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Sometimes the most magical films are the ones with no magic in them — at least not “magic” in the storybook sense. The Japanese animated film Whisper of the Heart contains no magic spells, wizards, witches, demons or gods, and with the exception of one fanciful dream sequence it remains rooted in the real world of a few middle-class kids and adults in 1990s Tokyo. And yet there is magic here — the magic of people deciding what they want to be when they grow up and then transcending themselves to make it happen.

Shizuku loves books. While her classmates occasionally hit the school library to do their homework or prepare for their high-school entrance exams, she’s there every day reading story after story. She also enjoys writing poems and song lyrics for her friends, and they seem impressed by her skill. But that’s as far as it goes, until one day she realizes that someone named Amasawa has already checked out all the books she’s currently reading.

Intrigued by this mysterious stranger with similar literary tastes, she decides to find out who he is. Seiji Amasawa turns out to be a classmate she’s never even talked to before, except to trade the occasional insult. The real surprise occurs when she learns that this “typical teenager” builds violins — and he’s serious enough about it to apply to a school in Cremona, Italy, the Mecca of violin making. As she slowly falls for this ambitious boy, she realizes that she’s reached a crossroads in her life. He has a dream — does she? He’s going halfway across the world for 10 years’ hard study to become a violin maker — is she ready to get serious about becoming a writer?

Shizuku makes a decision to push herself by writing her first full-length story in the two months that Seiji is visiting Italy for his initial evaluation as an apprentice. Anyone who has ever pushed themselves into uncharted territory will recognize the image of the girl slumped over her desk 24 hours a day, pen in hand, neglecting her schoolwork, not eating, not (intentionally) sleeping, and scared to death she doesn’t have it in her after all. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she hates the story’s second half, she’s ready to burst into tears when she hands the manuscript to Seiji’s kindly old grandpa to read — but she’s done it. She’s a writer.

At some point, this movie seems to say, we have to take that first step forward into the danger zone of What Am I without waiting for the bright light of certainty to illuminate our path. I believe that’s true. It’s true for writers, violin makers, entrepreneurs, or anyone else who seeks to transform his or her life.

This movie reminded me of how scary it can be to write that first story or attempt that new thing, whatever it may be. Writing is frightening. Going for what we want is frightening. Living is frightening — if we’re doing it right.

Lights up. The scene is a plush office in a bustling metropolis. A large man in a silk suit buzzes a younger, leaner, more nervous-looking man into his office. They greet each other and exchange a few minutes of small talk about the national industry trends, the latest headlines, the word on the street. The bigger man asks the smaller man to have a seat, then perches on the edge of his desk and speaks in apologetic tones to the smaller man about the company’s current challenges before dropping the reason he’s called the fellow in.

The smaller man yells, “What do you mean, I’m fired?”

Curtain. End of scene — or is it the beginning?

Yes, the opening paragraph sets a tone — it prepares the audience for a looming crisis in the conversation, gives us background information, and so on. A playwright or novelist could, in fact, draw that scene out for several minutes or pages to build suspense, especially if the audience has an idea of what’s coming to the poor dope in the chair.

Or we could do this:

Lights up. “What do you mean, I’m fired?”

Which opening gets our attention faster and propels us into the scene more forcefully?

One of the most useful things my playwriting instructors used to harp about was to “start in the middle.” Atmosphere and exposition have their uses, but the story doesn’t start until something happens.

Marketing writing sometimes suffers from this kind of foot dragging. I think we have it drilled into us when we’re writing those five-paragraph essays in school: “I will now talk about this, and I will support my thesis with these paragraphs, and in summary here’s my conclusion.” It’s linear, it’s clear, and it’s easy to grade. But it’s also predictable, and if you always know what’s coming next in a marketing piece, you might as well stop reading it and get back to work.

It’s fun to tease readers that something big is coming soon if they’ll just be patient and bear with you, but they may not feel like waiting for the drum roll. If your readers or website visitors aren’t sticking around for the exciting part, try dropping them right into the exciting part instead. Save the boring part for — well, nothing, actually. Boring doesn’t belong in marketing, so throw the boring part out. Fill your audience in on the details after you’ve hooked them, because without the hook, I guarantee you the details won’t matter.

Curtain.

And now another entry in the annals of writing gone wrong — things we shouldn’t do but somehow manage to do anyway, even those of us who know better. Let me add my usual disclaimer that the words themselves don’t necessarily leave me shaking my head, just the way they’re used (and abused).

Without further ado, here are my latest candidates for the Hall of Shame:

“In order to” — Only two of the letters in this phrase matter. Can you find them?

“You should,” “Be sure to,” “Make sure you,” etc. — The imperative that isn’t. If you want to tell the reader to do something, just tell them to do it.

“Very” — This word is like a volume knob with no indicator markings. How much is “very?” Let’s say you want to communicate that a film conveys a powerful message. Does “very powerful” really make the point any better than “powerful?”

“Great,” “Terrific,” “Fabulous,” etc. — More garbage words (see “Very”). “This movie is great!” What the heck does that mean? How is it great? Is it deeply mournful, crackling with dramatic tension, sweet-natured and amiable, refreshingly silly? “Great” means whatever the reader wants it to mean. State what you mean.

End of harangue. Go back to writing. Have fun. And as they used to say on Hill Street Blues, “Let’s be careful out there.”

SUPEREGO
Right, he’s asleep.

INNER CRITIC
You wrung him out like a rag today.

SUPEREGO
Oh, pish-tush. A 17-hour day is nothing to an entrepreneur who truly cares about meeting his deadlines.

CREATIVE SPARK
I don’t feel well.

INNER CRITIC
I don’t blame you. I saw what you did today.

CREATIVE SPARK
I did great things. Okay, good things. Okay…Anyway, who can get anything done when he’s being chased all over the frontal lobes by a sadist wielding a hammer?

INNER CRITIC
Wimp. It was a foam rubber Whack-a-Mole mallet, and you know it.

CREATIVE SPARK
I don’t care what it is, it’s distracting.

INNER CRITIC
Do you even have a clue about what my job is?

CREATIVE SPARK
Well, what about my job? What about that?

INNER CRITIC
You give me a pain, you really do. Always leaping up out of nowhere with some half-cocked idea. Every time you throw a lightning bolt I have to shoot the stupid thing down. It’s exhausting. The mallet’s better than you deserve.

SUPEREGO
Stop this bickering, both of you. It reflects poorly on the literary art. Vigilance and work ethic count for far more than any petty internal squabbles. In fact….what time is it?

EGO
4 A.M.

SUPEREGO
Time for me to wake him up and make him wonder if he ran the spell-check on the draft he sent tonight.

INNER CRITIC
Hey, while he’s up, lemme at him for a minute.

CREATIVE SPARK
You’ve had enough fun for one day. Sit down.

INNER CRITIC
He had no business feeling good about that thing. No business. I didn’t even mention the clumsiness of the organization. The pacing was poorly judged too.

CREATIVE SPARK
How am I supposed to spring him into action tomorrow after you two have had your way with him all night?

SUPEREGO
I simply feel that it’s a service provider’s duty to check his work again. And again. And again. He appreciates it, deep down. It makes him feel responsible.

CREATIVE SPARK
It makes him feel sleepy.

INNER CRITIC
Feeling the pressure, are we? Maybe he’ll decide to just stay in bed tomorrow.

SUPEREGO
No, I won’t have that. I’m make sure he notices that utility bill as soon as he wakes up.

CREATIVE SPARK
I won’t allow it either. You want thunderbolts? I’ll show you thunderbolts! And just you try shooting them down once he’s on his third cup of coffee. Just you try!

INNER CRITIC
Yeah? Well, you just wait till he’s completely awake and gets a second look at his work from the night before. Game over, pal! Game freakin’ over!

ID
QUIET UP THERE! I’M TRYING TO WORK!

For thousands of writers around the world, another November means another novel.

In case you didn’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a global scribe-fest in which writers and non-writers alike clear their desks, warm up their computers, and fry their minds for the entire 30 days of the month. Their mission: Write a short novel of at least 50,000 words. And amazingly enough, last year over 20,000 masochistic souls managed to beat the midnight deadline on the last day and claim their prize — a listing on the Winner’s Page and a certificate verifying that they have, in fact, written a bona-fide novel.

Okay, so there’s no publisher’s contract or new car or big check awaiting the winners. The fact that they climbed the mountain is the true reward. Sometimes it takes a serious challenge like NaNoWriMo to get the wheels turning. (And feel free to jeer at me because I didn’t enter. I sort of had this copywriting thing going on. And I’m lazy. Maybe next year.)

So, how do these folks sit down and bang out a novel in a month? Well, here’s their secret — they sit down and bang out a novel in a month. That’s pretty much it, as far as I can tell. Participants are encouraged not to bring in pre-outlined material or drafts they’ve already started. NaNoWriMo isn’t about crossing every T and dotting every I on your beloved dream project, and you couldn’t manage that in a month’s time anyway. NaNoWriMo is about tapping the keys madly for 30 days, regardless of the results.

As challenging as it may be to chain yourself to a desk for that period of time, your computer’s online playland makes it even harder to stay focused. Some writers use specials tools to narrow their distractions. Software applications such as Dark Room or Writeroom, for instance, turn the entire screen into a blank page — no browser begging for attention, no email waving its little flags at you. For the really hardcore cases there’s Typewriter, which allows for — well, not much. No backspacing, no deleting. All you can do is keeping going forward, mistakes and all.

Why write 50,000 words of probable drivel? By doing so, you drop yourself deep into the creative process and keep yourself there for a month — a powerful experience. You eliminate that inner editor who usually stands over your shoulder and prevents you from trying new or crazy things. Best of all, you prove to yourself that you can meet that deadline and write that book. Maybe later you can rewrite it into a good book, or maybe not. But the book exists now, and you wrote it.

Congratulations to this year’s intrepid word warriors. Now, who’s in for next year?

At a recent client meeting I casually mentioned that writing is “a different language” than speaking. My client agreed as if it were an obvious truth, and we went on to talk about other things. It was only after the meeting broke up and I was driving home that I stopped to reflect on what we’d both accepted so easily. Is writing really a different language than speaking? English is English, right? If I say, “The ball rolled down the hill,” do I communicate something vastly different when I write the same sentence? Do you receive a totally different message when you read it as opposed to hearing it?

It’s a fair question. But I stand by my original statement.

I’ve seen this phenomenon in action. Several of my best clients are terrific public speakers. They can light up a room with their personal charisma, and from their opening remarks they have audiences hanging on their every word. But their writing is no match for their speaking. Now, these people don’t suddenly lose their marbles when they sit down to write. They don’t forget all their captivating stories or their gripping message. But they find themselves in a different world, facing a virtual audience instead of a live one. Hands must replace the voice. The rules of the game have changed.

What makes writing such a different skill set from speaking? Here a couple of the main points that occur to me:

Inflection. How many times have you been accused of sounding angry or hurt or sarcastic in an email when you thought you were simply communicating? Chances are, if your friend had heard you say those same words, your emotional state would never have been misinterpreted. No wonder emoticons are so popular — they’ve probably saved many a friendship!

Writing requires a very skilled and subtle use of emotional cues — end a sentence a bit too abruptly, and you may “sound” curt or indifferent; add one too many exclamation points, and you may seem enraged instead of enthusiastic. A writer has to learn this emotional vocabulary, just as an actor or public speaker has to learn the many shadings of tone and pitch that bring color to his performances.

Inflection applies to body English as well. A speaker’s stance and gestures can communicate as deeply as his words. In writing, the words have to carry the full load.

Pace. Time plays out differently in the written world than in the spoken world. I’m no speed reader, but I know I read much faster than normal people talk. Examine your own reading habits sometime — do you go word by word, or do you scan big globs at a time in a flash? Now imagine those words being spoken at the same speed you just read them. It’d be like listening to a recording on fast-forward — you’d hardly be able to make it out. Yet that’s how people receive written information, especially on the Internet, where speed-browsing has become a way of life.

(That’s one of the great challenges of writing web content, by the way — hitting the reader with exactly what he’s looking for so quickly that he stops in mid-browse to read on.)

Spoken communication relies on linear time as a communication tool. The dramatic pause, the sudden leap forward, or the slow drawl all add dramatic punch a speech. Written communication uses tempo changes as well, but the total effect still exists in a compressed time zone.

There are other differences between speaking and writing, to be sure. Maybe I’ll expand on the subject in a future article, or maybe you’d like to contribute your own insights. I’d keep going, but my throat is getting tired….

There was no way I could write that article — no chance, no way, no how.

I sat at my computer desk, utterly convinced that my writing career was over. Time constraints, fatigue, stress, the sniffles, and lack of familiarity with the subject matter had all conspired to dry my brain into an empty husk. I had absolutely nothing left to offer. Writing the article was simply not possible.

I then proceeded to write a very good article, finishing ahead of schedule.

What happened? What magical incantation or secret Eastern mental technique did I employ to go from zero to sixty creatively? The truth is, I didn’t really do much of anything. I just started writing, having despaired of producing anything good or even competent. I just sort of doodled, and a finished article emerged.

But maybe “just doodling” is the key, not only to overcoming writer’s block, but to conquering procrastination in general. I’m convinced, first of all, that writer’s block does exist, though some very prolific writers continue to deny this (mainly on the grounds that they’ve never had it). I’ve experienced many bleak hours of sitting at a keyboard with absolutely no way to start, or continue, or finish, and countless other creative professionals out there know exactly what I mean. It’s just a particular form of procrastination, which in turn is a reaction to anxiety. We dread applying ourselves and seeing less-than-good results, because the perceived reward doesn’t equal the perceived effort. Perfectionists suffer when they produce imperfection.

So what can we do? We can give ourselves permission to fail. We can give up and say, “Well, whatever. I’m scheduled to write, so I’ll just scribble some notes and maybe some of it will be useful later on.” That’s pretty much what I did on the article. I knew I couldn’t write so I settled for “putting a few thoughts down,” and before I knew it, those few thoughts had transformed themselves into a finished, ready-to-print piece of writing. I stopped caring about perfection for a moment, and in doing so I deactivated my inner critic — which freed me to just write, instead of writing and editing simultaneously. You can’t edit what hasn’t been written yet, not without putting yourself into a feedback loop of inactivity.

So my suggestion is, the next time you don’t know what to do or how to do it — do SOMETHING. Screw it up and fix it later. Give yourself permission to fail. You might surprise yourself.

In his useful and fascinating book Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You, the distinguished author Ray Bradbury issues a very interesting command to writers: “DON’T THINK.” From what I’ve read elsewhere, he has kept a sign with this solemn directive over his typewriter as a constant reminder.

Surely writing requires thought. Doesn’t it? The answer, I think, is yes — but only at the right times.

Bradbury’s point is that writers often get in their own way by allowing fears, critical thoughts, and negative self-talk to inhibit their imaginations. These “Yes, but…” thoughts amount to self-censorship, and how can anyone compose and edit at the same time? When any word you write is potentially the “wrong” word, even starting can seem an insurmountable challenge. I recall a cartoon of a writer sitting at his desk, running through his mental checklist: “Okay, plenty of paper…good pen…good backup pen…lamp angle is right…chair is comfortable…the room is warm…perhaps the room is TOO warm….” Self-consciousness is the enemy.

The inner critic threatens every professional, in any field, who sets a high standard for himself. Think of the pressures an Olympic athlete or an internationally-acclaimed musician must face when it’s time to perform. A thousand possible distractions — crowd noises, technical details, health issues, a pounding heart, the nagging “What if” voice begging to be heard — must be put aside before the reflexes, the practiced perfection, can take over and triumph.

DON’T THINK, then, means get out of your own way. Don’t limit yourself before the fact. Let spontaneous creativity bubble up from your subconscious mind without your conscious mind beating it into submission, conformity, and ultimately mediocrity.

But we do have to get the words right! Sure, but that’s what editing is for. Composition is for getting it out; editing is for getting it right. Editing uses a whole different mindset from writing — suddenly you have to turn ruthless in your criticism of the first draft, and the second, and the third. But even here, the word is criticism, not self-criticism. A bad sentence doesn’t make you a bad writer if you fix it. But it’s up to you to summon the discipline and the objectivity to rewrite it into a good sentence.

Meanwhile, the blank page or screen awaits. So be like Bradbury: DON’T THINK!

Are you or your colleagues suffering from “-ese?”

You know what I mean. Legalese, medicalese, technicalese. Jargon. Industry talk. Insider lingo.

Language is a remarkably flexible tool. It can hold vistas of ambiguity or it can focus on details with laser-like precision. In many fields precision claims top priority; a legal contract, for instance, has to have every ounce of ambiguity drained out of it, leaving only cold hard detail. before it’s safe for either party to sign on the dotted line. An article for a chemistry journal must describe scientific processes and results using the terms most fit to describe them to trained chemists. You may well be in such a profession.

But what happens when you’re at a party and Joe Q. Public says, “So, what do you do?” If you were to launch into a description of your latest molecular biology experiment or a legal argument stuffed with Latin phrases, your conversation wouldn’t last very long. And you realize that, of course, so you speak like a regular human being instead, and the other guy’s eyes light up and he says “Oh, now I get it!” You have now communicated.

It’s the same with writing. You must ask yourself who your reader is before adopting a flowery or cautious or casual or technical tone. It’s an easy thing to forget if you’re surrounded in your daily work by others who communicate in fluent industry-speak. But if you’re writing for a general audience you may suddenly find yourself up against a brick wall of non-comprehension. Don’t fall into the trap of talking to yourself or your colleagues — talk to the reader!

Just remember: When writing for a non-specialist, “-Ese” never eases anything.

This has been a friendly reminder from the Anti-jargon Squad.