Good Advice: Foot in the Door

At the end of an internship some years back, when we were about to say goodbye, someone asked a person who was higher up in the company to say a good piece of advice for us.

"Get your foot in the door," he said. "Get a job where you want to work, no matter if it's the lowest job. It will help you get where you want to be."

Years later, I've seen this to be true. I was interning in an IT job at the time and I see it to be good advice most of the time for any industry. Of course, you need wisdom while following that advice. Some companies love to promote people from the inside, and other companies might not have a lot of advancement opportunities.

I've seen a friend start in the mail room and end up with a nice job in the same company. I've seen an intern in editorial be around when a full-time job in editorial opened up and she got it. Any experience you get, it really can help.

Even if you don't know what you want to do, just be humble and take a job that might not be your first pick if you find it hard to get "higher" jobs. Some people can recognize a good worker and want to keep that worker, and they know they might need to offer a higher-paying/position job to do that.

Awesome Word Spotting: Hurly-Burly

I've been reading a book by a British author—I'm not sure if that's why I saw this word in print recently! The word is "hurly-burly" and it was used to describe the world.

One Missed Letter - When "Friends" Becomes "Fiends"

One missed letter can change a word entirely.

Like when "r" is missing from the word "friends."

I was reading a recap article of a popular show and read the sentence, "Why has he been a guy who doesn't have a lot of fiends?" Those two words are the complete opposite! ... But we all know what the author meant (this time!).

"Devaluing Words"

In college, an English professor very passionately said she hates when people used the word "impact" to mean anything less than a physical collision, like a car crash. She didn't like it when people used it to mean "influence" or "effect." For instance, a person who says "Wow, that really impacted me" means that a thing said or done influenced, in a good way, the thinking of a person on a certain topic or helped them feel better about things.

My professor would probably describe this "misuse" of the word as devaluing the word and ultimately the English language.

I would disagree. In one way, I agree that it might cause less clarity—but often in language you take meaning from context. So if you do that, it's pretty clear what a person is saying.

The reason I disagree is "impact" used in that way (as "influence") is used in a metaphorical sense. The impact wasn't physical; it was mental or emotional. A person did or said something that really effected someone intellectually or emotionally. A bulldozer of a thought can really challenge a person's worldview; it can knock down part of the worldview's structure—taking down a piece out of it, this slightly unrealistic view of reality in someone's mind.

Christopher Johnson writes in Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little that much of everyday use of language has metaphors in it. When we talk about ideas, this often happens. "The thought hit me that ... " "Hit me" is a metaphor because a thought can't hit, but these words describe how it felt.

Also, Johnson says that metaphors like this are a good part of language. It brings mental color and pictures to thought in everyday conversations and writing.

I found this helpful in thinking through how to write well. Good writing includes those metaphors. Those everyday idioms. And yeah, of course—adding mental color and pictures sounds like art—so let's do it. Or do it more.

It's freeing—now I don't feel like my writing has to be so formal that I have to take it all out. Let language and metaphor live.

Book Review: A Cup of Comfort for Writers

I bought an "inspirational" book for writers for two dollars, put it away, eventually found it again, and then read the entire thing. Reading the entire book means it must be good. I don't often finish a book unless I really enjoy it or find all of it to be helpful or new information.

A Cup of Comfort for Writers is the book. The first two chapters/essays were hard to be motivated to read, but the essays following those struck me as helpful and even fun. Sure, every once and a while I ran into an essay that I didn't like as much, but I knew a following essay would be enjoyable. And I was right.

Being a type of person who loves words and writing feels like a unique thing--so, reading stories of people who are wired to love them was encouraging.

It feels good to see other people put words to your feelings, and show how this love for words plays out in different settings and lifestyles.

Another thing I think happened is that it made me a better writer. I've heard people say that to be a better writer, you should read a lot. Well, with this book, I was reading good writing. On top of that, it was my favorite type that I like to practice myself--nonfiction!

Every time I look for websites, magazines, and books on writing, most of it is on fiction writing. That seems to be the need. But I don't ever intend to write fiction. I see value in it but I also wish I could see more focus on nonfiction.

Having Something to Say

Guest Post by Danny Dowell, www.theologyponderings.blogspot.com

I enjoy writing as a hobby and am not qualified to speak on professional writing, but I have certain musings about trends I see in aspiring professional writers.

One tendency of aspiring writers is they seem to focus solely on the craft of writing. They have a fluid beautiful style of writing and then go to grad school to study the craft of writing.

There is a certain obsession with style that a lot of aspiring writers have. The reality is that most good writing needs content.

Even good fiction is based on content. The content is often a step back and hidden in the backgrounds.

All the really great works of literature are filled with ideas. We may or may not like these ideas but the provoke thought.

There may be social commentary, political commentary, commentary on how people relate to each other, or something that delves into the human psyche. But always the great works have content hidden within.

Sometimes these stories leave more questions than answers.  Content does not need to have a finality.  Content can provoke thought without giving the solution.

We remember stories because they teach us something or move us to feel something more so than because of the language these stories use.

Basically good writing needs to be based on good ideas. Maybe the aspiring writer should not study writing at all but study a broad array of subjects to write about?

Maybe studying writing will lead to a breakthrough for aspiring writers, but fluid style has a limited interest.

People want something which inspires or captivates the imagination. Most of these things are based on ideas.

There are some mass published works that sell wildly and have no content value at all. These works are the sort of thing you hope your friends would not read.

I hope the aspiring writer would hope to have something of value to say. Often having something of value to say is much harder than saying that something well.

A piece of writing can always be stylistically improved by a skilled editor. But a piece of writing devoid of content will always be devoid of content.

The writing style moves to further the content, but it is the content that makes the story worthwhile. Without content the story is just an array of beautifully arranged words which are of little value.