There’s one more book on English writing that I believe should be on every aspiring writer’s reference shelf along with such indispensables as William Zinsser’s
On Writing Well, Sol Stein’s
Stein on Writing, and Strunk & White’s
The Elements of Style. It’s actually an old book that dates back to 1965, that time when the Internet, cellular telephony and texting, and video teleconferencing weren’t even a faint glimmer yet in the communications horizon, thus making some people think of that book as now sorely outdated and passé. On the contrary, I believe that it has admirably stood up against the test of time in the incisiveness of its instruction and the depth of its insights about the writing craft—certainly far better than what many of the scores of how-to and quick-and-easy books on writing today can hope to do. That book is Lucile Vaughan Payne’s
The Lively Art of Writing.
As I recount in my new book
Give Your English the Winning Edge, I discovered
The Lively Art of Writing many years ago when I was a young man still very self-consciously grappling with writing technique. The slim book—it’s only 192 pages—taught me one unforgettable truth about doing a sentence: it’s all a matter of developing a basic idea. Through this book I learned that no matter how complex our thoughts might be, we can actually boil down each of them to a few words that capture its essential meaning, and that it’s only when we ask ourselves—or when other people ask us—to support and justify those simple ideas that we need to elaborate on them with more words. We then build sentences to answer those questions, making them short and simple or long and complex to the extent that our thoughts can be made clear and convincing not only to ourselves but to our readers as well.
Read this sample passage in
The Lively Art of Writing for an idea of its practical, down-to-earth instruction on how to write essays better and more methodically:
“Think of your essay like a moving train. The first car is your introduction; it gives you a clear view of the track in front, announces that departure, and supplies the power to set all the wheels in motion. The body of your essay are all the train cars in between; each car has its own specific cargo of thought. And your conclusion is the last car, which gives you a view of the land you just passed through.
“If your cars are to reach their destination all together, they must be firmly tied to one another. In the same way, your thoughts must be firmly linked together in a statement of purpose or essay. Otherwise, your reader becomes lost or confused and won’t understand the overall point you’re trying to make.”
I cannot recommend
The Lively Art of Writing too highly to college students who need nuts-and-bolts instruction on how to write incisive and more convincing essays and term papers, to entry-level professionals who need to make their memos, business reports, and letters better organized and more persuasive, and to professional writers and editors who feel the need to make their thoughts and ideas in print much more readable and compelling.
The Lively Art of Writing has unfortunately not been in stock in Philippine bookstores for quiet a long time now, but it is currently available as a Mentor Books reissue through Amazon.com and as a Penguin Group (USA) reissue through Barnes&Noble.com. Perhaps with this writeup and with enough of Forum members and their friends making orders, the major bookstore chains might be persuaded to order the reissue of the book and make it available again to Philippine readers.
Read Jose Carillo’s essay on The Lively Art of Writing inside the Forum now!Read an excerpt from Lucile Vaughan Payne's "The Lively Art of Writing" now!"The Dirty Thirty" in the English language according to Lucile Vaughan Payne (with some modifications) 
