Several Short Sentences About Writing reminded me of the The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Klinkenborg the listmaker enumerates all the perks and preconditions that a writer might need to create. Like: a quiet room, a fountain pen or customary laptop, just the right blend of tea in your favorite blue and white china cup. I don’t know…good feng shui?

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu advises the warrior to abjure all superstitions. In a sense, to be godless. Because any superstition you have can be turned against you.

Klinkenborg says you should be able to write under a variety of conditions, like even if you left your lucky ballpoint at home.

Klinkenborg isn’t martial except about writing. He accepts inspiration, or what I’d call in this context fighting spirit. But knowing the tools of the trade is the continuous employment of the writer. Inspiration comes, goes, misleads.

The writer’s blade is the sentence. As a samurai feels his blade has a soul, the writer should know the sentence, its parts of speech and how they function, as well as if it were his living companion.

Do you know what an intransitive verb is? If you don’t, you need to go back to samurai school.

My comparison to the martial arts is pure hooey. There’s nothing of that in Klinkenborg’s book. But Several Short Sentences About Writing is a nimble overview of how to write well. Klinkenborg is one tough customer about honing your writing skills. Don’t expect to get off easy if you’re not willing to do your homework. Klinkenborg is a poet. I think of poets as rather pacific people, except for Homer perhaps.

Klinkenborg wields her sentences short and swift, as if they were the blade of a samurai. He’ll teach you to avoid all wasted motion. He’ll teach you to distrust mushy notions like “inspiration” and place your reliance on craft. To be attentive to that slight brush of wind in your face that tells you a sentence is a misplay. He’ll even say honor the inspiration but maybe throw out the sentence. She’ll teach your sentence-making to dance. Here goes:

I wish for “poetry” that the word would disappear. Then maybe people would read more poetry because they wouldn’t realize they were reading it.

I wish the word “novel” would disappear. I wish we could begin an effort to rename everything. A neologism revolution. Who said neologisms were pathological? That’s a crock to prevent you from thinking, from creating things by naming them.

If we tried to rename the world, maybe we would appreciate the words we already have. It would make words precious if we couldn’t figure what what they were likely to be. Or if sentences kept altering while we were using them.

Or if you had to ask your friend what their word for “tree” was. Or if you had to ask someone you hated what they called a “rock”. You’d discover friendly words and unfriendly words. Not just masculine, feminine and neuter words like they have in some languages.

English would be a great language to bastardize in this way. Since we don’t acknowledge gender in our words. Just in everything else. We’d have to become adept at fly fishing for words.

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg is published by Knopf.