Thoughts on Pierre Berton
Pierre Berton has died in the past year, as did Jack McClelland. The
writer and the publisher. Two of Canada's best, gone within a year!
Back in July of last year, I made a point of reading “The Joy of
Writing: a guide for writers, disguised as a literary memoir ...”
published in 2003, in which he lets us know why and how he wrote the 50
books he did I wanted to especially find out the answers to these
questions, thinking that it would give me an insight of why and how I
write, and I am happy to say, it did just that.
The book has seven chapters, each of them concerned with some aspect of
writing, such as research in Chapter Four, and writing and rewriting in
Chapter One.
This is a textbook of how one person tackled the process of writing as a journalist, and then as a creative non-fiction writer.
The one rule that I have found to be true in journalism is that you
write the copy as soon as you return from the event or complete the
interview. Write the material while it is still fresh in your mind and
while you can still remember the context in which an event took place
or in which a quote was said - wait too long, and all of that is gone.
And these days, you can send the copy in at anytime, in a variety of
formats.
He had over 30 rules for writing, which he gained throughout his career. For example, three of the rules
include: know and understand your audience, save everything you write,
and recycle everything. I might add that the highlights of my copy of
the book are noted with coloured pointy things which stick to the side
of the page, and are more useful than having pieces of paper falling
from the book. I have six of these pointy things at really important
places in the book.
For example, he says on page 106 that a person had given them a talk
when he was at Macleans (magazine) that you don't have to start at the
beginning of every piece, but can start in the middle, end, or
wherever, and then bring it all together in the end. And this is true.
I discovered this when working for a newspaper on a regular basis, and
when I hit a bumpy space in my copy or simply did not have the opening
sentence zing out at me, I simply wrote down everything I knew, and
then wrote the article. I believe that this saved me from writer's
block, and even today, 16 years after starting as a journalist, it
still works.
His book ends with 30 rules - but its rules #8 and #11 which I see as
being the most useful. Recycle and read the good stuff before you begin
to write, and read as much of it as possible.
Early on, we writers of Canadian creative non-fiction realize that we
need to make three articles out of that really big one we wrote a
couple months ago, or else take a large subject, break it down into
groupings, and write an article on each one. I knew very early on that
I needed to do that in order to make any progress in my work. So I
guess one could call freelance journalists the first to use the
principles of recycling.
And the other rule is to read the good stuff before you start to write.
This isn't always possible, but as long as you read them as you go
along, I think it's okay.
I like to read for the descriptive passages - how people, places, and
things are described in such detail that I can remember them for always.
The one thing which I do not like about the book is his lack of angst
that most of us suffer. Oh yes, he does have angst from time to time,
for example, wondering if people will like his work, but we have all
suffered through that. But it's the angst that we feel when we have to
get up in the morning and face the paper and wonder how the words get
from our head to the sheet and wonder how many more times we can do
this. How many words are in that head of mine which can't be expressed
any other way except to put them on paper??? The question is not raised
by him in the book, and therefore not answered. Have faith in the
process, I guess, would be the answer, and so far, there is lots of it
around as we all keep working.
I would recommend this book to fellow non-fiction writers in Canada. If
for nothing else but to read about another writer's experiences, his
ups and downs, and aspirations for the career that he would eventually
have in his lifetime.
“Berton, Pierre The Joy of Writing: A guide for writers, disguised as a literary memoir ...”
ISBN 0-385-65998-9 Anchor Canada (a division of Random House of Canada Limited)
Rating: 1 through 10 pencils with 10 pencils being the best a book can be - this book is 8 pencils - just for the rules!
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880 words
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