Martha shares writing advice from wine writer Andrew Jefford’s essay “Wine and Astonishment.” His main advice for writers: be astonished. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Wine and Astonishment”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Earlier we were having some fun at the expense of wine writers.
Maybe we were just showing our lack of sophistication, Grant, when it comes to wine.
That’s me!
But I wanted to share part of an essay that I stumbled across recently when I was reading about wine.
It’s called Wine and Astonishment.
And this is by the wine writer Andrew Jefford.
It’s from a speech he gave earlier this year at a wine writer’s conference.
And there’s a whole lot about wine in it.
He’s super, super knowledgeable.
But there’s also fantastic writing advice for anybody in there.
And his main message to wine writers is to be astonished.
That’s what he says, to be astonished.
And remember that there was a moment when you got it about wine.
And most likely that moment, he says, didn’t come from drinking this particular pricey bottle from that particular year.
It was a moment, it could have come with any kind of wine, where you had the explosion of insight in which you realized for the first time all the connections, that what you’re sipping has an intimate relationship to the natural world and the place that it came from, that there was a particular grower, a particular winemaker, that there’s so much wrapped in that one mouthful.
And Grant, I think that that’s such great advice for writers to remember to be astonished.
Remember that moment when the light bulb went on about your particular topic that you write over and over about and that you have to tell somebody about.
I mean, I certainly had that experience with etymology and you maybe did with slang or whatever.
And I want to share just a couple of lines that he wrote about that.
He says we explore unfamiliar places with passionate intensity for two weeks a year, then barely glance at the familiar places where we live for 50 weeks a year.
We look with glazed or veiled or ungrateful eyes at those closest to us, those who give us most, whereas indifferent strangers are minutely appraised.
We relish health only when we’ve lost it.
And in the same way, he says that you have to pay close attention to language and keep reworking it to make it fresh.
And remember, we were talking about how do you get your passion back if you’re writing computer manuals by day.
And I just, I like the way that he was talking about that to people who have to blog and put out a whole bunch of information about a topic like wine.
We’ll link to this on the website so you can read it too.
What is his name again?
His name is Andrew Jefford.
You can call us.
If you want to talk about language, tell us how you keep the joy in your writing.
What do you do to keep it fresh?
Or send your thoughts about language to words@waywordradio.org.
