Bringing Death to Life

If an obituary can do this, so can writing about the living.

The Economist's obituaries are some of my favorite pieces of writing.

That sounds morbid, I'm sure. But take the recent obit for Sashimani Devi, the "last human consort of the god Jagannath."

Never heard of Sashimani Devi? What about Jagannath? That the obit editor of this major publication decided to focus on this topic for the week's one remembrance in print is a bit confusing. Yet, that's not unusual for this feature. And it's brilliant.

The prose is unpretentious and absorbing. And for a few minutes every week, the words transport you elsewhere. Here's the author describing Sashimani Devi's relationship with her husband:

"Each day she would rise early, bathe and go to the vast temple complex, where on the highest spire Lord Jagannath’s red pennants flew to show he was inside. There he was, her wooden spouse, freshly dressed and decked in flowers, on a high jewelled platform beside his sibling gods. She would arrive as his breakfast was served to him of coconut, sweets and ripe bananas, and afterwards she danced in the main hall for the visitors." 

Naturally about the person who died, these obituaries give you a glimpse into one person's existence.

But they're much more than that. They're deep commentaries on living and some of life's most difficult themes, from the personal to the international.

The author adds texture and personality to these themes. She makes big, intangible issues bite-size and digestible. She leaves you with firm takeaways and roots in the present despite looking to the past.

A reflection on the life of Naty Revuelta, Fidel Castro's mistress, blossoms into a story of unflinching devotion to a man and an idea, no matter the cost. It never mentions the thaw in U.S. relations with Cuba going on at the time of writing or revolutionary upheaval around the world, but it doesn't have to flaunt its relevance.

An offering on Billie Whitelaw, Samuel Beckett's muse, is supremely personal. The story about deep insecurity and success in the face of adversity is both inspiring and sad.

And then there's Sashimani, whose story highlights the struggle between modernity and tradition along with all sorts of questions about religion, devotion, love, and more.

All that is wrapped up in just three words in the quote above: "her wooden spouse." The narrative is about Sashimani's love of her husband, a god and "a mere stump of wood with round, staring eyes," as the author puts it. She was married to him at a young age and remained devoted to serving him her entire life, mourning the loss of her beloved when the piece of wood was replaced with a new one every twelve years.

This is writing that sheds light on the some of the world's deepest divisions, questions, and problems, but it doesn't do that in 15,000 words or with bullet points or through policy recommendations. These are engrossing and unique narratives that make very real some very abstract ideas.

If an obituary can do that, so can writing about the living.

Wait for It...

Don't leave your reader hanging.

If you like the book Cryptonomicon, you know how engaging it can be when a story is told in snippets that come together at the end.

The book jumps around between narratives, one in World War II and one closer to the present. There's overlap between the storylines that help make the time travel from one chapter to the next less jarring and more normal. It may jump around, but it is not quite disjointed.

Neal Stephenson, the author, gives you information in dribs and drabs. He's taking you on a journey, and he knows it. He draws you in, keeps you engaged, and expects you to read through to the end.

And boy is that end far away. The paperback I read a couple years ago is over 1,100 pages. And it's crammed full of stuff, from Van Eck phreaking to cannibals to cryptosystems to Douglas MacArthur.

Still, it works. It's not perfect, but it works.

You can't count on your readers to stick with it, though, particularly in the policy world.

That has in part to do with the fact that reading for pleasure and reading for information/analysis are different things in many ways. They aren't mutually exclusive—something that's pleasurable can also be informative and something informative is ideally pleasurable to read, and so on. But the reader approaches the material differently.

By and large, when reading for pleasure, I'm usually ready to go along for the ride. When reading for information/analysis, I want the bottom line.

This is of course compounded by the fact that we're all overwhelmed with stuff these days. 

I remember a piece in the New York Times a few years ago that talked about the amount of information Americans consume. I poked around and found it again—turns out the article is from 2009. So over five years ago, Americans were consuming 34 gigabytes of content and 100,000 words of information a day. I haven't looked at the full study yet. And I won't because now I need to get back to the point.

All this means that when you're writing to provide information or analysis, you want something that, as a good friend always says, breaks through the noise—that is engaging and a pleasure to read but still makes a case quickly and clearly. You don't want to wait until the end for everything to come together. You want to make sure the reader has at least a sense at the outset of where you're going to take him or her. You want to BLUF—put your bottom line up front.

Achieving that can be as colorful or as direct or as veiled as you'd like. If you're delivering key judgments to a decisionmaker, you probably want to BLUF directly, maybe even in bullet points (gasp!). If you're writing a 3,000-word piece aiming to raise awareness and inform your audience about an issue, you might want a more narrative style. If you're opening a research paper, you have more space and can ease into key points in the introduction—but even then it's good to have an executive summary of some sort that cuts right to the chase.

The bottom line is you don't want to be like Neal Stephenson and make your reader wait until the end for it all to come together (she says as she violates her own rule). And in the end, even he couldn't quite tie together all the threads he had unraveled. But more on that another day.

A Messy, Disjointed Account

The best writers I've worked with know when to ask for help.

I do love it when the Economist agrees with me. From a review on Islamic State books:

The pity is that [this is] such a messy, disjointed account. Their book feels at times like a jumble of notes hurriedly thrown together.

This is something I come across often in my work as an editor, and disjointed is a word I've used on more than one occasion to describe the phenomenon.

Many non-professional writers—a category in my mind that includes academics and think tankers who write for mass consumption sometimes—struggle to produce quickly and coherently. Ok, so some are never coherent. But assuming they are, it's difficult to cram a ton of field research or archive-diving into an approachable narrative at any time, let alone on a tight deadline. I sympathize.

But a key point that some of these authors miss is that it is necessary to be not just a writer but an editor too. The ability to take a step back, get some space from your words, and then go in for a 30,000' look is a supremely important skill. If you want to reach your audience, it's as important as those years you spent learning how to dissect Weber or conduct an interview in a conflict zone.

Yes, your mind is sharp. You have an important message the world needs to hear. You have the capacity to tell your story in an effective and accessible way.

That, however, takes effort. It takes trying. It takes failing. And above all it takes being open to change and observation from a distance.

The best writers I've worked with know this. They're passionate about their work and attached to their words and they even have egos, but they know good, deep, lasting writing is an iterative process. They're scientific about it, gathering feedback and course-correcting along the way, sure they won't get it right on the first go-round.

Of course, not every writer is capable of taking that space every time. Sometimes, you're on a tight deadline and you're just too close to the subject matter. The best writers I've worked with also know this—and know when to ask for help.