Writer's Wavelength

What the *%$#^! is "literary fiction"?

2012-01-27T19:01:00.000-08:00

Come on. You can't tell me I'm the only one who's fed up with this bizarre little term, which, to be honest, I never even encountered until I started going to writing conferences and reading writing blogs and following writer's chat groups. Isn't it a little redundant? According to my big fat Webster's Dictionary, "literary" means bookish or related to learning or books or literature. Um - isn't that inherent in the term "fiction"??? When did we decide to use this to describe a special subset of fiction?

If Google, the 21st century's lazy woman's research tool, is right, the term started being used in the '60's some time. Figures. (Oops! Did I say that out loud?). But I'd swear the widespread use among agents and editors is a later development. At any rate, I'm really developing a dislike for it. At times it seems to imply that "other" fiction (sometimes called "genre fiction" or "popular fiction" or "commercial fiction") is NOT literary - that it's for simpletons, that it's less educated or complex or nuanced. On the other hand, sometimes "literary fiction" is code for "stuff that won't sell" or "dull and plotless".

There's no lack of efforts to explain and define this term. Nathan Bransford has a nice, succinct one on his blog: "In commercial fiction the plot tends to happen above the surface and in literary fiction the plot tends to happen beneath the surface." He also makes a decent case for the concept, and puts up a good defense of what quality literary fiction ought to be. Still, I can't help feeling like this term can cause nothing but trouble, heartache and bad writing.

The best of "literary fiction" pays intense attention to detail, and finds breathtakingly perfect ways to describe small nuanced moments while tracing the arc of a character's internal journey. The best of "commercial fiction" pulls you along with strong plot elements and pacing. My question is, shouldn't the best of ANY fiction have all of the above? Achingly spot-on description, meaty nuanced character development, layered thematic arcs, gripping plot, strong pacing. I want it all!

I guess that's why I don't get the whole need for a term like "literary fiction." It just rubs me the wrong way. It makes my shrill, opinionated, loudmouthed self absolutely insist on coming out to play. Thanks for putting up with her. I shall now return to my more level-headed, conciliatory persona, who will dutifully look at all sides and recognize the value of a variety of perspectives. Let the comments commence!

(Today's blogpost is brought to you by an evening of reading literary fiction magazines while drinking coffee at Portland's Press Club eatery.)

Playing with Point of View

2012-01-21T16:02:00.000-08:00

As you know, I've been rereading WUTHERING HEIGHTS. It's gotten me thinking again about point of view. Bronte tells her story through so many layers of different POV characters that it's sometimes hard to remember who's narrating. First, there's the outsider who's come to live at Thrushcross Grange. Then, there's the housekeeper, who bore witness to so much of the story as it unfolded. Then, there's the characters who related events to the housekeeper when the housekeeper wasn't actually present. All these POV shifts aren't straightforward shifts. They're layers through which we view the story. It's the outsider telling us what Nelly the housekeeper told him about what Zilla and young Catherine and Isabella told her. Whew!

I'd completely forgotten this element of Bronte's novel. And now I can't help asking "Why?" Why all the layers? Why all the distance? It seems like such a convoluted approach to the story. Is it a flaw, or a masterful and intentional device? At a minimum, I feel compelled to identify the effect that this approach has on me, the reader. Because, when you're reading as a writer, that's the trick, isn't it? Not "Do I like this technique?" but "What effect does this technique have on the reader? How and when could I use it in my own writing to best advantage?"

In Bronte's work, maybe her choice of layered viewpoints relates to the unadorned, unimpeded level of viciousness and cruelty she's laying before us. All that viewpoint distance functions as a kind of protection, allowing us to look into the dark abyss without risk of falling in. A large part of an author's choice in point of view relates to the balance of risk and safety for your reader. How close can you take them without scaring them off completely? How far back must you stand in order to keep them from running away? How safe do you want them to feel? The answers vary from genre to genre, story to story, writer to writer.

One of my favorite books to reference as a point of view example is THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG. There are 3 different points of view, each with a different level of distance. The least sympathetic character actually has the most immediate point of view and gets the longest stretch to tell her side of the story at the outset. The most sympathetic character, in my mind, has the most distant point of view and the least page time to tell his side. In this case, distance seems to function in direct reverse proportion to sympathy, in an effort ultimately to present a fully balanced, three-fold version of events, leaving the reader to judge.

Back to WUTHERING HEIGHTS, then. If the closer you are, the more an unlikeable or sympathetic character might gain your sympathy, then Bronte clearly wants as little sympathy for Heathcliff, and any of the characters directly involved in her tale, as possible. She seems to be demanding our harshest judgment. And she wants that judgment to extend to every layer of the narrative, except, perhaps, the outsider. Yet over the years, we've developed this rose-colored view of Heathcliff as tortured romantic hero.

Maybe Bronte feared exactly that. She desperately wanted to prevent us from falling in love with him. She wanted to present a fully unvarnished vision of him. Maybe he was drawn from someone in her own life who pulled her into his whirlpool so completely that the act of writing about him honestly could only happen through the safely removed distance provided by those layered viewpoints. Sometimes we writers have to do that when we're writing about something raw and close to the bone.

Point of view is a powerful tool for writers, and a critical decision. You can go straightforward, or you can play around. Multiple viewpoints. Varied levels of distance. Unreliable narrators. Yes, it takes skill to pull off the more experimental approaches, but for the right story, it can have amazing results. Have you ever experimented with point of view? What did you discover?

Can You Wrestle With Your Critique Group?

2012-01-15T15:22:00.000-08:00

I think I have one of the world's greatest critique partners. She is reliable and she is relentless. We've been part of the same weekly writing group for several years now. The members have changed, but the two of us have stayed consistent and kept it going. We have really different, complementary styles. But the best thing about her is that I can argue and wrestle with her and she laughs and forgives me.

Now, I realize I shouldn't abuse this privilege. I have no patience for people who can't handle feedback. Why be in a critique group if you're not willing to be critiqued? However, I've discovered something about myself. I learn by wrestling through things. I learn by arguing, discussing, disagreeing.

I don't get biblical on this blog too often, but I'm about to do it now. You've been fairly warned. There's a passage in the Bible where Jacob wrestles with an angel. It's where the name Israel comes from and it means "he who wrestles with God." I LOVE this story, because it absolutely contradicts the notion of blind obedience. In fact, Jacob goes at it with the Lord Almighty, wins the match, and gets a blessing for it.

My teacher self has another example. The latest brain research shows that you build more neural connections from working on a difficult problem, whether you get the right answer or not, than from solving a problem you already know. In fact, kids who struggled and wrestled and were taught the value of that PROCESS actually did better on post-assessments than students who were simply told how smart they were. I have a feeling I'm not doing this particular bit of info justice, but the summary is - when you struggle to understand something, your brain grows.

So, back to my critique group. As much as I fear I may drive poor Suzanne crazy with my questions and responses and arguments, I am so tremendously grateful that she doesn't write me off and let annoyance get the better of her because the process of wrestling with her is making my work better and me better as a writer. And that is a blessing.

What battles and struggles have you found valuable? Who are your favorite folks for a good intellectual wrestling match?

Setting - Finding the Magic Anywhere

2012-01-06T18:38:00.000-08:00

A depression-era circus, the Florida everglades, a dystopic future society, Nazi Germany - all settings of great books I've read in recent years. What makes these books great, among many other things, is that they find the exotic, the magical or the deeper meaning in their settings and draw it out for the reader. Traveling in your mind to another place or time is part of the appeal of fantasy, sci-fi and historical fiction. But what if you aren't writing in those genres?

Karen Russell, whose novel and collection of short stories continues to fascinate me, has a gift for finding the magical in the places she writes about. Her short story collection is chock full of locales that began as someplace fairly ordinary and evolved into someplace well beyond extra-ordinary.

Lately, I've set myself the challenge of finding the magical, the exotic, the eerie, the disturbing in the places I write about. A backyard. A city park. A creek in Virginia. An old house. A playground. The issue isn't whether I have traveled to exotic places, or chosen characters in some far-off place. The issue is whether I can unveil the remarkable in the world around me, look beneath the surface, put on a new pair of lenses and see the world around me the way a writer should.

The Likeability Factor - Rereading WUTHERING HEIGHTS

2012-01-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

Having reread PRIDE AND PREJUDICE to see how it changed for me since I first encountered it in high school, I thought it was time to take a look at a classic that I absolutely loved when I first read it - Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS, which I read in college. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that, just as Austen's work has improved for me with age, Bronte's work has lost some of its appeal.

What strikes me most is the utter absence of likeability, or even redemptive qualities, in the characters. Cathy and Heathcliff are passionate, but they are also selfish, vain, narcissistic, cruel and brutal. It seems on this reading as if Bronte intentionally wrote them with absolutely no redeeming attributes. They resolutely refuse to act in any redeemable ways, even when Bronte gives them multiple opportunities to do so. Even in the childhood scenes, it's clear Bronte is confronting us with the germ of their worst traits, already deeply ingrained. Is the novel a condemnation of unbridled, self-destructive passion?

Well, no. The other extremes, the Lintons, are foolish, weak, insipid, easily led, even whiny. What of the intermediary characters, then? The various narrators of the tale, who are removed from the center of the story? Well, they're not completely abhorrent. But they don't do much to make us care about them either.

I had somehow deluded myself over time, as many of us have, into thinking of Heathcliff and Cathy as tragic, passionate, misunderstood romantic characters - much like Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. They are not. Passionate - absolutely, with a passion that destroys themselves and everyone in their path. Tragic? I'm not so sure. Their inevitable downfall is brought about by their intense passion, but that element of sympathy or empathy that I think of when I think of a tragic hero is definitely lacking. Their passion and selfishness and cruelty are not tragic flaws but defining traits.

Where is the novel's appeal, then? As a writer, I've always believed that even my villains should be complex and multi-dimensional, and my story needs a protagonist that we can care about, flawed, but sympathetic. This re-read of WUTHERING HEIGHTS has me questioning that. Because, the thing is, as violent, brutal, fatalistic, unrelentingly hopeless and without redemption as this story is, I can't seem to stop reading it. Granted, I set myself the goal of re-reading it, and I'm not one to leave a book or goal unfinished. But still. WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a classic for a reason. And my college-age self consumed it with gusto.

Is it simply the power of human extremes painted in livid detail? Is it our natural fascination with villains, cruelty and passions, sort of a literary equivalent to the obsession with soap operas? Is it the compulsion to watch the gothic horror of the thing unfold and reach the inevitable conclusion that is laid before us in the very first chapter, much like the "how" of a murder mystery? Do we keep reading because we keep hoping, just like the poor deluded Isabella Linton, that redemption lies ahead?

I don't know yet. But re-reading it has forced me to question my maxim that a story must have a protagonist who is both flawed and likeable. And I have a new kind of respect for Bronte because she was able to write a compelling literary classic in which there is not a single likeable character, and in which the most memorable characters really have no redeeming qualities at all.

Unraveling the Tapestry - The Trouble With Endings

2011-12-26T16:45:00.000-08:00

For the past two weeks, I've been working on the ending arc in revisions for my novel THE SPARROW'S SECRET HEART. It used to be an ending, but the old ending no longer fit. So it devolved into a hodge-podge of thematic ideas, key scenes, and placeholders strung together with notes. Then, last week, with the freedom of winter break, I managed to come up with a collection of finished chapters. But they didn't feel right. I couldn't put my finger on the problem.

Lucky for me, my critique group met in spite of it being Christmas Eve, and I got some great input about the order of events and other key issues. I left feeling wonderfully inspired. Christmas was a non-writing day. Even I knew there was no point tackling anything then. But this morning, I was back at it and worked my way through the feedback from my group. The result? I've completely unraveled what I had and I'm back to a collection of scenes, notes, and thematic elements with missing links and placeholders. Aaargh! My intellect recognizes this was a necessary step to achieve my greater goal. Some other part of me hates this feeling of going backward to move forward.

This process got me thinking about Penelope, Odysseus' long-suffering wife in Homer's ODYSSEY. To put off the hordes of suitors clamoring to snatch her up, Penelope promises to remarry when she finishes the tapestry she's working on. But she doesn't want to remarry. Supposedly, she is so faithful, she believes Odysseus is alive and will return. So, every night, she unravels the tapestry that she wove during the day.

I've always accepted this tale on face value - a clever way to get around her own vow, extracted under duress, while remaining faithful to her husband. But today, I find myself contemplating Penelope the Artist. She's been working on this damn tapestry for twenty years, but she willingly puts off its completion. Some part of her must have rebelled at the intentional destruction of her own artistic creation. How did that feel? Was she ever tempted to say "the hell with it - I just want to finish the damn thing"?

A writer's relationship with the completion of a novel has some similarities. We know that once we finish, we have to say goodbye to the story and the characters that have been our faithful companions. There's some grief and loss connected to that. So, sometimes, we actually sabotage our own efforts at an ending, unraveling things just to put off the inevitable. On the other hand, there are times when the unraveling is simply a necessary evil in the process of getting the right ending. We don't want to end up with one of those annoying, if conveniently present, suitors that keep banging at the door demanding we just draw things to a conclusion. No. We want to remain faithful to the spirit of our novel, to our future readers, to the deeper themes of our work. We want the right ending, even if it means unraveling our work night after night.

Tonight, I'll drink a toast to Penelope the Artist. And then, tomorrow, I'll get back to work reweaving the tapestry of my ending, until I get it right.

Hooray for Fellow Margin-Scribblers

2011-12-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

The other day, there was an essay in THE OREGONIAN by Douglas Yocum decrying the tendency to write in books and insisting people should cease and desist, that it ruined the books for future owners and for sales. I felt sad when I read it. I disagreed. Today, I rejoice because it is clear I was not alone. Three letters to the editor and two columns in the Sunday book section (one by writer Natalie Berber and the other by teacher-writer Tim Gillespie) all responded to that essay, and all with variations on my own feelings.

Notes in the margins are a way to take part in the great cross-spatial, cross-temporal conversation that is the written word. When you write and highlight and underline in your books, you are interacting with the text, giving it the kind of life it was meant to have. For no written text can fully exist without a reader, any more than a play can fully exist without an audience. The only exception to this "go-ahead-and scribble", of course, is books that don't belong to you - school textbooks, library books, books borrowed from a friend.

If someone else wrote in a book I now own, it gives that book life and history. It widens the conversation. It connects me, in a mysterious and particular way, to that unseen hand that scribbled the notes or highlighted the words.

I remember in high school coming upon a copy of a small collection of Persian tales that had belonged to my father. All sorts of notes, reactions and responses were furiously scribbled in the margins and the pages and the inside cover. It gave me a special kind of insight into my father's inner world, a gift I wouldn't trade for a million pristine copies of that same book.

I've just begun rereading WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Some of the earliest clues to the real story of Cathy and Heathcliff are uncovered by the narrator through Cathy's scribblings inside her books. The narrator's relationship with Cathy's old books invites us, the reader, to interact with his tale as well.

I rejoice in knowing that there are so many book lovers like me, folks who understand the literary equivalent of the story of THE VELVETEEN RABBIT. If I ever manage to get one of my books published, I hope it will be as well-loved as the Skin Horse in that tale, dog-eared, with coffee-stains and bookmarks and scribblings inside. I must confess, I doubt that digital texts, no matter what their affordability or convenience, will ever receive that same kind of love.

Change Over Time Part 2 - Rereading Jane Austen

2011-12-03T16:30:00.001-08:00

A while back I wrote about the different lens through which we view stories depending on the time of life in which we read them. I mentioned rereading OLIVER TWIST at that time and promised to take on Jane Austen next. Well, as predicted, Ms. Austen's work makes a lot more sense to me now, at age 45, than it did when I was in high school. Not exactly a big surprise.

Specifically, I am rereading PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Now, I must confess, the beautifully spot-on adaptation featuring Colin Firth, which my husband and I have watched several times, has perhaps enabled me to catch some of the nuances in the book that might still have escaped me even now. However, I honestly believe the bulk of my increased appreciation of the humor and social commentary in the story comes from the heightened perceptions and insight that only age can provide.

This leads me to wonder why on earth we persist in assigning such books to read when people are too young to really appreciate them. In fairness, perhaps there are many of you who became ardent admirers of Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy or D.H. Lawrence or Herman Melville at the tender age of 15. I wonder, however, if that came about after reading them as assignments or after finding them on your own.

Even in college, so much of what I read became a massive swirling mishmash of ideas, whereas the same sorts of classic literature, explored on my own at my own pace with my own personal purposes AFTER college, resulted in deep insights and a lifetime love of those authors. That is how I fell in love with Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Thomas Hardy, DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, e.e.cummings, and many more.

Are there works of classic literature that, like fine wines, should not be served before their time?

A Writer's Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T11:03:00.001-08:00

I am thankful for ...

my supportive husband, who encourages and honors my writing time.
my terrific critique group, which holds me accountable in productivity and quality.
friends who read my work and give me honest feedback.
small independent publishers and booksellers, who are willing to take risks.
the many incredible authors whose works have inspired, entertained and challenged me throughout the years.
computers and writing software, because quill pens, typewriters and scotch tape are charmingly old-school but exhausting.
the new opportunities made possible by e-publishing.
the many people who will always return to printed books anyway.
reading the classics on my iPad at the gym.
print books, which survive falls, beach trips, coffee spills and power outages.
handprinted notes from another reader in the margins of a used book.
used book stores.
living in a literary town like Portland, Oregon, where a bookstore is a happening place on a Saturday night, a literary lecture series packs the house, literary magazines and writing conferences pop up and thrive, and nationally recognized authors find refuge and inspiration.
coffee shops that welcome writers to linger and discuss.
the stories and characters that keep finding their way into my head and onto the page.
the human capacity to spin tales, which makes life so much more interesting and bearable.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Voices In Your Head: Are Writers Crazy?

2011-11-19T20:41:00.001-08:00

I've been working with my third and fourth graders on using periods correctly in connected text. "Listen to the voice in your head," I said one day. "If it stops, then you probably need a period." Not a rule, but a good guideline when the trickier nuances of grammar elude you. So, I'm teaching children to listen to the voices inside their heads.

Isn't that what we writers do all the time? Listen to the voices in our heads, follow the craziest, darkest impulses and hallucinations, enter waking dreams, talk to ourselves, project alter egos and multiple personalities that take on lives of their own and tell us what to do. And we can't seem to stop. It's pathological.

Some people even believe that you can't be a truly gifted writer, or gifted in any creative field, unless you're mentally ill. They point to the long, long list of creative geniuses who struggled with mental illness, and, in so many cases, succumbed and committed suicide. "If they'd had access to prozac, maybe they never would have created such great works."

People don't seem to apply quite the same argument to brilliant scientists. And I can't think of many examples of great scientists who killed themselves. Why? Is the scientific mind less vulnerable to the destructive influence of creativity? Or is scientific genius simply not viewed with the same mistrust as artistic genius? Maybe I'm just less aware of the struggles great scientists have had with mental illness. Perhaps the stigma is greater for a scientist who is insane because their mental illness could discredit their work, while the world may still embrace the works of an artist who is insane.

My husband and I watched the German silent film of FAUST last night. I was struck by the similarities between Faust and Shakespeare's Prospero. Magicians, working strange wonders with their mystical books. Early alchemists blurred the lines between science and the mystical imagination all the time. And people feared them, saw them as dabblers in dark magic making deals with the devil, or madmen attempting to play God, as in FRANKENSTEIN and so many similar tales (written by us creative types).

Personally, I like the mystical interpretation of creativity better than the psychological one. Maybe, after all, every human being, in one way or another, has a link to the divine, to the spiritual world. For some, it speaks through stories, for others through music, for others through science, for others through their hands or their children. But I guess when your link to the divine seems alien or strange to the rest of the world, they reinterpret it as demonic or crazy.

Or maybe these are just the delusional ramblings of a madwoman.

The Writer's Role in Social Change

2011-11-12T18:12:00.001-08:00

Tonight, one minute after midnight, the city of Portland plans to evict Portland's component of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, Occupy Portland. I don't know if this will happen peacefully or with violence. Two sides of the 99% - the Portland Police and the protesters - may well end up pitted against one another.

Thinking about this impending event and what it means has lead me to think about the writer's role in social change movements. We have a duty to bear witness, to ask difficult questions, to generate conversation, perhaps even controversy. Sometimes, we come down on one side, sometimes another, but often the writer's role is to explore the complicated world of the in-between.

John Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH is a powerful example of the writer bearing witness in an era of social change. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, with her work THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, gave voice to the earliest frustrations of feminism on the most intimate, personal level. On the nonfiction side, I think of Howard Zinn's radical, perspective-altering PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. Emile Zola, too, comes to mind. Virginia Woolf's essay A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN is a stirring call to every woman to fight unceasingly for change. One could argue that almost any writing has the potential to be a voice of change. At a minimum, we have a duty to examine whether we are playing that role.

Perhaps the role of the writer in social change is clearest for writers of nonfiction - journalists, for example, or essasyists. For fiction writers, it may be more complicated. Sometimes, the writer's position ends up being unpopular with both sides of the issue, because it is our duty to explore both sides. The worst of social change literature is that which caricatures one side and therefore fails to speak to anyone but those who already embrace the author's viewpoint. The best of social change literature casts light upon the dark corners and spurs action or powerful discussion.

In 1935, writer Archibald Macleish wrote a verse drama about the stock market crash entitled PANIC. It features a chorus of the unemployed, and a group of bankers, and includes a scene in which angry radicals storm the board room of the bankers. It gives heartfelt, beautiful poetic voice to the pain of the average person during an economic crisis. It expresses the revolutionary anger such a crisis can engender. And it commits the crime of humanizing even the bankers. It ends with the declaration "Man's fate is a drum!" It took me a while to understand this sentence, which seemed to be the culmination of the entire piece. A drum must be beaten to make noise. It requires a human hand and human action. Macleish's simple statement is a call to action, but the action is left up to us. Does any of this decades-old piece sound familiar?

Another well-known writer whose work came to mind as I thought about tonight's impending events and the Occupy Movement? Dr. Seuss. Specifically, HORTON HEARS A WHO, the story of a whole world so small the great oafs of the jungle couldn't, or wouldn't, recognize its existence until the entire community banded together and shouted "We are here! We are here! We are here! We are here!" It wasn't until the last, smallest member of the community spoke up - "because every voice counts" - that their presence became palpable to those in power.

In the wake of whatever happens tonight at Occupy Portland, and whatever happens in the other Occupy sites throughout the country as evictions loom, we writers must ask ourselves, what is our role? How do we bear witness, spark action, generate discussion?

Postscript on November 19, 2011: For an insightful and informative up-close perspective on Occupy Portland, check out David Loftus' series of blogposts at http://www.americancurrents.com/2011/11/occupy-portland-part-7-aftermath-and.html

You Can't Win If You Don't Play

2011-11-05T20:28:00.001-07:00

When it comes to all the schmoozing and self-promotion aspects of writing, I'm a big wimp and colossal whiner. But at least I've learned one cardinal rule since I became a grown-up. You can't get published if you don't put yourself out there. Overnight success is more myth than reality. It certainly isn't the norm. And if you're like me and you hate self-promotion, the whole process of building a digital platform can be enough to send you into the fetal position. So, what do you do?

Okay, there's no way to avoid self-promotion. But there is a different way to come at it. My critique group today pointed out that digital presence is more than just blog stats. (Yes, my grasp on this stuff really is that simplistic). It's all the many ways that you register on the radar, all the little blips, that can pave the way for the time when you push for something bigger.

Write stuff and submit it, over and over. Doesn't have to be novels. Make it whatever you can manage. Because you can't win if you don't play the game, and you can't get published if you don't stick your neck out and submit your writing.

Obvious advice, right? But I remember a time when the thought of showing ANYONE my writing was beyond terrifying. Over time, I've sent in a script here, a short story there, a novel that wasn't ready yet, an article, an audio theater piece, a picture book. These days, while I'm plugging away at the exhausting and protracted process of revising the novels, I'm submitting short stories. It gets a little less terrifying and a little more run-of-the-mill with each step. And then I keep writing so I don't obsess over the waiting game. I try not to let too much time go by without something being out there in the universe. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I slip. It's one step at a time.

If you're feeling discouraged or hiding your work in a drawer somewhere, this post is for you. Rip the bandaid off. Show somebody. Write something small and put it out there - a poem, a short story, a letter to the editor, a skit. Something, anything. Write it. Put it out there. Write something else. Put it out there. In the end, the fact that other people read what you write is what matters the most.

Shaking It Up with Short Stories

2011-10-29T18:31:00.000-07:00

Whenever I hit a wall on my big projects, THE NOVELS (they demand to be all in capitals), I find myself clearing my palate with a project of a more manageable scope. With my third graders, we take brain and body breaks throughout the day. Maybe this is my creative brain's version of the same thing. After all, that part of my brain doesn't like to just turn off. It never goes away (thank goodness). But sometimes, it needs a change of pace.

When I finished what I foolishly thought was the final draft of Novel #2, I was fried. But I wanted to keep up my writing routine. Lucky for me, my husband Sam needed a script for an audio theater project. A complete change of writing muscles - different genre, a deadline, a lighter topic, a veritable sorbet for my brain.

This week, in the throes of parent-teacher conferences at school, I slammed smack into a tangle of structural uncertainties and missing backstory on my revisions of Novel #1 (which I had also, foolishly, thought was finished). But, miraculously, instead of bemoaning my inability to get any writing done, my brain started fiddling with an old short story idea. Next thing I know, I'm playing with point of view and reviving this old piece into something with some real legs on it.

In fact, I have a lot of short stories that came about in much the same way. I wanted to keep my writing going, but I needed to catch my breath on the big stuff.

The moral of the blog? When you're writing brain gets tired, maybe it just needs a change of pace. Try a new genre. Try something of a more manageable size. Play a little!

Endings: Happily Ever After - Or Not

2011-10-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

After my weekly writing group today, a couple of us got into a long discussion about the challenge of endings. They seem so elusive. Somehow, you know when it feels wrong or feels right, but you can't articulate it and, until you hit on it, it seems almost impossible to see how you'll get there.

Let's face it. Endings are hard. They can torture you, drive you to drink, send you into endless bouts of insomnia. We put them off. We impose them. We rush them. We drag them out. We want to satisfy the reader and ourselves. We want to get the damn thing finished and we never want to say goodbye, because the ending means leaving behind characters and a world that we've grown to know and love.

Lucy Calkins says endings should have important action, memorable images, something that reminds your reader of the heart of your story. Tricky concepts for my 3rd and 4th graders, who are still learning how to move beyond "That's all I have to say!" or "I hope you like my story." So, I give them helpful sentence frames as a scaffold: "I will always remember _____." "I will never forget ________." "At that moment, I knew ___." "Now I know ______." "From that day on ________." If only it were that simple for grown-up writers!

But maybe it is. Folktales have handed down a collection of stock endings to us. Maybe those stock endings are just the master storytellers giving us scaffolding. We just have to figure out which kind of story we're telling and what our story's version of the stock ending would be.

"They lived happily ever after." Are you setting your reader up for a happy ending? If so, you have to deliver. What would it take to make your protagonist, and therefore your reader, happy and satisfied? Know this and you know how your story must end. Think how furious we would have been if Harry Potter hadn't defeated Voldemort in the end.

"They were never heard from again." If your story is a tragedy, you need to leave the reader with a mix of loss and devastation, and the lingering sense that it all might have been prevented, if only ... I think I'd put THELMA AND LOUISE in this category.

"You can still hear his voice echoing through the night." Expand your vision of a horror story to include anything that leaves a haunting image to cap off a cautionary tale. I think of MOBY DICK, whose final image - the boat sinking below the waves with its drowned crew - still lingers in my mind more than 20 years later.

"There goes a mouse!" I've always thought of this as the Grimm's folktale version of my 3rd graders' "That's all I have to say" - kind of a cop-out. But really, perhaps it's more like Bugs Bunny's "That's all folks!" The comedic sign-off has it's place, when delivered with the proper light tone and humorous nonsequitur. Think of MONTY PYTHON'S HOLY GRAIL, perhaps. Or BBETLEJUICE.

What flavor does your story have? Can you think of other classic, stock endings that might point the way in your own struggle to bring your tale to a satisfying conclusion?

Give me a Break: Recess is Not Procrastination

2011-10-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

My third and fourth graders have an incredible arsenal of work avoidance tactics. Finding a pencil. Sharpening a pencil. Getting a drink of water. Going to the bathroom. Not having the paper, book or other supply they need. Finding the perfect place to sit. Setting up a screen to block out distractions. Taking the long way back to their desk and visiting friends en route. Helping a buddy in need. Working on another assignment first.

Sound familiar? Writers are just as good at these tactics. We call it procrastination. And sometimes that's exactly what it is. But sometimes, a break is necessary. Sometimes, the brain returns refreshed and renewed. We humans are not designed to work nonstop 8 hours a day.

As a writer, I'm terrified that if I take a break from a piece, I might never finish it. If I deviate from my routine, I might never get back to it. It takes courage to trust myself enough to step away and take a breather. When I do, I often have a breakthrough. I come back with a new perspective. I can see the value in the things I thought were hopeless crap. I can let go of unnecessary scenes to which I clung for old times' sake. Structural solutions that had been mired in the swamp reveal themselves with absolute clarity.

I took two years away from my current project. I actually never intended to come back to it. I finished a second project and started a third one. Then, I needed a break from that third one and found myself looking back at this piece, THE SPARROW'S SECRET HEART. I saw it with new eyes and realized I didn't want to let it go and that I could, in fact, fix what I thought was unfixable.

Everybody needs recess. Even writers. Sleep in. Work on a different story. Read a new kind of book. Go for a walk. Work out. Spend time with a friend or loved one. Go to a movie. Take a nap. Step away from the work for 10 minutes, an afternoon, a day, even a week. You may be surprised at what you find when you return.

Writing, Day Jobs and Life: The Balancing Act

2011-10-10T19:28:00.000-07:00

How do you find the time to write? For any of us who work full-time doing something else, that question is the number one challenge to defining ourselves as writers. If, like me, you have a day job that doesn't end when you walk out the door, it's an even greater challenge.

I have a day job that I love. I'm a teacher. Like writing, it's a passion. When I walk out the door of my classroom, my brain is still buzzing with a million and one school-related things. It's hard to turn them off. That's why, for me, writing time has to be in the morning, before school, when I can give myself over to the story. The challenge? I have to be at school at 7:00 AM.

As a teacher, I have the great bonus of summers and other vacation times when I can give myself over to big chunks of writing. But it makes the re-entry into the school year that much harder, when I have to let go of that freedom and limit myself to 20-30 minutes of writing per day. All summer, I can dance between a variety of writing projects, plus engaging in the blogosphere as part of building my digital platform. Then the school year arrives. Something has to be cut back. I feel sad about losing that full immersion in writing.

Finding a balance I can live with is a struggle. I give up the snooze alarm and buy myself an extra 15-30 minutes in the morning to write. I don't wear make-up. My hair doesn't always look it's best. But I get my writing time.

For self-care purposes, I give myself permission to take the occasional day off from writing, as long as it doesn't become a habit. My weekly critique group helps me stay accountable for a certain level of productivity. I block out some time on the weekend.

I let go of non-essential writing-related activities. While school is in session, building my digital platform will have to wait. I might not be able to attend all those conferences. Writing every day and participating in critique groups may be all I can manage. For me, balance means self-care, sustaining my writing muscles, sustaining forward momentum on my highest priority projects, and maintaining connections with other writers.

If you're faced with overload and have to cut back, ask yourself what is essential, what is the lifeblood of your writer identity? What can you let go?

Conferencing With Yourself - Intentional Writing Practices

2011-09-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

The other day, Suzanne LaGrande, one of the members of my weekly critique group, was talking to me about intentional practice - practicing the writing craft the way an athlete practices. If I'm lucky, maybe she'll do a guest post about this topic.
Athletes don't just play their sport during practice; they focus on specific elements and skills. I paddle with a dragon boat team (Go, Mighty Women!). Our goal is to finish the race first, or at least to beat our best time. But to accomplish that, we work on our technique.

So, when I sit down to write, my goal might be "to write 1000 words" or "to write for one hour" or "to finish this scene." But that's not enough. I need to think about what element of the craft I am working on.

When I conference with my third and fourth grade students, I always start with the question, "What are you working on today as a writer?" At first, they just tell me about their story. Then, I say, "What are you trying to do with that story?" or "What are your goals with that story?" Like so many of us, they often say, "To finish it" or perhaps "To make it really long" or even "To make it really good." It takes a while, but eventually they learn how to identify what element of craft they are working on. "I'm looking at dialogue." Or "I'm adding sensory details." Or "I'm trying to write a great lead."

Next time you sit down to write, conference with yourself. Move beyond, "I'm going to write this many words or pages or minutes." Ask yourself, "What are you working on as a writer today?" Identify what aspect of craft you're focused on for that writing session. Practice with intentionality.

How Many Pages Does It Take To Get To The Center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

2011-09-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

I'm about to start racking up overdue fines again. I placed a hold on Adam Levin's THE INSTRUCTIONS at the beginning of the summer, back when I would have had time to read all 1,030 pages of teeny-tiny print. But it didn't arrive at the library for me until 2 weeks ago. School was gearing back up and my time for reading was shrinking. I went to pick up the book and had quite a shock. It was over 3 inches thick. My hand barely reached from the back cover to the front. A brick pile of a book.

I started reading. Great voice, creative use of language, intriguing opening and premise - kind of a unibomber meets CATCHER IN THE RYE. But 1,000 pages? Really? Are you absolutely sure you couldn't tell this story in less than that? Where was this guy's editor? How in the world did this get published? Looking at the name of the publisher (McSweeney's Rectangulars) and Levin's bio, I'm guessing his short story successes opened the door for publishing THE INSTRUCTIONS. It seems well written (granted, I'm only 20 pages in), but I really don't believe you need that many pages to tell a good story. Honestly, it's like a dare to the reader.

Yes, yes, I know. Proust was 3-4,000 pages long, at least, depending on the edition. And there are actually people who've read the whole thing. You think he'd get it published today?

I really have no business judging if I don't finish the book. But returning it after 20 pages isn't likely to keep me up at nights - because, so far, the book isn't keeping me up at nights. I think the last book I read that was a similar length was probably MISTS OF AVALON by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It kept me up at night. I'd show up at work bleary-eyed because I couldn't stop reading. So far, that hasn't been the case for THE INSTRUCTIONS.

Anyway, I guess I'll never know if Levin's massive tome is worth it. Time's up, late fines are mounting and school's in session, which means my reading material can no longer include a 1,000 page experiment. I'll have to take the reviewer's word for it that this book was a "must-read." As in, someone has to tell you that you must read it or you'd never crack that huge block of paper.

Anybody else out there read THE INSTRUCTIONS? Am I being too snarky and cynical? Should I try again next summer when I have more time? Did it really need to be that long? Have I simply succumbed to the shortened attention span of the new millenium?

Dialogue Tags - Staring At Strangers

2011-09-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

Look to the left!
Look to the right!
Stand up!
Sit down!
Fight, fight, fight!

Good dialogue isn't just about what's said, because conversation isn't just about what's said. It's about what happens between the words - the nonverbal cues, the tone of voice, the facial expressions, the rhythms, the pauses. Capturing and conveying that effectively in the written word is easier said than done. Dialogue tags do a lot of that work, letting us know not only who is speaking but how.

I keep hearing that "said" and "asked" are invisible dialogue tags and everything else ("she screeched" "he gasped" "they hissed" "I murmured") draws too much attention to itself. Then I keep hearing that adverbs should be avoided or at least used sparingly (Oops! There goes one, now!). What tools does that leave for creating rhythm and pause in dialogue, identifying speakers, conveying underlying emotion from a non-point-of-view character, and still preventing repetitive injury (he said, she said, he said, she said, ad nauseum)?

Ever since I learned the above pearls of wisdom, I've become obsessed with my non-verbal dialogue tags, and woefully conscious of my limited palette in that arena.

"He looked at her. She looked at him. They glanced at eachother. I looked away. We turned to eachother. They eyed one another. He looked down. She stood up. I sat down. We turned away."

Lord save me! But if I tried to avoid that overused collection, I ran into tortured descriptions like "His lips twisted sidewise" or "Her mouth slanted downward." My characters were a group of twitching, tortured, spastic puppets.

In desperation, I found myself staring at strangers - in bars, at bus stops, in meetings - anywhere two or more were gathered in the name of human interaction. If I couldn't hear what they were saying, so much the better. This was an investigation into show-don't-tell. Could I interpret their non-verbals? How would I describe them?

I started to notice the power of props. As someone with a theater background, a former props mistress in fact, I can't believe I overlooked this fact. The cigarette, the drinking glass, the strand of hair, the wristwatch, the bracelet, the purse strap, the sleeve cuff, the teddy bear. We humans have an endless array of props through which we express ourselves in conversations. Set a scene somewhere that gives your characters access to a few props and you throw the world of dialogue tags wide open.

I also started thinking about the whole body. Forget eye contact. Get beyond the character's face. What's their body doing? Their shoulders, their back, their legs or butt or hips or feet? Sometimes I have to get up out of my chair while I'm writing and physically inhabit the character to figure out what they're body does in this moment with this emotion. Makes me a pretty amusing sight at the local coffee shop.

What are your favorite overused dialogue tags? How about delightful discoveries you've added to your dialogue palette?

Three Tricks to Strengthen Your Word Choices

2011-09-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

Here are a few nuggets I learned from Wordstock's Teacher as Writer workshop. You may already know these tricks of line editing and revision, but they raised the bar for me.

Verbs of awareness: "Saw", "heard", "thought", "felt", "tasted", and similar words are verbs of awareness. They point out the presence of the protagonist as separate from the reader and thereby distance your reader from the action. They draw attention to the process of noticing. When we see something, we don't think in our heads, "I see that." Instead, we register the thing itself. Often, writers use verbs of awareness in order to avoid what many of us see as one of the seven deadly sins of writing - the verb "to be." Teacher as Writer instructor Joanna Rose radically suggested we should embrace the verb "to be" as a means of removing verbs of awareness and making the sensory experiences of our characters more immediate. For example:

"I saw the monster rise up out of the lake. I heard its horrible groans. As I turned and ran down the path, I felt the brambles scrape my cheeks."
OR
"The monster rose up out of the lake. It let out a horrible groan. I ran. Brambles scraped my cheeks."

For those of us who are teachers, verbs of awareness are a great scaffold while we are helping students build their skills at incorporating sensory details. But the language is even stronger when the scaffolding eventually goes away and there's nothing left between the reader and the sensory experience itself.

Redundancy: Look for places where you state the obvious. For example, if you've placed your characters inside a truck, you don't need to say, "I leaned against the truck window." "Window" alone will suffice. When you start getting good at the infamous skill of "show don't tell," you'll find redundancies popping up all over the place. If you show us the character speaking in an uncertain manner, for example, you no longer have to tell us they said something "uncertainly." Once you start looking for these, its amazing how many you'll find. It helps to have another pair of eyes looking, too.

Latin language vs. Saxon language: This was both the trickiest and most transformative concept for many of us at the workshop. Words with Latin roots, often multi-syllabic words, tend to create emotional distance. When a scene calls for emotional weight and gut-level power, the simple, usually mono-syllabic, punch of saxon-derived words has a stronger impact. For example:

"Humanity imbues astrological bodies with narrative."
OR
"We tell stories about the stars."

Feel the difference? For all the juicy fun of high-blown academic language, sometimes simple, blunt words are the strongest.

The distance provided by latinate words can come in handy for humor or irony. The cutting, sardonic tone of writers such as Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton and Jane Austen often comes from the juxtaposition of latinate commentary against ugly, base truth. However, if you find that a scene you're writing just isn't having the emotional impact it should, maybe there are some latinate words getting in the way.

These three tricks have given me some new tools for fine-tuning my writing. What are some of your favorite, straight-forward revision or editing strategies that bring out the emotional punch by polishing your writing craft?

Breaking Up the Logjam of Mid-story Writer's Block

2011-08-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

In the old days, breaking up a logjam was incredibly tricky and dangerous. Loggers carefully removed one or more “key logs” (a little like reverse jenga, I guess) and if it was a really bad jam, they had to use dynamite. These days, they use a machine to haul out big chunks until the logs start moving.

I've been working on revisions for my YA novel, THE SPARROW'S SECRET HEART. It was my first novel, and it's been through more rewrites than I can count, including a complete point of view shift from third person to first person, but I keep coming back to it because I still love the protagonist and he just won't let me give up on him.

Recently I hit a logjam. I'm trying to rewrite a pivotal scene that introduces an important character, the protagonist's Aunt Megan, a complete stranger to him until this moment. My critique group demanded a better description of Aunt Megan and her house, as well as a restructuring of the scene to raise the tension and conflict. I kept coming at the scene and stalling. Over and over and over. Finally, I realized I really didn't know enough about this aunt of his. So I sat down and started working on the backstory.

Now, I'd worked out a backstory for Aunt Megan before, but it really was surface stuff, more about plot logistics as they affected my protagonist than about Aunt Megan herself. I realized I didn't even have a clue how to get inside her head yet. So I started with the timeline, her age when certain key events took place. I pieced together the ways those events affected her and her life. Then I wrote my problem scene in first person from Aunt Megan's point of view. Mind you, I have no plans to rewrite the novel in her point of view. This was an exercise to help me find my way into the scene.

I wish I could say the words flew from my finger tips, but they didn't. With each key log I thought I'd removed, new ones took its place, new questions about who Aunt Megan was. I wrote scenes that had nothing to do with my protagonist. I followed lines of thought well beyond the necessary conclusion. I got out my sketchpad and drew a complete floor plan of her house. It was a little terrifying to make such a commitment to the interior world of a character who isn't my protagonist. Why was I spending all this time on stuff that wouldn't even make it into my final draft?

But it was worth it. Bit by bit, the logs began to break free. Aunt Megan came into focus. Critical motives and subtexts revealed themselves. It's taken me a good week or so, and a lot of words that won't end up in the novel itself, but the logs are floating downriver again.

Mine was definitely a case of removing key logs one at a time, gradual and painstaking. But I've also had those dynamite situations - just sit down and power through it with some insane, off-the-wall notion. I've even used the chunks at a time method - cut this chunk, move this chunk, and soon it makes sense again.

When you've faced writer's block, how did you break up your logjam? Chunk-chomping machine? Key logs? Or dynamite?

Life in a Literary City - Portlandia is for Writers

2011-08-17T19:32:00.000-07:00

First, confession time. I've only watched the TV show PORTLANDIA once or twice. I didn't care for it. Why? There was no affection for the place they were mocking. I mention this because the overly-quirky, accept-the-fringe, coffee-loving atmosphere PORTLANDIA mocks is the same atmosphere that has fostered an incredibly literary city that I am proud to call home.

When I first moved to Portland, Oregon, I was blown away by two facts. First, something called Portland Arts and Lectures, featuring literary speakers and expensive tickets, was routinely sold out. Second, on a Saturday night in Portland, the Anne Hughes Coffee Shop at Powell's Books was packed with literary geeks like me until late into the night. "I have found my tribe!" I thought.

Portland has a thriving writer's community that's given birth to all sorts of literary events, including Wordstock and the Willamette Writers Conference, not to mention Haystack and the Pacific Northwest Children's Book Conference. Portland is also home to such literary talents as Ursula LeGuin. And recently, not one, but two Portland-based writers were selected for inclusion in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES. Other selections were previously published in two nationally-recognized Portland-based magazines, TIN HOUSE and GLIMMER TRAIN.

Maybe its the nine months of rain. What else is there to do but hunker down inside with a good book, or write your own? With all that gray, drizzly weather, we lean on coffee just to keep our spirits up, but maybe that thriving coffee shop culture fuels good literature. Maybe it's the afore-mentioned quirky, fringe vibe, which leaves so much room for artists of all sorts. Maybe it's the low cost of living. Yes, we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, but it takes less money to get by in Portland, so folks who quit the day job to work on their novel can make it on less money.

Whatever the reason, Portland is a literary city, a city of writers and readers, a city that values words, and I feel lucky to be here.

Where do you call home? Would you say it's a literary city? Where have you found your community of writers, live or online? What do you think fosters a literary climate? Which cities would you cite as writer-friendly and why?

Following Karen Russell Beyond Swamplandia!

2011-08-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

I recently read Karen Russell's novel SWAMPLANDIA! and I can't quite stop thinking about it. Much like HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins, it makes me want to re-read it from my writer's brain. The two books are so different, but both examples of great writing. HUNGER GAMES keeps pulling you forward with in-your-face stakes from the get-go. SWAMPLANDIA! draws you in with its rich, strange images. It keeps growing on me over time. After HUNGER GAMES, I had to read the rest of the trilogy. After SWAMPLANDIA! I wanted to get my hands on Russell's short story collection, ST. LUCY'S HOME FOR GIRLS RAISED BY WOLVES, which I've just started reading.

There's something liberating about Russell's writing. The places are so fully realized and so wildly other at the same time. It reminds me of the worlds my brain would travel to as a child, though it is not children's literature. It leaves me believing that, like the protagonist in SWAMPLANDIA!, I can leap off the high-dive into a pit of alligators and swim safely to the other side. It makes me want to take risks in my own writing, to pursue the crazy, out-there images that float through my brain without fear and see where they lead. That's a trick worth celebrating. So, thank you, Ms. Russell!

Notice, Conjure, Give In, Resist - Using Imagery

2011-08-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been obsessed with imagery - sensory details and descriptive passages that carry the emotion and mood of a narrative. I used to think description was good if it put my reader physically in the moment - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching what the character did. But descriptive passages and sensory details can and ought to do so much more.

I thought about this a lot as I was reading Karen Russell's SWAMPLANDIA! At first, the dense, thick, laden descriptions almost seemed too much, slowing down the narrative and making it hard to find my way in. But Russell knows what she's doing. The descriptions are absolutely essential to creating the semi-magical, otherworldly mood that makes the novel work, drawing us into the world of the Florida swamps and the possible supernatural experiences that lay within. I only accepted the strange pivotal events of the novel because all that mood work brought me so fully into the mindset of the main character - not through her thoughts but through Russell's descriptions of her environment.

I want to share an example of my own efforts to rewrite description in order to convey emotion. This is a brief excerpt from my novel THE SPARROW'S SECRET HEART, which I am in the process of revising. The scene is the funeral of the protagonist's mother.

Early draft:
"The funeral home looked like some rich person's grandmother lived there. It had perfect green grass out front and tall white columns and a big glass door with a brass handle. Inside was a fireplace with candles on top, some fat armchairs, and a tall, polished table all covered in lace with a vase full of fake flowers on it. A big picture of Momma sat next to the vase, and there was a black guest book with a fancy pen so people could write stuff about Momma inside. Some double doors opened on a little room full of chairs with a table at the front and a big wreath of flowers and a wooden stand and a microphone."

Rewritten draft:
"The funeral home looked like some rich person's grandmother lived there. It had perfect green grass out front and tall white columns and a big glass door with a brass handle and polished tables with flimsy lace on top. Made me want to stick a wad of chewing gum somewhere. There was a fireplace with no fire in it, candles with no flames on top, and a vase full of flowers with no smell. One fat armchair stood in the hallway facing nothing, like anybody'd want to sit by themselves in a hallway staring at the wall. This long black book with a long black pen was spread open next to the flowers, waiting for somebody to come by and write something. In between the fake flowers and the empty book, Momma's picture smiled at me, flat and frozen."

Now, I know I still have work to do on the revised draft, but I think you can see the steps I've already taken to make the description carry more emotion and mood.

You can go too far with imagery, pouring it all over everything like Will Farrell ladling maple syrup on spaghetti in the movie ELF. So, how do you approach description without going off the deep end into a binge or tiptoing so carefully you miss opportunities? I think the sensory tango goes something like this:

1. Notice: Notice the world around you. Pay attention to your senses as you move through your own days. Constantly collect those observations and store them up in your mind so you have lots and lots to choose from when the time comes in your writing.

2. Conjure: When you sit down to write a scene, use words to conjure your stored up images. Choose the words carefully. Approach descriptive passages like poems. Wear the character's mindset and the mood of the scene as filters while you write.

3. Resist: Imagery is seductive. The juicy words and thick wealth of details will seek to pull you in at every moment. Play hard to get sometimes.

4. Give In: Hard-to-get is great, but occasionally you have to let imagery sweep you off your feet and carry you away. You can always dial it back later. A little wild abandon can lead to wonderful discoveries. That tension between resistance and giving in makes me call it a tango.

During the Teacher as Writer course I attended last week through Wordstock, instructor Joanna Rose gave us this exercise, which I believe she credited to author John Gardner:

A farmer has just lost his son in the war. Describe his barn. Without using the words "loss," "death," "tragedy," "son," or "war," convey the mood and emotional content of this moment.

The Moving Target - Writing Over Time, or Bringing Up Baby

2011-07-31T07:19:00.000-07:00

My last post was about how time affects the reader's view of a work of literature. Back when I wrote it, (a week ago), I was all gung-ho to do a follow-up post about how time affects the writer's relationship to their own work. I had the post half-written in my mind. I counted on my brief reference in my last post as sufficient to jog any memories that might need jogging with the mere flip of an ipad.

Now, here I am, a week or so later, and already my relationship to the material has changed. Between then and now, things have happened. Not earth-shattering things, just the ebb and flow of living. Still, that ebb and flow is enough to shift the sands. The thought that popped up so vividly then seems distant and foggy now. New blog posts and story ideas have been jostling for a place in line. And this is after little more than 7 days. This is with the succinct, manageable form of a blog post.

How, then, do we writers, changeable humans that we are, manage to sustain our connection to a novel, with its complex storylines and fully-realized characters whose truth and consistency must hold not only across the space of hundreds of pages but across the many years it takes to complete such a longer work? It's not like we stop changing and growing and evolving during that time. What do we do if we sit down one day and discover that the themes or characters that drove us to create a story in the first place are no longer the themes that resonate for us today?

Perhaps we need to be time travelers in our own minds, imaginative enough to go back and find the emotional truth that drew us to a story. But we're also responsible for creating characters vivid enough to have life and growth on their own, outside our minds. The skin and tissue of our characters must be consistent and strong, but also fluid, allowing them to grow. In the end, like parents, we must trust them, release them from our own control in the hope that they can stand, walk, run and live on their own.

How? Well, if my own mini-experiment in this blog post is any indicator, when you don't feel the connection anymore, write your way back in from a new angle. Maybe your story will be richer for it. Or maybe, as in my case, you'll at least feel you've given it the attention it deserved. And if you drop it, ignore it, give up on it? Maybe, like Frankenstein's monster, it will come to you at night in some terrifyingly powerful form and insist that you own it as yours.

Change Over Time - Experiencing Stories at Different Phases of Life

2011-07-23T23:34:00.000-07:00

Back in high school, when I took calculus, I remember there was something called "change over time." I think we represented it with the Greek letter delta. I've forgotten an awful lot I learned in calculus, but lately I've been thinking about change over time - as it relates to writing, of course.

I've been re-reading Charles Dickens' OLIVER TWIST at the gym lately on my iPad (there's a sentence I'd never have expected to write). I first read it when I was about 12 or 13 years old. After watching a movie adaptation on Netflix, I found myself wondering how accurate my memories of the story truly were, and how my experience of it might be different at the age of 45 than it was 30 plus years ago. The adult me is infinitely better tuned to Dickens' wry tone and scathing condemnation of his society than the adolescent me. But beyond that, there were entire sections I had completely forgotten (or perhaps blocked out) and even characters I barely remembered or noticed the first time that stand out much more this time through. My impressions of other characters are completely changed. Fagin and the Artful Dodger, for example, seemed much more complex, almost sympathetic, on my first round, while their villainy and self-interested motives appear obvious now.

I remember my mother had a similar reaction to SILAS MARNER. In high school she thought it was boring and stupid. As an adult, she found it deeply moving. So, now I'm on a mission. The next on my list is Jane Austen, who left me utterly cold when I first read her stuff in high school. We'll see what I think of Mr. Darcy and the rest this time through.

The words don't change with time, but we do, and we, the readers, are co-creators with an author. We stage and interpret their work in our mind's eye, and as our minds change, our experience of the story changes.

Change over time affects us as writers, too, a fact that can prove especially challenging when you work on something over the course of many years. But that's a story for another blogpost, one I suspect will be entitled THE MOVING TARGET.

Genres and Misfits - Labels in Literature

2011-07-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

The digital age demands categories and labels in order to sort the overwhelming quantity of data and information floating through cyber space. Search engines want to know where we fit and where our ideas fit. They want to know because there are people at the other end trying to sift through all this information to find what they seek. Genre labels can help your audience find you, and they can help you connect with the right people and places. Nevertheless, the process of labeling oneself tickles a disturbing place in the brain.

I recently checked out an online database for submissions called duotrope (my thanks to Pete Morin of the Fiction Writers Guild on Linked In for sharing this). It seemed like a great resource, but it forced me to parse things into multiple layers of categories. Duotrope's lists were not only sorted into 9 genres, but also into innumerable subgenres and each of those were sorted into styles. I struggled to determine which of my stories fit into which categories, or whether my stories were misfits.

Agents and publishers use genre labels, too. So often, the bio information for editors or agents at a conference or in a newsletter includes a list of genres they seek and those that "need not apply." Meanwhile, authors struggle to decode what each agent's definition of these terms might be. Do they interpret "horror" the way I interpret "horror"? How are they defining "magical realism"? What's their issue with "inspirational," or do they really mean "anything at all to do with religion"?

I suppose it's better than being back in high school, where people assigned labels and categories to human beings. Still, I can't help but notice that same, rebellious piece of my brain fighting against the boxes, whether it's "jock, brain, stoner and drama fag" or "horror, romance, mystery and thriller."

None of us like being pigeonholed. Maybe that's because so many voices coexist inside us. We are filled with selves - dark selves, humorous selves, adventurous selves, argumentative selves. Each self has it's own collection of stories, and those stories take many different forms. Perhaps that's the beauty of the whole genre and subgenre game. I'm not labeling myself. I'm just labeling one story. And I have an unlimited supply of stories inside of me, stories of many different stripes.

Classifying and categorizing is part of human nature. Even as young children, we sort our world into categories - people who look like our parents and people who don't; men with beards and men without; humans, animals and clowns (their own disturbing category). It's how we store memories and organize data in our brains. The danger comes when we exclude things from our world based purely on labels and categories, when we shrink our world to fit those categories, when the labels serve as boundaries to our vision of the possible. Narrowing the search shouldn't mean narrowing your mind.

Stumbling Into Genre

2011-07-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

First, let's get the shameless self-promotion out of the way. My short story, DAEMIEL WATCHES, just won 2nd place in the Kay Snow Awards. External validation is a lovely thing. But here's the bloggable part. This is the 2nd short story I've written that has won an award, and both of them have been in the horror and suspense genre. "Big deal," you say. Well, since I've never particularly thought of myself as a horror and suspense writer - or even a horror and suspense reader - it is kind of a big deal. Or at least a mid-sized deal. It's left me asking myself what this means for me as a writer.

The realization that I have more than a few horror and suspense pieces to my credit had been gradually creeping up on me, enough so that I made a special page for them on my website. But this latest turn of events has put it all in a new light. Mind you, I don't plan on throwing my lot in with horror writers and ignoring everything else from here on, but I do plan on examining more closely the kind of writer I am and wish to be and the kinds of stories that draw my best work from me.

It got me thinking of the time I was browsing the shelves in Powell's Books and stumbled upon a copy of John Steinbeck's first novel, CUP OF GOLD, a swashbuckler based on the life of pirate Henry Morgan. It wasn't terrible, but it really wasn't Steinbeck. He so clearly had not yet found his true writing home, as if he was trying to live in someone else's skin.

I'm still not sure exactly what conclusions to draw about myself as a writer from all of this. At a minimum, it's a reminder not to pigeonhole myself, but rather to keep my mind open to stories of any genre, write the stories that demand I write them and attend to the characters who insist on attention. Still, I think I may have to take a look at some Stephen King.

The Luddite Versus the Populist

2011-07-12T17:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, folks, I'm going to continue to contemplate the questions of literature in the digital age. Let me say, first of all, that following this conversation in its many forms and facets, has led me to blogs and chatrooms all over cyberspace and into several different books, from HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME by Victor Hugo to NEGOTIATING WITH THE DEAD by Margaret Atwood and beyond. The topic seems to engender debate that is lively to say the least.

In my own thoughts on e-publishing, I find two perspectives warring inside me - the luddite and the populist. The luddite approaches the entire concept with a healthy dose of paranoia and distrust. She always notices the latest posts warning that Facebook has changed its privacy settings to give it the ability to own her image, her words and all the private information she or any of her friends have ever posted anywhere in the cyber universe. She would rather remain unknown than click "yes" to anything giving some faceless cyber creature permission to do anything and believes her keychain is nobody's business but hers. She believes computers, television and cellphones have cut us off from one another and created a generation of children increasingly incapable of civil conversation. Her favorite books include George Orwell's 1984 and FEED by M.T. Anderson.

Then there's the populist. She honors the internet as one of the great heroes of all the latest revolutions throughout the world. She celebrates it as a tool of the masses, overthrowing the information elite and throwing open the doors of ideas to the people. She has a copy of Apple's famous METROPOLIS-inspired Superbowl ad saved on her iPhone and firmly believes that e-publishing is to the common man what the printing press once was. She believes humanity's desire for connection will always win out over the isolating aspects of the computer, and points to the explosion of social networking, skyping and shared gaming experiences as proof. She is an incurable optimist and she likes it that way.

Which one is winning? Honestly, I think I'll keep them both around, just to stay grounded. Whose winning in your head?

Continuing the Conversation on the Digital Revolution

2011-07-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

My friend Jan Bear is fearless in her exploration of the digital realm as it relates to writers. I keep telling her she will become the first in a new breed that, for lack of a better word, I'm calling a digital agent. I look to her as Virgil to my Dante in the dark wood of the digital world. She has graciously decided to chime in on our conversation about the digital revolution at her blog: marketyourbookblog.com.

Craftsmanship vs Mass Production: Literature in the Digital Age

2011-07-08T16:18:00.000-07:00

Lately, I can't seem to stop thinking about this question of the digital revolution and its effects on writing, writers and literature. Most recently, I found myself wondering how the new age of blogs and e-publishing impacted the quality of written work.

It seems to me that the digital revolution is to the world of ideas and stories what the industrial revolution was to furniture and other such material goods. We are entering an age of mass-production of ideas. The printing press enabled mass-production of the concrete items that contained the ideas, the messengers, i.e. books. But now, the ideas themselves can flow forth at an unprecedented rate from anyone and everyone, with minimal effort, risk or sense of commitment.

When the industrial age allowed the mass production of items such as clothing and furniture, many would argue that a reduction in quality followed close behind and craftsmanship was lost. "They don't make 'em like they used to." Will we find this same thing to be true with stories and ideas in the digital age? Will craftsmanship fall by the wayside in favor of "increased traffic"? After all, we've all heard that the more frequently you post on your blog, the better your traffic.

Call me a luddite if you will. Or perhaps this is simply another in a series of warning signs that I am becoming an old curmudgeon. But maybe it's a call to arms, a reminder not to compromise quality in the face of quantity and the rush to deliver.

For an interesting conversation about this topic, from a different perspective, check out the post
"Tsunami of Crap" at The Newbie's Guide to Publishing.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Reading with Two Brains

2011-07-03T18:06:00.000-07:00

One of the great joys of summer vacations, especially as a teacher or a student, is the time to read, and to truly lose yourself in a book. But ever since I've gotten serious about my writing, I find I read with two brains. One is the reader, who drops herself deep down into the world of the story, journeys with the characters, hopes and fears with them and, if the author does his or her job right, can't stop until the book is done. The other brain is the writer brain. She has a much tougher job, and she knows it. She's clinical, analytical, and sits way up high studying, taking notes. She often tries to muscle the reader out of the way so she can get a closer look at the machinery behind the magic. She's Toto to the reader-brain's Dorothy, pulling away that curtain so she can reveal the wizard's true self.

I'm always telling myself that the writer brain deserves to take a closer look. She deserves a chance to go for another ride on the book, to take her time and pick apart the language and the technique that swept the reader off her feet. But the reader, ever a bit flighty and always looking for the next magic moment, insists, "But I've already read that one! I want to try this one out! There are so many books, and so little time!"

My writer brain has gotten pretty good at catching things on-the-fly, identifying where a particular book or author has demonstrated special mastery. J.K. Rowling makes me want to turn the page the way Doritoes make me want to keep eating. Water for Elephants has an incredible opening scene. Lovely Bones demonstrates a brilliant and unusual use of point of view. Dickens creates unforgettable characters and writes fantastic dialogue. The Hobbit is a beautiful example of voice. I could go on and on.

"Yes, yes," says my writer brain. "That's WHAT they did. But HOW? HOW? That's the most valuable part! I must have the chance for further study!" I wonder, if I let her have her way, would she be strong enough to take charge and analyze the way she wants? Or would my reader brain once again win the struggle, caught up in the magic spell of words, story and character that won her over in the first place?

Once, long ago in college, I had to do exactly that - analyze, analyze, analyze. I did fine, but I'm not sure I ever did it with quite this purpose - as the sorcerer's apprentice, hoping to learn the master's spells and tricks well enough to apply them to my own magic.

Have you ever re-read a book purely to analyze the technique in-depth? What book? What did you learn?

The Muse In the Machine: The Writer's Relationship with Technology

2011-06-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

Thirty-thousand years ago, an early creative artist painted stories on the walls of Chauvet caves in France. The available technology affected the story. With no film or written language, the muse spoke through hand prints, animal paintings, tripled images to evoke movement, and the shape of the cave rock itself. Visual images necessitated the development of metaphor to reach for abstract concepts. Collaboration happened over hundreds, even thousands of years. The risk involved included the threat of maulings by bears or death by rock slides.

As spoken language evolved in complexity, the muse, no longer bound by visual images, could enter more and more abstract terrain. Ballads, epic poems, the shared memories of entire cultures - all became her playground. The oral tradition was a collaboration of the community, ever shifting and changing, and utterly ephemeral. There was no "final copy." There was rarely an "author." Intellectual property was a foreign concept. Plots and characters were shared freely from one creative artist to the next, albeit dressed in ever-changing robes. The audience was always a community, rarely if ever a solitary individual, and their reaction - love it or hate it - could be gauged immediately because the writer was the performer.

As civilization advanced, so did the writer's technology. Human beings could imprint stories onto stone tablets using written language. Lengthy tomes required a commitment we can only imagine. Yet, entire epic poems survived intact from this age. But written language had to be learned and taught. Enter the gatekeepers, determining which stories would survive to be shared with communities not yet born.

In the Middle Ages, the gatekeepers became protectors, guarding the efforts of past writers from the desecration of the small-minded and honoring the sacred side of the muse, copying works in the hope that the audience might grow.

The printing press. BAM!! The muse engages with the masses on a scale unheard of in the past. The power to preserve thought for the future is popularized as never before. The size of audience to be reached explodes. And the gatekeepers become those who own this new and powerful technology, for they can now determine how many copies exist, how soon they are made, what they look like, how much they cost.

And now the digital age. Like an A-list celebrity, the muse is being mobbed from all sides. Anyone and everyone has a forum. The communal creative energy of the oral tradition has combined with the preservative power of the written word and the popularizing capacity of mass production on an unprecedented level. Written, visual and oral storytelling can coexist and commingle in new ways. The role of the gatekeeper is transforming and mutating daily.

What will be the latest progeny in the tempestuous love affair of muse and machine, writer and technology? When everyone has a forum, can the audience hear anymore? When everyone is artist, performer, and gatekeeper, who is left? Will this new age foster interaction and creation or narcissism? What will survive to the future when all is said and done? What will the next age be?

Overfeeding the Hungry Muse

2011-06-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

There's definitely no shortage of resources to feed my writing muse. Blogs, conferences, publications (both digital and otherwise), books on writing, books on publishing, books on revising, books on finding an agent, online data bases, online chat rooms, critique groups, workshops, lectures, newsletters ... and on and on and on. The real challenge is recognizing which resources will actually nourish my muse and when.

It's a little like shopping at Costco. I don't know about you, but my brain goes into overdrive and my eyes glass over when I spend too much time at Costco. Bulk everything. Piles and piles and piles of merchandise of every sort and kind. Free samples. Crowds and crowds of people. You better know what you're after or you'll end up with a year's supply of jalapeno-flavored cream cheese in a jumbo tub.

Writing conferences offer a great opportunity for inspiration and networking, plus a chance to get your foot in the door with editors or agents who don't normally accept unsolicited manuscripts but will do so for conference attendees. Conferences can be energizing, but they can also be overwhelming. You get out of them what you put into them. It's a good idea to balance workshops on the business of writing (getting an agent, getting published, marketing your book, writing your query letter) with those on the craft of writing, just to keep your sanity. It helps to have your own goals in mind so you don't get swept up in everyone else's goals. And you need to be prepared to answer, and ask, the question "What are you working on?" over and over and over.

Personally, I prefer the face-to-face, real-time interaction of conferences and workshops to the one-dimensional experience of blogs, newsletters, and similar formats. But when the intense energy, time and money required for a conference is in short supply, or I need guidance and inspiration in smaller doses spread throughout my year on my own timeline and my own schedule, then books on writing, and blogs and newsletters and similar resources, truly fit the bill.

Summer is my conference time. But just for this year, I've opted out of writing conferences. My hungry muse needs a different diet for a while.

Writer's Wavelength: THE Call

2011-03-10T20:30:00.000-08:00

The link below is a follow-up to my post about the need to be prepared for that day when you actually get the call from an agent or publisher.

http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2009/04/getting-call.html

THE Call

2011-03-10T20:12:00.000-08:00

For the past few years, I've been striving to put my work out there, to get noticed, to find an agent, an editor, a publisher that will help bring my writing to a wider audience. But every so often, a tiny voice in my head says, "What if?" What if I actually got the call? Usually, the what-if game is fun to play. My wish-fulfillment side takes over, and my husband and I daydream about what life might be like. But the other day, I got a call. Not THE call. But A call. A call from someone in another state wanting to know what was involved in getting rights and permission to use one of my audio theater scripts for a project. What was my response? "That's a really good question." Honest, but not particularly savvy.

We managed to negotiate our way through the situation, and it all worked out fine, but it left me staring down that question as if it were a rat in the middle of a sterilized, white room. What if I got THE call? The call from an agent or a publisher saying they wanted to represent me or publish my stuff? I realized I was completely and utterly unprepared.

When I go to writing conferences, it always seems the height of hubris, or the depth of futility, to go to the workshops about the business aspects. I don't have an agent. Maybe I'll never have an agent. Why bother finding out about picking and choosing and examining all the minutia with a fine-tooth comb when I can't even get my foot in the door? But after that innocuous phone call, I realized I need to be prepared. I need to think like someone who WILL get that call one day. I need to know what to say, how to act, what questions to ask. I don't want to be a clueless rube, tail wagging, eager to please, and failing to stop and think and protect myself and my work.

What would you say if you got THE call? Or what DID you say?

Post Script: After a brief wander through cyberspace, I happened upon this highly relevant post from an agent, plus useful and relevant replies. Ask and you shall receive!
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2009/04/getting-call.html

Overworking the Clay

2011-02-04T20:36:00.000-08:00

On my latest project, I found myself worrying away at the same spot over and over, bringing the same chapters to my critique group, rewritten, revised, renewed and tweaked, week after week. Every week I'd say to myself, "That's good enough for this draft. Now it's time to move forward." My group would echo the sentiment, reminding me not to "overwork the clay." But every week, when I sat down to write, I found myself rereading and rewriting that same section. My logic brain told me I was caught in a quagmire and rereading those same sections was a trap, but some other slippery spirit in me kept insisting on going back.

I didn't really have this problem on the first two novels. Here I am on my third, thinking "I should be getting better at this. In fact, I should know better." I began to think the genre was what made the difference. The first two novels were realistic fiction. This one is magical realism, and the rules and process feel completely different, more metaphorical, less linear. I've written a full draft and about two-thirds of it is useless. I've written multiple synopses that seem to make perfect sense only to have the story hijack me into some other direction. Every rewrite seems to change the metaphorical elements or the psychological landscape just enough that I have to go back and alter imagery, scenes, characters. And each tiny change in choice or motivation has a potentially seismic impact on the physical landscape, the symbolic magical objects and the otherworldly characters.

Okay. Let's say this genre demands a spiraling approach to drafts and revision. Even so, at some point you overdo it. At some point you have to let go and move on or you risk "overworking the clay" - leaving your characters and story limp, exhausted and nearly lifeless from obsessive attention to one section. How much is too much? What signals tell you to move on? What if you go too far - can your story be rescued?

I am reminded of watching my third graders attempt watercolor painting using non-watercolor paper. They just don't understand the idea of exhausting or overworking the paper. I'll watch as they paint and paint and paint the same spot until the paper is coming up in little nubbins or falling apart in their hands or they've worn a hole right through their favorite section of the picture. Then they come to me in despair believing it's ruined. I tell them to let the paper rest and dry and then we will try to repair it by transferring what's usable onto a new, fresh, stronger piece of paper. Perhaps I need to heed my own advice.

Of course the best way to prevent the ruined watercolor situation is to use the right kind of paper to begin with. Proper watercolor paper can handle the kind of stress placed on it by diligent and overly enthusiastic third graders, or by techniques like watercolor wash that involve tons of moisture. It's strong, thick, heavy and durable.

So what's the metaphorical equivalent of "the right kind of paper" for a novel? Setting? Point of view? Pre-drafting strategies? Plot outline? General structure? It has to do with the foundation you lay before the intricate, in-depth work of drafting and revision begins.

What do you do to lay a good foundation before you dive into the serious drafting process?

What Should You Celebrate?

2011-01-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

I recently encountered another one of those necessary demons of the writing life - the rejection letter. Mind you, it's not the first one and I doubt it will be the last. With each one, my skin gets a little tougher, but they still take the wind out of my sails. As I bemoaned this fact, a wise woman from my online critique group reminded me I still had something to celebrate. "You've actually finished something and sent it out. Some of us are still mired in the mess of our first-ever first draft." And I remembered a time, not so very long ago, when I "wanted" to write. I actually wrote even then - I wrote and wrote, but I never finished anything. I had sketches and scenes and half-formed notions, images and descriptions and little splurts of characters. My friend's words reminded I had much to celebrate. I had finished a novel - my second novel. And I had had the courage to send it out. In fact, I've been able to finish and send out quite a lot of work over the past few years. And my friend had reminded me that this fact was worth celebrating.

So what should you celebrate? Even rejections are worth celebrating because you had the courage to send something out and the world didn't end when they said no. Celebrate the personal rejection letter, because it's not a form letter. Celebrate the form letter because you ventured forth. Celebrate your decision to share your work with someone else. Celebrate your first paragraph or page or chapter, because you found the time to write. Celebrate putting pencil to paper or fingers to the keyboard. Celebrate the next word you write because you had the courage to do it.

Write Like a Third Grader

2011-01-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

I've learned more about the craft of writing in the nine years since I became a teacher than I did at any time in college. Granted, I am thinking more like writer, and seeing myself as a writer, which helps. But in teaching my third graders the craft of writing, I have received an education myself. By teaching the process, I think about my own process. When I teach my students strategies for planning their writing, I discover my own strategies. When I talk with my students about revising by identifying whether they have a good balance of dialogue, action, internal story and sensory details, I must ask myself the same question. Have I oriented my reader to the setting? Introduced and described the characters? Am I writing in scenes, stringing together small moments, or just telling what happened? Have I chosen a story or topic that I care enough about to spend time with?

I have to give a great deal of the credit to the writing curriculum we use in our school, a curriculum developed by Lucy Culkins. Culkins' curriculum is designed to help children think and work like real writers. As a teacher when I conference with students I must hone in on what they're doing well and what they need to work on. In a conference, I ask them "What are you working on today as a writer?" "What are you trying to do with that story?" "Can you show me an example of where you did that?" I teach my students to be the boss of their own writing. When they sit down to write each day, they make a plan, asking themselves where they are in the writing process and deciding what they will work on that day. Are they generating ideas? Organizing their thoughts, perhaps with an outline or storyboard, a timeline or a story mountain? Maybe they're writing a discovery draft or rehearsing their story. How can I not become a better writer when I ask these questions day after day and hear eight-year-olds telling me, "I noticed I didn't have enough dialogue and I didn't orient my reader to the setting?" If my third graders can hone their craft, so can I.

Every third grader in my class, and most of the younger students in our school, also know Lucy's mantra "When you're done, you've just begun." I finished my novel and sent it out. Now what? "When you're done, you've just begun." Go back to your writer's notebook and start thinking about ideas for the next piece.

If you are not a teacher but you are a writer, I encourage you to find some of Lucy Culkins' work. THE ART OF TEACHING WRITING is a great place to start. You might even use it as a template for your critique group if you have one.

The Epistolary Novel Reborn

2011-01-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

A while back I posted on facebook about a blogged novel that a writer friend was working on called MURDERER'S MOM (murderers-mom.blogspot.com). The writer, Jan Bear, is in my critique group. I'd watched her developing her ideas for this book over the past year or so, but when she decided to dive in and start writing it one blog entry at a time, online, it leapt off the screen with a life and immediacy that it never had before. The immediate past tense vision and the intimacy of the blog format were the perfect fit. When I posted about Jan's work, another friend, opera soprano Jennifer Wilson (www.jenniferwilsonsoprano.com) made the insightful comment that this form hearkened back to the old epistolary novels of bygone years (eighteenth century?).

Jennifer's comment set me to ruminating a bit on the blog form in general and the way in which it seems to have revived the voice of letter-writing, albeit with a twist. Blogs have the length, contemplative tone, humor and individuality that used to be part of the lost art of letter writing. The difference - we now write not for the highly specific audience of one, but as if our letters were already intended for posterity, cleansed of all mundane details of daily life (one hopes!) and raised to a higher level by drawing conclusions about our world, engaging in humorous observations and waxing vaguely philosophical.

Perhaps email and facebook and twitter have irreparably altered the epistle as a literary form. Or perhaps it has merely shape-shifted into a new guise.

I wonder ... are there any courses or books examining online content as literary form, the way we examine other genres? What defines it? What are its limitations, its strengths?

I Get My Best Ideas On the Treadmill

2010-11-24T09:07:00.000-08:00

For some people, inspiration hits them in dreams or while meditating or during conversation. For me, it often hits at the gym. Exercise triggers something and the neurons start firing. No doubt somebody somewhere has studied this. Maybe it's related to endorphins. I started exercising as a way to address depression, but it's proven a useful tool for conquering writer's block and collecting ideas for new stories.

When I get on the cardio machine, I start thinking about my story. I may even focus on a scene or element that's giving me trouble. But I don't actively try to solve the problem. I just contemplate that section, holding it in my brain, sometimes telling myself the story. When things start clicking, I grab my ipod and text myself.

The ideas that hit at the gym don't always pan out. Like dreams, they might not make much sense later. "Why did I think a giant purple hippo would work here?" I may find myself wondering. But even when that happens, the process seems to shake something loose and open the door for the right idea to find its way in.

Confession time - I don't actually go on the treadmill itself at the gym. I prefer the eliptical machine. Maybe its the result of too many sitcoms where some poor shlub can't keep up with the machine and they slide all over the floor instead. Or maybe I developed an aversion when I learned that the treadmill was developed in Victorian England as a punishment for prisoners, part of the "hard labor" sentences - 6 hours a day on a hideous version of a giant gerbil wheel, designed to force prisoners to lift their legs extra high. If they didn't, and couldn't keep up with the machine, the result could be ugly - a lot uglier than any of those sitcoms. I believe Oscar Wilde spent his prison time on the treadmill. Maybe some of his stories were born there. But I wouldn't recommend 6 hours a day. I think I'll stick with my 30 minute workout.

Where and when does inspiration hit you?

For a little more background on treadmills, check out www.uh.edu/engines/epi374.

Writing Communities In the Digital Age

2010-11-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about the magic of critique groups and wondering how it translates into the digital forum. I'm in two groups at the moment - one that meets live and in-person at a cozy neighborhood coffee shop once a week and the other born from a face-to-face workshop experience that is trying to recapture that energy through a monthly, digital exchange. The live, in-person energy is so powerful and digital communication is such a different realm. I wonder if the give-and-take, push--and-pull exploratory exchange and support of the in-person critique group can actually transfer to a digital format?

Our digital group has gotten off to a terrific start, but I think I need to learn how to critique and share ideas more effectively in that forum. I miss the capacity to write comments directly onto the page and interact physically with the printed word of another author. I miss the ideas that are born from the free-flowing conversation. I question whether I'm providing the proper nuance to my words that will allow another author to hear what I say without the unintentional sting criticism can sometimes carry. I wonder if my own responses are too much, too little, or seem defensive when they're not meant to. There is an art to giving criticism that is honest and useful while also being supportive and encouraging. There is an art to hearing and receiving criticism of your "baby."

What strategies have you used to translate the face-to-face critique experience into the digital world? What challenges have you faced? How have you overcome them? Are there ways in which you prefer the digital writing community to a live writing community?

Fearless Revision

2010-11-15T20:07:00.000-08:00

"What if I rewrite the whole thing in first person?"
"What if I cut this chapter entirely?"
"What if death is the narrator?"
"What if there are 4 different narrators?"
"What if I write it as a blog?"
"What if she turns into a hippo instead of a moose?"

There was a time when I revised like an ancient, nearsighted clockmaker, turning over every word and phrase, tinkering with the minutest mechanism, making miserly revisions as if each change cost me and each letter was crafted from grains of diamond dust. I love treating words with so much affection and care, but I'm thankful that I have finally developed the courage to make more fearless revisions, skydiving, bungee-jumping revisions, the kind of revisions that change the entire landscape of a manuscript.

My whole critique group seems to have entered this phase of development together, which makes it ten times more exhilarating. When one of us announces, "I think I'm going to cut that whole section and move the important parts here instead," we cheer, we exult. It feels like we've all gone cliff-diving together.

Perhaps the support and safety of this long-term critique group has given me the foundation of confidence to take those plot-shattering leaps. Or maybe this liberation comes with writing novel-length pieces. Perhaps it's a function of exposing myself, over a period of time, to multiple critiques. Or maybe being in the habit of writing has made the words less scarce and therefore less precious, the process less like mining gold and more like cultivating a garden.

What is the most fearless, radical change you've ever made in a piece of your own writing? How did it affect the story?

If you've found yourself saying, "What if I ....?" or "I wonder what would happen if ...." then I challenge you to grab the hands of some fellow writers and take that vigorous plunge! What have you got to lose?

How You See It and How You Say It

2010-11-11T19:14:00.000-08:00

"It's all in how you see it," some people say. For writers, that means point of view, which has to be one of the more challenging, complex and, to my mind, fascinating topics of the writer's craft. Point of view is more than just first person or third person. Point of view is about immediacy and risk. Whenever I learn about or explore point of view, I find myself thinking in cinematic terms. Where is the lens of my reader's camera located? Where is their microphone located? How tight is the close-up? Does my story need a more panoramic or epic scope?

Even tense can play a role in point of view. I just made the risky move of rewriting the first scene of my latest novel in first person, present tense. It has a level of immediacy, intimacy and high-risk involvement like no other, but it comes with a price. You have to place all sorts of limits on your access to information, since you can only share what your narrator knows at or before the point in time of the action. But I have to say, my pulse is racing and I feel like I'm going for the jugular a lot more in the first person, present tense. It's almost an adrenaline rush.

How you see it can also drive how you say it. I'm thinking about that elusive quality known as voice. So hard to define. You just know it when you see it. Too often I reread my stuff and am disgusted by how flat it seems, the way it lays there on the page after being run through my critical, analytical, disengaged and dispassionate mill one too many times. Then I'll write something for a workshop exercise and it just leaps off the page. Voice.

When I shift point of view, it can blow voice wide open. To me, finding the voice when you're not writing in first person seems so much harder, and when it comes to YA literature, I keep coming back to the first person point of view. No intermediary between the reader and the protagonist.

At a minimum, if you're struggling to find the voice of your story, I think it's worth it to rewrite a pivotal scene from a variety of points of view. You may be amazed by what you discover. If you're lucky, you'll find the right voice before you've finished an entire draft. If you're like me, you might end up rewriting your whole novel from a different point of view. But the risk is worth the pay-off. At least, that's how I see it.

Written In Stone

2010-11-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

I'm taking another whack at the magical realism novel I started a while back and I've discovered that the process I'm following for it seems different than for the last project, which was straight-up realistic fiction. My office looks like a giant craft project. I find myself immersed in cut-and-paste, sticky note extravaganzas, drawing pictures, taping things together, and paper-clipping bits and pieces onto eachother. I can't seem to stay in the realm of the computer. The world of the computer feels too small, as if its physical size and shape imprisons the story. It got me wondering, has writing changed as the tools of writing have changed? Do our tools affect not only our process but our product, too - that is, our stories themselves? Would the great writers of the past have produced different stories if they worked on computer?

A typewriter sends the words onto a page that flaps freely in the air. The words have a physical reality the moment you type them. Writing by hand has a messy, lively, organic flow to it. Writing by hand with a pencil, a pen, a quill - each tool seems to connect with different experiences in the brain and body, a different sense of artistry, permanency, open-ness.

On the computer, we can write and delete huge chunks of text with such ease. The words come and go like will-o-the-wisps. But their ethereal spirits are trapped inside this skinny little two-dimensional box.

How would my work change if I wrote on stone tablets? How would your work change?

Inspiration from Mentors

2010-09-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago, a friend offered free tickets to hear Margaret Atwood and Ursula LeGuin speak here at Portland's gorgeous Arlene Schnitzer concert hall as part of the Literary Arts series here in town (which used to be called "Arts and Lectures" back in the day). The concert hall is a huge space, and we were, understandably, way up in the nose-bleed seats. On the stage were two armchairs and a small table with a pitcher of water and two glasses. In other words, it was an intimate arrangement in a cavernous setting.

I was prepared to feel disconnected and distant, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Atwood and LeGuin established a warm and personal rapport that somehow managed to climb up into the rafters and span across the wide, ornate concert hall as if we were all just a bunch of friends sitting in a room together. But beyond that, for the roughly two hours we were there, I had the feeling I was meeting with mentors - smart, creative women who had seen a thing or two, who had opinions, and who knew what it was to struggle in the dark to illuminate a story that hadn't yet been called into existence.

It got me thinking about the power of mentors. Whether they are people you know personally or writers you've never met whose work you admire, it makes a difference when you have someone who feels like an elder of your particular tribe, who knows the journeys, who can serve as a guide, point the way, honor the struggles, share their wisdom.

There are a lot of "mentor programs," but the best mentors I have had are never assigned or named as such. They emerge from the relationships I have. With women, it can be a strange and challenging thing to honor someone as a mentor. I worry that I will offend them by pointing out the fact that they are older than me. But the older I get, the more I love talking with older women who are smart and creative and can help show me the way.

Who are your mentors? How have they changed over time? How did you find them?

The Joys and Agonies of Bookstores

2010-09-16T20:59:00.000-07:00

It's a funny thing walking through a bookstore when you're a writer trying to get published. The part of me that loves stories and books and reading and language breathes it in and gets lost and can't get enough. The part of me that wants to be published and collects rejection notices and keeps struggling to be better looks at it all and says, "What's the point?" It can be overwhelming, and that's just the stuff that's been published.

This is especially true when I visit Powell's here in Portland. Powell's isn't called "The City of Books" for nothing. It takes up something like a couple of city blocks and at least 3 stories crammed floor to ceiling with every kind of book imaginable - new books, used books, trashy books, classics, books in other languages, rare books - you name it. When I was in my twenties I'd go there and hang out in their coffee shop on a Saturday night and it would be packed with other booklovers like me and I thought to myself, "I have found my people."

But on my last visit, knowing my own writing was in the hands of agents yet again, and that a rejection notice was most likely in my future, I had a bit of an anxiety attack. So many great books - who reads them all? How does one ever get noticed over the others? What makes me think I have something so worth saying that people will pay money for it?

I know I'm not alone in this two-sided relationship with bookstores. I wonder what other writers do to overcome that feeling.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

2010-09-14T17:54:00.001-07:00

Okay, I admit it. The title for this entry is absolutely a cliche. An alternate title might be "Perspective." (I'll save the whole subject of titles for another blogging day). I'm talking about the perspective on a piece of writing that can come with time away from that writing. There's something about being too deeply inside the story that limits your capacity to judge it fairly. I have a piece I thought was an absolutely useless mess. Someone critiqued it and I realized from their comments that I should not, in fact, throw it away and forget about it all together. But I still couldn't stand to think about it or look at it. I was convinced it would be an impossibly convoluted task to make any sense of it at all.

But it kept tickling at my brain, saying, "Come on. You finished a draft of me. You spent a whole year with me. Come back for a visit." I have resolutely steered clear of it for a good two years now. But when I finished my last novel, I decided to give it another look, fully believing I would still want nothing to do with it.

Lo and behold! I found myself caught up in the story, where before I thought there was no story to speak of. I discovered it had a lively pace and the main character had some real gumption to her that I had been completely unaware of. The whole thing moved along nicely and kept my interest. Then I looked back at the synopsis and it all started to crystallize. The problem spots offered solutions to themselves and the arc of the plot seemed to shimmer into focus. I guess sometimes you need a two-year break to really appreciate something, and what was exhausting at one time can be inspiring at another.

Starting Over

2010-09-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

So, I just finished a 300 page YA novel, revised, revised, revised, edited, edited, edited, and submitted. I'm sure I'll be revisiting it eventually, but for now, it's done. So, what's next?

I have a few ideas, all of which have something started already (thank God for my writing notebook). But as I sat down, after a week's hiatus, to look at them, I had the sensation of standing at the foot of Mount Everest and thinking "Didn't I just climb this thing?" The work you do at the end of a novel and the work you do at the beginning are so very different. So much more is known and mapped out at the end. So much is shapeless at the beginning. There are, of course, more discoveries to make at the beginning, which is something to look forward to. Still, that first moment, staring up at the mountain, is a daunting one.

I'm a teacher, and I'm also poised on the brink of the new school year just now. I am struck by some similarities. In the classroom, everything goes a little more smoothly once you've laid out the routines and procedures and you've gotten to know your students. In a novel, everything goes a little more smoothly once you've figured out the central conflicts and plot outline and gotten to know your characters. But those first few days of school, all the work to be done can feel overwhelming. In both cases, progress happens one step at a time and requires patience, consistency, routine, passion and commitment.

Most teachers have a collection of "getting to know you" activities as well as creative methods for teaching routines & expectations. I'm betting most authors do, too. I have culled a few from workshops and conferences. Character wheels. Scene sketches. Various excercises - interview your character, walk through their house, write a letter from them to you or vice versa. Distill your idea into a collection of purposeful sentences. Try writing a short-story synopsis first. Outline with index cards or sticky notes.

What do you do to kick-start a new work?

Exploring the Gray

2010-08-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

In thinking about the thematic elements of my recent writing, I find myself ruminating upon the much-maligned color gray. Dull, medicore, in-between, halfway, the color of compromise - that's what we usually associate with gray. But I think it's gotten a bad rap. Gray isn't just some washed-out, plain, monotone. There are a vast collection of grays - asphalt, concrete, charcoal, pewter, nickels, the edging of clouds on a fine summer day or the heavy fullness of a thunderhead about to break.

Black and white are the colors of two dimensions. Gray gives shading, depth and nuance. Without it, things are flat. Gray provides fullness of shape.

In my writing and in my reading, I find I am drawn to stories that explore the gray - that is, the messy, nuanced, complexities of life. Simplistic, black and white answers rarely ring true or make for interesting and meaningful characters or stories.

So here's to gray! Go find some!

"Now I Am a Real Boy!"

2010-08-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

Like most writers, I want my characters to be real. After I spend enough time with them, they seem real to me. They start making decisions without me and taking the story in new, usually quite interesting, directions. When I share chapters with my critique group, the characters become a little more real. "She wouldn't do that!" they exclaim, as if they were talking about a close friend. That's when the characters move from existing in my head to existing in some forcefield of space created by the energy of the critique group. But in a way, at that point, my characters are still Pinocchio-the-puppet, or the pre-fever Velveteen Rabbit. They aren't truly REAL.

I recently gave the "final" copy of my novel to a bunch of friends to read, most of whom knew little or nothing about the story or the characters. The first reader's comments came in. She talked about the characters like she knew them. She felt things for them, and when one of them died, she cried. As I read her comments, I thought, "Now they are REAL." What a remarkable feeling!

Like Pinocchio or the Velveteen Rabbit, my characters couldn't truly become REAL without experiencing love from the person they were created for - the reader.

Novel-writing Postpartum

2010-08-18T03:16:00.001-07:00

So I've revised and rewritten and polished and edited and re-read and tweaked and now I believe my novel is done and ready to be read in full by everyone who matters. Now what? My head says, "Take a little break. Then start on the next one." I know that's my plan. But taking a break from this one is hard. I don't feel like I've let go. I don't feel ready to let go. Am I really planning on sending my characters out into the universe on their own now?

I wonder if completing a novel is like giving birth or is it more like grieving? Maybe it's both. Right now, I think I am experiencing some level of shock or denial. It doesn't entirely feel real. I'm not sure what to do with myself. I want to revisit it and at the same time I don't want to look at it or think about it.

Someone may ask me to go back to it, and when they do, I think I will take it up again gladly, with a sense of purpose. But, for now, the crazy push to finish has ended. I must fill not only my time but my brain with other endeavors.

How Do You Know When You're Finished?

2010-08-11T19:57:00.001-07:00

Revise, revise, revise. Polish, polish, polish. Critique, critique, critique. Move this bit here and that bit there. Cut that line. No. Put it back in. Change that word. Find another one. Rearrange some more. Add a scene. Delete a scene. Is my head ready to explode yet? Wait. I think I've got it. Read it again the next day for flow. Nope. Something's still not right. Shave a little here. tweak a little there. And I know after all of this I'll show it to someone and they'll still have suggestions and fixes. Perhaps "finished" is a myth. Perhaps everything is perpetually a work in progress. After all, it's created by a human being.

At what point do you tell yourself your work is finished?

Digital Ruminations

2010-08-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a long, long time since I've made any entries here. But I am going a little more digital this summer. I'm preparing to debut my very own writing website and thought it was time to reconnect with my blog. Blog I must for a better platform!

I'm at the Willamette Writers Conference this week, filling my head with the business stuff of writing. The world is abuzz with discussion of e-readers and other digital media, also a topic of discussion at the Pacific Northwest Children's Book Conference two weeks ago. Sam and I met last night with folks who run the Digital Media program at Washington University in Vancouver. I find myself challenged in a very healthy way by this brave new world. I've always been a little nervous about change, but the older I get the more I am taught, time and again, that change is the constant. And perhaps change is healthy.

There was a time when humanity communicated its written literature through cave paintings. We don't anymore, but we still tell stories. The story remains, no matter what the medium or technology might be. In that there is hope.

I recently visited my parents in Delaware. We were talking about our early memories as readers. My Mom mentioned a book she always loved and remembered, a book she searched for when we were kids, searched for over the years, and could never find. She called it RAFFY, CHAMPION OF THE VELDT. It occurred to me that, in the digital age, I might actually be able to use online searches to find the childhood book my 70 year old mother loved so much. And so, sitting in their guest room, I pulled out my laptop, went online via their wifi, and googled "Raffy, Champion of the Veldt." First, I had the wrong spelling of Raffy. Then, I had the wrong title. Finally, I found a quote, that seemed to be from the book, a quote about something called a "honkebeest." So, I entered "Raffy" and "Honkebeest", and, like "open sesame", it threw wide the doors to the many rare and collectible, and not-so-collectible, copies of RAFFY AND THE HONKEBEEST, by Rita Kissen. I ordered it online, to be shipped to Mom's house. A few days later, it arrived. By then I was back in Portland, Oregon. But Mom emailed me a beautiful description of the experience of rediscovering this favorite childhood book, six and a half decades after her father first read it to her. None of this experience could have happened in quite this way without digital technology.

My point? The digital world and the nostalgic, old-school world sometimes coexist not only successfully, but elegantly, beautifully, poetically. I am hopeful.

The Other Part of Writing

2009-01-01T15:09:00.001-08:00

The further I venture along the road of writing, the more I come into contact with writing's evil twin. Would you call it marketing? Visibility? PR? It is the ever-changing, insatiable cluster of activities that are meant to get you noticed, purchased, etc. Blogging, networking, querying, pitching, attending conferences, reading newsletters and magazines. When it is sometimes a challenge to carve out time for the act of writing itself, I wonder how I can carve out time to dance with this evil twin long enough that my writing sees the light of day. In an ideal world, if I treated it like a full-time job, part of my writing day would be devoted to the act of writing, and part of it to this other creature, this bastard step-child, this time-sucking cruel master that is self-promotion. Ah! But I have a full-time job. So. When writing's evil twin holds my work hostage in darkness and demands his pound of flesh, what can I do?

I suppose it is a question of rationing your time and attention. I should count my blessings. As a teacher, I can devote time on my breaks to both sides of writing. And perhaps that is really the way to look at it. Writing has two sides - more, really. It has a case of multiple personality disorder - the Muse, the Editor, the Promotor. Who knows who else is in there? They each serve a purpose. They each have their skills and talents. Some of them are more fun to dance with - or maybe they just know different steps.

No amount of extended metaphor is likely to placate my frustration with that Other Part of Writing. But maybe it will help me tolerate it, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, perhaps even come to respect it. Still, I doubt I will ever embrace it. My loss.

What do you do to help make your peace with this other aspect of the writer's life?

The Superhero Test (from a workshop by Lisa Schroeder)

2008-08-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

In May, I attended an SCBWI conference and came back with some great strategies for looking at characters. One that has recently returned to my mind is form a workshop by Lisa Schroeder. I don't know if she got it from somebody else or not. It's called the Superhero test. And it goes like this: Every character, like a superhero, should have the following:
* a power
* an arch enemy or nemesis
* a special place
* a love (though it doesn't have to be a person)

Like any writing tool, it is not an iron-clad rule, but a helpful litmus test when thinking about what might be missing from a character.

At the Willamette Writers Conference this weekend, Elizabeth Lyon spoke of giving your character some deep past wound, the "hole in the soul" that results in a yearning, need or drive they must try to fill. I think this, too, belongs in the superhero test. After all, what would Spiderman be if his gentle Uncle Ben had not been murdered? What would Superman be if he had not lost his home planet? What would Batman be if his parents had not been killed? You get the idea.

Try applying the Superhero test to a character you are developing or wrestling with. See what you discover.

Getting to Know You - Character Wheel exercise

2008-07-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past few days working on a character wheel for the protagonist of a young adult novel I'm writing called SCHISM, which deals with religion and homophobia. The character wheel is a great exercise I got from a workshop by Shannon Riggs at the SCBWI Oregon Conference this spring. Basically, each spoke of your wheel represents an aspect of your character - things like family, friends, school or job, religion, hobbies or interests, romance or pets, strengths, weaknesses, quirks, wants/needs, home, etc. You can add spokes, change the spokes depending.

If I were writing for audio theater, I'd want to be sure I included spokes for socioeconomic class, geographic location and era, as these can really inform the way a character speaks. I went ahead and included those pieces on my wheel anyway, just to generate as much discovery as possible.

It's a terrific brainstorming tool and can sometimes lead you right into your story. As you go along, conflicts begin to emerge, personality takes shape, storylines evolve. You catch yourself making discoveries about other characters, branching off from the wheel. I actually used a 14" x 17" sketch pad for my wheel because I wanted lots of visual space. The wheel shape helps me kick out of my linear, editor brain and into the artistic brainstorming creative side. It also gives me a sense of what may be missing from my vision of a character. I look at which spokes seem sparse or blank, and why.

My wheel took a few days because I would detour periodically to do a little research, work on and tweak my plot outline, make some extra notes about other key characters. I had originally thought to do a character wheel on each of the main characters, but I don't want to get overwhelmed. I finally decided to let my exploration of the other key characters happen in a more linear fashion, thus keeping the visual of a wheel that revolves around my central protagonist. I imagine if I were writing a piece that would have multiple viewpoint characters, I'd want to do a full wheel for each of them. but I'm sticking with a pretty traditional Point of View and plot structure on this.

How much do you find you need to know about your main character or characters before you dive in and start your draft? Does it vary depending on genre? What decisions, if any, do you make before you get to know your characters? Are there any graphic organizers or other visuals you've found useful in building a vision of your characters?

Powered by Communal Energy

2008-06-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

I just got back from teaching writing workshops at the National Audio Theatre Festivals audio theater week. I was reminded again of the communal energy generated when a group of writers gets together. No matter how introverted or solitary we writers can be, there is a pow of electricity that can happen, under the right circumstances, when you get a group of us in a room and you ask the right questions. It was exciting to be instrumental in generating some of that energy this past week.

Whenever you plug in to that communal energy, however, you have to find a way to ride it and channel it. How do you carry that energy into the solitary part of writing and focus it onto your work?

I feel fortunate to have a teacher's schedule, because I can go to a workshop or writing group in the summer and then have lots of opportunities to capitalize on that energy during the time available to me in summer vacation. As long as I don't let the time slip through my fingers in a glorious haze of napping and gardening!

Claiming the Name of "Writer"

2008-06-04T18:21:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was talking with a friend who has lived the life of a writer for many years, has published and been produced, had an agent and attends a critique group. However, because life and schedule has kept him from writing during the recent past, he now seems reluctant to call himself a writer. It got me thinking about the whole process of whether we call ourselves writers to the outside world or not and the significance of that decision.

For me, "taking the plunge" to call myself a writer didn't happen overnight. You could say it's been pending since I was 8 years old, but the true shift has only happened during the past 5-10 years. There were many steps that led me to give myself permission to say, "I'm a writer:" Writing for an audience besides myself. Getting paid to do it once in a while. Being asked to do it for work, to help others with their writing. Shifting from assignments by and for others to writing my own stuff again. Letting people read and hear my work besides my husband and parents. Connecting with other writers. Setting myself writing goals and working towards them. Seeking to learn and improve upon my work. Asking for criticism and learning to accept it. Attending conferences. Submitting lots of pieces and getting lots of rejection letters. Hearing other people call me a writer. All of these led me to feel I had earned the name of writer and continued to merit that name.

On the other hand, many of those steps would never have happened if I HADN'T started calling myself a writer first. Perhaps by claiming the name, I set myself a level of expectations to be worthy of that name. And I still find it odd to say, "I'm a writer," as if someone will ask me for my writer's license or the secret code word to the club and then they'll discover I'm a fraud. But I get more comfortable with it as time goes on.

By the way, I basically told my friend that once a writer, always a writer, or, as the saying goes, you can't unring that bell.

Have you claimed the name of writer? What did it mean for you to do that? If you haven't, why not?

How Long, How Fast - Writing in Time

2008-05-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight over dinner a friend of mine commented that I "write faster" than he does. We went on to discuss how long it takes us to write something short. Then, I came home, looked over my old emails and found this excerpt, forwarded to me from Angela Keene. How long DOES it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop, or a short story? The world may never know.

From an interview in Children's Literature Review, 2003, about writing the children's story, Wolves in the Walls:

"The concept for Wolves came from the author's young daughter, who had a bad dream one night. "She was convinced there were wolves in the walls," says Gaiman, "and as she described them to me, I immediately knew that I would steal the idea for a book." Not long after, he sat down and wrote the first draft of the story. "I didn't like it at all," says Gaiman. Instead of rewriting it, however, he decided to abandon it. After about eight months, he tried once more, but again, he didn't like it, and again, he abandoned the story. Another eight months passed. Then one night, Gaiman suddenly woke up in bed and thought, "When the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over!" This, apparently, was just the idea he needed to bring the book to life. That afternoon, he wrote the entire story, to perfection. "It took me one afternoon to write it," says Gaiman, "but also two-and-a-half years.""

I have recently revisited little bits of ideas from long ago that are now emerging in completely different ways. Think, write, think, revise, simmer, write, revise, write.

What does time look & feel like for you as a writer? How long do you work on something? How many times do you come back to it?

Purple Prose

2008-04-14T20:50:00.000-07:00

Hi, anyone who's out there. I've been away a long time, but thought I'd try to get back on track here. I'm reading a book called "Spunk and Bite." It spins off from, and in places challenges, the old "bible" of writing style, "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. Having been schooled on Strunk and White, I tend towards the sparse and streamlined approach, but I fear I have essentially stripped my writing of life and originality. So, I'm trying to shake it up, and have now begun overcompensating, falling prey to an overabundance of "Purple Prose." So, I am dancing the line. I guess I need to give myself permission to experiment and fail many times in order to find my voice and grow as a writer.

What kind of experiments have you tried? Successes? Failures? How did you determine which they were? What did you learn from them?

Angel On the Shoulder

2007-10-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

I may have written about this in the past. Virginia Woolf writes about the "angel" on her shoulder, that nice, proper and well-behaved Victorian lady who whispers in her ear that she shouldn't say certain things because they might upset or offend. She describes her process of murdering the angel on her shoulder so that she could write and write honestly.

Today, in the WOW monthly group, we talked about this a bit, too. Everyone's angel takes different forms. Can I share this piece with the group, or will it offend someone? Is my piece too nice, not offensive enough to be cool? My piece is fiction, but what if someone in my family sees parts of themselves in it and takes offense? If I get too political, will it keep people from hearing what I'm really trying to say? Is it possible to write without being political?

Who or what is the poisonous angel on your shoulder? How is she affecting your writing? Have you killed her? How will you kill her? Do you keep trying to kill her long after she is dead?

Writers On-the-air Final Thoughts

2007-08-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

Reading Day was long, but a terrific success! We are so fortunate to have sucha talented group of actors willling to give their time and skills to bring the writers' words to life for the first time. After the full day of readings yesterday, the writers gathered one last time this morning for a debrief. We were all a little bleary, but once again the conversation flowed fruitfully. We talked about discoveries, surprises and reactions from the readings. For some of us, the flaws and holes in our scripts came into focus. Others reveled in finding the script sounded just as they hoped it would. We tossed around our reactions to audience feedback and our reactions to each others' scripts. Some of us will be working on revisions, others will put their pieces aside and others will tweak here and there but are basically satisfied with where things stand. I announced my plans for a monthly writers critique group born of WOW and collected some evaluations of the workshop process. Bigger space & more time to share what we write were among the requests for the future.

This blog is such a woefully inadequate encapsulation of the WOW experience. I come to it feeling lazy and spent and inadequate to the task of re-creating the workshop experience. Perhaps that's as it should be. The writing workshop experience is so much a function of the interaction among participants. I repeat again, find a community of writers with whom to share and discuss your work. It is motivating and exhilarating at its best, and it can save you from the vortex that solitude can create. It is the great paradox of writing - you must have chunks of solitary time in which to create, but you must have chunks of communal time to feed that solitude and counteract it and interact with it.

So, we close another year of Writers On-the-air. But the Writers' Wavelength blog continues sporadically all year. As should the writing itself.

Writers On-the-air Day 8

2007-08-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

Our final check-in before Reading Day. After a day of juggling schedules and casting, I was a little foggy-headed, but the evening went smoothly. All scripts are in and finished - bravo, writers!

When we checked in tonight, several of us talked about those last-minute tweaks and changes and the temptation to keep tweaking and changing. This is the liberating part of knowing it's a first draft. It's a little easier to stop tweaking. Still,the discussion raised that question that plagues many a creative artist - "How do you know when to stop?" One participant pointed out the quote "Art is never finished, only abandoned." Luckily, with a first draft reading like we have with WOW, you can just stop changing and see how it reads as is. That may help make the decision about changes, and save you some time if the changes weren't necessary.

One of the writers found that this last push to finish the script really kicked in her creative drive to complete another piece as well. A testament, I think, to the wisdom of those who tell you to write every day. When those muscles are in use, they get a lot done.

Those folks working on series discussed the ups and downs of that experience. It's somewhat comforting, if you have to cut, to know you can always put things back in to future episodes.

We tossed around the idea of "burning questions," which we will pose to our audience/actors. What makes a good burning question? Sometimes, you want to zero in on a particular moment, but often you want the question to look for that problem spot without putting undue focus on it before the audience hears the piece. Some recommendations: Ask yourself what you think the major strength & weakness of the piece is and formulate your questions from there. Build the questions as more open-ended. For example, say you're worried that certain parts are too short and others too long. You might ask: Which parts would you like more time on? Which parts feel unnecessary? You can also ask general questions such as: What is your impression of this character? What do you see as the greatest strength of this piece? What is its greatest weakness? what questions were you left with?

Guideliens and expectations for reading day:
What it is: A cold reading. A chance to hear your words read aloud by actors, see what works and what needs changing, hear specific reactions from a variety of listeners. A celebration of what you've accomplished during the workshop process.

What it is NOT: A fully rehearsed performance, final production, promise of production or future casting, opportunity for you or others to scorn or condemn your hard work, time to critique actor performances or casting choices. It does not determine your worth as a person or an artist.

In addition to logistics, we took a moment to do a "quickwrite" (write without stopping under time pressure) about our hopes and fears for Saturday's Reading Day. We hope the balance we are seeking between humor and authenticity will succeed and we fear laughter where we don't want it and silence when we want laughter. We hope genre will work for us and fear the preconceptions that some folks have about genre lacking depth. We hope we have created an effective degree of tension in a piece, we fear actors' tendency to go for the laughs in a cold reading. Generally speaking, we hope the audience will enjoy our work and fear that they won't.

Reading Day is always an adventure. I can't wait! With 10-20 actors plus writers and invited guests, 12 scripts and 6 hours of readings, it's certainly an event.

Writers On-the-air Day 7

2007-08-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

The closer we get to reading day, the more aware I am of how difficult it is to capture the experience of the workshop sessions through a few notes in a blog. It just speaks to the value of working with a communty of writers.

WOW Day 7 really just served as a chance to check in with one another and provide advice and support to eachother as we emerged for the final push to complete our first drafts, and in some cases wrestled with getting those drafts done. We talked about the challenge of giving ourselves permission to let a first draft be a first draft, in all its messy imperfection, especially knowing we would be sharing it with others - not just the safe community of the WOW writers but also the eyes and ears and minds of the actors joining us on reading day. We celebrated completing something, something with a beginning, middle and end, something longer and imperfect. "Celebrate your imperfection!" I say. It's incredibly liberating.

We talked about anguishing over "killing the babies" - cutting characters that no longer worked, eliminating dialogue or scenes we have come to love, and so one. Not to mention the way such big changes can affect the shape of the whole, and then you think you need to rewrite, and it can feel unending. Once again, we have to accept that a first draft is just that. The beauty of a reading with actors and other people hearing it is that, rather than being your judges, they can be your allies in the struggle to fix what's broken and solve those nagging script problems. If there's a battle your fighting with your piece and you don't feel you're solving the problem, let it be your burning question, put it to your audience or readers and enlist their aid in your struggle.

We wrestled over endings - does it work? Is it too abrupt? We worried about length - too short? Too long? What did everybody else do? We celebrated - plugging problem plot holes, finishing a full-length piece, rediscovering an old idea and finding it has new life in it. We gave and received support - both live and online - to tackle that last push.

We listened to some audio clips from previous WOW Reading Days to geta flavor. We also compared a clip from reading day with a finished production of the same piece and noted the way the energy of a live audience feeds the actors, how the actual presence of a soundbed can radically alter the tone and mood in the final production, how ambiguity in writing invites a wide range of interpretations by actors that can influence the final impact of a piece.

From the business end, I asked writers to be sure every character is accounted for in their cast list, so that every character is assigned to an actor, and to note any that could be doubled.

Tomorrow - last minute check-ins and notes before the BIG DAY of readings on Saturday.

Writers On-the-air Day 6

2007-08-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

Day 6 was a few days ago, but it's been a busy weekend. I spent Friday and Sunday at the Willametter Writer's Conference, and Saturday devoted to a brutal 2 hour Praxis test for my ESL endorsement. My brain is a bit saturated, but here goes.

On Day 6, we took refuge in the air-conditioned WRW studio to escape the heat and keep our brains fresh for sample scenes from 5 more scripts. We talked over the role of narrator (always a hot topic at WOW - to narrate or not to narrate, that is the question). We examined ways to raise the stakes for characters in a conflict. We wrestled with means for helping the listener hook into the multiple characters of an ensmble piece. It's okay to restate information a few times in different ways, and its okay to toss the character names out there in dialogue on a regular basis to help us keep them straight. The theme of intentional ambiguity arose numerous times. This is a tactic several of the scripts are playing with - intentional ambiguity or misdirection. The point was made that, while we may not share all the information with the listener, the author themselves should be clear and decisive in their own head. You should know the answers to the questions you raise, even if you don't give those answers to your listener.

Between those conversations and some of the info I gleaned at the writers conference, I find myself pondering the question "When is it okay to break the rules?" Put another way, at what point have you mastered your craft sufficiently to dabble in ambitious efforts? One of the presenters I heard at the conference, Eric Witchey, used the analogy of juggling. You master the easier skills first - one ball, two balls, then three balls - before you go on to the headier stuff - flaming torches, say, or chainsaws. Likewise, you master traditional plot structure, and perhaps short stories, before going on to novels or to non-traditional plot. So I ask myself, do I keep plugging away at an idea that is intriguing and unusual but perhaps a little out of my league at the moment? Or do I sharpen my skills on something more in my current range? Intentional ambiguity and misdirection in audio (or, perhaps, in any writing) seem to fall into the category of more ambitious efforts. Absolutely worth attempting, but go in with your eyes open.

Anyhoo, those are my musings of the moment. Script drafts are due next week, so we're all putting noses to the grindstone at the moment. Sam is lining up actors for a full day of readings on Saturday, August 11.

More next week!

Writers On-the-air Day 5

2007-08-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

Day 5 of the Writers On-the-air Workshop was probably the most difficult to capture in a blog. We had no audio clips. We jumped right into sharing sample scenes from our scripts, with our accompanying "burning questions." The burning questions are intended to focus listener feedback and make it more meaningful for the author. Authors read all the parts in the script themselves, which can be confusing but can also reveal when your audience might be confused as to who is speaking, whether you've captured character in the dialogue, etc. We heard scenes from 7 of the scripts tonight and what a wonderful range! Deep, intellectally meaty, mysterious and thought-provoking, chandler-esque with a humorous spin, comic inferno, satirical comedy, period gothic, tense docudrama. Burning questions included the following (feel free to use these yourself some time):

How does the scene make you feel?
How would you describe the tone and mood of the scene?
Does the scene successfully establish a sense of time and place?
What is your impression or mental picture of this character?
Is this element necessary?
Is there too much narrative?
What, if anything, is confusing?
Does the exposition work?

These questions give you a little glimpse of what our authors are working on.

On a personal note, I discovered that my piece was funny. I actually realized that while working on my scenes for this session, but was pleased to see that, in fact, laughs occurred. Comedy is a strange beast, and not one I usually tangle with. It has caught me by surprise and I'm curious to see where it will take me.

Tomorrow night we will hear sample scenes from the rest of the authors (5-7 more in all).

WOW Day 4

2007-07-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

Audio clips for Day 4 were the opening segment of TUMBLEWEED ROUNDUP by Great Northern Audio Theatre (out of Minnesota, I believe) and an excerpt of ISLAND OF DR MOREAU, performed live by WRW as part of OPB's Livewire show. Both had a lot going on in them sonically plus potential for listener confusion. TUMBLEWEED suffered from some mixing problems, so it was harder to hear and felt almost too much, but still fun cinematic-style old western. MOREAU was a great example of what you can do with live sound effects, the power of good direction, sound design & ensemble work. We talked about the strength of a big sonic hook at the top of MOREAU, and the impact of layered sound.

Next, we finished sharing descriptions of protagonists, opening dilemmas and conclusions. The variety and creativity of the pieces inspired a lot of rich conversation and questions. We wondered about techniques for conveying a character who is pure energy - ways she could communicate sonically. We talked about the importance of having a clear vision in the author's head when something will be hinted at but never directly shared with the audience. We examined listener's point of view - which character is our "in" to the story? How does point of view impact the listener's perception of whose story this is? We discussed how plot can affect and be informed by tone. Is your piece dark drama, light comedy, dark comedy? (In Shakespeare's day, "comical-tragical, tragical-pastoral" etc.). Several pieces will use flashback-style scenes to convey memories or information, the show-don't-tell of audio. We asked one another questions about character motivations. "How" and "why" were popular questions.

We closed with some discussion of the writing process. How do you approach building your plot? Some of us use a fairly organic process, starting with an idea, then unfolding it or writing it out or following it where it takes us. I voiced my need to strengthen my plot skills as a reason for approaching the topic of plot in a more intentional and analytical manner. One author suggested mind-mapping (some know this as making a web). Begin with a sentence - perhaps a central idea or event or character. Then ask "Why?" ("how" would also work). Write your answer. Ask "why" again. etc. (Rinse, lather, repeat). Another author talked about writing towards a feeling or emotional response, rather than towards a predetermined ending. Look at the big picture, then zoom in like a microscope. Someone else liked having a simple, clean through line, and viewing character and relationship as the ornamentation, like a christmas tree. I floated the idea of storyboarding as a tool. What pictures do you want your audience to have in their mind's eye?

As a parting gift for anyone who might need it, I shared following exercise:

1-Write out the key events in your story as sentences.
Each sentence should include the main character.
Follow the structure of person + action + thing acted on.
The verb in each sentence should show action.

2-Put each event sentence on a notecard or slip of paper.

3-Draw a graphic representation of the plot structure you plan to follow.

4-Arrange your event sentences on the graphic.

For next week, we'll be turning in character breakdowns with descriptions (remember, its audio - "Blonde, tall and buxom" is not an audio description) for casting purposes, and sharing sample scenes from our scripts, with our burning questions.

Tune in next week!

Writers On-the-air Day 3

2007-07-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

Our first Day 3 listening excerpts came from www.zbs.org, Meatballs Podcast 7 - selections from the series SARATOGA SPRINGS. Music plays an absolutely essential role in these pieces. One participant said the style was reminiscent of Ken Nordine. The plot? Not so much plot-driven, although two of them basically follow the plot of a journey. Beautiful in their simplicity. These selections blow open what a story can be. At their heart a real sense of place and time. In addition, there were some great examples of the extraordinarily layered sound and remarkable location recording that are Tom Lopez' trademark.

We also listened to a clip from Episode 3 of THE LAST HARBINGER, by CrazyDog Audio Theatre in Ireland. The clip included the convention of a series intro summarizing the nature of the story and catching the audience up. The piece created a sense of place with very little time & info, though there was some discussion in the group as to how well that was achieved, whether we really had a sense of the characters or direction of the story. The intro was rhyming, and there were widely divergent opinions on that as well, which speaks to the range of tastes & styles. While the soundbed was rich, we again had stylistic & taste differences over "how much is too much." As one participant put it, "My ear didn't know where to go," though that experience might prove different when listening with headphones. We talked about the listener needing time to breathe & absorb what they're hearing. Finally, the clip had some great examples of creating "3-D sound," a sense of spatial relations through sound, a technique that can really expand the mind's eye of the listener.

We also discussed the nature of sci-fi, a topic we later returned to - science as the background rather than the focus, character as the focus, what can we tell about the world of the story and how is that information conveyed. One participant said that sci-fi is not about high-tech props & costumes, it's about characters and story.

We then moved on to sharing our descriptions of protagonist, opening hook/domino/inciting incident and concluding changes to the character. This proved to take longer than expected and will be continued tomorrow night. Among the highlights of the rich conversation: When you float an idea that sounds like an existing story, is that bad? As writers, we sometimes fear being derivative, but the point was made that everyone tells the story differently. There really are no new stories under the sun. So the question is, What will YOU do with that story?

Finally, we drew graphics to represent non-traditional plot structures, drawing on stories (books, movies, TV) we already know. The images included stairstep arrows with lines going back on themselves, spirals, squares dipping in and out of a central circle, a straight arrow with multiple lines traveling above and across, a triple Venn Diagram. Stories folks referenced included the movies RASHOMON and MEMENTO, among others. Some of the non-traditional approaches included backwards storytelling, telling the same story from different viewpoints, telling a collection of stories that all reveal something in common, embedding a section where the plot diverges into 3 or more stories as different lead characters are separated. Food for thought: What structure will tell your story best?

Tune in tomorrow for Day 4!

Writers On-the-air Day 2

2007-07-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

Day 2 began with a selection of 4 audio clips shared by Joe Medina, creator of the AFTERHELL series. The clips explored the defining conflicts that shape the plot. First up, THE ODYSSEY OF RUNYON JONES, a Norman Corwin piece that, to my mind, is a marriage of Kafka and The Cinnamon Bear - in a good way. Small boy seeks lost dog and is faced with the worst of adult bureacracy in tracking his poor Tootsie between Dog Heaven and "Curgatory." (You can purchase this on a CD of Norman Corwin stuff from OTRCAT.com.) The SFX in this piece were pretty incidental. The dialogue was all.

Next up, DR CHRISTIAN, a country doctor series starring Gene Hirshel (forgive my spelling). Written in 1937 or threabouts, a relaxed dialogue style leads us to realize the conflict is that local wife Charlotte's new found fame as published poet leads her to seek a divorce. Her husband just isn't interesting enough. Can Dr. Christian help, or is he too clueless?

Third clip, from the STAR WARS audio series, gives us a taste of a more modern, cinematic style - lots of SFX and music. Notable in that it focuses on setting up a central relationship between two characters who are friends, rather than the central conflict, although that is embedded in there. We talked about the differences in plot structure with an episodic series, and the nature of writing a story that people know, where you may be able to establish the conflict later because the audience knows what it is.

Finally, a clip from AFTERHELL, the Hotel Giallo (apologies - I may be getting the name of the episode wrong). Richly layered sound effects here. Conflict is immediately established as the tough boss announces, "The job isn't done." What job? Why isn't it done? Stay tuned, as gangster hitmen grapple with the impact of zombies on their profession.

Next, we went shared our descriptions of the central conflicts in our own pieces. There was a terrific range: vampire drama, postapocalyptic inner conflict, detectives in hell, dog detectives, intellectual terrorism experts race against time, man battles ambiguous forces without and within, angel special ops or a society in which a professor can be jailed for discussing his encounter with the almighty, cops track a serial killer, noire detective or holiday variety show, docudrama of Flight 305, reporter searches for mysterious vigilante (plays with unreliable narrator concept), man's inner voice is broadcast and takes over, teenage struggles of puberty become manifest thru sci-fi, cowgirl tries to save the ranch. Whew!

Finally, we drew visual representations of traditional plot structure, with, again, a wide range of images resulting. There were graphs, both linear and circular, flow charts ( "If short story, end here. If long story, repeat loop"), stick figures driving cars, gravesites and headstones, a bee collecting pollen, a man climbing a tree and fighting off agressors, ever-increasing peaks and valleys, a doorway leading to stairs. We talked about decisions an author makes - plot driven or character driven? tragedy or comedy? Or both, which may sometimes be the most interesting. We discussed the role of the "inciting incident" and the little conflicts along the way. What supports those smaller threshold moments? Some of the pictures looked at plot structure from the view of character and how character change occurs in a story. Some looked at it from the reader or audience perspective - how we collect information as we proceed through the story. We kicked around visions of the climax - an explosion? a tree? Fireworks? The nature of your piece affects the nature of that final climax. What type of resolution will you have? Or will it be ambiguous?

Rich conversation! The assignment for next week: Write about the following three key plot questions:
1-Who is your protagonist? Get to know them, likes, dislikes, etc.
2- What is the "inciting incident" or hook, the action or change that starts the ball rolling? Not sure? Try writing a sentence or two telling what your story is about. Find the first active verb in the sentence. That may be your hook.
3-What will your conclusion be? That is, how will your character and/or their world be different? Will they succeed, fail, give up?

See you next Wednesday!

Writers On the Air Workshop - Day 1

2007-07-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

Day 1 was really about introductions and a little audio theater overview. We have a wonderful range of experience at the table, with many returning workshop participants and folks who have experience producing audio theater and stage theater, among others. We went over some key points about audio theater - that it's really about writing a good story, what are the limits on language for broadcast, the many narrative devices available (and how narrative is not so frowned upon in audio), about 6 main characters is a good limit, though you can have a lot more minor characters.

In discussint the challenges and guidelines for giving and getting criticism, one participant made the link between criteria and criticism. Once you know the criteria, e.g. what the author is going for, then you can give constructive criticism on whether that criteria was met. Another participant used the phrase "roses and thorns" to describe good criticism. A third participant suggested that, before giving a critique, you ask yourself: "What is it (the piece)? How was it done?" and then "My response to this is ______________."

In discussing how an audience talkback can sometimes run away with your work, someone pointed out a quote from Isaak Denisen: "Your only loyalty as a writer should be to the story."

We did an exercise to explore writing in the sonic realm and look at what sound effects can and cannot do for you. Each writer had a card with a sound effect that they had to describe. The other writers then tried to identify the sound. Finally, the writer shared some lines of dialogue that might help the listener identify the sounds. One of my favorites was the description of a low-pitched, slowly repeating, creaking (The description was more eloquent than that but I failed to write it down). Our guesses were all over the map. The dialogue was Amish-style and talked about pulling a heavy load and fixing the axle and led us to figure out that the sound was a wooden cart rolling.

The exercise highlighted the dangers of depending solely on a sound effect to convey information to your listeners. Also, when even a little context is provided, the listener tends to expand and build upon it to create a world and sense of time and place.

Here are a few for you to try to identify:

1. Loud, uninterrupted metalic buzzing with varying pitches
Dialogue: "How many feet did you want cut?"
"It's a six-foot fence, so-"
"Right, then - six feet." Followed by sound.

2. Slushy, watery crack, tearing, grunt, groan, scream, rustle, deep breathing.
Dialogue: "You've got a right arm. I'm gonna make sure you never use the left one again!"

3. metallic shwunk, swoosh of air, human gasp, splatter, drip, heavy sickening thud
Dialogue: "Take it easy! Put that down! We can work this out! No, stop! Stop!"

4. A slipping fabric sound like cloth being pulled taut, perhaps a grunt or "ah" and faint foot pad, followed by a zzzip and a tinkle of metal
Dialogue: "Hang on a second - wrong leg. There we are. These used to fit ... Ahhhh."

Answers: 1-power saw, 2-arm being torn off, 3-throat being cut, 4-man putting on pants.
(They were all fascinating - wish I'd written them down!)

Now, try your hand at the writing part. Choose a sound effect. Describe it, using only sound words that the listener would hear (no identifiers such as "sounds like a hose being turned on"). Then, write some dialogue that will provide identifying context.

1. Sound of a body being dragged through the mud
2. walking through snow
3. whip cracking
4.getting a haircut
5.stacking wood
6. running through the jungle

Finally, we listened to the first 5 minutes or so of the following WRW productions:
THE SHADOW: SILENT AVENGER (classic old-time radio style)
FALL OF THE CITY (completely different style, written in same time period)
CHRISTMAS AT THE TNT (modern piece, slice of life, rich atmospheric soundbed)

We noted the distinct styles of the writing, the flavor of specific genre writing such as noire. Also, we talked about how the listener needs adjustment time if there is an abrupt change in style, perspective, point of view. As authors, we need to be consistent OR be intentional when we shift. Finally, I pointed out that most strong pieces establish the conflict in the first 5 minutes or so. Which brings us to tomorrow's assignment - describe your central conflict, how it starts and how it ends.

See you tomorrow!

4th annual Writers On-the-air Workshop (WOW)

2007-07-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

WOW 2007 starts Wednesday, July 18 and runs Wednesday and Thursday nights through August 9, with script readings on Aug. 11 and Writer's Debrief brunch on Aug.12. This year's focus will be on plot structure. Over the course of 4 weeks, meeting twice a week, participants examine the storytelling process through audio theater and develop complete audio theater scripts. WOW culminates in a day of recorded script readings by professional actors. Many of the scripts developed through WOW have gone on to full productions through WRW and other entities. Previous WOW scripts include one Mark Time Award-winner, five Ogle Award-winners, and three National Audio Theatre Festival Award winners. WOW is offered at no charge to anyone committed to the process and interested in exploring writing through the audio medium, although participants are welcome to donate money, space or refreshments.

Schedule of WOW 2007 sessions:
Evenings (7pm-9pm) on
Wed, July 18 and Thurs. July 19,
Wed. July 25 and Thurs. July 26
Wed. Aug. 1 and Thurs. Aug. 2
Wed. Aug. 8 and Thurs. Aug. 9
Final readings of scripts on Saturday, Aug. 11 throughout the day
Final writer's brunch on Sunday, Aug. 12 , 11am - 1pm.

For more information or an application, please contact WOW Director Cindy McGean at cjmcgean@aol.com

Quotable Quotes

2007-06-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

I'd like to thank Kate Hawkes for sharing these quotes with me. Food for thought.

"Is it constantly on my mind when i'm going clickety-clack on the machine that this is somehow going to enlarge the scope of human comprehension? I would have to say no, that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm trying to get the line done.'

'The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.'

'It's no use. I find it impossible to work with security staring me in the face.'

'No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.'

Writers On the Air Workshop 2007 - It's all a plot!

2007-06-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

Heads up, writer friends! The 2007 Writers On-the-air Workshop is coming in July. This year's focus will be on plot structure. Stay tuned for details, and thanks for your patience and your interest!

A Writer's Movie

2007-04-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen "Stranger Than Fiction," with Will Farrell, you must check it out. It is truly a writer's movie. Among other things, it examines the process of figuring out just what story your character belongs in - comedy? Tragedy? Often, you may have a character but are uncertain about the unfolding plot.

The movie also explores the writer's relationship with their characters - how close is too close? If a character truly becomes real enough, how do you deal with their death? Can your characters ever be too real? Can you ever get too close to them? Does a story have to be tragic to be profound?

What if I'm a Sanjaya and I just don't know it?

2007-04-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Forgive the pop culture reference. I've been thinking about the need for critiques, outside eyes and even writing classes (something I've often been ambivalent about). Writers, indeed, any artist, must be able to gauge if their work is quality work, but we often don't feel able to trust ourselves or those close to us. We ask ourselves, "What if I'm producing garbage and I'm just unable to recognize it?" On the other hand, we have to develop a certain amount of steely confidence in order to survive the inevitable rejections and dismissals that come with seeking an audience for our work.

In the process of developing a tough skin, do we run the risk of building a wall so strong that valid criticism cannot enter?

Watermelon and Seed

2007-02-14T18:45:00.000-08:00

I must credit Lucy Culkins with the title of this entry. Her books on teaching writing to children delve beautifully into the writing process. I have learned much to apply to my own process by the explicit modeling and examination of writing in which I engage with my students, thanks in part to Ms. Culkins' work (THE ART OF TEACHING WRITING is one I recommend - I think that's the title). "Watermelon and Seed" refers to the notion of choosing small ideas to focus in on, rather than trying to eat the whole watermelon. Of course, the metaphor breaks down a bit, since I don't want to eat the seeds, but you get the idea. A variation on this comes in the form of word limits. I recently submitted a short children's mystery to a contest. The word limit was 800 words. I found it a real challenge to maintain a sense of the mystery genre within such a short space, but it forced me to zoom in on the seed instead of the watermelon and give my story a lot more focus. Ultimately, not only did it improve the story, but I now find I have other "seed" ideas with the same character.

What are some seeds or watermelons you've encountered? Wrestling any watermelons you need help whittling to a more manageable size?

Attend the Mutant Frogs

2007-01-23T23:48:00.000-08:00

I was talking with a playwright friend the other day about a review he had received. He made the point that at times, while a specific criticism may not itself be valid, it may be a symptom of a problem area, a sign that something needs fixing, even if its not the something the critic thinks. These kinds of criticisms are the mutant frogs, those signals that all is not right in the waters or ecosystem of your written work. I had a similar experience in getting critiques of my novel and the mutant frog comments helped me identify the areas of the book that had not kept pace with the continuing evolution of the characters, often sections that were holdovers from an early draft and no longer fit the direction of the story.

I like this notion of mutant frogs as a way of hearing criticism. Look past the surface of the critique. Does it point you toward an area of toxic waste in your work?

What signs serve as your mutant frogs, clues that something is amiss in your work? What about canaries in the coal mine (not to batter my metaphors too badly)? What signals tell you when to cut your losses on a piece as being too toxic to support life?

Dueling Viewpoints

2007-01-21T16:09:00.000-08:00

So, I've started reading THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG by Andre Dubus. What strikes me thus far is what a good example it is of an effective use of multiple viewpoints. He basically sets it up that you find yourself sympathizing with 2 characters on opposing sides of an experience. They can't both get what they want, by by alternating between their viewpoints and making both sympathetic, he makes you hope they both get what they want. In so doing, he illuminates a particular concept - that to achieve the American Dream, it may often be at the expense of someone else's dream. Anyway, that's my impressions thus far.

Dueling viewpoints, anyone? Have you ever explored this in a piece? If so, what was your goal? Did you succeed? Why or why not?

Writing on Demand

2007-01-18T19:47:00.000-08:00

It's lovely to build a notebook, revisit your ideas, write what the muse inspires, work on the pieces that truly call to you, but what of the command performance? An opportunity or a need arises and - bam! It's time to write something, on a deadline. "Be creative," you shout at your poor brain as it stares at the blank page like a deer caught in the headlights. Is this writer's block or simple fear-driven paralysis? My college motto often breaks thru the paralysis for me - "It doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be done." Still, is that the road to quality writing?

The command performance has the great advantage of demanding completion, demanding output, no excuses. Sometimes, that urgency can plow through the wall, free you of all your crazy internal editors and censors, drive you out of your writer's shell, stretch your writing muscles. "Write on this topic. Write in this genre. Write something of this length by this deadline." The sheer compulsion of external motivators can produce remarkable results.

How do you feel about the writer's command performance? What have you experienced as the best and the worst of your own writing on demand? Ever wished for those external motivators when you didn't have them? How successful are you at completing things without those demons driving you? When they're absent, what do you use to motivate yourself? Which do you prefer - intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?

Writers as Readers

2007-01-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

As I browse through the book review section of the paper, I am struck yet again by the number of books that are out there, and how few of them I've read. I used to think I was an avid reader, but sometimes I wonder. I guess it's WHAT I read. I read old classics, I read books that catch my interest when I browse in the book store or the library, I read books on topics I'm looking to learn more about, I read children's books for my teaching. I don't read from the latest best seller lists. I don't seem to read many modern novels. There's a lot I don't read.

How does what you read affect your writing? As a writer, should you strive to expand your reading repertoire? Are you ever afraid it will just paralyze your writing if you read the work of others?

Shakespeare Meets Jerry Springer

2007-01-11T19:43:00.000-08:00

What do Shakespeare and Jerry Springer have in common? Just ask the kids at the school where I teach. After I described the plot of MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM to the afterschool Drama Club, one of them said, "Jeez! It's like the Jerry Springer Show!" In fact, I realized, they were right - catfight and all. Both portray conflict and the complicated entanglements that are human relationships. And both are popular in part for that reason - people can see and recognize their own entanglements in both men's particular forms of expression. But Shakespeare makes his catfights poetic.

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?

2007-01-01T19:55:00.000-08:00

Many a great writer - and some of the rest of us, too - have had the urge to burn our false-starts and incomplete work. Or at least throw them away. Certainly never look at them again. And yet, I have found of late that there is value in some of those old pieces. Indeed, work I thought was garbage has time and again returned, tugging at my sleeve, until, with the good grace of time and distance between creation and revision, I have been able to recognize the potential in a piece I had given up on.

Who are the old acquaintances of your writing, those sketches, half-formed ideas and unfinished novels that deserve a second look? Old acquaintances should not be forgot. Let them go, leave them alone, and they may well come home wagging some new inspiration behind them. (Now there's some kind of bizarre stream-of-consciousness metaphor-mixing happening, huh?)

Censors and Sensibility

2006-12-29T10:28:00.000-08:00

A recent turn of events has led me to contemplate the many forms of censorship writers encounter. There is, of course, the external forces - censorship driven by the market, your audience, the FCC, etc. And then there's self-censorship.

Sometimes, we self-censor based on the audience we have in mind. When I'm writing for an audience of elementary-age children, I will naturally exercise a certain kind of self-censorship. But even there, where the parameters ought to be pretty obvious, you can run into hazy territory. I may be okay with witches or ghoblins, or stories about death or divorce or other ugly realities that kids experience. Someone else might think these topics inappropriate or unacceptable. I've been working on a highly abridged version of MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM for my drama club of 4th-6th graders. The word "ass" appears in reference to the donkey's head that Bottom wears. But, Shakespeare being Shakespeare, the double-meaning is played upon liberally. Do I cut these references? It seems a crime. But parents may complain.

There is a deeper kind of self-censorship, the kind Virginia Woolf refers to as the Angel on your shoulder, the voice that tells you not to upset your family or friends or polite society by writing about darker issues, or intimate subjects, or family secrets, etc. Woolf has a wonderful essay in which she describes killing off this Angel as a necessary act, especially for women writers who are particularly susceptible to its form of self-censorship.

Can censorship be a good thing? A necessary evil? Or just plain evil? Which kind of censor is the hardest to beat - the outside one or the inside one?

Writing from the inside out

2006-12-27T22:13:00.000-08:00

I was lying on the couch tonight, recovering from stomach flu, and watching a show about Rod Serling. They spoke of how often his scripts were born from writing through and about his own internal conflicts or fears.

Often as writers we begin to think of our writing as an outside entity, driven by external forces and ideas. The muse visits us. Our characters take control of the story. I have often written about the process in this way here in this blog. The mention of Serling's drawing from his internal struggles was a reminder to me. Sometimes, our best work comes not from looking at the world around us for inspiration, although that can be powerful, but from delving deep inside ourselves and squaring off against our own fears, hopes, desires, struggles. This writing can be painful, can be dangerous.

Writing from the inside out. Maybe it's like sewing a garment. You muust put it together inside out first, to make the seams clean. When the structure, the bones, are finished, you turn it rightside out and put on the finishing touches that make it beautiful for the world. The best writing combines these personal internal visions with the external connections that make them speak to others, to the audience.

What's In a Genre?

2006-12-23T18:35:00.000-08:00

My last entry, and subsequent comments, got me thinking about genre. Specifically, its purpose and its limitations. Who is genre for? Is genre something the writer decides in advance, or is it something a reader uses to identify and classify work? Does genre help us, providing useful templates to lead the way through the thorny woods of our story, or does it limit us, setting up barricades and "Do Not Enter" signs to our creative detours?

I tend to think genre is something we assign after the fact, a common, if simplistic, way for us to find readers and publishers, and for them to find us. What do you think?

Two Plotlines Diverged in a Wood

2006-12-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

Two plotlines diverged in a yellow wood... And I don't know which is the road less traveled or how to choose. I am working on a novel that has both fantasy and realistic elements. It has developed a split personality. There is a point in the plot when it could go in one of two directions. The one takes it further and faster into fantasy territory. The other keeps the setting more realistic, while the fantasy elements appear in that realistic setting. I cannot seem to write my way through this.

Is my dilemma the mark of a larger problem, a lack of clear vision for the overall story? I had been working on it with the realistic grounding and fantasy elements invading. I had gotten quite a bit written that way. Then, I re-read it and suddenly, it seemed to make sense, and be a better read, to thrust it pellmell into a fantasy realm at an early point in the narrative, thus scrapping my earlier work. But some of that earlier work is good stuff!

"To scrap, or not to scrap - that is the question." God help us all when we have to tackle major rewrites and revisions. It truly is a "re-vision." Seeing the whole piece anew.

The Self is a Narrative

2006-12-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

"The self is a narrative, not a fixed identity. There are countless cultural fictions that lie about the self ... For writer's, there's 'Find your own voice.'" - Siri Histvedt in NOVEL VOICES.

Your self, and therefore your voice as a writer, is constantly changing, growing and evolving - a work in progress. In a way, this is true of humanity, too. Our identity as the human race, the human story, is constantly being told and retold with different voices, changing and ever-shifting. By telling our stories over again, we actually participate in creating that identity. That is a part of the writer's job, the storyteller's job.

Spending Time with Your Characters

2006-12-17T12:10:00.000-08:00

A character comes to mind, or you call one forth or start to sketch one out. Maybe you start telling their story and you find gaps and holes begin to pop up, or the character floats grayly in a fog and eludes your vision. How do you get to know them better?

When I first tackled writing a novel, I found that simply telling the story only carried me so far. I had to take occasional rest stops to get to know my characters. The story would grind to a halt because I didn't really know their history as well as I needed to.

What was their childhood like? Where did they grow up? Who is their family? What do they want? Has it changed? What is their job? How do they dress? What little stories and memories do they carry around? What makes them laugh?

I believe there are no pointless questions to ask about character, because you never know what little details may pop into the story later and give your reader that extra measure of reality.

Sometimes, I sketched out a history. Sometimes, I retold a crucial scene from the perspective of a character I needed to understand better. Sometimes, I had other characters describe the person in question.

So I ask again, what do you do to spend time with your characters? Ever met a character you couldn't stand? Did you keep him or her and make yourself get to know them? Or did you decide they were better left undisturbed?

Make the Wrong Choice

2006-12-10T00:59:00.000-08:00

I was talking with someone tonight who told about being directed in a play to "make the wrong choice" when they were stuck on a scene. Got me thinking about how this can apply to writing. It's a very freeing instruction. Of course, in writing, it involves a level of commitment, by virtue of actually putting the wrong choice down on paper. Still, maybe we all need to make more wrong choices as writers in order to arrive at the right choice.

Go make a wrong choice with a piece of your writing. Make that wrong choice on purpose and see what happens.

Life is the Fuel

2006-12-08T23:05:00.000-08:00

I like reading journals by well-known writers I admire. Steinbeck & Woolf are among my favorite journals. Steinbeck often talks about not getting any writing done when he stays up too late with friends, goes out or has people over, etc., etc. Very human of him - comforting. I thought about Steinbeck's late nights this evening as we came rolling in at 11 pm from a festive and sumptuous dinner. Life is the fuel - the fuel of our writing. Some solitary time is needed, but we also need to live, make merry, be among our fellow humans. Or perhaps solitude is the fuel and life is the main ingredients, the raw material.

In "LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET," by Rainier Maria Rilke, Rilke encourages a young man in his solitary, almost hermit-like occupation, extoling the virtues of solitude for the poet.

What mixture of solitude and human conviviality works for you as a writer?

The Company of Writers

2006-12-07T17:44:00.000-08:00

Last night, the chatroom had a full house. Lots of folks showing up to exchange ideas and talk about their latest work. It got me thinking about how important the company of other writers is.

I arrived pretty late at my understanding of the need for connecting with fellow writers. It isn't easy. I was always very protective of my writing, and terrified someone would shoot it down, or worse yet, wouldn't "get it." Writing is meant to be a conversation, meant for an audience, as Jamie pointed out. But it is so intensely personal. Of course, personal can become lonely, and at some point someone has to see what you've written. In recent years, I've learned just how vital the company of other writers is - electronically, in person, on the phone - anywhere you can get it. It has given me the courage to be public about my work, even send it to publishers, far more than I ever have before.

The company of writers can call forth my green-eyed monster. It can also inspire me, give me new perspective, revitalize my own work, cast out the demons of doubt and isolation.

What does the company of writers mean for you - good and bad?

A Head Full of Characters

2006-12-05T21:08:00.000-08:00

Jamie said, "the challenge is to allow the characters to develop the plot and the story, rather than make them tools of the plot."

So, what characters am I hanging out with lately? Well, there's Red-faced Rosie, a little girl who throws big tantrums. She helps me write through my pissy moods. Then there's Ryan, an ordinary kid in a special needs world trying to figure out how to get more attention when he has to compete with difficult kids. There's Hope, a chubby girl, big and different and creative. And Jimmy, inspired by a kid who lived across from me where I grew up. And there's Lillian, based on my grandmother, daughter of a wealthy and demanding father who grew up to run away and marry a poor, alcoholic Irishman.

Who are the characters running around in your brain these days?

The Writer's Audience

2006-12-05T20:06:00.000-08:00

In a comment, Jamie says:

"I would contend that all writing is for an audience. Even private diaries, where the audience is the writer himself -- or, perhaps, the audience is the future. I think a writer always has to be mindful of who his audience is, or the work will suffer. (That's a long discussion, maybe best saved for another time.)"

No time like the present, Jamie! And since it IS a long discussion, I have given it its own thread.

FYI - Reading Comments

2006-12-05T20:02:00.000-08:00

To see what other Writers have said, click on "Comments" at the end of the post.

Seeing Sound

2006-12-05T19:45:00.000-08:00

There is a brain condition in which the patient sees sounds: "'Ah' is something white and long; 'ee' moves off somewhere ahead ... 'yih' is pointed in form..." etc.

This makes me think about how writers balance form and function. We want to convey meaning, but we also play with sound and imagery, we roll the words around, choose between words with the same denotation but different connotations. Where better than Writers On-the-air to explore this balance - the role of sound in conveying meaning and imagery.

I shall steal the above patient's quote as a starting point for a mini poetic meandering:

'Ah' is something white and long ...

"L' is luscious, dripping, wet ...

"Sh" rushes flying through the snow ...

"Ck" trips you, stops you cold ...

Which sounds are evocative for you?

The Birth of Writing

2006-12-04T18:51:00.000-08:00

There are some theories that writing first evolved, in certain cultures, from the tally marks used in commerce. My friend Ms. Flaherty says, "How could poetry and literature have arisen from something as plebeian as the cuneiform equivalent of grocery-store bar codes?" She expresses sadness at this, but I think it is somewhat glorious. Beauty born of mundanity. Perhaps it is a reminder to us as writers to find the poetry and power in the ordinary, the everyday. Poets excel at this. We prose types may need to make an extra effort.

Which everyday activities might inspire you?

previously on Writer's Wavelength

2006-12-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

Ruminations on Writer’s Block and the Muse:

I’ve been reading a book called THE MIDNIGHT DISEASE-THE DRIVE TO WRITE, WRITER’S BLOCK AND THE CREATIVE BRAIN, by Alice W. Flaherty. IT’s gotten me thinking about the mechanism of inspiration versus perspiration, and the competing forces of motivation and blockage. I’m noticing today that often, when I can’t sleep and my mind is full of a million little details of life, writing actually helps me move through that - real writing, creative writing. What’s happening in the brain then? what process takes the million mundanities and processes them into something unrelated, waving narrative and character out of them? In a way, that’s what our dreams do. Perhaps when I write through insomnia I am actually creating the waking version of dreams? The mind weaving story out of all its preoccupations, story that seems completely unrelated.

Thus endeth the musing and rumination. Your thoughts are welcome.

Joe Medina Says:
November 29th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Kewl, this is a lot more thought-provoking than I expected. I must’ve taken these questions for granted longer than I thought. I’ve got to read Alice Flaherty’s now. I’m intrigued.

I’m tempted to go into the science of it. Or rather, the theories. Hypnagogic mental states. Quantum brain dynamics. But I’d only be distracting myself from a simple fact: It’s an integral part of who I am. And I don’t know what it is.

For me, that’s part of the fun. Maybe we’re quantum computers that invent their own software. In a ghost realm where a particle can be here and not here at the same time, turning everyday nonsense into a heartwarming, carefully plotted character study would be a cinch. Are you working on another chapter or breaking symmetry? Is that a paradox in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? Dream it all and let Heisenberg sort it out.

I do thinking we dream while awake, and that we do a kind of lucid dreaming when we write. There is craft to the art, the editing and conscious effort. But the process is still mysterious. Suddenly a character takes on a life of its own, or there’s a twist in the plot that surprises even the writer at the keyboard. We tap into an energy that doesn’t seem entirely ours, but not completely alien either. Whether it’s the same cosmic power that made shamans out of ordinary men, or a Zen-like collapsing wave function courtesy of superstrings in our heads….

Come to think, what’s the difference?

cjmcgean Says:
December 2nd, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Leon Wieseltier, cited in THE MIDNIGHT DISEASE: “Whenever I read Kafka, I wonder:what sort of dejection is this, that leaves one the strength to write and write and write? If you can write about the wreckage, the wreckage is not complete. You are intact. Here is a rule: The despairing writer is never the most despairing person in the world.” To which Alice Flaherty adds: “Of course, that is one reason why we write, to prove to ourselves that the wreckage is not yet complete.”

Why do we write? And how does depression affect our writing? Is art of any form a means of salvation when faced with mental illness? Cause, effect or neither? Flaherty refers to research that posits a sort of bell curve in reference to mania (a state of arousal) - just enough for action, not so much to become disorganized. Perhaps the same could be said of all mental states - just enough to motivate and give depth, not so much that the wreckage becomes complete.

All of which brings me back to the fundamental question of author’s purpose. On the one hand, we write for ourselves, because it is how we express ourselves, because we have a story that demands to be told, a character who insists on speaking, a message that must be shared. But we also write for an audience. Is a work of writing complete without an audience? I used to feel that was a fundamental difference between writing for theater and other forms of writing - the role of others. Writing seems so solitary, but theatrical writing truly does not exist in completion until other artists are involved - actors, producers, an audience. Yet perhaps that is true of all writing. All except private diaries. It does not fully exist until it reaches an audience. “If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?” If a piece of writing never reaches an audience, is it complete?

Why do you write?

cjmcgean Says:
December 3rd, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Joe wisely reminds me such introspection can distract from the sheer joy of the creative act. But I can’t help it!! I yam who I yam.

And I “yam” thinking a lot about plot these days. This dance between dreamlike inspiration and conscious, sweaty craftsmanship circles around plot for me just now. The dreamlike state cannot sustain long enough for coherent plotting of a longer piece of writing. The conscious, craftsman mind has to step in, look over the meanderings and find the logical - or purposeful or meaningful - pathways through them. Plot. How to get from point a to point B. It sounds like it should be so easy.

What do you do to guide your plot?

New -new- new

2006-12-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

Here we are in the new, spiffy Writer's Wavelength blog. So, what's so great about new anyway? As writers, we are often faced with the horrifying specter of new. Editors looking for a new voice or a new perspective on things. The adage "there's nothing new under the sun." The fear that our work simply rehashes what others have said. Why bother writing anything if there's nothing new to be said?

But writing is also about retelling the oldest story -the human story. It's a complex story, so there are always little details to add. Maybe it's like sewing or knitting. The format, the pattern may be the same, but that doesn't mean we stop knitting. When we write, we join a conversation that is as old as the Lascaux caves in France. The conversation of humanity. Does a story have to be new to be worth telling?

Welcome!

2006-12-03T18:10:00.000-08:00

Along with the standing invite to the chatroom on Wednesday evenings, I've decided to make our webpage a sort of open blog. This blog is intended to start a writerly conversation. Chime in when you can.