Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield – Page 18

How a Bestselling Author Makes His Sentences Sing

In the process of working on “The Art of Doing,” we assimilated dozens of life lessons, tactics and tips—some that even helped us write this book. Stephen Dubner coauthor of the freakishly phenomenal “Freakonomics,” a book that has sold over 4 million copies, spawned a blog, a radio show, and of course, more books, told us,

“Writing was originally a way to preserve oral speech and I’ve never forgotten that….I prefer to write in a way that draws on the oral tradition.”

This was a lesson he learned as a child. Dubner’s family wrote its own DIY newspaper, the Quaker Street Quacker. And being the youngest of eight children, Dubner found competition to be published fierce. His mother would sit with him at the kitchen table and say, “Well, let’s read this out loud and see how it sounds.”

Dubner, who once fronted a rock band, considers writing and music twins. He uses repetition, call-and-response and varies the lengths of his words and sentences the way a composer varies musical notes and phrases. And Dubner, who has written five books and hundreds of articles (most of which will be read silently by his readers), never forgot his mother’s advice, telling us,

“After writing every sentence, I read the words aloud.”

Even though we sometimes felt pretty silly, we tried this, too—reading aloud what we wrote. Surprisingly we found the ear to be an unrelenting critic. Hearing your own written words can be cringe-worthy. You can’t miss the clunky construction, uncommon word usage and convoluted logic. You’ll also hear when a sentence sings.

So whether it’s a memo or a memoir, a Tweet or a term paper, according to Dubner, listening to your writing by speaking the words aloud can help you write with greater clarity, simplicity and directness.

Oral Tradition Fact: 1906, Mark Twain begins to speak his autobiography aloud to a stenographer, accumulating half a million words. According to The New York Times, Twain argued that “speaking his recollections and his opinions, rather than writing them down, allowed him to adopt a more natural colloquial and frank tone….” Or as Twain himself put it, “One would expect dictated stuff to read like an impromptu speech, brokenly, catchily, repetitiously, & marred by absence of coherence, fluent movement, & the happy things that didn’t come till the speech was done—but it isn’t so.” 2010, Autobiography of Mark Twain Vol. 1 is published and becomes a bestseller.

Who’s Who in the Art of Doing

English author, Lady Constance Howard, writes in her 1885 book on etiquette about what makes a successful dinner party:

“Your guests should be remarkable for something—either beauty, wit, talent, money. You should be certain of such a flow of bright conversation that no one can be bored or feel in any way neglected.”

Although a bit dated, Lady Constance’s advice summed up our own philosophy about who we’d invite to participate in our book—a fantasy dinner party. We wanted brilliant, accomplished people at the top of their field, and of course a mix that would include people in business and art, media and sports, the young and old, the highbrow and low and the revered as well as some rogues.

Take a look at our table of contents—the world’s most famous dog whisperer, Cesar Millan is sandwiched between an opera diva and the winningest game show champ in history. A vintner is next to a civil rights lawyer who is next to an extraterrestrial hunter. Alec Baldwin has tennis champion Martina Navratilova on one side and cultural gadfly Simon Doonan on the other. And after all what’s a dinner party without a big game hunter, a rock band, a hostage negotiator, a bestselling author and Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times?

The Making of an Author’s Photo, Part 1

One of the earliest examples of the author’s image is the Evangelist portrait. These portraits were glorious full page illuminations of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that appeared in the frontispiece of Medieval Bibles.

Since then, the author’s image has been reduced from a full-page color illustration in the front of the book to a small black and white photo exiled to the back. But the purpose remains the same—to allow the reader to picture the person who wrote the words on the page.

In the Evangelists’ case, it was to confer saintly grandeur. For modern-day authors, as novelist Richard Ford (pictured to the right in a photo by Marion Ettlinger) once described it, the function of the author’s photo is as:

“A porthole window on the back of a paperback, which the author peers through and says, ‘Hi.’”

But what about when your editor tells you that she needs an author’s photo of you? How will you say, “Hi”?

First of all, you want to appear intelligent. With some gravitas. You want to seem attractive and interesting. But not pretentious or as if you are trying too hard. You want to be taken seriously, but you don’t want to come across as dull.

There are many pitfalls, such as some of these hilarious examples of awful authors’ photos. Of course, the fantasy is to have the photo on the book jacket look more or less like one of the iconic images of authors pictured below.

remembered — Top Row: James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Emily Dickinson. Bottom Row: Alan Ginsburg, Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde

Go here to read Part 2 about our process

The Making of an Author’s Photo, Part 2, Our Process

Since our photo would portray the two of us not only as co-authors but also as a married couple, the dynamic between us would be as important as the way we looked individually. As a photographer (and okay, an image control freak) before taking portraits of others, Josh often gathers examples of images from his gargantuan and not-always-well organized files of inspiration. Since the history of photography is so rich with iconic imagery sometimes it’s better to steal a great idea than come up with a half baked one on your own.

We chose a few images of couples and possible poses and printed them out as a cheat sheet.

We asked our good friend Svend Lindbaek brilliant photographer and technical wizard to photograph us in his studio.

As in most photo shoots no matter how well directed, the majority of the shots are fails.

To see the final image go here

The Making of an Author’s Photo, Part 3: The Final

Our favorite image from our photo shoot was self-plagarized. The pose was based on an image (left) Josh had shot for a fine art project that he himself had plagarized from a Sixties’ era French fashion magazine. We felt and hoped the image of us leaning against each other would communicate some of the complexity of our working relationship, but with a sense of humor. If one of us moved the other would fall.

We couldn’t decide how far to crop into the photo. After much discussion and polling some of our design-minded friends, we chose the full body shot. That is until our editor told us that the picture on the book’s back cover would be so small that it wouldn’t “read.” We’d have to crop it into a head shot (right). Richard Ford’s porthole window from Part 1.

At the shoot our six-year-old daughter Roxie was flabbergasted that she was not included in the photo. She insisted on one more shot that she art directed. It was shot on Camille’s iPhone. In the end it might be the best image of all.

More great author photos and images here and here and here.

Also see Part 1 and Part 2