To Be, Tis Not To Be

Allow me to quote Joni Mitchell: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till its gone.” That’s a bit how I feel after struggling to finish the first paper for my Executive Policy class. The professor, a gravel-voiced Texan by the name of Terry Sullivan, gave us a rather unusual restriction. We had to write the entire essay without using any form of the verb “to be.”

Now, you might think, “Hey, that’s not so hard!” Ha! You just failed, what with your indiscriminate use of “that’s”! When you throw out “to be,” you lose every form of that wonderfully, wonderfully malleable verb. So long, “was.” Sayanora, “were.” Auf wiedersehen, “is.” It’s like trying to ride a bicycle with a leg tied behind your back. As someone who has enough trouble riding a bike with both feet on the pedals, I can’t imagine anything more difficult than that.

Axing “to be” certainly has some advantages. It gives your writing a little more punch. The sentences don’t lollygag around. Everything becomes action-oriented! Your sentences flow faster, sound crisper, and hit harder. Sometimes you can even get carried away, and your sentences start to read like a verbal avalanche, words falling over one another faster and faster until they bury the reader in a mess of -ings.

“To be,” I’ve realized, functions like a verbal time-out. Whenever “to be” appears, the action grinds to a halt and the description begins. It gives the reader a chance to kick back, prop their feet up, and survey the scene. And sometimes “to be” is unavoidable. Wait! I didn’t mean to say that! I meant to say, “and sometimes, ‘to be” cannot be avoided.” Writing can sound awfully…weird without “is.”

For now, though, I salute Professor Sullivan. Thanks to him, I’ve discovered a whole new way to write. Today is the start of a new literary era! Wait! Today MARKS the start of a new literary era. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Wait!...