Get the Protocol Droid

Once in a while, I’m reminded just how powerful words can be and why, as a writer, I should take more pains to make sure I’m using the right ones.

Here’s my latest reminder. To sum up, President Obama, in awarding a medal of freedom to a deceased World War II Polish resistance fighter, said “resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself.”

Poland is in a tizzy over Obama’s wording. As Slate’s Abby Ohlheiser points out, Poles in the past have objected when any Nazi death camp in their country is referred to as a “Polish” death camp. I can see why they would choose to quibble over such a distinction. The death camps were not instigated by the Polish – the Polish streak of anti-Semitism aside – by the Polish government, but, rather, by the Nazi occupiers. These are rightly Nazi death camps, not Polish ones.

So let’s take a look at how this likely happened: Editing.

I’m not sure how much of President Obama’s words were scripted beforehand – his reliance on teleprompters aside. If they were scripted, I can see easily someone looking at the more correct phrase “Nazi death camps in Poland” and thinking, “Let’s tighten that up a bit. Polish death camps. Much better.” Much better, but much less correct. And if the words were not scripted – which I think is the most likely scenario here – President Obama meant no disrespect, but was just looking for the shortest way to get himself from A to B in awarding the medal. Again, choosing a phrase easier on the tongue but one, in the eyes of the Polish, that is more than incorrect, but that is slanderous.

This is an excellent exercise at looking at tailoring your speech to the audience and the advantages of considering that audience not only when writing, but also when editing. We as editors should realize that as we deal with sensitive subjects is would be wise to put on a sensitive editing hat – difficult as we don’t have a C3PO-like protocol droid at our elbow, reminding us of the offense taken at such slights in the past. We are after all, fallible and not capable of retaining – let alone discovering – such gaffes so we can avoid them.

What can we do?

We can read our words carefully.

We can read a little history and try to figure out what might happen if we phrase things in a certain way.

We can look at things like Camp Westerbork, a Nazi transient camp in The Netherlands that started out as a refugee camp for German Jews fleeing the Nazis but ending as a transient camp for “undesireables” the Nazis shipped to Germany, and throw up our hands in despair at trying to know every nuance.
Or we could find someone Polish – or, better yet, some several people of Polish nationality – and ask them, “So, how is this phrasing going to go over in your homeland?”

And then pray they’re representative of their countrymen.

Tolstoy in Spurs, Or, Feeling Better About Writin' Wroten Wrotten

If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write,” said famous western author Louis L’Amour. “Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.”

This might mean something more to me if I’d ever read a Louis L’Amour book. I’m still tinkering with Zane Grey, and that’s only because Col. Sherman Tecumseh Potter likes Zane Grey – or as Charles Emerson Winchester III calls him, “Tolstoy with spurs.”

This does have meaning, however, when you consider all the navel-gazing writers do, and the style of navel-gazing I tend to do as well. So I like this approach. It kind of reminds me of what Ray Bradbury says about writing, which is also similar:

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Tolstoy on spurs himself said this about writing:

I love my work but do not know how I write it.

That’s what I’m doing. I’m doing things. That’s what I remind myself constantly.

And this:

I don’t want to be that kind of a writer.

And I also try not to think too much about writing. Reading books about writing is the worst. Right now, I’m reading “The 101 Habits of Successful Screenwriters,” which my wife picked up at Dollar Tree, of all places. I always wonder what kind of loathing goes through an author if he or she sees his or her work on sale at the dollar store. I suppose it happens. Anyway, if you’ve ever wondered why Hollywood films are formulaic and derivative and dull, well, read this book. I mean yes, there are some good movies out there, just as there are good novels. There are also bad movies, just as there are bad novels. I am surprised to see how rigidly screenplays are approached, however. But, I guess it’s like Harry Flugelman says: “Stray from the formula, you pay the price.”