

It is this: It’s not how to become a writer that is the most important question. It’s what do you have to say?

Lynne Truss, in Eats Shoots and Leaves, makes punctuation sexy. She observes that these days we have so many great communication tools, but the problem is that so few people have anything important to say. It’s unfortunately true that common sense is so rare.

I can’t recommend the book highly enough. It’s short, reads very well, is very funny, and is true. I read the whole thing cover to cover one Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia waiting for customers to come by an open house I was holding as a favor to my broker. It was a beautiful house but she was having trouble moving it because its address was in kind of bad odor. No one came, but my time paid off because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have read the book, or at least not as soon as I did.

Next time: Showing v. Telling.