Are there times when you want to write something different; to create something special and lasting that readers will find important?
Photo by Lauren Hammond
I was recently inspired by a book called A Grand Complication: The Race to Build the World’s Most Legendary Watch, by Stacy Perman, a fascinating book about watchmaking and collecting in the early 20th century.
After reading the book, I was struck by the many lessons fine watchmaking can teach about writing. Here are four of my favorites.
1. Use Layers to Enhance Your Writing
The great watchmakers understood that special watches need to do more than tell time. They added complications, the name given to elements like alarms, celestial charts, and calendars.
Watches with complications are made up of hundreds of pieces of metal and gemstones the size of a grain of rice or smaller. The limitless combinations of tiny elements are painstakingly built up in layers so they fit within a compact space and flawlessly perform the function they are designed for.
Likewise, writing is made up of an infinite number of elements that affect your plot, characters, narrative structure, and flow of argument. Sometimes the pieces are so small as to seem insignificant. Yet each is important and works with the others to contribute to the whole.
Like watchmaking, writers don’t toss all the elements in and hope for the best. You carefully add layers to your characters so they are multi-dimensional. You don’t give the plot away all at once, but at a measured pace. And when you write non-fiction, you lead your readers through the layers of your argument.
However, unlike watchmakers, you aren’t limited by physical space. You can rework or add new elements to change anything you like. The only constraint is your imagination and your technical prowess. As your skills increase, so do the permutations of your elements.
2. Don't Hide Your Writing In a Drawer
Only a few of the most sought-after watches, called supercomplications have been built. The watch referred to in the title of Perman’s book is the Graves Supercomplication, named for the financier who commissioned it. The Graves watch has over 900 miniscule pieces, each specially handcrafted and polished to exact specifications.
Yet for all their technological and aesthetic superiority, this watch was meant to be handled and enjoyed, and your writing should be as tangible as a watch. If your words remain hidden in a desk drawer, nobody will appreciate their beauty. Put your writing out in the world for everybody to read and benefit from.
3. Write As Fluidly As a Fine Watch
Like watch movements, there needs to be a purpose to your work. If it cannot be used or understood, what impact will it have? You don’t need an existential treatise or an incomprehensible story based on metaphor to create something beautiful and special.
Have you ever watched clock movements? There is a remarkable fluidity to them. They are made up of solid gemstones and pieces of metal, yet the movement is graceful and mesmerizing.
Beautiful writing can be as spellbinding as clock movements. I’m sure you’ve read passages that draw you back because what you read has special meaning for you. Words and ideas may be ever-changing and ephemeral, but their impact doesn’t have to be.
4. Serve Your Apprenticeship
It takes years to become a fine watchmaker. Apprentices begin by sitting next to a master. Slowly their skills increase until they build a simple watch on their own. Eventually, the practice pays off and they use their knowledge to take over from their mentor or open their own shop.
As a writer, you can begin your training at any time and gain proficiency relatively quickly. Writers can choose any master as a mentor simply by visiting the local bookstore.
However, to go beyond proficient writing, you have have to be a prolific reader because reading teaches what works and what doesn’t. If you carefully study the phrases and passages that resonate within you, over time you will incorporate the best elements of beautiful writing into our own work. Now, I’m not claiming everybody can write like Faulkner or Yann Martel or Erica Jong. But that doesn’t mean you can’t write meaningful prose that your readers remember.
Could Your Writing Be Timeless?
This is where practice comes in. While timeless writing isn’t super complicated, it takes dedicated, mindful work. As you read and explore, your mind fills with ideas and phrases that you put onto paper. The more you do this, the easier it becomes to decide which elements work together to create a finished piece.
After you master the basics, keep pushing the boundaries of your creativity. There is no limit to what you can learn if you are dedicated and always strive to do a little bit better each time.
What makes writing timeless for you?
PRACTICE
In order to write at a deeper level, learn to see everything around you. Go outside and study a tree in your yard or local park. Consider how each tiny element of that tree contributes to the whole.
Spend fifteen minutes painting a picture in words that conveys what you see. When your time is up, post your practice in the comments section. And if you post, be sure to leave feedback on a few practices by other writers.
Thanks for posting this, Joe.
This reminds me of the time when, as a teenager, I owned a pocket watch. It had a train embossed on the front, and I just loved pulling it out of my pocket and looking at the detail on it.
I realize now that I need to fine tune my “layers” writing. I suppose that perfecting your layers, will make the difference of your story being either 2 dimensional or 3 dimensional.
And I guess that the movie “Inception” is the perfect example of using layers. And even though the layers were very obvious and out in the open, it really worked in that case. I remember leaving the movie and thinking, wow, that was a good movie. It really made me think.
Layers do make us think. just finished Nicholas Sparks book, “The Longest Ride” and appreciate the layers of characters and action which somehow he ties together in the genius of good storytelling.
Ruth, Nicholas Sparks is a master at building characters. Some authors excel at plot, others at suspense. My favorites build relatable characters into a great story.
Jonathan, you’re right about Inception – what a great connection. The layers in the movie are a great example of how layers can enrish our writing.
I also love pocket watches. There is something about the combination of industry and beauty that fascinates me.
Wow, Rhonda, I am so sorry that I missed you were the author. I even read the beginning, but I guess at the end I was thrown off by the widget that says “About The Author”, and it was Joe.
Great post though, got me to thinking more about layers.
No worries, Jonathan 🙂 I’m just glad the post helped
Congratulations, Rhonda, you did it. With that first point (about layers) you singlehandedly (okay, almost singlehandedly) managed to get me to rethink my entire novel-in-progress. Right now it really has just one layer (hey, it’s the first draft of my very first novel–Shakespeare didn’t become the world’s best playwright overnight either 🙂 ). It’s back to the drawing board.
And for that, you have my eternal gratitude. You may have saved my novel. 🙂
You’re most welcome Jeroen! Great to see you here. Reading what you’ve done so far leads me to believe that you’ll figure it out.
Getting the first layer figured out is a great step. Recognizing that you want to add to it is even better.
Good luck with the rethink and let me know how it goes.
Thanks for a terrific post, Joe! ****
It’s always been my favorite tree, a hickory in the back yard. At first glance it is enormous, at least sixty feet tall. The branches reach out like a perfectly shaped bouquet. But in autumn it is spectacular as leaves ease slowly from green to gold until the morning sun rises between its arms in a blinding flash of brilliance. Its trunk, almost black in contrast, supports at least a million leaves. An artist’s creation of perfection, it represents life in all its glory. Beside it stands an elderly oak, barren and broken, having lost its fight, a grim reminder of the fragility and brevity of life.
Wow, Ruth that is truly beautiful. I love the connection between humanity and nature. I especially like the image of the sun coming through the leaves in a “blinding flash of brilliance.” It’s exactly that that makes autumn so spectacular.
When I sat under a tree in the park across the street last week, I was surrounded by fallen leaves. There was a light dusting of snow and the red, gold, and rust peeked through. I pictured the spring flowers that will take their place in a few months and thought about how the seasons mark the passage of time. I know that underneath the old bark is sap that will begin to run again in the spring, bringing a new round of bright green leaves to canopy the green space. And that all makes the coming winter a little easier to face.
Thanks for sharing such a lovely picture.
Thanks for your input and I’m sorry to call you Joe! So great to have guests posting!
No apologies necessary! I’m glad you enjoyed the post
I do like how you explored the many physical and temporal layers of the tree.
Very beautiful. I was mainly descriptive, but you got poetic. Nice job.
Good post. I need to think about layers and detail; this is something I struggle with in my writing. Although we have many trees in our yard, I chose to write (for better or worse) about my immediate surroundings. I guess this shows a certain amount of courage that I am willing to post this, even though it’s not a flattering picture! And now here is my 15 minutes’ worth of writing:
The dining table I sit at is a mess. To the left of my laptop is a stack of mostly books, with one CD and a worn piece of paper that has all my passwords listed. In front of that is an open bottle of Prelief, the antacids I take with foods and drinks that activate my gastritis. To the right of the laptop is a coaster with a bottle of SoBe Lifewater on it, and to the right of that is another stack of mostly books, three CD cases, an empty mug and my timer. Further down the table on the left are more books, a stack of blank CDs on top of one book, and further down, a light table that used to be an X-ray table that my husband rescued from recycling at the landfill where he works. Further down the table to right are more CD cases, topped by the top of a ceramic TARDIS mug which I have come into possession of recently, an unopened solar charger for electronics, which sits on top of The Crystal Bible Volume 2, which sits on top of a CD. To the right of that are books, catalogs and papers. Further down is my husband’s CD case with his diabetic testing kit stuffed into the top pocket, and further down from that is an unopened box from Amazon with more Prelief inside. It sits on top of another book and some junk mail. Also on the table is an unopened Stretch Genie from Publishers Clearing House – I have some shoes that need to be stretched out – as well as our camera, a phone book, magazines, and some of my husband’s pewter casting supplies. Three chairs surround the table, two with baseball hats hanging from their posts. To my right are two bookcases, one in the corner of the room and one next to the door to the kitchen. The bookcase in the corner has all of my husband’s books on
medieval Anglo-Saxons, and is topped with built plastic models of a Klingon
bird-of-prey, a cutaway Enterprise and the Martian ship from Jeff Wayne’s
musical version of “War of the Worlds.” The other bookcase has software boxes, knickknacks and reference books, and is topped with the ashes of our cat, Saleesa, some of her toys, a model of a dragon, and the Norman Osborn toy from the first Spider-Man movie. On the other side of the doorway to the kitchen is the computer desk, which is an L-shaped kit desk that my husband and I first put together several years ago. A black monitor sits in the corner, to which has been glued the model of the HAL faceplate from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Sometimes it’s good to just notice ALL the details.
This picture of everyday life is strong. I wonder how much of this you noticed before deciding to write about it. I have spots in my home that are exactly the same, but I walk by them every day without seeing them.
It’s amazing how much of life we miss when we forget to really look.
As for this not being a flattering picture: I actually disagree. To me, this is an image of a full life with a wide range of interests. Exactly the kind of person that fascinates me 🙂 Oh, and I love the Trekkie artefacts!
Thank you! 🙂
As trees go, it isn’t a particularly old tree, but it’s older than any human, and by cat standards it’s prehistoric. The other cedars don’t quite know what to do with it. Where they spear the sky, the exotic cedar opens its hands, like a giant basket. The earth around it is pounded bare. Paths criss-cross through the underbrush. The cats play tag in its branches. Sometimes they catch birds. Sometimes they spy on their humans. Sometimes they just doze in its safety.
The tree has seen a lot. It remembers the footsteps of little George and little Heather. George now cuts trees for a living, and Heather has moved away, but the tree remembers hide and seek and climbing, sunny days, and popsicles. The tree remembers backyard barbecues, dog-eared books, and Mad magazine. The tree remembers soccer balls and baseballs and frisbees. Things are quieter now, but the tree still loves its kitties.
And that is how you do it!! This is lovely. It tugs at my heart and brings back memories of tree-climbing and swings and forts. Thanks so much for sharing
Thanks, Rhonda.
It’d 10:05 at night and I’m sitting at my vanity in the bedroom with the computer. The blinds are shut so there are no trees in sight. But curled in the corner of the grey lay-z-boy is a two year old female kitty named Nikki. She’s new to the family, adopted 3 days ago. Basically white with areas of blended black and grey. Her tail when visible is grey with black strips, like a raccoon’s.
Her coloring sometimes helps her hide. She has spent much time under the bed. The fur will keep her warm in the energy saving chill of the house. It’s softness makes holding her soothing. Her warm body trusting me, breathing gently into the cushion.
She keeps her nails sharp on the scratch pad but I can feel them when she rests on my shoulder. They help her move the litter, play attack with the catnip mouse, and climb.
Her black ears go straight up at any noise and she sits at attention as if in the military. Her eyes watch, will she need to dive under the bed or into the closet. Her nose twitches when I offer her food, which she eats from my hand– after close inspection.
Time’s up.
You remind me of what lovely pets cats make. My son is allergic, so I no longer have them. Even though he doesn’t live at home anymore, I figure i probably shouldn’t fill my house with cat dander 🙂
I can picture Nikki cautiously checking the world around her, making sure she is safe, but curling up with trust. A sweet picture.