MAKE EVERY WORD TELL
V� How to Write
Sometime in the 1960s, a young technical editor at a major American aerospace company wrote this memo to the writers whose work he was editing:
"Words are symbols that we should use as precisely and arrange as carefully as the symbols in a schematic diagram, tools that we should choose and use as carefully as we would use knives or axes � or dynamite. It's hard to do; a lifetime of using words doesn't make us good writers any more than years of driving make us automotive engineers. Wearing a coat makes no man a tailor. The best writers, the masters, are the most vigilant users of words � yet even they goof sometimes. Using words well is hard, the way that digging ditches is hard: the principle is easy; the practice never is."
Right!
Knowing a subject inside-out isn't enough to make anybody a writer. Knowing the language inside-out isn't enough to make anybody a writer, either. The ability to describe something or tell others about it isn't enough.
Writing clearly, accurately, effectively, and efficiently about even the subject closest to your heart and set deepest in your brain is a separate and significantly different chore, a skill that's related to learning, studying, and telling � but in a class all its own.
Most of us who have to write know the feelings of the boy whose teacher asked him what a vacuum is � he said "I've got it in my head, but I can't say what it is." These feelings never leave us. As we grow older, as we learn more things in deeper detail, and as we learn how to tell others about them, putting them into words gets easier. Our skill with words grows because we become more and more aware of their potential for skillful use and more alert to their potential for misuse. So there's
always more skill to develop and more mistakes to look-out for.
The first problem � getting started � is usually the toughest part of the chore. Horace was right:
"Dimidium facti qui coepit habit � to have begun is half the job."
Studying writing itself as a learnable craft means looking at it from two basic points of view:
1. What good writing is (goal, product).
2. How to develop skill at it (process, techniques).
To develop skill as a writer, you must
� Learn and use the right
principles.
� Learn and use appropriate
techniques.
� Handle
the right tools responsibly and well.
� Handle
the right materials responsibly and well.
� Practice,
practice,
practice,
practice,
PRACTICE.
We've already spent a lot of time on
a few of the principles:
� Natural, normal English speech is the natural foundation for good writing� but much easier. Writing requires much more discipline to compensate for its lack of peripheral signals of intended shades of meaning.
� A sentence is a group of words chosen and arranged to tell somebody about
something doing something.
� The reader reads a sentence word by word as he encounters them on the page.
There's more, of course.
� Writing is
rewriting � sometimes several drafts, not just a rough and a final draft.
� Mastery of rewriting your own sentences requires (a) the ability to isolate the
core sentence within a long, complex written sentence and (b) relating the grammatical (written) sentence to the "notional" sentence (the reality being described).
Writing is rewriting � Remember the myth of the "one draft" that everyone mistakenly assumes that a "real writer" writes, all neat and clean and ready for the reader. First, get your thoughts onto paper as fast as you can, just as they come to your mind. Never mind, for a while, their organization or the best words to use. Let the spelling go, for now, and the punctuation.
Just get everything down the best and the fastest that you can.
Then go back and shape it up. This is the time to pay close attention to organization (what to tell the reader first, next, after that,
etc), the best words to use, the best ways to arrange them in good sentences, how to spell the words, how to punctuate the sentences, and so on. Later on, I'll have some useful words on how to get ready for this phase of your writing � and how to go at it.
the core sentence � As you take another look at this sentence from the Henry James novel
The Ambassadors, (a) remember the definition of a sentence and (b) look for what this sentence says about
who did what. That's the core sentence:
"He left it to Miss Gostrey to name, with the fine, full bravado, as it almost struck him, of her �Mr. Waymarsh!' what was to have been what � he more than ever felt as his short stare of suspended welcome took things in � would have been, but for herself, his doom."
The core sentence in all that long string of words is
He left it to Miss Gostrey to name ... his doom. All the rest of James's full sentence is stuff tacked-onto it, to add supplementary meanings to James's basic sentence that
He left it to Miss Gostrey to name ... his doom.
As you write, you should (but won't always) begin with a
core sentence in mind. When you rewrite, you'll notice that some of your sentences are hard to read, and some don't even make sense. At your first rereading, you won't always know exactly
why. Find and isolate your core sentence � or discover that this or that long string of words doesn't have an identifiable core sentence � and the rest of your necessary rewriting will almost certainly become a lot clearer.
You may have to recast the sentence by changing the sequence of its elements. You may have to add words here or there, or delete some. You may be wise to make this or that long string of words two, three, or even more shorter sentences � even separate paragraphs, sometimes separated by other paragraphs. Whatever you have to do to it, to make the sentence at least make sense and preferably easy to read, will be both easier to see and easier to do, once you've found and isolated the
core sentence within it.
One editing or rewriting technique that I've found to be very helpful is going through a draft or manuscript in several separate, dedicated "passes," with each pass through the draft dedicated to a specific concept � its basic order of presentation, typographical errors, core sentences, and so on, down to spelling, punctuation,
etc. You're more likely to spot specific flaws when you're looking for them by kind, than you are if you're just reading your draft over and over without any specific editing or rewriting strategy. If you're just reading it, you're too likely to get caught-up in what you intend for it to say, too unlikely to see what it actually says, says poorly, or fails to say at all.
the grammatical sentence versus the notional sentence � After you've identified your core sentence, another thing to look for, as you rewrite each sentence, is whether the grammatical structure of your core sentence matches the reality (the notional sentence) that you want that sentence to relate as clearly as possible. Remember, once again, that a sentence tells somebody about
something doing something sometimes
to something, etc.
When you write your first draft, you'll write each sentence as the thought works itself out of your mind and into your sequence of words � which may well
not be the best sentence that you can write, to best tell your reader most clearly what you want to tell him. Your strongest sentence will relate the grammatical structure directly to the actual
what did what that you're writing about. For example, if a friend of mine flies his Cessna 182 over my house, he,
the pilot, is the
somebody who
did something. He is the
notional subject or the subject of the
notional sentence � the reality that I want to write a sentence about. Therefore, the strongest sentence that I can write will have
him as the
grammatical subject of the sentence.
But as I'm writing my first draft, the Cessna may be the first thing that comes to mind and thus the first thing that goes into my first-draft sentence �
The Cessna ...� which in reality was what my friend flew � is the
notional direct object. So if my first awkward stab at a sentence becomes
The Cessna was flown by the pilot, the only verb here is
was, and the notional subject (the pilot) is in this draft merely the object of the preposition
by. Weak!
I could've done even worse. If the first thing I'd thought-of was
flying, I could have written the even weaker sentence
The flying of the Cessna was accomplished by the pilot, making the notional verb
fly the subject of the grammatical sentence,
was the verb, and both
Cessna and
pilot merely objects of prepositions. Even weaker!
In the actual event that I want my sentence to describe as clearly as possible,
the pilot is the notional subject (the
somebody who
did something),
flew is the notional verb (the
did something that he did), and
the Cessna is the notional direct object (the
to something that he did something to). So my rewritten sentence makes the grammatical subject, verb, and direct object match the notional � the actual, the reality� in each structural category �
The pilot flew the Cessna.
Throw-away writing is high among the several techniques for practice that a number of accomplished writers have found to be helpful. In a bit, I'll show you a technique that combines throw-away writing with another helpful preparation technique. Throw-away writing is just what the term implies � "unimportant" writing that you don't have any reason to keep or even to rewrite. But it's not really unimportant, and it certainly isn't a waste of your time. You use time that you otherwise might be wasting, and the practice helps you to develop your skill. With pen and paper, you simply write down whatever comes to your mind as you (for example) watch people walk by, or the rising sun light the mountains beyond your west window, or your impressions of the commercials you see on TV � anything. What you write about isn't the focus � writing as you think is the focus � pretty much the same as the purpose of my "riding" my stationary bike isn't to go anywhere on it but to keep my withering legs from failing any further and perhaps even to regain some of their lost strength.
An old technique of mine � which I should revert-to after years of neglecting it � is an adaptation of the motion-picture "story board." I cut sheets of college-ruled notebook paper precisely into thirds (top, middle, and bottom) and carried a sheaf of these "note sheets for narrow-minded writers" with me everywhere. Had a sheaf on the night stand, with a good pen and a flashlight. Whenever I thought of something that "should go into the book," I wrote that thought on the top sheet (front and back, on more sheets if I needed them) and put that sheet at the bottom of the sheaf.
It's important, in this technique,
not to write cryptic notes like
include common problems with misalignment but to
capture the entire thought, in as much detail as possible, in sentences and paragraphs that you write just as if you expect to use them in your eventual draft.
After I had a large stack of these random notes, in the order that their thoughts came to mind, I cleared room on the living-room floor and went through them all � arranging them
in the order that they made the best sense. This gave me not only the natural outline to follow but also showed where I needed to fill-in gaps and voids and where they needed smooth transitions from one subtopic or observation to the next.
This, by the way, is the right way to think of outlines � let your material establish its outline. Any outline that you make-up in a vacuum will cause you much grief as you try to make your presentation fit. You'll leave-out a lot that you should include � simply because you didn't think of it when you made-up your outline, and as a natural, inevitable consequence, your outline doesn't remind you to include it.
Two prewriting "warm-up" exercises that I've found to be worth my weight in gold are (a) well chosen preparatory reading and (b) working crossword puzzles. The first exercise helps immensely to shape my mood for writing, and the second helps to kick-in the knack of lexical agility � the ability to more easily use different words as necessary in rewriting. I often buy packs of old crossword-puzzle magazines and do puzzles as long as I can stand to do them.
Find yourself some good writing that you enjoy reading over and over, and you'll find that without trying consciously to imitate those writers' styles, you'll be better attuned to writing good, clear prose of your own.
And enjoy the process.I especially recommend the war writings of Ernie Pyle (
Here is Your War and
Brave Men), the laymen's theological writings of C S Lewis (
The Screwtape Letters, The Four Loves, Mere Christianity), and the series of memoirs by veterinarian James Herriot (
All Creatures Great and Small and several sequels). You can probably find any and all of these at moderate prices on
http://www.abebooks.com and other book-search sites. Any and all are excellent additions to anybody's bookshelves. (Oh, if only I could write like any one of this very readable trio!)
Whenever you have time to plan how you're going to say something, or even when you're just putting some thought in order before you file it away in memory, play around with saying it
in words of one syllable. The idea and main benefit of this exercise are the practice at rewording, not the final structure of your expression � the lexical agility again, plus the grammatical agility � the increasing ease of recasting your phrases, clauses, and sentences. You won't always be able to just yank a word like
conflagration or
confrontation out of your sentence and replace it with a single word like
fire or
fight, and you'll often have replace a phrase like
the orchestra conductor's baton with a longer one like
the stick in the hand of the man who leads the band, but the practice will do wonders for your rewriting.
Surprisingly often, you'll find that saying it in words of one syllable is also clearer and stronger. Words of one syllable can be powerful. Consider the simple strength of these paragraphs by Joseph A Ecclesine and Gelett Burgess:
Ecclesine:
"When you come right down to it, there is no law that says you have to use big words when you write or talk.
"There are lots of small words that can be made to say all the things you have to say, quite as well as the big ones. It may take a bit more time to find them at first. But it can be well worth it, for all of us know what they mean. Some small words, more than you might think, are rich with just the right feel, the right taste, as if made to help you say a thing the way it should be said.
"Small words can be crisp, brief, terse � go to the point, like a knife. They have a charm all their own. They dance, twist, sing. Like sparks in the night, they light the way for the eyes of those who read. They are the grace notes of prose. You know what they say the way you know a day is bright and fair � at first sight. And you find as you read that you like the way they say it. Small words are gay. And they can catch large thoughts and hold them up for all to see, like rare stones in rings of gold, or joy in the eyes of a child. Some make you feel as well as see: the cold deep dark of night, the hot salt sting of tears.
"Small words move with ease where big words stand still � or, worse, bog down and get in the way of what you want to say. There is not much, in truth, that small words will not say � and say quite well."
Burgess:
"This is a plea for the use of more short words in our talk and in what we write. Through the lack of them our speech is apt to grow stale and weak, and, it may be, hold more sham that true thought. For long words at times tend to hide or blur what one says.
"What I mean is this: if we use long words too much, we are apt to talk in ruts and use the same old, worn ways of speech. This tends to make what we say dull, with no force or sting. But if we use short words, we have to say real things, things we know: and say them in a fresh way. We find it hard to hint or dodge or hide or half say things.
"For short words are bold. They say just what they mean. They do not leave you in doubt. They are clear and sharp, like signs cut in a rock."
Before I forget to cover this very important point, let's talk a bit about lead sentences and paragraphs. Take-offs and landings deserve special attention whether you're flying an aircraft or writing a book or article. The "take-off" of your manuscript � the lead � is in some ways the most important part of the entire document. It's no exaggeration to say that your lead can make or ruin your document, or that it may be worth as much care and attention and skill as you bring to bear on all the rest of that document.
Until you develop a knack for writing good leads, practice repeatedly by writing, for everything that you write, every lead that you can think of. Try writing at least one of every kind of lead � there are at least nine commonly used kinds of leads � (a) a statement, (b) a question, (c) a description, (d) a narrative, (e) a dialogue, (f) an anecdote, (g) a statistic, (h) a quotation, and (i) a definition. Strive for the best lead
sentence that you can compose. The rest of your lead paragraph will usually then follow almost automatically. And a really good lead makes the rest of your draft much easier to write, just as it makes the reader more inclined to read it.
Here are some samples � not necessarily good ones � of the nine kinds of leads that I can think-of right now:
� statement � "Anyone can make a mistake."
� question � "Have you ever made this mistake?"
� description � "The rust on the sheet-iron roof of the mill stood in bright contrast to the green of the weeds that nearly obscured its dusty, cob-webbed windows."
� narrative � "A heavy-bodied bull elk with streaks of battle scars on his side stepped out of the brush into a small opening at the top of the ridge and drew-in a gust of breath to bugle his challenge to any other bull that happened to be in the upper Rye Creek drainage. As fast as I dared and as slow as I could force myself to move, I raised the Whelen to eye-level."
� or "The smell of elk woke me" (the shortest narrative lead that I ever wrote, I think, for "Elk Aren't Typical," in
Field & Stream).
One of the best narrative leads in literature is the first sentence and paragraph in the Ambrose Bierce short story, "The Horseman in the Sky." In a very few words, Bierce puts you there and lets you see what he has to show you. Look especially at his first sentence for all that it lays-out for you to "be there."
"One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861 a soldier lay in clump of laurel by the side of a road in western Virginia," Bierce wrote. He continued the lead paragraph with "He lay at full length upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge-box at the back of his belt, he might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of duty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, death being the just and legal penalty of his crime."
� dialogue � "�Hey, you can't do that here, you know!' the cop said.
�It's all right, officer,' the man replied. �She's me wife.'
�Oh, I didn't know.'
�Neither did I, until you turned-on that bloody torch.'"
� anecdote or joke � "Pianist and noted curmudgeon Oscar Levant, asked by his draft board whether he could take another human's life, answered �Friends and relatives, yes'"
� or "Sir Thomas Beecham, founder and conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, was not a great admirer of the music of the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. During a rehearsal, ... "
� or "A woman got huffy when her doctor told her she was too fat...."
etc.
� statistic � "Each year, forty percent of those affected by the AIDS virus ... "
� quotation � "�The difference between the
almost right word and the
right word is really a large matter� �tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.' � Mark Twain"
� definition � "�
pannier � 1. A large wicker basket,
esp a. One of a pair of baskets carried on either side of a pack animal....' (American Heritage Dictionary)"
Many good leads are combinations of these nine basic types. If you have to choose one or the other of two or more kinds of leads, you're a lucky and very able writer!
Generally, the dialogue lead is the strongest attraction to induce the reader to read further. But don't overdo it. Use two or a very few lines of conversation at first, and fill-in the rest of the exchange later if you find it necessary. The function of the lead is to launch the rest of the piece in such a way that the reader wants to read further. The art in this form combines (a) telling the reader something that somehow indicates or implies what's coming in the rest of your piece and (b) snagging his curiosity to make him eager see what else you have for him. If there's also no break, no discernible seam, between the lead and what comes next, you've written a good lead. Good leads don't come easy or often.
A little wit or humor can help immensely, especially if it fits the tone of the over-all writing. One lovely lead that I can only approximate, having only heard it quoted a couple of times, is the lead (two sentences) that begins a book,
Shod with Iron, the memoirs of a Border Patrol compadre of my friend Bill Jordan. As Bill loved to quote it, it goes something like this:
"When I reported for duty at my first Border Patrol post at Nogales, Arizona, I had a horse, a saddle, a Colt, a Winchester, all my teeth, and a hard-on. I still have the saddle."
Leads like that come just once, to one man, in all of eternity. That lead makes me want a copy of that book!
Many writers write their leads
after they've written their first drafts. The best lead is often the last part written. I prefer to get a good lead down
first, because just as it helps the reader focus his attention, so also does it help me focus mine. Once, a very natural lead came directly from the focus of my attention � in the preface to my book
Designing and Forming Custom Cartridges: "Anybody who knows me can tell you I don't know enough about cartridges to do a book like this all by myself."
The lead for each chapter of that book got much more of my time and attention � and sometimes more rewrites � than any other comparable chunk of prose in the chapter. If you get the feeling � as you read them � that I just reeled �em off easily in one fast draft,
great! That's one of the effects that I was trying for. The leads for the chapters of my next
Custom Cartridges book are what I dread � and look forward to � most of all.
The best leads are usually short� but it's a serious mistake to get the idea that
only short leads are good leads. The reader often needs a longer than usual introduction to a particularly unfamiliar or complex subject, especially if the lead is his first dip or sip of a book.
I've been having a tougher than usual time writing the introduction to the Powley-and-Howell book
Inside the Rifle (which is still in the works� my top priority right now)� especially the
lead into the introduction. So I wrote the first several drafts of the accursed introduction with several working leads, some of which are now deep inside the introduction, some of which have been given decent burials.
Who knows? Maybe the lead that
now starts the ball rolling will also give way to a better one later. For whatever it may be worth, here's my current lead to introduce readers to a book on the fundamentals of the interior ballistics of high-velocity rifles. (Note that I've used as many one-syllable words as I could� intentionally, for their simple strength.):
_______________________
INTRODUCTION
TWO MEN stand at the rail of a ship as she steams past a huge berg of ice in a far-northern sea. One man, who is not a man of science, sees the tip of ice that juts up out of the sea, and he gives no thought to how much more ice there may be, below the surface of the water, that he can not see. It is enough, to him, that what he sees is a threat to ships, and it brings thoughts of the sinking of the Titanic to the front of his mind � or he may see it only as a thing of beauty, a thrill to see, nothing more intricate or sinister.
The other man knows from science how much more ice there is, that does not show. If you can tell that man a certain few technical details, such as the temperature and salinity of the sea water and the temperature of the ice, he may then be able to calculate to a very tight percentage how much of the ice in that berg shows above the surface and how much more ice in the water below does not show.
None of these details may matter at all to the first man. The second man may mention them as technical �trivia� for the first man�s momentary interest. The first man may go home, later remember roughly what the second man had told him, and in telling others about what he saw, he may say (without an iota of dishonesty, just an inexact memory) at different times that there was �twice as much,� �three times as much,� �four times as much,� �seven times as much,� or �eight times as much� ice down there out of sight below the waves.
His friends, in turn, may later pass along to other friends his descriptions of that item of Arctic beauty, and in their retelling, they may further introduce their own technical inaccuracies. Eventually, with enough repeated retelling, the hearers inevitably come to accept as �common knowledge� whatever erroneous proportion of unseen underwater ice their folk lore tells them supports the dramatically beautiful visible portion.
A man of science can then come among them, mention the correct proportion of the visible ice to the submerged portion, and immediately find himself to be considered �ignorant of the facts� � or at least doubted by one and all who �know better� � simply and solely because what he relates is at odds with their �common knowledge.�
This is the state of the �common knowledge� of interior ballistics among handloaders today � including many technically educated handloaders who are well versed in one and another branch of science other than the ballistics of artillery and small arms.
______________________
Too long? Honestly, I still can't tell.
In an earlier post in this series, I mentioned editing a draft in several separate passes rather than trying to spruce it up in every way in only one "flock-shooting" pass. One of these passes � after you've made all your word changes � should be a check for misspellings and typos. There's a neat old trick to avoid getting your attention caught-up in the flow of thoughts, to concentrate your focus on the spelling of each word:
go through the draft word by word backward, from the last word to the first. That way, you look at each word
as a separate item, not as a link in a chain of thought. You're more likely to see each word
as it is, not as your brain knows it should be, so you'll more easily and quickly spot typos and misspellings.
Writing is
rewriting � also cutting, trimming, pruning, sometimes with a machete, sometimes with a paring knife, sometimes with a scalpel. Writers who have called me "the hatchet man" meant that nickname as a compliment, and so it is. The best writing, like the best fruit, usually comes from the trees that are best-pruned. Train yourself to cut great chunks out of your writing without regard to how much work it took to write it � go only by how little it adds to or how much it detracts from the over-all flow and impact of your draft.
How much can you cut? How much should you cut? Be brutal. Old advice, still good, was "murder your darlings." Very often, the word choices and phrasings nearest and dearest to your heart simply have to go. The willingness to cut them out of your draft is one of the hardest � but one of the best � steps in your development of skill with writing.
There's almost no limit � certainly no set limit � to how much you can cut out of a rough draft without adversely affecting meaning. There is a limit, of course � but it varies too much from person to person and from draft to draft, even from sentence to sentence, to offer a convenient rule of thumb. One writer, not entirely as a joke, advises cutting-out every other word � not a totally bad suggestion but more sarcastic than useful.
It's good practice to study other writers' samples of wordy writing to help you see what you can do with your own. Rewrite them to see how short you can make �em. Here are two samples of original and edited copy that their writers couldn't bring themselves to shorten to fit their specified spaces � so they brought �em to "the hatchet man." Both writers approved the shorter edited versions of their copy as full and accurate, with no meaning sacrificed for brevity.
In the first example, a paragraph had to be added to a certain page in an airline manual for the flight crews of Boeing 747s. The manual had been published (loose-leaf) and distributed. If the inserted new paragraph could be held to a certain maximum number of lines, the airline would have to set in type, print, and distribute only one new page � even so, not a small or inexpensive project for the world's ninth- or tenth-largest airline. But if it were longer, the airline would have to replace
over twenty pages. This wordy version was far too long:
Use of crew oxygen with diluter lever set to 100% will ensure protection from poisonous fumes produced by fire or overheated material. Such fumes may be present in the cockpit with no noticeable smoke. Use of oxygen should continue until the fire is out and all smoke is evacuated. It must be positively determined that oxygen is no longer required.The edited version (below) was clearer and just short enough to fit the available space, yet it omitted nothing that its originator's message needed. I could've made it shorter and sharper if the originator had let me say "Use oxygen until ..." instead of "Oxygen must be used until....:
Using oxygen with diluter at 100% protects crew from toxic fumes not marked by smoke. Oxygen must be used until fire is out, smoke is removed, and need for oxygen is clearly past.In the second example, the originator � an experienced Hughes Aircraft technical writer � had to send the Custom Gunmakers Guild a personal sketch, no longer than two hundred words, for his entry in a directory of guild members. His first draft was several times as long as the two-hundred-word space allotted him. He managed to cut it about in half � to 485 words � but couldn't see how to shorten it further without throwing-away details that he wanted to keep. He brought me these 485 words:
It is not surprising that Harvey [not his real name],
born one generation removed from the settlement of the lower forty-eight's last frontier, the upper peninsula of Michigan, would develop an early interest in firearms, particularly rifles. To his father, the son of an early settler, a rifle ranked in importance just below wife and family. It was given the respect and care of a fine instrument and never treated as a mere tool.
During his formative years, the depression decade of the 1930s, Harvey spent a great deal of time admiring pictures of sporterized Springfields and Mausers stocked by the late greats Alvin Linden and Bob Owen. Someday, if he were particularly fortunate, he too might possess a fine rifle such as these.
WWII brought the unanticipated opportunity for a college education for returning war veterans. After earning a little more than a year of college credits while working full time over a three year period, Harvey heard of P O Ackley's two year course in gunsmithing in Trinidad, Colorado. His decision to enroll was not for the purpose of pursuing gunsmithing or custom rifle making as a career, but as a part time money making avocation and to secure a rewarding retirement career � and maybe, just maybe, he might be able to develop enough skill to build for his own use, custom rifles of a quality that would satisfy his childhood dream of owning a rifle of comparable quality to those of Linden and Owen.
In 1951, while still at Trinidad, he began making stocks professionally for other students and a gunshop in Michigan. After graduation, he began his part-time gunsmithing career which quickly resulted in enough stock work to keep him busy for ten to twelve hours a week. During the next eight years, he acquired an additional three years of college credits at the under graduate and graduate level. Simultaneously, he worked at a series of entry and slightly above entry level positions in the area of business administration.
In early 1961, Harvey's varied business background was instrumental is gaining employment with Hughes Aircraft in a brand new field that utilized the largest available computers for schedule and management control of major defense contracts. He had found his niche and quickly took hold in this field. For ten years, he was head of computerized scheduling at Hughes. During this time, he gained a small measure of national recognition for several of the innovations and advancements made in this field. When he retired from Hughes in 1981, he was a corporate level in-house management consultant.
Now freed by retirement to practice his first love, custom rifle stockmaking, he is also a part time instructor in the two year gunsmithing program at Yavapai Community College in Prescott, Arizona. He is currently studying engraving under Rachel Wells and intends to add engraving to his repertoire if and when he develops a skill level comparable to his riflestock work.Harvey couldn't bring himself to cut another word from this draft (which was about half the length of his first draft). With Harvey looking over my shoulder and resisting every change, I shortened his draft to 196 words � keeping track of the word count with the computer. My first version was 195 words, so Harvey had me restore one word that I'd cut (
someday in the first paragraph). Here's what he sent-in for his entry in the guild directory:
Harvey, grandson of a settler on Michigan's upper peninsula, became interested in rifles early, in a home where a rifle was second in importance only to the family � to be treated as a fine instrument, not a mere tool. In the 1930s, he admired pictures of Springfields and Mausers sporterized by Linden and Owen � dreaming of someday owning such a fine rifle.
While in college after WWII, Harvey heard of Ackley's gunsmithing course in Trinidad, Colorado. He enrolled � to learn skills for building custom rifles like those he had admired as a youngster. At Trinidad, he made stocks for other students and a gunshop in Michigan.
After graduation, part-time stockmaking kept him busy ten to twelve hours a week while he acquired college credits and experience in business administration. In 1961, Harvey was employed by Hughes Aircraft, where for ten years he was head of computerized scheduling. When he retired in 1981, he was a Hughes management consultant.
Occupied full-time by his first love, making rifle stocks, Harvey is also a gunsmithing instructor at Yavapai College. Now studying engraving, he hopes to add this art to his repertoire when his skill compares with his work on stocks.__________________________________
There you have it, Amigos � the last installment in the boiled-down on-line version of the boiled-down five-part seminar version of the old semester-long course, "Make Every Word Tell." My seminar syllabus also includes some appendices, at least one of which ("A Guide to Good Style") I'll probably add � in installments � to the above.
But not right now. Y'all have enough already to keep your gray matter a-grinding away for some time yet. Later �
