In the past several weeks, I’ve had to do quite a bit of what I think of as “big picture” writing. “Big picture” writing is writing—usually in someone else’s voice—where you step back from the everyday, take the pulse of things, and then attempt to say something about it all that is general but also specific and, most importantly, not completely idiotic. It’s not easy.
When I try to knock out some “big picture” writing, what inevitably happens is that my mind yanks open the mental drawer of words and phrases that’s easiest to reach. This drawer is filled with stock phrases like so many plain white T-shirts, slightly off-color from their frequent use.
When it comes to “big picture” writing, one of the more comforting but drab little garments is “times like these.” Narrow your eyes a little and the non-specificity of “times like these” starts to look monstrous.
In fact, curious whether I could trace the etymology of the phrase, I conducted a few Google Books searches and found that the phrase has been consistently used for hundreds of years. Charge that to our species’ general solipsistic insistence that our times are the most important times, the crucible through which the future will be forged.
And yet—says a small voice in my head, eager to defend from that broad attack—doesn’t our era of COVID-19 and the somehow more viral epidemic of misinformation carve out an exception for “times like these”?
When my mind starts chugging this self-important swill, I have to close my eyes, breathe, close that drawer of plain white Ts, and bring myself back to Orwell’s first rule for writing, which he outlined in his famous essay “Politics and the English Language”:
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure you’re used to seeing in print.
This rule is obvious, and it also points to a painful truth: you actually have to work at this stuff. As someone who mostly writes about a particular industry, I can write certain chunks of text in my sleep.
A description of a new PK-8 school? I can knock that one out in an hour, I’ll think. And then I do and I reread the paragraph the next day and groan. Seriously? What was I thinking? The chunk of text I cobbled together is completely anodyne, a floating paragraph that could be slapped onto any school in a 500-miles radius. Was I even trying?
Of course I wasn’t. I was opening that easiest drawer and throwing a bunch of T-shirts onto the bed, suckered in by their comforting shape and guileless plainness.
So, when I sit down to do some “big picture” writing—which for me is close to the pinnacle of difficulty in terms of writing assignments—it’s hard to not yank open that drawer and start rummaging around. I know the “times like these” T-shirt is in there and I will want to march around wearing it.
In times like these, we need to remember what’s important…
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
I’m already asleep. It felt good to write because it was easy to write.
But perhaps what’s worst about “times like these” is its undemanding generality. The phrase has a fill-in-the-blank quality that allows the reader or listener to play Mad Libs with the sentiment.
Oh, she’s talking about [the COVID-19 pandemic] [racial inequality in our country] [the supply chain crisis] [the school shooting in {Florida}]…
“Times like these” is not just lazy writing; it’s also a refusal to stake out your territory. What are we saying about these times, exactly? And does it matter? More often than not, “times like these” is a mere pivot point—it provides an entryway for the writer to inject something else entirely. If you’re the president of a shipping company writing an op-ed, don’t be cowed by “times like these.” Point out that your industry is struggling for x, y, and z reasons. Don’t try to vaguely swaddle those real reasons in an armful of T-shirts.
And, regardless of who you are and what sort of writing you’re doing, “big picture” or otherwise, let’s do our best to ditch the “times like these” look. It’s not doing you (or me) any favors.
Taylor Coe 