vamysteryfan | Writing and Creativity (Reply)

Steve Jobs' Life By Design by George Beahm. This book does not contain the text of the 2005 commencement speech. The author takes that speech as a starting point and tries to illuminate various sections with additional information and anecdotes from Jobs' life. The author is clearly a fan of Jobs and wants to share that enthusiasm. Jobs is undoubtedly a visionary and a brilliant inventor. But learning details about him as a husband and father, I came away thinking less of him as a man. Perhaps it was simply the author's style, with too much of a gloss. Watch the video on YouTube and learn what the man wanted to share from his own lips.

On Writing, Editing, and Publishing: Essays, Explicative and Hortatory by Jacques Barzun. This slim collection of essays ranges from the 1940s to the mid-80s. His style reminded me a lot of William Buckley or William Safire. He has that same enjoyment of polysyllabic words while preaching plain language. He makes some excellent points in his essay "English as SHe Is Not Taught" on that subject. I also enjoyed his essay on the discipline needed to be a writer.

The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth. Did you know there’s a word for unnecessary words in a sentence (pleonasm)? Mark Forsyth knows the words that classify the structures of famous phrases. From alliteration to epistrophe to zeugma, he explains the figures of rhetoric that make speeches and poems memorable. His writing is fun and entertaining. Even the suggested reading list contains one of the best puns I’ve seen in a while. He capped a description of one writer by saying he “built huge rococo sentences filled with trapdoors and secret passages and little subordinate clauses.” It’s worth reading even if you are not a writer for his sheer enjoyment of words.

Every Idea Is a Good Idea: A Musician's Guide to Unlocking Your Creativity by Tom Sturges. The more you understand how others create, the better equipped you are to start your own creative process. That's the basic premise of this book. The title is misleading. I found it a somewhat frustrating read, although it did repay some perseverance. The first four chapters were essentially name-dropping with occasional nuggets of helpful advice. I was skipping pages by the end of the fourth chapter. The fifth chapter had some solid advice. The sixth and seventh chapters discussed the collaborative process that TV writers use. I went back and looked at the opening chapters and realized his examples focused heavily on collaborations there too: Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Lennon and McCartney, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Bernstein and Sondheim. I realized the examples he presented had more to do with collaboration than unlocking individual creativity.