Talk this way

My brain has been trained to think about which words to use, and what order to put them in, to achieve a specific effect.

The effect is intended for the reader of what is known in newspapers as a general interest/humor column. I think, consider, mentally test, type, read, pause, edit, and then begin the process again, with the next sentence.

Over time – 35-odd years – I have gotten so practiced at it that I do it automatically.

But should I talk that way? Verbally relate to family and friends that way? When I look at my wife, and want to tell her something, should I think, consider, mentally test, begin, pause, and edit? Is that any way to treat a sentence in plain spoken English?

I am starting to think not. My wife, Karen, is the second dear person to tell me that I talk like I’m writing a column. Apparently the 650-700-word column has become my language template. I can see why. If you are going to write a column, or essays, for a living, you better be good at it. If nobody reads it, you won’t be writing a column very long. I think I will undertake an analysis. For example, I saw that last sentence, about analysis, as I gazed out of the window after the sentence that ended, “column very long.”

I won’t analyze here. Typing the words, “the sentence that ended,” I was reminded of a favorite E.B. White line (I just had to revise this sentence so the line can begin here): “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process, and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”

That wonderful observation can be applied to so many functions in life, including love, and certainly column writing. Imagine how discouraged a reader might be, after five or six paragraphs like the last two. I must say, I had to rewrite the last sentence three times. But no more! Analysis over!

Where does one go for a template laid out for plain speaking and clear understanding in real time? What profession requires thinking on your feet? What is the key to extemporaneous speaking? I know extemporaneous speaking is taught, in high school and college. But if it must be taught, and learned, then what is extemporaneous about it? I can hear a dear person saying, “You talk like you were an extemporaneous speaker.”

The key must be to eliminate the thinking part. When I say this, I mean two kinds of thinking. One is thinking of the right word to use. That is fine, even essential, for column writing. But it slows speech way down. Maybe by only five seconds, but five seconds of dead air in a conversation is a long time, particularly with the facial language associated with trying to think of the right word. I could devise an exercise: every day, have a three-minute conversation with myself in the bathroom mirror. Watch my facial language, as I’m told they do in speech classes, and experience the aggravation that goes with watching me trying to think of the right word.

The other kind of thinking is what I have come to called meandering. Some people have the facility to think in a straight line. I am a meanderer. Again, it belongs to the writing template. A person one-third of the way through a medium-long sentence will mention, as part of that sentence, something that I find immediately interesting. My mind leaves the conversation and meanders off for a closer look at the interesting thing. The other person, finishing what was an important sentence for him or her, replete with purpose and meaning, sees that my eyes are fixed on a point in the middle distance over his or her shoulder, and rightfully concludes I haven’t heard what they took the time and effort to say.

So. Eliminate the thinking part. I’ll have to think about that.