Writing Tips from Silent Mic (aka Spottless Marxx)

I’m 52 and have had quiet a full life. A life that has included many rigorous writing lessons. My first and hardest was from my High School English teacher, Ms. Williams, who flunked me twice before finally giving me a “C-“ so I could graduate. She was the only black teacher in our almost all white public school and one of the few black people in our almost all white town. A town with deep roots in the hippie and, later, new age spiritual movement known for organic health foods, psychedelic drugs and alternative medicine and religions... but not discipline. 

Although I grew up in mostly Latino low income housing projects (another story) she really stood out in this idyllic world filled with beautiful laid back yuppies with perfect tans who were really into fitness and hugs. She was short, fat, grumpy and very disciplined when it came to writing. At the time, I despised her for it. Today I love her for it. 

Beside pummeling us with grammar, Ms. Williams also taught us the basic structure of a five paragraph academic paper: 1) Introduction, 2) Three supporting ideas / paragraphs and 3) Conclusion, with each paragraph being a microcosm of the whole, having a similar five sentence structure. 

What I remember the most, however, were her teachings on emphasis and rhythm. Things I’ve never heard from anybody else, then or now. It was important to her that we knew and understood that we weren’t tasked with faithfully re-creating the actual world we live in with words but, instead, creating a model. We learned the three universal principles of modeling behavior: 1) Deletion 2) Distortion and 3) Generalization. In other words, she taught us “the map is not the terrain.” 

The key to making a good map was being in control of these principles and making conscious decisions about what we manipulated and controlled through emphasis. According to her the most important ideas should go first. The most important sentences are the first and the last. I re-wrote my first sentence of this document when I remembered that lesson. The most important words, according to her, are the words at the end of each sentence. She would highlight the last word of every sentence we wrote and make us rewrite it if the last word was boring. The most important word of all was the very last. I also vividly remember her drilling us to vary our sentence length and use active verbs. The previous sentence said “drilled.” I just changed it to please her ghost. 

As some of you are already aware, around this same time I would have been destroyed from the inside out had I not been rescued by a band of drug dealing hoodlums on skateboards. As a moody poor kid on the outskirts of this pristine and wealthy college town, I was an insecure misfit yearning to belong. I had almost given up trying when I was adopted into the “do it yourself” ethic of punk rock and graffiti. I learned to embrace my informal education gathered bit by bit from thousands of hours of watching TV, reading comic books and experimenting with drugs and alcohol. 

Before becoming a punk, I had dreams of becoming a world class filmmaker. The more I learned about that path, however, the more I realized a poor kid like me had almost no chance of making it to the top. Living in Hollywood for the last 10 years has only reinforced this early impression. I’ve come to experience first hand that the film industry is not only dominated by white men, many have gone to expensive film schools and started off as interns with long hours and low (or no) pay. Their wealthy parents have had to subsidize their near mandatory apprenticeships / initiations. What I also figured out during my punk days was the accessibly and affordability of words and paper. I discovered zines! Since most punks couldn’t afford merchandise and magazines (we saved our meager funds for vinyl albums distributed out of the back of the vans of our music idols) we made our own “do it yourself” hand painted t-shirts and xeroxed publications. 

Although I’ve done much writing on a professional level since then, I am still to this day, more proud of my zines than any of my “professional” writing. They defined me as both a writer and a person! 

My next big lesson in writing was as a radio journalist. In short (beyond what I already learned about emphasis from Ms. Williams) journalism is all about efficiency. Although I worked in the realm of non-corporate community radio I was constantly being encouraged to produce what was described to me as a clear, natural and professional sounding news product. What that meant was hours and hours of editing interviews, removing any and all “umms”, pauses, interruptions, awkward phrasing and, most importantly, “cutting to the chase." In other words, eliminating all tangential information and making people sound concise and articulate even if they didn’t actually speak that way. It still fascinates me that nearly every person I interviewed believed that is how they actually spoke. Pro editing tips I constantly struggled with also included the unofficial requirement that no single soundbite exceed nine to fifteen seconds (much shorter today). Anything longer than that was considered indulgent and distracting. If you haven't seen the movie ROMA I highly recommend it. When I hear people criticize the extraordinary long shots in that graceful film it reminds me of the criticism I used to take in the newsroom. This process of making things “professional” was one of the reasons I got out of journalism. It was particularly painful when I was interviewing nuns who were organizing labor in the unholy maquiladora factories in Latin America that NAFTA gave birth too. These strong but peace loving women were receiving government sanctioned death threats as a reward for addressing toxic working conditions, extremely low pay and violent union busting. Meanwhile I’m being forced to censor them to make sure they sound “clear and natural” to respect my audiences short attention spans.  I'm not saying this is wrong. I appreciate journalists more than ever now that they are being demonized & attacked by elected officials, arrested by dictators and even killed. One of my favorite protest signs I've been noticing says "Then they came for the journalists and after that... we don't know what happened." Nonetheless, you've probably already guessed that I'm the wrong person for making complex realities bite sized and digestible.  

A few years after leaving radio, Blogger was created and it was all the rage but had many critics warning of the "Vanity Press.”  Back then I didn’t think too hard about what "vanity press" actually meant but certainly agreed it was tasteless... and probably something I should be doing. Years later Blogger has gone the way of AOL and MySpace but maybe it's only problem is that it was ahead of it's time? I currently spend many hours watching strangers from all around the world on my phone talk about their menstrual cycle, do their laundry, draw a picture, rant, rave, dance, feed their bird and pet their cat. And I’m not alone. A literal army of  virtual peeping toms are doing the same thing. Why? I think it’s because we crave all that vain, overindulgent, tangential and awkward information that has ended up on the cutting room floor without our knowledge or permission. We’re tired of being force fed rehearsed and hollow talking points coming from corrupt politicians and corporations. We’re not interested in “clear, natural and professional” ... we want the awkward, ugly and often boring truth!