First Rule for Pro-Democracy Writers: If You Want to Be Heard, Be Us.
If you want your words to be memorable, they'll need to be quotable. They'll need to sound like us.
If you’re a writer working to save what’s left of our democracy and you’re getting a little frantic because nothing seems to be working, welcome aboard! You’re among friends. Let’s talk about the weapons we’re using.
Because we’re writers we’re using words as weapons. For some of us they’re all we’ve got, yet there are millions of words to choose from. That’s heady but damned scary. Millions of words! Which to choose, which to choose…
I write in language that’s mainly plain nowadays but there was a time when my thesaurus stayed right beside me and I looked to it for words of many syllables, thinking how smart I’d appear if only I could find that right word—even if it was a word I had to look up in a dictionary (also by my side) to make sure I was using it correctly.
That was stupid. A real timewaster, considering I wasn’t writing to impress the scholarly or the brilliant, but rather to find people who were more like me, people I was comfortable around, people who didn’t need or want big words. Not that they avoided them or didn’t understand them, but they preferred language that fit their own neighborhoods. Just folks.
I still look for the right words to describe what’s happening, or to get my point across, but because my mission today is, to my mind anyway, so important (saving the whole damn country) I want simple words that will resonate. Words that are memorable.
More often than not I feel I’ve failed, but it’s not because I haven’t found the right big words, it’s because I haven’t found the right combination. Sometimes I want my prose to read like poetry, and other times I want it to read like jackhammers—pounding, pounding, pounding away.
I want my words to fit the theme and not deviate from beginning to end. I want the beginning to be so striking the reader can’t help but want to read on. I want the ending to be so right I can hear the happy sighs from where I sit. I want everything in between to ripple along on paths so amazing it’s incomprehensible that anyone would leave.
I know! It’s what we all want. You don’t have to remind me. Entire industries have been built on just those wishes. But it all comes down to the words we choose. While I’m madly in love with words, I love my readers even more.
Which brings me back to my original notion:
You don’t need big words in order to write big thoughts. In fact, big words will often hinder your mission, which, if I read you right, is the same as mine: we’re here to save our country from certain mad destruction.
I look to the writers past and present who do it best, and every single one of them writes in a way that grabs our hearts and minds. They’re showing us there are many ways to win a battle.
They want us to feel something, and big words often get in the way.
I’ve made a short list of some of my favorites, in no particular order, off the top of my head, mainly looking at my own bookshelves. They speak to us in language that is evocative and memorable. Some of them have done it so well they’re still known and loved after a century or more.
I did this quickly. I know I’ve forgotten so many. Please add yours:
Will Rogers, John Steinbeck, Barack Obama, Maya Angelou, Molly Ivins, Edward R. Murrow, Harper Lee, Dan Rather, Mike Royko, bell hooks, Woody Guthrie, Dorothy Thompson, Eugene Robinson, Arthur Miller, Rachel Maddow, Robert Reich, Rachel Carson, Studs Terkel, Toni Morrison, Bob Herbert, Kurt Vonnegut, Anna Quindlen, Mark Twain, Jessica Mitford, Carl Sagan, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ken Burns, E.B White, Heather Cox Richardson, James Baldwin, Russell, Baker, Barbara Kingsolver, E.L. Doctorow, Connie Schultz, William Shirer, Margaret Atwood, Joseph Heller,
We’re writers who find ourselves in a world so crazy, so upside down, we know we need to try to make a difference now. We know that how we say what we have to say is as important as what we say. We need to remember our audience: they’re people who are looking to us to witness and transcribe and go for the gut. Every word must mean something. Cull those that don’t and throw them out. The number of syllables doesn’t matter. Don’t make readers have to look up a word so uncommon even you had to waste minutes making sure it means what you think it means.
Write the way you talk. Write the way we talk. Talk to us.
My list of current writers working along with us in our effort to save our democracy. Please follow me at my other Substack publication, Constant Commoner:
Amen, Ramona. I read listening for the writer’s voice in my ear. I don’t want to be distracted by artful flourishes.
Two things:
1. I believe there is a name was missing on that list: Ramona Grigg.
2. Thanks for reminding me of the incomparable Molly Ivins. She is missed. There aren't many political writers with a better combination of sharp observations, acerbic wit, humor inducing belly laughs, and all with an urgency to make you get up off the couch.
I've got to sit with the sentiment in this piece. It's definitely a wrestling match for me between erudition or relatability. I hope there are ways to do both and we all find our own, if we want that.