Customer Reviews

Writing Under Pressure: The Quick Writing Process (Oxford paperbacks)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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If revolutionaries were also great teachers, or great teacher also revolutionaries, they would write books like this.

For those seeking help with their writing, no book will do a better job. This is a book about writing that truly recognizes the profound difficulties that everyone, beginner or published author, encounters in trying to make what they say clear, and in trying to clarify for themselves what they want to say. It addresses these problems by cutting through all the myths about writing and gets to the heart of the matter by giving you a surprisingly practical technique for digging out the things you really want to say and for giving them a crisp, articulate, and elegant form. Use this book and writing really will get easier and more fulfilling, and right away. You won't believe how easy it is to say what you want to say.

But this isn't just a book about writing -- at least not if you think writing is just about putting words on the page. Kaye also tells us something about writing that few have seen before -- something so elementary that once you see it, you can't believe you (and everyone else) ever missed it.

Boiled down, it is this: the great struggle to express that makes so many of us so insecure really is, in part, a handicap imposed on us by the culture in which we are raised, educated, and shaped. That culture, Kaye suggests, wants us mute. Voiceless, we will not rock the boat, question the way things are, or articulate alternatives. To this end, it tears us down from the moment we start trying to express ourselves, teaching us time and time again that our ideas make no sense and that our efforts at expression are embarassingly clumsy. Ashamed, we shut up, and stop trying to tell the world about our insights, our passions, or ourselves. And unable to say what we wish we could say, we gradually forget that we even wanted to say it.

This is a profoundly humane account of the struggles we all have writing. It tells us what few of us would dare believe on our own -- that the difficulty we have making our ideas understood isn't really about our own intelligence or artistic capacity or charisma, but about this culture's relentless effort to shame us into quiet conformity.

Proufoundly humane, this view is also therefore radical. Not like Stalin or Castro, though, for it doesn't ask us to sacrifice ourselves for some ideal. No, what's really radical about this radical view is that it reaches out to help us. It helps us express ourselves, and thus empowers us.

Kaye wants to change the world, but he knows that for the world to change, YOU have to be able to say what you want to say. God knows where that leaves him, but for you the results are all good: this book REALLY does want you to find your voice, and it goes after it with both a teacher's touch and a revolutionary's zeal.

God knows, its helped me.

I can understand Sanford Kaye's objective: provide a program that take the angst out of having to write in high pressure environments, such as a test or presentation at the office. That the author is an academic and his target is primarily students skews this work in a direction it shouldn't really go - and Kaye's sallies into the politics of his day doesn't help matters.

Kaye drops nuggets like "Your goal is a process which allows you to write efficiently and confidently for a reader whom you have placed in an appropriate relationship to your words, and whose questions you have anticipated within the planned structure of your essay, memo, or exam." I can think of a half-dozen ways to express Kaye's meaning in an understandable form, not swaddled with academic window dressing that chokes the meaning out of words. "Conscious, careful selection, whether the representation is a word, symbol, or underlying metaphor, is crucial to both power and clarity in prose." Muddled way of suggesting that you understand the language and choose your words carefully.

Statements like this make up the bulk of this book. The advice is good, but not exceptional. The writing style is dry and dull. The excursions into the politics of the day back then are meaningless to contemporary readers as they were probably at the time.

For the writer who reacts adversely to time pressure, there are many other more generalized books on writing which do the job better.

Jerry

When I first got into college, I had absolutely no idea how to
write. I had written papers in high school, yet it had always been an agonizing process. As a result, I dreaded every paper assignment, and put off writing until the last minute. Then, one day, in the midst of such procrastination, I discovered this book on the library's shelf.

Shelved between two books on grammar, this book looked like another long-winded treatise on sentence construction. Yet after opening the book, I was pleasantly surprised.

Sanford Kaye's book, Writing Under Pressure, puts forth an interesting, well thought out strategy for writing papers. Through a case study, and then specific applications, he outlines his strategy in a clear, easily understandable way that is immediately applicable. Yet this is not this book's main strength. Kaye clearly loves writing, and he communicates this in a way that makes the reader feel the same way. Now, this is the book I turn to whenever I feel overwhelmed by a writing task. So if you are looking for a book on writing, or even if you are not, you cannot do better than Sanford Kaye's Writing Under Pressure.

This book takes the !!ARRGH!! out of writing. Concentrating on academic assignments, the author, who has been there-done that, lets students in on his secrets of how to relax and make ANY subject interesting to the writer - and, therefore, the reader. Writing Under Pressure is clearly written (the author practices what he preaches), but contains enough lightness and human touches to make you forget you're not reading it for pleasure. I would recommend this book to someone who is learning (or re-learning) how to write assigned term papers or essays.

I've had this book since the first paperback edition came out in 1990, and have referred to it many times over the years. The material is well layed out, easy to read and more importantly, easy to apply! You definitely won't regret buying this book!

More than a how to write fast manual this book addresses the process of writing from start to finish. The steps are laid out in an easy to follow fashion with gems like "talent is the result of consistent practice" dispensed along the way. The author advocates a structured thought process without falling into the programmatic do's and don'ts of the ordinary writing text. In summary, great for a new writer or rusty writer looking for a writing framework to make the process easier. If you already have an efficient writing stlye then not needed, for the rest of us, great book.

I think this is a great book for SAT essay writing preparation. It is also a great book for general essay writing. The book focuses on getting the meaning down in an organized manner.

I highly recommend this book, but only gave it a 4 because it focuses on the narrow, but important, issue of writing a theme under time pressure.

It should be in every SAT essay preparers hands.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

I learned how to write quickly and with meaning by reading this book

"Art history textbooks are dry, encyclopedic, and non-controversial. They include every work of art except our favorites. We hear these complaints often, but nonetheless we use them. One way to spice up a course is to add extra readings. Some extras are practical references, such as writing manuals. Others cover theory or support specific assignments. This is the first in a series of posts on extra textbooks."

"For students struggling to finish well-structured essays during exams I recommend Sanford Kaye'sWriting under Pressure: The Quick Writing Process. It discusses the writing and grading of essay exams from both a student's and an instructor's viewpoint, which is insightful to both."

Excerpt from my blog entry The "Extra" Art History Textbook: A Writing Manual Roundup: http://arthistoriansatwork.blogspot.com/2008/12/extra-art-history-textbook-writing.html