Who Are You?

If you're a Syrian dissident in Homs writing a blog about the uprising there, I can see why you might want to be anonymous. But if you're a guy in Indiana writing about what whiskeys you like, why all the secrecy?

When I check out a new whiskey blog, I invariably want to know something about the person or persons writing it. I look for an 'about' tab, or something similar. Sometimes they are obvious, sometimes the information is there but you have to dig for it. Often there is nothing, no biography, no statement of purpose beyond "I started this blog to write about things I like to write about."

So many people are writing whiskey blogs these days, I need some criteria for deciding which ones to follow. Sure, one can judge the writing quality, and I will discard something if it's poorly written. (Life's too short.) But in a crowded field, shouldn't you do something to try to stand out? What's your point of view? Your raison d'être?

If you've decided to write anonymously, tell me why.

Does all this casual anonymity bother anyone else? Assuming you like this blog, would you like it just as well if you had no idea who writes it? Would you like it better? Especially if the blogger offers opinions, and reviews are the mainstay of most other whiskey blogs, I want to know the writer's qualifications. Is that weird? Or are qualifications also passe?

From the earliest days of the internet, people have used handles. When bandwidth was dear, a unique handle was better than a full name as a way to distinguish people with similar names from each other. It wasn't necessarily about anonymity. In many cases, the community was small and the participants all knew each other through other channels.

On bulletin boards, you see the same names often enough that you get to know them as individuals even if you don't know anything tangible about them. You learn who usually has something worthwhile to say and who doesn't. You can do the same thing with blogs, I suppose.

Writing anonymously is almost unheard of in old media, except in the case of news reporting. The Economist, which I love, is rare in that no writer is ever credited. Even commentators use aliases, house names whose bearers can change without notice. You're supposed to accept the credibility of the institution itself. Okay, fine, but The Economist is 169 years old. "Sippy Likes Whiskey" is not.

Isn't there something to be said for signing your name to your ideas? Claiming them? Being willing to defend them? Don't you tend to take yourself more seriously when you have some exposure? Does anonymity make people more likely to behave irresponsibly?

Anonymity on the web seems so much the rule that people don't even think about it. I wish they would. That's all I'm saying.

Writing About Writing, Part Four.

I can’t say I’ve gotten very much from writing teachers, but one of them in college used to say, "writers write." I didn’t get it at the time, until I began to meet people who wanted to 'be' a writer, but never wrote anything. I learned the difference between being and doing, and that you don’t do what you are, you are what you do.

There is nothing wrong with writing 'for the drawer,' as people used to say. Many writers keep journals that may contain bits and pieces they will use, but the journals themselves are for their eyes only. Today, the internet gives us another way to go. Making your writing available to an audience, even if it doesn’t find one, is slightly different than writing for yourself. You are, at least, bringing the idea of readers into the equation.

Even today it is rarely a good idea to publish a first draft. Ideas are the same way. A writer I used to work with called it "first land visited." I’ve known too many people whose first idea is always their best because they give up so easily.

Writing About Writing, Part Three.

As I wrote last time, putting those two bits together – economy and craft – I learned that rewriting a sentence to shorten it by even one word is time well spent.

So when are you finished? Writing to strict deadlines is good discipline early in your career. Rewriting is good, but you can’t let yourself get too fussy about it. If you notice that you keep alternating the same two constructions of a particular sentence or phrase with each revision, that means you’re probably finished.

Setting something aside and coming back to it later is a good tip. The longer the better. You will see a lot that you want to change after an hour. You will see ten times more after a month.

If you are writing something for a blog, and you have this option, don’t hesitate to revisit and rewrite it even after it has been posted.

I reread my stuff so much I worry about narcissism.

But I also don’t believe I have ever rewritten something and made it worse. 

Writing About Writing, Part Two.

I learned one important lesson about writing from a sculptor. He explained that he didn’t create his art with his hands, he did it with his eyes and mind. The most important part of the creation process, he explained, is to look at what you have done, think about it, then make it better. As a sculptor, he emphasized that you have to look at the work from every angle; a good metaphor for what writers do too.

Many writers have made this observation. Vladimir Nabokov wrote, "I have rewritten - often several times - every word I have ever written. My pencils outlast their erasers."

Though this bit of wisdom is common, it may need to be impressed upon young writers since so many of today’s modes of expression demand and celebrate the spontaneous and unexamined.

Writers have always been impatient. Young writers especially tend to fall in love with their creations much too quickly. That has to be beaten out of you, as it was me. Today, you can publish as you write. No one will stop you. You have to stop yourself.

I have heard there were once people called editors who helped writers improve their works and become better writers. I don’t wish to disparage any editors with whom I’ve worked, but I rarely get feedback and nobody is that good. It’s not the editor’s fault. They are not hired to do that. They are hired to commission writers who can write something that’s ready to publish. They have too many other responsibilities and don’t have time to give you much more than general impressions.

I have one editor who actually edits me from time to time, but he picks his battles. He only does it when the project is high profile. Again, no criticism is intended. He’d love to do it on everything if he could, but that’s not his job.

Putting those two bits together – economy and craft – I learned that rewriting a sentence to shorten it by even one word is time well spent.

Writing About Writing, Part One.

Since I graduated from college 37 years ago, I have made my living as a writer, but I haven’t written very much about writing. Why not? Well, I haven’t written very much about anything I wasn’t hired to write about. That has been the nature of my career.

But a few years ago I decided, career be damned, I will write more about the things I want to write about. (And the career largely has been damned, but that’s another story.)

Most of the things I’ve learned about writing that have served me well I did not discover on my own.

I learned the value of simple, direct, and economical writing from Ernest Hemmingway and, even more so, Kurt Vonnegut. Like me, Vonnegut started out as a copywriter. He noted that advertising writing is one kind in which personal style is discouraged. He said that was not necessarily bad.

As a writer, I justified a lot of my writing-for-hire as learning the craft. The craft is important. It’s not something to be taken lightly and you usually don’t master it overnight.

After 37 years I’m still learning the craft. Should that worry me? Shouldn’t I have mastered it by now?