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Subject:Re: Technical vs. other writing From:JIMCHEVAL -at- AOL -dot- COM Date:Mon, 19 Oct 1998 12:43:42 EDT
In a message dated 98-10-19 10:37:06 EDT, G HART writes:
<< The problem with my technical writing background is that it
emphasizes brevity and simplicity to the point that I consciously
have to switch gears to do other forms of writing. For example, I
have to resist the urge to eliminate metaphor and complexity from my
fiction, >>
Actually Willa Cather and Hemingway did that too. For a certain kind of
fiction, that's the very definition of good style. And on one of the actor's
lists I belong to, I was going crazy because the acting teachers on the list
insisted on posting lectures which (though they didn't realize it) completely
buried the points they were trying to make.
Any writer in any style who's going to leave in all those metaphors and
complexity better be damned sure they have the energy of a Marcel Proust or a
T. C. Boyle to back it up. Otherwise, I find the discipline of technical
writing quite transferable in the sense of learning to communicate
knowledge/experience to the reader rather than indulging one's own verbal
hedonism. "Kill your darlings."
By the way, for newcomers to this list, my passing remark when I joined (about
a year ago) that I'd become a TW because of Amy Tan (who had been one) kicked
off a LONG discussion about literary vs. technical writing. See archive for
immensely more.
