Ponderings of "The Interview" a.k.a. Journal #1

After reading chapters nine and twelve in "On Writing Well", I find the author's voice to be mildly sarcastic and basic. I enjoyed his everyday choice of language because the basic and simplistic qualities meant that my brain didn't have to dig deep to understand the true meaning of the text. The meaning was simply there for me to take in.

In chapter twelve I felt as though Zinnser knew how I would deal with conducting an interview. All of those things I thought to myself during the first class meeting he had written on paper. He said, "You'll be tempted to use all the words that are in your notes because you performed the laborious chore of getting them all down. But that's a self-indulgence--no excuse for putting the reader to the same effort. Your job is to distill the essence." This was exactly my problem during our first in-class project and I interviewed Vanessa. When I was trying to capture everything that she said, I found myself trying to figure out how I could possibly use all that I was writing in the future article that would come out of our time together. However, according to Zinnser, this idea is actually a mental laziness that could (and most likely would have) come to being in my writing.

But my question is: how does one distill the essence? For me, whenever I speak about an event in my life I feel that it is important otherwise, why share it? I feel the same for what Vanessa shared with me. Her time spent over the summer was wildly interesting to me and I wanted to be fair to her in my upcoming article about her. Being fair meant to put into words everything she said. How can I take the essence of her summer if I didn't experience it for myself? Is the "essence" simply a summation of the event? I don't think so but that is how my brain is processing the word "essence". This will be difficult for me to accomplish in my writing--a goal that will run the length of the class I'm sure.

Another quote that struck me was when Zinnser said, "You are dealing with a person's honor and reputation--and also with your own." I had never thought about writing in journalistic style as holding someones honor or reputation in my hands. Sure, I thought about how my reputation might be affected by what I wrote but that was because it was a work of my own. That is a huge burden on a writer, to know that you hold some form of control over someones good name when you write about them. Actually, this thought was scary to me. What if I misrepresent someone unintentionally? Holy Cow.