On writing

We’re red faced. I was caught napping. We let this column’s readers down. The Aug. 10 edition was woefully written and negligibly edited that a dear colleague painfully revealed how two grammatical errors were evident on the first paragraph, and when the third one showed up on the third paragraph, she quit counting. Just hope she did not skip the rest of the article altogether.

This unconscious display of disregard for the discipline and art of our craft is unconscionable. It is doubly painful for me as a schoolteacher who this week just launched the High Performance Writing program for our sixth grade students. Our first week’s lessons were on drafting, editing and proofreading.

The packaged program comes out of Microsoft Word Processing, which includes the features of a speller and a grammar checker, among others. Since we do not have computers in our classrooms, we have to rely on the old reliable blue pencil to perform those tasks. We just have to become familiar with the commonly used diacritical marks so that we are guided by similar symbols. Ironically, it was dependence on the grammar checker on my word processing program that the errors slipped through. I ran the piece through the checker again, and sure enough, the program failed to catch the grammatical errors. In my haste and misplaced self-confidence, the piece went to press without the needed editorial second eye.

I suppose I could use the old excuse that my native language indelibly inculcated certain modalities of thought that may be politically correct but are frowned upon in contemporary literary practice. Asian languages tend to lean heavily on the passive voice—the actor would rather not act proactively but would prefer to be acted upon, or, at least, say so in the telling. Being proactive is presumptuous of leadership prerogatives, and in a highly stratified society, the masses generally shy away from the impression that they take initiatives. That belongs to the royal domain. Then there are the peculiar disregard for agreements in number and tense between the subject and the predicate. In a scientific ethos that attempts precision, clarity and accuracy, and where math symbols brook no ambiguities, writers must at least conform to the standards of the society of scribes.

There is little consolation in a friend’s comment that the column is not read for precise grammatical constructions. On the contrary, with numerous tools available, there is hardly any justification for sloppiness, especially in the area of competent communication, a favored category at my San Vicente School.

But enough said of the form of writing and our non-compliance to its set rules. We aim to be more disciplined hence, and impart the same to our students this year, of course, along with mastery in reading, propriety in speaking, and…er…we’re still revving up on the listening routine. Having the widespread epidemic of verbal diarrhea to contend with, getting students to learn how to listen, in “bare nakedness” as the Buddhist would say, without prejudgment of the speaker or the predisposition to think about one’s retort before even receiving the full import of a message, is a difficult task. The general image of common discourse as a couple of ships passing each other in the night, I am afraid, is rather accurate!

To be sure, if one cannot be precise in form, one can hardly be clear in content. My mother whose man’amko moments describe 90 percent of her waking hours in Honolulu’s Aala Park, in her 84th year of biospheric existence, delights in telling the story that of all her children, she loved getting letters from me. She claims that she could not understand them, but that they force her to think. “Obscurity is not profundity, neither is it art!” was a morsel of wisdom I snatch from an English divine back in College. I must not be an ardent practitioner. However, I must have taken a liking to the craft since I’ve kept writing this column on a regular weekly basis this past two years, and then some, during the summer months.

The late New England balladeer Harry Chapin, who infuriated the Carter White House for his relentless drive to get the government be singularly focused on ending world hunger, has a song titled ‘Mr. Tanner.’ It is about a Dayton, Ohio baritone who was a clothes cleaner. He loved to sing, and was goaded by friends and associates to stage a concert in the big city. Taking all his savings, he invested on his voice, presumably, to make a career of it. Unfortunately, pleasant as his voice was, it was not good enough for the critics, so Mr. Tanner went back to the Midwest and resumed his cleaning business. He never sang again, Chapin crooned, save in the middle of the night, while folding clothes, one may hear a baritone voice vocalizing its favored tunes. “Music was his life, it was not his livelihood,” the song declared.

There is a similar sense when I approach the art and discipline of writing this column. I am often asked where I get the subjects that I write about, and since this is not a researched-based endeavor, nor is it meant to be persuasive in a political sense, nor informative in a social analysis sense, I can honestly say, “Just off the top of my head.” The stream-of-consciousness genre popularized by journal writing would be closer to my preferred style rather than the logical, syllogistic progression of thought commonly employed elsewhere. Friends had not been unkind. I get variations of comments, from “It is very challenging to read your column,” to “It is a good exercise,” to “It is infuriatingly vague; can you connect the dots once in a while.” Not unhappily, most are polite enough to add, “Keep writing.”

Saying all the above is not meant to obscure nor excuse the fact that I was sloppy in the latest outing, and would have to be doubly vigilant if I am to be an effective mentor to our budding 6th grade writer. First, an eye on the form so that it is clear and concise (Ha! Verbosity is my last name!). And as to content, that it be relevant and authentic.

A dear Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines once asked me to help her launch a writing career. I told her to go and live first, and look me up again when she is 60. She’s got a while to go but I just made three scores. So I guess, I’ll keep on writing.

(Strictly a personal view. Vergara writes a weekly column for the Saipan Tribune.)