A Blessing for Writers
This week I finished teaching my first creative writing class: “The Sentence.” As is likely a common experience for people teaching a topic for the first time, I learned a lot. I read many articles and books in preparation, and then, of course, read them again ahead of the particular lessons we discussed them.
In “The Sentence,” we examined—you guessed it—sentences. Sentences are the building blocks of language (words perhaps are more like the building materials). Sentences give structure to thought and communication. The shape of a sentence can shape our perceptions. Our perceptions can be shaped by the shape of a sentence. By the shape a sentence has, our perceptions can be shaped.
We thought about what questions to ask sentences: what work do sentences do on the page? What effect do they create? What happens if you write a sentence another way? What is gained? What is lost? We explored the possibilities of sentences: what can a short sentence do? A long sentence? Modifiers before, after, and in between the subject and verb? Of course, we looked at examples of sentences in non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. In our poetry week, we discussed the density and opacity of language, as well as the relationship between the sentence and the line (between the syntax of a sentence and the line which breaks it).
We did sentence exercises (mostly borrowed from Peter Moe), my favorite of which was “Write It 15 Different Ways.” Raymond Queneau, a French writer in the early twentieth century, jotted some notes about an incident he experienced on a bus. He then rewrote the incident 99 different times in 99 different styles. He published them in a book called Exercises in Style. Students read the book, then tried their own stylistic retellings. They wrote a single sentence of about 15 words. Then they rewrote that sentence 15 different ways (the rewrites could be longer than 15 words, multiple sentences, etc.). Some style examples:
Reversed: tell the events of the sentence in reverse order
Inversion: rearrange the elements of the sentence (subject, verb, object, modifiers, etc.)
Yoda-speak (basically an inversion—though Yoda doesn’t always speak invertedly)
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Morse Code
From the perspective of another character in the sentence
As a theatrical scene
In Gen Z slang
Sarcastically
As a PBS kids show wrap-up segment
Everything in Synonyms (or should I say “All as Related Words”)
As a haiku
As a Rupi Kaur poem
As a nursery rhyme
As questions
As gothic horror
Try it yourself! And then once you’ve done a few rewrites, ask yourself: “Is this the same sentence? How has the meaning changed from one rewrite to the next? What is gained or lost in each version? Which one is your favorite? Why?” You don’t have to do it all in one sitting. You could do one rewrite per day over the course of a month. It’s just one sentence. Wouldn’t take much time, but could be quite rewarding.
Anyway, our “Finals Week” session was more of a celebration. I brought snacks, the students each read a paragraph or two from their final papers, and I shared my Grammar Hammer video with them. Fitting, I think.
But I wanted to give them another gift, something more than just a “You did it, good job” or “think of all we’ve learned.” So I wrote a blessing for them. A blessing for writers.
I like writing blessings and prayers. These forms require you to pay attention to your words and sentences. It involves more than just “communicating content.” Rhythm and syntax can affect how the piece is read and, therefore, how it is understood.
Robert Frost says that when we read, we intuitively listen for “the sound of sense,” what he later calls “sentence sounds.” Try reading this next sentence aloud. When a modifier, even a small one like this, interrupts the subject from its verb, we change our tone to indicate the modifier. This is a subtle, audible cue to the listener that a modifier is present. (Read it again, and see if you can notice the tonal shift in your voice at “even a small one like this.”)
So if you’re writing a prayer for common worship, and there are parts that the community reads together, you want to make sure there is no ambiguity about what is happening syntactically and rhythmically. Of course, the content is important, too. But how you structure your sentences can make a different in how that content is understood. Take the following examples:
I hope you experience a blessing when you write.
May your writing be blessed.
What do you notice about these two versions? They communicate the same message, right? Perhaps. But what does the second one do that the first does not? Let’s examine the differences.
Sentence 2 replaces the “I hope” with “May.” "May may seem like a soft word, perhaps even a weak word, a word which does not assert a truth but suggests it, as if it pushes the thought forward then quickly retreats. “It may … be.” But placed at the beginning of a sentence, May is an active, assertive word. May is the word of invocation in the face of uncertainty. “May it be so.” Could we say that may is a pre-emptive Amen, a verbal cue that what comes next is hoped for, invoked, asserted?
So May does what “I hope you” does and more in fewer words. When blessings are read over a collective audience, May can be more authoritative than “I hope.” “I hope” feels like the feeble wishes of one person. “May” invokes a higher power, a higher authority over the blessing. Of course, context matters. While “may” can also carry authority in a more personal setting, you might opt for “I hope” to indicate that these are your your own hopes for the other person. (But also of course, since you are writing the blessing, it’s already implied that these are your hopes, so maybe may is still more effective.)
“Experience a blessing” is an awkward verb phrase. It makes blessing into a noun and an indirect object of experience, itself a vague noun masquerading as a verb. Even though we often use the phrase “experience a ___(noun)____”, this fact does not make the sentence flow any better. It is actually slowed down by these verb-nouns (vouns? nerbs?) because nouns are sedentary. They’re solid, they’re useful. But they don’t always make the best verbs.
So the second sentence uses two words, two verbs, to communicate the same message: “be blessed.” Be is the main verb, and blessed is a past participle acting as an adjective. The effect is one of motion, activity. Experiencing the blessing is implied in the phrase “be blessed.”
Finally, Sentence 2 condenses the two “yous” of Sentence 1 into one. (What a weird sentence I just wrote!) Instead of “you experience … when you write,” Sentence 2 has “your writing.” Your writing implies that you are experiencing it. Writing has the added bonus of being both a verb (the act of writing) and a noun (the written artifact). So your writing could be both your experience of writing and whatever pieces you end up writing. Both activity and artifact are blessed, process and product.
Sentence 1, with its wordiness and awkward constructions, gives the impression that a blessing could be possible sometimes when one happens to be writing. Sentence 2 asserts that whenever one is writing, they are blessed. At first read, the sentences seem to say the same thing. But syntactical differences lead to differences in content as well.
All this to say: in my last class teaching The Sentence, I put what I’d learned about sentences to use in writing a new piece of work, a blessing for the students in my class, a blessing which I hope can be useful to other writers as well. May it be so.
A Blessing for Writers
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth
with nothing more than words.
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
Words have the power to shape reality,
to change our perceptions,
to widen or narrow the circumference of our love.
Therefore, may your words be blessed
and a blessing.
May your words guide you to deeper insight,
even if the journey takes you through the land of confusion.
May your words invite you
to a love that casts out fear.
May you labor over your words with care,
that your thoughts and sentences propel each other forward
into the joyful and dangerous unknown of discovery.
May you know the satisfaction
of writing a perfect sentence on the first attempt.
May you know the satisfaction
of writing a perfect sentence only after painstaking labor,
countless drafts, and many hours, days, years.
May your intuition be honed by the words you read and write,
that your rhythms delight whether written or spoken.
In a world full of mindless, clichéd entertainment,
may you write words that freshen insight,
renew understanding, and deepen perception.
In a world ruled by the cheap tricks of advertising,
may you write sentences of substance.
In a world dominated by harmful political rhetoric—
from national leaders to family members,
from speeches to social media—
may you compose sentences of care and clarity.
In a world of watered-down summaries and shallow truth,
may you, with precision and beauty,
write what cannot be paraphrased.
May you trust in the power and possibility of syntax.
May you trust in the authority of your own style.
May you trust in the power and possibility of revision.
May you trust in the value of your own perception and interest.
May you always be humble but never timid.
May you remain open to your words on the page,
that they continue to influence your thinking.
May you be blessed with few typos.
May you be blessed with a large dictionary.
May you be blessed with ideal readers.
May you be blessed with an insightful writing community.
May you be blessed with serendipitous encounters
with books and writers.
May you be blessed by the company of writers and books you keep close.
May you find in your reading fortuitous models for your own writing.
May your sentences become fortuitous models for other writers.
May your style meet your content
in a dance of mutual enrichment.
May you never stop writing,
even when you’re not writing.
May you joyously enter into and dwell in the land of literature,
and may you find your place in it
to be broad, fruitful, and well-neighbored.
Of making many books there is no end;
may you be blessed to carry on this labor
and expand the possibilities of what language can do.
May your reading and writing be blessed!
Go forth and write!