Life is challenging. Each day we wake with a fresh start, a new hope for something better and it is up to each of us to reach as high as we can to attain what will make us happy or conversely, allow the latest obstacle to overwhelm us. No matter what the size of today’s struggle is, the power is ours to defeat it as long as we put in the effort.
Inside of us is a tiny seed of ambition that will only grow if we locate it and subsequently, use our time and energy to nurture it. Nothing is as satisfying as watching that seed grow into a full fledged dream come true. For some, its raising a child to adulthood and for others its a job or a new home. For many its all of those things.
Writing, like life, is daunting. As an author, I glimpse an idea and I toss it around in my mind and like a handful of snow rolled around on the ground until it becomes a jolly happy soul leading a line of children marching down the street, I give it life. Although I admit there are times (more than I care to let on) that I think it is too difficult, or overwhelming and I come shamelessly close to giving it up; murdering my idea before it has the chance to take its first breath. And if I dare to envision each step of the long challenging process ahead, from writing draft after draft, to revisions and edits and pursuing a publisher, I am sure to throw in the towel and find something else less intimidating to do instead.
But then where will I be at the end of the day when I reflect on my accomplishments or lack of..?
That’s easy. I will still be pacing back and forth at the bottom of the mountain, looking up at the top wondering what it looks like up there and how it would feel to climb higher than the clouds, actually reaching success.
So, as I roll around my idea, giving birth to my dream, I decide to take one step at a time without looking at the peak. Somewhere inside me is the strength I need to make my way to the top, and only I can find and nourish it as long as I keep moving forward and never give up.
Archives
Make the reader an equal partner
I once blogged about “the writer’s dance” which is the partnership between writer and reader, one leads, the other follows but both are needed equally to dance. Best Selling Author Anita Shreve told “The Writer” magazine author Hillary Casavant in her April 2014 article “You have to make the reader an equal partner”, quoting advice from novelist John Gardner.
She explained how in her book “Stella Bain” , which took her 3 years to write and nine drafts, she changed the point of view, tense and location. She had written the first draft in first person from the perspective of the title character, but after a while she realized that the story needed other key pieces of information from the main character’s own past to be withheld, which could not be done using that viewpoint.
When writing the story, the writer must always keep the reader in mind. What pieces of information would be too much of a give away- ruining the surprise, what pieces must be furnished bit by bit. What should the writer allow the reader to see at different points of the story. What will please and excite the reader most?
“Most of writing is problem solving”, says Shreve, ” a challenge to tell the individual pieces of a story in an authentic way and allow the reader to instinctively know what’s happening through a gradual unveiling of detail.” Her story Stella Bain, she describes as a “mosaic, a collection of hazy moments that clarify for the reader as the story progresses.”
In Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s “The Language of Flowers” we see young Victoria Jones progress through a bunch of troublesome experiences, each one providing us with a sneak peak at some horrible incident from her past and it allows us to feel her pain yet wonder what is causing it. We can not stop reading until we find out what picture those hazy moments come together to paint. The writer takes us from the first “connect” the dot point to the end, knowing when to allow us to enter a scene and when to shut us out, until we reach the final scene and the picture is complete.
Just as we learn about people and their pasts in our own lives, brick by brick as we build the foundations of relationships and ultimately come to conclusions about why our neighbor is afraid to fly, or why our co-worker keeps getting divorced or why our partner can’t be a good parent to our children, we must imitate this in our work. Unravel your story slowly while building suspense so that the reader is permitted to come to know the characters while sympathizing with them all the while. Then when the reader enters that final scene she not only has come to know the character she routed for, but she has become her, if only for the moments of her reading journey. You as the writer will have perfected the dance and ultimately have made her an equal partner and she will be forever grateful.
Dressing up your vocabulary
A person’s choice of words can tell us a lot about that person. Within minutes of engaging in conversation we get a sense of where they have come from in life, what part of the country they may live, how they live and even who they are. Whether their language is filled with southern drawl, short choppy one syllable words, street slang or words like emolument or insalubrious we listeners form a picture of who they are. Just as we all have our own style of clothes that we wear: a little black dress for a saturday evening party verses a skinny pair of jeans for an afternoon lunch with the girls, we also have our own style of vocabulary.
Stephen King tells us that his “commonest” tool of all, the bread of writing, is vocabulary. In his book “On Writing” he talks a lot about the writer’s toolbox and the placement of the tools. He tells us to “put vocabulary on the top shelf of your toolbox, and don’t make any conscious effort to improve it. (You’ll be doing that as you read, of course… but that comes later.) One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.”
So be yourself in life and in your writing and your little black dress will always have a place where it fits.
Active versus passive (verbs)!
In life there are those who “do” and those “who get done to”. Some of us work hard toward success, whether it is an educational goal, a career dream or simply a pursuit of happiness. Happiness comes in many different shapes and sizes and colors. For some, happiness is impossible without a constant turning of the wheels complete with a daily “to do” list in hand and feeling of being productive. On the other hand, there are others who rise late, move slowly and can not bear the thought of having an agenda to follow. The “active productive addicts” act. A thought comes to mind and they’re out the door before you can say “wait”. The “passive late risers” pass. A thought comes to mind and they say “maybe later” and procrastinate until someone comes along and pushes or pulls them through their tasks. Active versus passive.
Like people, verbs can be active or passive. With the active verb, the subject does something. However, with the passive verb, something is being done TO the subject. The subject lets it happen. No fight, no struggle, it just rolls over and allows it. Like some people, right?
Although there ARE some instances when passive verbs can be more appealing, they’re few and should be avoided whenever possible.
In Stephen King’s “ON WRITING” memoir on craft (Do NOT scoff at the idea of Stephen King if you do not like horror or thriller genre- the man is a GENIUS and MASTER of the craft of writing and knows his stuff!) he writes: “I won’t say there’s no place for the passive tense. Suppose, for instance, a fellow dies in the kitchen but ends up somewhere else. THE BODY WAS CARRIED FROM THE KITCHEN AND PLACED ON THE PARLOR SOFA is a fair way to put this, although ‘was carried’ and ‘ was placed’ still irk the shit out of me. I accept them but I don’t embrace them.” Sometimes it just works because it fits the way the writer wants his reader to see the scene.
BUT King warns us to be selective in our use of passive verbs. He reminds us ( I say “reminds” because we all knew this at one time…) that active verbs give life to the sentence. They make the sentence shine, dance, sing or whatever we- as writers and creators- want the sentence to “DO”. Active verbs are like active people (in my opinion); they are interesting and we want to hang around with them. They grab our attention and they hold it. They entertain, teach and enlighten. They do not get entertained to, taught to or enlightened upon. They are the leaders and we follow.
In King’s “On Writing” he tells us how E.B.White writes in his introduction to THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE,”A MAN FLOUNDERING IN A SWAMP, AND THAT IT WAS THE DUTY OF ANYONE TRYING TO WRITE ENGLISH TO DRAIN THIS SWAMP QUICKLY AND GET THIS MAN UP ON DRY GROUND, OR AT LEAST THROW HIM A ROPE.” And remember, King says” “The writer threw the rope, not The rope was thrown by the writer.”
Whether you are merely a regular person living your life, waking early to catch the worm or staying in bed until your husband or wife tells you its time to start your day, whether you are the active or passive verb of your life, you are the creator of your own destiny and will reap what you sow.
But if you are the writer and you want your story to glow, to sparkle and mostly to make the best sellers list, there is no getting woken up by someone else, because if you use mostly passive verbs, the worm will not be caught. It is the active verb who CATCHES the worm while its passive cousin still sleeps soundly waiting to be woken up.
The autonomy of the human experience turned into art
The autonomy of the human experience turned into art is key in the teaching of the famous poet, William Stafford. He has said “I don’t want to write good poems. I want to write inevitable poems.” He advocated that “the research for what you are writing is your whole life.” That applies to writing short stories, novels, poetry and just living out your dreams in your everyday life.
As complicated as life can be for all of us, Stafford reminded us that it’s ok to be simple, to use simple words to tell a story.” We do not need to make our work more complicated by looking so hard for the right words or the right way to express ourselves. It’s ok to make a mess when we are writing, just as long as we keep going and do not give up. Somewhere buried in that mess there is a neater line or a paragraph or story that we can use another day which has the potential to blossom into the artwork we had envisioned and thought we were not capable of producing.
Isn’t that true of life as well? Don’t we perpetually make a mess of things and then feel the overwhelming desire to give up, throw in the towel and walk away,or worse yet, make the situation worse by placing blame where it does not belong. Too often we neglect to find the value of life’s lessons and we forget that we do learn through our mistakes if we are only wise enough to dig through the mess of our consequences. To unbury the lesson deep down and despite however heavy it feels, to pick it up and carry it forward in our pursuit of creating happiness.
William Stafford said “Writing a poem is easy, like swimming into a fish trap. Analyzing a poem is hard, like swimming out of a fish trap.” We must not be afraid to live today messily if need be because tomorrow we must be able to see beneath the mess for the shining piece that works and revise it and mold it into the fine polished piece of art that we had dreamed about when we began our journey. It is autonomy of our human experiences that create the final piece of art work that we are left with to rejoice in and admire in the end.
Reading a first good line is like falling in love…
A writer must hook her reader immediately. It will not matter if the pages beyond the first five or so are so compelling and so well written that it could compete with some of the top novels of all time. Capturing the reader and before that- the editor, is the only way to keep the book from never seeing the light of day.
In the words of Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl, “I think when you read a first good line, it’s like falling in love with somebody.”
Imagine sitting by a roaring fire while the snow falls continuously outside the large picture window at your house on the lake. A steaming cup of coffee or hot chocolate sits on the table by your side. You can not wait to open the first page of the book your neighbor recommended so highly. Ah- but as you read the first couple of lines you are instantly disappointed yet you continue on- hoping for redemption. By the end of the first five pages you are done. Its time to do the laundry anyway.
There is no falling in love there, only disappointment. And as “they” say- people make their first impressions within the first two minutes of meeting someone. After that a lot of hard work needs to be done to change that newly formed opinion.
In the case of a reader looking to “get into” a new book, there usually won’t be a second chance. First impressions are everything. The writer must do her best to create a dynamic opening or she will lose the chance to impress her reader forever.
According to Nancy Lamb in her book “The Art and Craft of Storytelling”, she says a survey conducted in Great Britain for Costa (which sponsors the prize formally known as the Whitebread Book Award for the most enjoyable book of the year) confirms Nancy Pearl’s theory of falling in love. The survey found that 43 percent of readers know by the end of the first chapter whether they will finish a book. One third of readers know by the time they have read the first fifty pages.
I have found that trying to write the first few pages of the book is one of the most difficult parts of writing. Because I am a perfectionist I would re-write it and re-write until I would become so sick of the whole thing that I’d rip it up and forget it completely. I would edit as I go and never be happy.
One way to overcome this is to keep writing and writing- letting the ideas flow from your mind to your paper, not paying attention to which line will actually end up as the actual opening hook. Keep going and later when you are ready to go back and edit, long after you first started, well into the rest of the book- perhaps even after you have finished the first draft, you can go back. Then as you read it with fresh eyes, as if you are the reader by the roaring fire, the real first line will pop out, staring at you like the first budding flower in your garden. You may find it hidden in a tangle of sentences on the second page or even in the beginning of the second chapter. It won’t matter if you place it first without any background information attached and in fact, that may grab your reader’s attention even more. The need to know what it means or what has happened before that will push him on through your story. And it is at that time that you- the writer, will cut and revise so that the first impression you give your reader will surely get him to fall immediately head over heals in love.
Identification with the protagonist
To heighten the reader’s identification with the protagonist of the story, the writer must create some kind of breakthrough for the protagonist by the story’s conclusion. Either the protagonist has succeeded at attaining his object of desire despite the opposing forces he encountered along the way or he has done the exact opposite- failed miserably, or perhaps his quest has even changed completely. But regardless, the writer must ensure that the protagonist has transformed in some way whether spiritually, emotionally or at least in some way he is a changed person. The transformation is what gives depth to the story and by relating it to a larger issue or theme that many can relate to, it elevates the story from the personal quest of one person to one that is more universal.
At some point of our lives, every one of us faces some kind of journey- from the pursuit of love, to facing the loss of a loved one to the need to know what the meaning of life is and many others in between. Therefore, each of our readers struggles with similar journeys faced by other readers, making the themes of their quests universal. And if we, as writers, are able to resolve some of their questions or perhaps even echo their concerns, validating them in our stories, we will have not only achieved the difficult task of fueling our readers’ curiosity and thereby leading them on to finish the story, but we will have gained our own new insight into what we have learned as writers. And so by our own desire to set out on a journey to transform as we move the protagonist forward, we beckon our readers to identify with our protagonist and we all become connected, transforming one by one, together.
The magic of Books
For many of us worlds unfold through the pages of books as we visit places that were once too far away; we meet new people who were once strangers and we learn how to understand who we are and how we should behave. In Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird”, we learn that books show us ” what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
In life we tend to be so wrapped up in our own lives and in the difficulties we face that we overlook the details that comprise each day of our lives: the sky that looks so vivid and flawless in the morning, the overgrown grass at the sides of the road that sways in the breeze, the warmth of the sun on our arms. Through the magic of books we are forced to pay attention, to stop and take notice. The writer distracts us from our daily challenges and takes us on journeys away from our lives -allowing us to look around at the sights we pass along the way. Through the writer’s story we find magic and hope and we come alive.
Anne Lamott tells us it is a miracle that these “small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort, and quiet or excite you.” She tells us that books are “full of all the things that you don’t get in real life- wonderful, lyrical language right off the bat!” she tells us that her gratitude for good writing is unbounded.
I feel the same way; grateful for good writing and for the unbounded magic of books and of the talented writers who continuously find new stories to pull out of their hats, er , I mean “heads”!
Building Character
Lately, all of my discussions have led back to this topic. Whether I am engaged in a political discussion about the rights people should have or the direction the administration is taking us, or a discussion about a child being bullied at school- ignored by that administration, it seems it all comes down to character.
Recently, I finished taking a class in hypnotherapy, primarily to fulfill a growing need inside me to help people to like themselves, to be more tolerant of themselves and subsequently of others. As I noted on a recent post on my facebook page, if we were to clear out all the bugs hiding deep within the subconscious levels of our minds, think of how much nicer the world would be. Our mind is like a computer, sponging up whatever ideas and beliefs are fed to us right after we are born (and some say even before we are born)like a software program downloaded into our hard drive.. If we could clear out the damaging bugs in that program and replace them with a new program of fresh, positive thoughts and beliefs, imagine how wonderful that new hard drive would be. And imagine if all the hard drives (our minds) in the world became positive, happy, confident thinking, ultimately ridding people of their insecurities, negative fears (I say negative because some fears are good.. think danger falling off a cliff), anxieties, and all negative thoughts toward others and themselves, imagine how wonderful our world would be. There would no longer be a need to hurt, destroy, kill others ….physically, mentally, or professionally.
In fiction, human life is depicted more fully than any scientific or otherwise theoretical rendering out there. David Corbett says in his book “The Art of Character” that “the importance of character to story lies in this open endedness at the core of our lives. Stories that emphasize ideas or problems- the conundrums of philosophy, the lessons of history, the truths of science, the consolations of religion- invariably hit rough sailing the further they drift from the shore of character. Ideas too often serve as a digression from the messy stuff of life- ourselves, each other. For some they provide a kind of false salvation. But the core reality of life remains: We die. Ideas, no matter how “eternal”, can’t save us. And because we can only honestly stand on one side of death, we can never know for certain how our lives will turn out, which is why we experience our existence most profoundly in the interrogative mode,situated in a world premissed on, as Constantin Stanislavski put it, the magical “What if?” Mr. Corbitt goes on to explain that the craft of characterization in our stories is the writer’s attempt to expore the truth of human nature. As we do this, we see ourselves in our characters.
As we write, we are constantly asking the question “what if?” both as the writer constructing the tale and as the reader who comes along on our journey. Just as the clinical hypnotherapist hopes to change a negative thought or experience to a good one, as a small step toward changing the world, one person at a time, the writer hopes to open her reader’s mind to ask a question that counts- at the very least. And as we ask ourselves those questions, exploring our possibiities, we take one more step toward building character.
How revision can fix the “messiness of overwriting” and other weaknesses.
All writers have both strengths and weaknesses. In the “Guide to Revision” May/ June 2013 Writers Digest issue, David Corbett points out that all writers have strengths and weaknesses in their personalities which will naturally come out in their writing. He reveals that his own weakness of overwriting is “from a misbegotten devotion to being thorough, when in fact restraint is necessary to lure the reader in.” Because this is a weakness in his personality, where he has the tendency to cross every ” t” and dot every “i” in his everyday life, it also comes out in his writing. But he has learned to let it go, let his writing flow and then later because he recognizes his weakness, he can fix it during revision.
It is much easier to allow our mind to flow at the initial first draft stage and revise later than to struggle and risk not writing anything at all.
Just as Mr. Corbett saw students who were shy or introverted reflect their personalities in their writing by avoiding all conflicts in the texts as they do in their lives while conversely, he saw compulsive talkers “write dialogue comprised of a jabbering onslaught of empty words.”
These weaknesses are part of us and will come out in our writing. It is natural and we shouldn’t expect anything else. No writer writes perfectly without flaws during the initial writing stage. No writer has strengths without weaknesses.
With regard to my own weakness of overwriting, I no longer feel alone when Mr. Corbett writes “Jokes you explain are never funny. Stories you explain are never interesting. The key is to provide enough so the reader feels engaged, but not so much she can feel you trying to control how she responds to the text.”
Since I do overwrite, overexplain, and write “redundantly” and I know it (I have probably repeated myself and overexplained here in this blog!) and I sometimes, no -often let that block me, I am now learning to let the words spill and then later, through the process of revision I will clean up the mess and wipe it clean. At least then I will have SOMETHING written in the end. Something that pulled the reader in but left her feeling grateful that I trusted her enough to fill in the pieces and get it all on her own!
Writing Queen 