Q&A with Sarah L. Kaufman

  

 

 

Sarah L. Kaufman is the author of the new book Verb Your Enthusiasm: How to Master the Art of the Verb and Transform Your Writing. She also has written the book The Art of Grace. The former chief dance critic for The Washington Post, she lives in Asheville, North Carolina. 

 

Q: Why did you decide to write a book about verbs, and how was the book’s title chosen?

 

A: Verbs are the most elegant part of speech—essential, efficient and evocative. They’re truly the secret soul of language. A single strong verb can change a sentence, paint a portrait, express a feeling. All that in a word! For writers—and that’s all of us, writing anything at all—verbs are gold.

 

Take the sentence “Kim walked down the stairs.” Change just one word: “Kim staggered down the stairs.” Now you’ve triggered some tension and curiosity: What’s happened to her? “Walk” is neutral; “stagger” tells a story. Something has knocked Kim sideways and she hasn’t recovered.

 

Making smart verb choices can pump up your writing and make it memorable in so many ways, as I’ve seen in 30 years as a journalist. I wanted to share what I’ve learned, and that’s what sparked Verb Your Enthusiasm.

 

I stumbled on the power of verbs when I was the chief dance critic of The Washington Post. Nailing the action—catching it as it flew by— was my greatest pleasure and greatest challenge. I didn’t want to bore readers with wordy descriptions.

 

So I relied on verbs: With a few crisp verbs I was able to snap a moment into focus and evoke the thrill of dancers sweeping or squiggling across the stage, carving shapes in space, and beckoning with gestures and arcing limbs.

 

I started working that muscle in my mind, firing up my creativity. My fascination with verbs grew, and what I discovered is that vivid, precise verbs can make any writing sing, whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, a blogpost or email.

 

Interiority, physical action, the atmosphere of a place—anything we write about grows more alive and dramatic with well-chosen verbs.

 

Here’s an example: Margaret Atwood, in The Handmaid’s Tale, uses dynamic verbs to fill the Commander’s sitting room with a sense of menace. “It’s one of the shapes money takes when it freezes,” she writes. “Money has trickled through this room for years and years … crusting and hardening like stalactites into these forms.” (I love her choices: the blunt takes, instead, say, of adopts; the deliberate drip, drip of trickled, instead of poured.)

 

This is what excites me about verbs. These little fireballs possess so many mysterious and poetic powers. Exploring them in this book opened my eyes not only to verbs—but to overall excellence in writing.

 

About the title: A dear friend and former Washington Post colleague came up with it. It works on a few levels, turning “verb” into a verb, and also expressing the theme of my book. It’s all about enthusiasm. For action, for life, for words and writing—and most of all, for creativity.

 

Q: The author Benjamin Dreyer said of the book, “Sarah L. Kaufman’s Verb Your Enthusiasm is, at first glance, a primer on the effective use of what we were raised as young folk to think of as action words, but like all first-rate writing on language, it’s also a meditation on existence.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I’m so grateful for Benjamin Dreyer’s endorsement and his support of this book. When I first read that beautiful comment in particular, I immediately thought: He nailed it. A meditation on existence is exactly where this book led me. I reflect on that in several places, the idea that verbs, boundless and new-forming, give you the means to grapple with this world of change and call it forth. They give you the power to hold what vanishes.

 

Q: One of the first examples you cite in the book is from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--and you note in the acknowledgments that your house has a Fitzgerald connection. Can you say more about that?

 

A: That was an incredible twist of fate. Soon after relocating to Asheville, N.C., we jumped from a cozy apartment to renting a big 1920s house in a hurry; my elderly father needed our care and the house had room for all of us. After we settled in, our landlord told us a story he’d heard about Zelda Fitzgerald once living in the house.

 

She and her husband had landed in Asheville in the 1930s—he hoped to reinvigorate his writing in these mountains, and she started treatment for schizophrenia. He stayed a couple summers  and moved to Hollywood, where he later died.

 

Zelda never left. For 12 years she cycled in and out of a psychiatric hospital, finally dying there in a fire. During her long years of treatment, so we were told, she also stayed in the brick Colonial we were renting. It had once been a rooming house, and Zelda apparently lived in the smallest upstairs bedroom. You could still see holes in the floor for plumbing, and scars on the door from locks.

 

By the time I heard that story, I’d already set up my office in that same bedroom and was busy writing Verb Your Enthusiasm, with Fitzgerald’s work running through it. Who knows if the tale is true, but it makes some sense: The house sits near one of the few main roads, and it’s not far from the hospital’s former site.

 

We’ve since moved to another house, but the mystery ties me even more deeply to Asheville, Fitzgerald’s work, and Zelda’s wild, creative life.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially fascinated you?

 

A: The research astonished me. I loved poring over books to find great verb examples—from Toni Morrison, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Zadie Smith, James Joyce, Sally Rooney, and so many others.

 

I dug into the science of verbs, and spoke with linguists and neuroscientists about the power verbs exert on our minds and bodies. A memory psychologist has tested how the verbs “hit” or “smashed together” affect the way witnesses remember car crashes. A cognitive scientist told me about testing how we process verbs when we read, the emotional reactions they trigger.

 

The science points to the immense power these words have in the hands of writers who choose them with care.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A new book I’ve been messing around with for a few years in the margins of everything else—now it’s central. I also teach writing here and there, which I enjoy. And I write on occasion for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and other publications.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I have a few words about AI. It looms over all creativity, but we must forge ahead. We’re born with creative abilities. The more we create and express ourselves, the more we nurture our humanity, by connecting to our deepest selves and to those around us.

 

I hope, with my book, to inspire readers to play with language, enjoy their imaginations, feel confident in their creativity. To release their gifts and share them.

 

Speaking of gifts, Deborah, your books and lifelong work to support authors amazes and inspires me. Thank you for your interest and for our years (so many years!) of friendship.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Sarah L. Kaufman.