Concrete Writing

By Kelly Boyer Sagert

A local concrete company recently invited members of the chamber of commerce for a visit. Not having any idea what to expect, I decided to accept the invitation.

At the beginning of their tour, all I saw were massive piles of raw materials. The guide admitted that the mounds were a real hodge-podge of stuff and that they needed to be sorted in order to discover what was valuable. He demonstrated how the material was sifted to separate the larger chunks from the silt and he explained how both sizes were necessary, in varying degrees.

Water, I learned, provides the glue that turns those raw materials into useful concrete, but the amount of liquid needed depends upon the job that the concrete is expected to perform. Does a new homeowner need a driveway? Is the city putting in a new street? Building a bridge?

Samples of the concrete are tested periodically, the guide explained, using both pressure and humidity. If no cracks appear within the first seven days, then the company is about 70% sure of success. By the 28th uneventful day, high quality is almost certain. By this point of the tour, I wanted to leave to write down all of the incredible parallels that exist between making concrete and writing an article. Here are just four of them:

Raw materials

Writers are presented with an overwhelming amount of information and at first glance, it often looks like a huge conglomerate of junk. Our chunks and rocks range from facts found on the Internet to fascinating details discovered through conducting personal interviews. Besides that, we often collect floating dust, those bits of life that we find randomly intriguing. Here are my three most recent motes:

• While strolling around the neighborhood with my children, I noticed that somebody had stuck a magenta flower into the iron door handle of a downtown church. While most of the stem was missing, there was now no way to open that door without either removing or bruising the blossom.
• On another recent walk, I saw ragged pieces of a white substance blowing around in the wind. I chased a few down and discovered them to be ripped up pieces of graduation photos, circa. 1960. I put the scraps into my purse, where they still remain.
• At a busy intersection, two people, who looked like grandmother and granddaughter, were selling pillows from a truck – two for $5.96 as long as they were standard size. Queen and King cost extra.

Who left the flower at the church and for what reason? Why was it important to rip up those photos, decades after the snapshots were taken? What would it be like to be a traveling pillow salesperson? Where does one apply for the job?

Well, at this point, the best answer I can give is that I don’t know. That’s what makes those images raw material! The core substance of anything, whether ideas or concrete, generally needs to be transformed into something else before it’s useful – and we need to exercise patience while uncovering the best purpose.

Examining the material

With concrete, raw material is poured into a sifting device where larger rocks are caught at the top level and medium-sized rocks descend another level, and so on. With writing, we perform a similar function while organizing our notes. We first must determine our biggest rock and then decide how the other stones complement the burgeoning structure.

I recently wrote an historic overview of Fairfield County, Ohio and I needed to include four different topics. In order to weave the stories together into a coherent whole, I first selected my “biggest rock;” and ironically enough, in this instance, it actually was a rock. Much of the history of Fairfield County (from 25,000 years ago until the present) focuses around Standing Stone, a 240-foot sandstone cliff. Once I deciphered that region’s – and article’s — centrality, this wispy piece gained substance.

Providing the glue

Transformation is tricky. And, creating smooth transitions may not be as straightforward as learning the proper amount of water needed to form concrete. With the Fairfield County piece, I wrote each section by itself and decided that I could determine the connections later on. Since I’d already decided that Standing Stone needed to be first, I reviewed the other text and discovered that another building block of the piece, the fairgrounds, actually existed at the base of the towering cliff. That transition was easy — but it often takes quite a bit of juggling to find appropriate order and this step cannot be ignored.

Order depends upon intent, just as the rock/water mixture of concrete depends upon the final usage of the material. When I was writing the Fairfield article, my goal was to show the background of the county, to entice tourism. If my intent had been to compare historic downtown areas across the state, that section would move to the top of my list and Standing Stone might be denigrated to an interesting footnote.

Testing the quality

Whenever possible, follow the age-old advice of putting a piece of writing aside before submitting the work to an editor. At night, your efforts might feel smooth and polished, but in the morning, you may discover that the shine really covered up the glare of an embarrassing error.

And, one more thing. Before I left the concrete plant that day, I was told that even if their company produced a high quality product, if it wasn’t installed correctly, then all was for naught. So it is with writing. The piece that fits perfectly in one magazine might clash in another, so you must spend a significant portion of your time researching the ideal markets for your work. While time consuming, adding this vital ingredient to the mix will ensure that you’re one step closer to building your own unique and rock-solid formula for success.

Related links

• Fifteen Writing Exercises (0.500)
• How to Create Fictional Characters Using Adversity (0.500)
• 12 Exercises for Improving Dialog (0.500)
• How to Create Fictional Characters (0.500)
• Writing Productivity -- Using an Idea Log (0.500)

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