Precision starts with life. Precision starts with the real. Precision starts in the experiences you have had, and if you want to write—and this is the crux of the whole thing—you better pay attention to what is happening around YOU as a means by which to begin to be precise. You better begin to look, and to see. – Brett Lott, Life and Letters
Brett Lott uses several pages to write about precision, an ironic maneuver if ever there was one. The thing about being precise is that it isn’t easy to do or talk about. It isn’t even something that really can be taught.
To be sure, teachers can (and will) say, Be precise! My own beloved professor and mentor at Hardin-Simmons—the one who gave me the necessary nudge to lead a life of words—had only this to say on the subject: Be concrete. Avoid abstractions like “love,” “joy,” et cetera, et cetera.
Well. Okay. Precision. Deep breath. What is it? From whence does it come? (I’ve obviously been reading too much British literature as of late.)
Precision comes from the details, but it’s much more than that. Precision comes from choice. Which details are chosen? Why? Also, why this precise ordering versus that one?
It’s a little like creating a floral arrangement. I have all the flowers in the world at my disposal, but which ones will I use? Which ones convey the idea, the emotion, the truth, the experience I’m trying to express? How does their arrangement help or hinder?
I step back from the arrangement, consider it critically. No to the carnation; less of the baby’s-breath; more of the daisies. Yes. Yes. Now the whole is coming into being.
That still leaves the question of how, precisely, to be precise. As I said before, it isn’t something that can be taught. It’s something every writer has to learn on her own. There are no “10 Tips” here. Here, I’m far out, sifting through life, sifting, sifting.
Precision is learned, over and over again, as I set words onto the page. I find my objects, my bones and ash and birds. It comes from reading—a lot of it. Ritsos. Gaiman. Purpura. Popa. Atwood. Luci Shaw. These writers, living and dead, who show me what it means to be precise, to lead a life of words, to search for and find the right detail and the right placement.