Why?

I am sure one of the most relatable experiences across all cultures is when a little child starts responding to every single statement with that dreaded word, "Why?" You explain that they have to eat their broccoli. "Why?" Clean your room. "Why?" You shouldn't put the cat in the washing machine. "Why?" This phase is the fodder for plenty of comedy sketches, and actually a good sign that the child is now inquiring about the world around them. They grow into it much to everyone else's chagrin, bombard the world with questions, and then, sadly, grow out of this phase thinking they know everything. Hopefully they maintain a curious mind afterward, but that's not the point. The point is that we can learn something from this inquisitive yet annoying child.

A lot of people I know want to write The Great American Novel. They clearly have the skills, they can generate the time, and yet... no novel. They might even talk about their desire to write that one book, make that one profound, 78,000-word statement, and sit back in the glow of their accomplishment. Yet somehow, not one page gets created. Are they just all talk? Is this a way of them suggesting they could do something if they wanted but they just don't want to? Or is it something more?

When I started writing, I wrote about things that were on my mind, wild flights of fantasy, and other fictitious things. Then people who knew my past and had an idea of my deepest, darkest secrets (usually because I told them these things) suggested I write about growing up in the south suburbs. Well, that sounded like a great idea, so I did. It was, without question, genuinely horrible stuff. It was one-dimensional, it was just a bunch of stuff happening rather than a complete story arc, and it wasn't really the kind of thing that made readers care about the character - even though they knew that character firsthand. What went wrong? The answer is simple. When people started saying I should write about my life and times, I never said, "Why?"

Frankly, for a long time I never considered this to be an important question, so I never asked that question, but the answers would've explained a lot of how those stories failed. If I asked, "Why?" and my friends said the stories were funny and people would enjoy them, that would've given me a frame of reference on how to write the story. If they were inspired about the tragedies I've overcome, well, that's an entirely different voice for the story, and a different reading audience. However, just by asking "Why?" I now had some information about just what made those stories valuable to them, and I could express the funny stories with a bouncy, humorous voice, and so on.

Let's now look at the friends who want to write The Great American Novel. "Why?" If their answer is, "It would be great to be famous," well, that's probably not the best food to nourish a writer. If they want to be  an inspiration and their generation's Harper Lee, well, they had better discover something timely and deep that will resonate throughout the years. Asking "Why?" is the inquiry that forces us to better understand our motives and our drives. When we feel the need to write a story, ask, "Why?" The answer will instantly inform us about how we need to broadcast that story. And if the answer is, "Because I need to get it out of my system and onto the page," then that's a perfectly valid answer and something to work with. 

Lastly, if you find yourself unable to answer that question about something that feels important to you, don't give up. Poke around and try to draw something out. Sometimes those truths are a little scared about coming to the surface, but when they do, they will reveal a lot more than the story to you. Once I answered my own, "Why?" I rewrote plenty of my life stories. They came out incredibly different, and very satisfying. More to the point, I could read them afterward and feel that they were the answer to my, "Why?"         

Is Our Writing Ever Done?

I was actually going to do a piece today about how writing is a part of our broader thinking process, and how sometimes when we get tied up in our story and can't find our way out, we can use this connection to resolve a lot of our conflict. However, that whole concept kind of fell apart after I wrote Friday's post, and now I want to make a very special point about the things that move us to write and what we lose when we stop writing.

A few hours after I wrote my last post, "Being Haunted By Words," the author I mentioned in that piece, Linda Berry, passed away. I can't say her passing came as any surprise - she was 85 and in declining health. When I visited her last Friday, it was to help her get her affairs in order and make sure her final wishes would be seen to. Quietly, I knew it would likely be the last time I saw her. It was. Fortunately, I did get the chance to tell her how she and her husband were the writing mentors that turned me into the published author that I am, and that I was thankful for her guidance, her wisdom, and her friendship. Letting her know that leaves me with no regrets. However, there's still a frustration I will never be able to resolve.

I can't help thinking about all that she left behind as a writer. In the time when her health started to slide, she talked more and more about the things she wanted to say, the poems she still had in her. She wanted to express so many things about so many subjects, but it had become difficult for her. The writer in her was alive and well, but there were fewer and fewer ways for her to get those stories out. She couldn't type anymore, her hands were too arthritic for writing, and I can't help but to think that the loss of her husband - a fellow writer - placed too much of an emotional weight on her. She still had so much to create, but in the end it never came into existence. In some ways, that's just as terrible a loss as Linda's passing, because it was a part of her I never got to know.

Now that she's at rest, the mind naturally turns inward and I think about my own mortality and my own writing. Granted, I am three decades younger than her and in better health than she was at any point in the past year, but I still think about all those stories I have yet to write. I've shared plenty of my humorous anecdotes and silly experiences. I have also gone through writing and processing my own amount of trauma. However, both categories still have plenty of stories to be told. Some are not Earth-shaking, others I still haven't mustered up the courage to write about because they damaged me to the core. But whatever the reason, I am no different than Linda in that I haven't gotten around to doing something that deep inside I want to do, and if I don't make it to tomorrow, all those stories vanish along with me.

All of us writers are the same. We write things we feel compelled to produce, we create things for the joy of writing or to purge them from our soul, and each story - fictitious or factual - is a modest revelation on some facet of our existence. And for all that we create, there's plenty that we just never get around to. And no matter how boring those stories may sound to ourselves, someone else might take an interest in that because a part of you resonates with a part of them. However, it will never happen if we never write them.

Tonight, write something. Write anything. Post it on social media. Say something about yourself. Make yourself a little more known than you were yesterday. It might not make a difference for you, but it gives someone else a chance to see you a little more clearly. And someday, you will no longer have that chance, and people out there will wish they had one more thing to know about you.

Rest in peace, Linda.             

Being Haunted by Words

This post is about the closest I will get to a Halloween-themed post this month, given that I will be very busy in the next few weeks, and, of course, NaNoWriMo is approaching - the real holiday for writers. That all being said, I did want to talk a little about some stories that stick with us, for better or worse, and we are left with them seared into our brain. There is no one definitive way to say how this is done, since it is a very unique effect and no one story will resonate with everyone. However, analyzing the story that haunts you might be an insight as to what pulls at your personal heartstrings; what can make you a better writer.

The story that won't let me go is a heretofore unpublished work called, "The Taste of Milk." It sounds simple enough, perhaps even so much so that this is part of its allure. The story is also very straightforward - a woman tells the story behind why she will no longer drink milk. This might just seem like a teachable moment about lactose intolerance, but the author has no problem with other dairy products. The problem goes much deeper.

The author tells a story from when she was seven - put yourself in a rural, southern, post-WW2 mindset - and enjoyed the fresh milk brought to to her house in the morning. The morning milk was a regular event and innocent enough, until the author's mother had what could best be described as a psychotic break. The story gets dark fast as the mother insists milk is only for babies, that the little girl wasn't a baby, and would never be allowed to drink milk again. In an uncontrollable rage, the mother takes all the milk bottles into the backyard and smashes them with a broom handle, spraying the yard with the milk the girl loved so much. The girl, traumatized, could not drink milk for ages, and whenever she tried to, she was repulsed by the taste of milk.

I wish I could drop a link to this story, but as I mentioned, it is unpublished (for now - I am working on getting it into print). This story stayed with me for a long time - easily ten years running - and it genuinely haunts me (this is part of my drive to get it published somewhere). However, what really stuck with me went beyond the words, and that's when the writer in me decided to figure out just why this story had traction. For the author it was obvious - she was expressing some painful childhood trauma. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what really haunted me about it was that the story was honest and upfront in dealing with a terrible situation that a child could barely understand. The honesty and confrontation of the story had moved me. Now I just needed to know why.

At that point, the writer in me had the answer. Everyone has had their fair share of traumas in life to some degree. One of the reasons I write is to process my past trauma, and in some ways I am successful with this. However, "The Taste of Milk" stuck with me because it had an honesty I had not yet been able to achieve. I wanted to reach that point where I could take the most damaging moments in my life and put them on the page with dramatic, painful honesty. "Just sit in front of the typewriter and bleed" as Hemingway said about writing. 

So when a story, a poem, an essay sticks with you; when it lingers long after you've read it and put it away, don't think about what the writing did for you. Think about the content and purpose, and how you connect with those elements. Think about how that author walked in shoes that you want to wear. The real lesson in a good story comes from finding out what parts of you connect with it, then exploring that in the stories you decide to write.

And thank you, Linda Berry, for "The Taste of Milk." If I ever find the copy you wrote, consider it published.       

Learning From Our Students

It may sound a little odd to say that we learn from our students. After all, isn't it supposed to be that we learn from teachers until we know what we are doing, then we become the teacher? Well, that's very true. However, it isn't the entire story. Ask any teacher about when they stopped the learning side of their job and they will probably say, "What makes you think I ever stopped?"

In the broader sense, I was reminded about this the other day when I did some tutoring. This being the season for college applications and scholarship pitches, there's a booming market involving students who want to get things just right so they can go to the school of their choice or get a big, fat scholarship to help offset the costs. Fortunately, this also involves students who are fairly educated when it comes to their writing, but they want things to shine, to really pop off the page. For that, they bring in the tutor - that would be me - and I get to teach them the tricks of the trade.

Well, how does this amount to learning? Well, teaching someone how to raise their writing game is one thing. You discuss some techniques, you talk about structure and reader appeal, you go through their writing and work through the problematic parts - that's the teaching part. However, things really kick into gear when you point out how they need a hyphen in a particular spot, and they say, "Why?" Those three letters, that simple word has echoed through every parent's brain when their child first reaches the inquisitive stage. "Why?" That's when the teacher has to do more than say, "Because." They have to teach the answer, which means they need to remind themselves the reason behind a particular answer. This often means relearning what we now take for granted.

My favorite thing to teach is the compound modifier, which involves a hyphen. What is it? Well, in the sentence, "I took a fifty-mile ride on my bike," it is "fifty-mile." This is where we describe something - the ride - with at least two words that only work when combined, and those words get hyphenated. "Fifty-mile" describes the ride only when those words are used together in front of "ride," so it becomes this compound modifier. If the sentence was, "I took a ride of fifty miles," then there's no hyphen because we are separating fifty miles from the ride. This is used quite often when someone describes another person with a phrase rather than a word. "He's just a useless, no-good, couldn't-find-his-butt-with-two-hands-and-a-flashlight troublemaker," has three modifiers -  "useless," which is straightforward, "no-good," which is a two-word compound modifier, and that huge phrase that counts as one descriptor so the whole thing is a compound modifier and gets hyphenated through and through. (And I actually snuck in another compound modifier into the paragraph just for fun.)

So, when my student looks at me and says, "Why?" my job is now to teach them exactly why such a rule exists. When I do this, I also reinforce within myself the reason these rules exist, their purpose in writing, and just why they can be important. I give myself a refresher course on these rules of writing, all while teaching them, and my writing skills are that much better.

(And I get paid for it, so there's that.)     

So I'm A Writer - Now What?

It's best if I approach my title head-on with this one, and not meander about. The obvious answer is: Start writing. However, there's something very unsatisfying about that answer in that it doesn't quite get people where they want to go. They like writing, they've developed their process and learned their tools for creating things, they know they rules and how to break them... but something's still missing. This is where they learn that writing is just a means to an end. What is that end? Let's find out.

As I mentioned over 500 posts ago, my main drive to write came from a desire to make sure the stories bouncing around in my head were brought into being through the written word. I had a lot to work with, a bunch of things to say and even more to create, and this tool known as writing, so I put them to use. However, creating stories wasn't the destination. As it turned out, while I had a lot of things to say and stories to tell, I realized that when I wrote things, I thought about them from different angles and had certain realizations about different concepts. With some larger ideas, I found myself changing my mind about long-held opinions. I found myself... growing. So the purpose of my writing became a tool to better myself; to be more of whatever I really was.

I think it's fair to say that this may not be the purpose of writing for most people, and that's fine. The point of that last paragraph is that we need to discover what our reason is, and why writing is our tool of choice. A very enjoyable reason is to make a good record of your life as you know it, along with the people that made you who you are. Many of the people who shaped me during my youth are no longer around; many never made it to the 21st century. However, I want to make sure that a few more generations hear about my grandmother, my Aunt Isabelle, and the many people who influenced me long before I knew the effect they would have on my life. Writing about your life is a great reason to write - and if I may, here's some advice on writing about those people and their stories.

I could write about Grandma, Aunt Isabelle, and so on, telling many stories about them. What makes these stories truly resonate with the reader is including some note about how their messages carried on through you. If I wrote about my Aunt Isabelle and her days as a teacher in Chicago, well, they're good stories. However, the parts that really carry through are how those events shaped her so that after she retired, when she looked after me and my brothers, that teacher came back to educate us. The story of her in Chicago is fine, but once it covers the arc of time, readers see some vision of that message in themselves.

And, of course, if you want to set out to write the Great American Novel (and yes, there's already a novel of that name), then go ahead and write it. However, this is again not about setting out to write something, but setting out to convey some greater message with writing as a tool to accomplish this. So as you write that novel, think about the message you wish to communicate, and make sure every part of your work hones in on that meaning.

(Then mention me in the acknowledgements.)         

Fact-Checkers Need Not Apply

These days, it's amazing how many people spread false information and the speed with which it goes around. (Note: These people aren't necessarily liars. According to St. Augustine, to be a liar, one must know something is false yet still speak it as truth. That's what I go with.) False information, astounding lies, and amazing stories too intriguing to be real fly around the internet at the speed of information, and everyone falls for it at some point. Why?

There's just so much temptation to believe that, say, your favorite cookie does, in fact, stop the aging process, because that justifies you scarfing down another sleeve of cookies. It's for your health! However, there's an even greater force at work here, which is our willingness to believe certain people and figures in our life. We have these people around us and we say, "Why would they lie to me?" after they tell you about the anti-aging cookies. We yield something to presumed authority, and it makes the story easier to accept - even after we've packed on an extra forty cookie-pounds worth of anti-aging goodness.

Well, this is where writers get to have fun. When we write a story, we create the ultimate authority - the narrator. The reader steps into a new world and the entire thing is created by the narrator. From the color of the sky to every character's actions, the narrator brings out this information, usually through the main character's perspective, and we build out from there, entirely dependent on the narrator's guidance. However, the writer is the one running the show, so even though the reader is all about this narrator, the writer is the one who knows the truth, and the greatest truth a writer can know is when the narrator is lying. This is the basis of the technique known as, "The Unreliable Narrator."

In my most popular post in the history of this blog, affectionately titled, "Obi-Wan Kenobi - You Suck!" I demonstrated how our beloved character of Obi-Wan set up one of the more famous scenes in sci-fi because he lied to Luke about his father. Now, a writer can do that same thing by telling us a story through one character's perspective, but not revealing (at first) how that character might see things differently than they were. I think of the stories passed down from generations, accumulating that wonderful shine of the golden years that covers up the gritty truths within those stories. (Since I recently had a family reunion, I could tell you things...) But most importantly, the Unreliable Narrator allows us to portray a situation as the character sees it so we understand what drives the character, then gradually reveal the truths, which if done right can show us the deeper layers of that same character - perhaps their inner fear of the things that really happened.

The Unreliable Narrator should not be used as just a clever tool for you as the writer to fool the reader. The reader will believe the narrator until told otherwise, so they are too easy a mark for such a simple trick. Rather, it should be used as a point of revelation - possibly for the narrating character themselves - that they have been resisting larger truths and more fearful circumstances. It should be used as a twist to aid in the character's progress and not a "Gotcha!' moment. As the reader, our response to a good use of the Unreliable Narrator should be, "Wow!" not "Huh?"

After all, Obi-Wan was, in fact, doing what he thought was best for Luke. It just didn't turn out too well.          

Things I Learned From Mark Twain (maybe)

“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please” 

-- Probably Mark Twain

Now, if I am not mistaken, that last quote is, in fact, from Mark Twain. Mark Twain was one of the most prolific authors and wits of his time, and is known for many quotes. Far more, in fact, than he actually said. Along with Shakespeare and the Bible, he ranks among the most misquoted voices in the literary world. And yet there is still wisdom in his words (if they are in fact his), and we, as writers, can take advantage of this.

Let me offer a simple story. It's about a guy. The story is him going through his routine - go to a movie, take a regular morning jog, watch television and gripe about the news. Everything seems fine. When he's outside on a hot summer day, this character is very social, trying to make conversation with the woman using her earbuds in the seat next to him on the bus. or waving to strangers on the street. Occasionally, someone waves back, and it's perfectly normal conversation. These are normal interactions. Nothing special here. Maybe we have a sad moment, when he goes to visit his mother's grave. Other mourners do not bother him, instead wrapping themselves tighter in their own sweaters or putting on their jackets. A solemn moment, but no surprises here. In fairness, it's actually kind of boring.  

Oh, did I tell you it was a ghost story? No? Well, it is, and I set up a series of "facts" to work with, then distorted the story just enough so you wouldn't know it was a ghost story - at this point. Basically, I gave you The Sixth Sense treatment (spoilers ahead). I created a ghost, made him seem real, then surrounded him with facts that I never told you: 

• Ghosts don't know they're dead. 
• Ghosts can talk to anyone, but only people who can see ghosts can hear and respond to them.. 
• When ghosts get riled up, things get cold. 

These are the facts. We look back at our story about the guy and realize he is within the rules, but now he very well might be a ghost. If this were a longer piece, I could go on and make you feel for this perfectly human character before the big reveal of whether or not he was a ghost. However, I would have to know my rules, follow them to the letter, and properly tweak everything I wrote to make you think something else before the big reveal. 

Leading you down a certain road of thought before offering new information that really enhanced the meaning was something else I learned from Mark Twain, but that's for another time. But I will offer another possible Twain quote: "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." This will be the lead-in to my next piece about unreliable narrators.

And by the way - Bruce Willis was a ghost.