The Grass Harp: Writing That Takes Your Breath Away

Some writing just takes your breath away. My writing friend and critique partner recently recommended THE GRASS HARP, by Truman Capote. It is a novella, a form that seems these days to elicit both love and disgust. It is beautiful. Breathtaking. And I'm only on Chapter One. Here's an example:

We reached a field of Indian grass at the same moment as the sun. Dolly's veil flared in the morning breeze, and a pair of pheasants, nesting in our path, swept before us, their metal wings swiping the cockscomb-scarlet grass. The China tree was a September bowl of green and greenish gold: Gonna fall, gonna bust our heads, Catherine said, as all around us the leaves shook down their dew.

Such a short passage, with so much going on! You have to stop and take it in. You have to slow down, to notice. The words make the world magical, without ever introducing any magic. It takes your breath away.

From Banal to Sublime: Tolstoy's One-two Punch

As I may have mentioned, I've been reading ANNA KARENINA, one paragraph or so at a time on my phone, which somehow tickles me to no end.  I'm nearly finished.  It is a strange and contradictory piece of literature, at times so achingly poetic I want to cry, and at other times so blandly dry and superficial that I wonder if it's still the same book.  However, I think I've concluded there's a method to that madness.

I hit a particularly long and excruciating section of the novel in which Konstantin Levin, the secret heart of the story in my opinion, spends a bunch of time in the confusing world of Russian small-town political machinations.  This section seems interminable.  I found myself wondering what the hell Tolstoy was up to.  Then - BAM!  He writes this transcendent description of the birth of Levin's child, and the contrast between these two sections is so shockingly vivid that I can't help but think it's done on purpose.  By juxtaposing the banal and the sublime, Tolstoy's given us a potent, in-your-face reminder of what things truly matter in this world, and it ain't political intrigue and bureaucratic backslapping.

So what do I take away from this as a writer?  Structure at the service of theme.  The courage to take your reader down a side road that will set up a later section.  The impact of contrast.  The power of a well-written and sympathetic character to keep the reader following them down those side roads.  Tolstoy's one-two punch would never have worked if Levin hadn't been such a fully realized internally complex and well-drawn character.

Tried any one-two punches of your own lately?  

Pacing and Sentence Rhythm

Which feels more urgent and gives a more rapid pace to a scene - longer sentences, with their rush and deluge of words, or short abrupt, staccato ones?  I've gone back and forth, and had writing partners take me back and forth.  On the one hand, those longer sentences can pull you forward, barely giving you a chance to catch your breath, while shorter ones, by the mere presence of the period, allow you to stop, think, breathe, ponder.  On the other hand, there's a kind of punch-slap-kick rhythm to shorter sentences that can be tremendously effective.

Let's put it to the test:

Short sentences:

The door opened.  The bird flew in.  It crashed into the vase.  It bumped against the ceiling.  It came at me.  It aimed its talons straight for my eyes.

Longer sentences:

A bird flew in the open door, crashing into the vase, bumping against the ceiling and coming right at me with its talons aimed for my eyes.

Admittedly not the most elegant example.  (Work with me here.  I'm too lazy for research today.)  It seems its not as simple as one over the other.  So much depends on the content of the sentences themselves, especially with the longer ones.  A longer sentence could feel much more languid than the one above:

Flying through the open door, the bird first ran headlong into a mahogany vase, which fell crashing to the ground, then veered in the other direction, wobbling unstably, and bumping off the ceiling, before finally aiming its talons at my eyes and coming straight in my direction.

In this last example, I've added details that slow it down, not because there are more words but because the process of noticing such details implies a slower experience.  When everything is coming at us pellmell, details such as "the mahogany vase" shouldn't register.  I also think the list of participles (crashing ..., bumping ..., coming) in the first example has more of a runaway train feel than the more convoluted structures of the second example.

Thoughts, anyone?  Thriller writers, how do you approach those exciting chase scenes for maximum rhythmic effect?

Conferencing With Yourself - Intentional Writing Practices

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.

Notice, Conjure, Give In, Resist - Using Imagery

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

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.

Write Like a Third Grader

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.