Writing on A Full Stomach

Through the history of this page, there was only one occasion where I wrote a piece on the day after Thanksgiving. It was the first year of my postings, so every entry had to count. It was surprisingly devoid of comments about the Thanksgiving feast the previous day, so there's every chance that I wrote it ahead of time then dropped it into the blog at some point between turkey sandwiches and fall clean-up. However, I can guarantee that this piece is being written the day after Thanksgiving as I ride out the calorie crash, still digesting the two or three full plates of food I ate yesterday.

For writers in particular, Thanksgiving should be an opportunity to see how far we've come over the past year and appreciate whatever gains we have made. If we participated in NaNoWriMo, then a pat on the back is deserved whether we finished it or not. If we set out any task or goal and pursued it, then let's be thankful for those things as well. Since writing is all about growth, when we set out to do something, we've already won, even if we didn't finish it. We just "failed up," as people like to say.

This year I explored the creative side-products of being a writer, and that's exploring other things that might make for a good story. I danced and sang, I went to new places and did new things, and even set myself on a new life trajectory. Whether I did these things successfully (and I guarantee that with dancing, I did not) is not the point. The point was to stretch out that creative zone - the supposed "box" we are supposed to think outside of - and let more experiences and opportunities come naturally. I think next year there might have to be some improv. I'm at that point in life where trying out what I have wanted to do for years can't hurt, and if it is a failure, it's not like I ruined a career opportunity; I just took a step that I wanted to. Nothing wrong with that.

As my regular and semi-regular readers know, I lost several people in my writing community this year, and I also recently lost my mother. Mourning losses such as these takes time, but I did grant myself a little time to be thankful for having known them. It isn't closure by any sense, it just reminds me that my life is different and better for those interactions. And with regard to my writing friends, I would've never known any of them if I hadn't stepped outside of my secure space and joined the workshops they participated in or facilitated. Plenty of people went their entire life without meeting those friends of mine, but I got that opportunity. Thank you.

More to the point, as a writer, I now have a fresh stock of things and stuff to incorporate into my style and my ways of saying things in general. Letting those become part of my stock and trade will be part of this coming year's process, as will many other adventures I have yet to encounter. However, for now I have to settle back in my chair and finish the last of the leftovers while watching Friday college football (which I will never get used to). But as a writer, I can already say that I am full from the past year of writing, and look forward to the next one.        

The Color of the World

I've been doing a lot of writing about some of the events in my life and what they ultimately mean to me. A part of the research into this process has been reading through some of my old journals - and I do mean old, like as in high-school old - just to get a little perspective. One of the things that caught my attention was not in the writing but in the margin, where I had scribbled something that perhaps felt profound at the time but was probably not my own thought. It was simply, "Don't paint the world with your brush."

The reason I kind of got hung up on this one was that I wasn't exactly sure what angle it was coming from, so I had no idea where to take it to. I was taking some basic writing courses then just like every high-school sophomore, so maybe a teacher said that, but why? And whose brush was I supposed to use? I was 14 - I barely had any brushes to call my own. Or was this about just using one color to paint the entire world, that was clearly a multi-colored object? That didn't feel right. Was this about writing voice, because not using your own voice seems intuitively wrong. It was a puzzler.

I think it dawned upon me a litter later on what another possible meaning could be, and this one felt a little more natural, though maybe the painting metaphor was not the most appropriate. A part of me wondered if it was more a statement about trying to not look at the world through your own personal lens. This kind of made sense because, as I said, I wrote that when I was 14, and my field of vision was quite small. Or, rather, I didn't really have much of a brush to work with. I knew very little about the world, even less from first-hand experience, and had little clue about how complex things could be. However, what was that saying about writing? Was it telling me to not write about my own limited experiences? I was confused again.

Eventually, I made a few connections that caused things to click. In high school, those of us who kept writing journals did so because they were assigned to us, and we had to fill three pages a week. We then handed them in, got them back on Monday, and went back to writing. I took a closer look at the entries I had done the weeks prior to that note of mine in the margin. I had been writing about relationships and how I perceived them. (I won't get into details. Let's just say I was 14 and about as ignorant as can be about how relationships really worked). My conclusions had been simple expressions of frustration, like all young teens my age, and I went on from there. That's when I realized what the statement had meant.

I was allowing my experience to be the main determinant of how the world must be. I experienced something, and decided that's how it all worked every time, everywhere. My young mind applied the very limited world I knew and stretched it across the entire globe. That's not exactly fair to the rest of the globe, especially if their success or failure would be determined by my tiny, judgmental ideas.

The big takeaway as a writer is to remember that even though I hold a particular viewpoint, that doesn't mean everyone else does. Plenty of people may hold opposing viewpoints and be just as passionate about them as I am about mine. Assuming that my ways, thoughts, and ideas are the default settings of the world limits my ability to connect to others, to relate to others, and definitely write about other people that gives them individuality and depth as opposed to being little clones of me. Let the world be whatever color it chooses; whatever color works for it.

And if you get a chance, think up a better metaphor than, "Don't paint the world with your own brush," because I think there are better ways to say it.   

The Secret to Success in Writing

This is what you've been waiting for. After 551 posts, we have reached the point where I offer the big reveal on how to find success as a writer. I have poured over 275,000 words into this blog, which is like three books-worth of talking about how to avoid the passive voice and way too much about poetry, but it feels like the right time to talk about successful writing. And I will preface this with three profound claims. First, this applies toward everyone. Second, it is in fact very difficult to achieve. Third and most important, the answer will leave you wildly disappointed.

You see, for all that it's worth, successful writing is sort of a Shaggy Dog story. Your journey to becoming a successful writer at one point or another will go in a lot of directions, take you to plenty of places both useful and useless, and get you to do things that may or may not improve your skills. This journey, however, is the entire point. Each step brings with it its own lessons, be they how to improve yourself or a warning about what not to do. Quite often, however, you will have no clue what the lesson means at any given moment, and often they will seem useless at the time you are experiencing them.

There's an art-school exercise that talented students often have to go through, which is something like this: Get out your pencil and sketch pad, and practice drawing circles. Not ovals, not roundish, egg-shaped spheroids, but circles that are just as geometrically accurate as can be. Big ones, small ones, you draw them to the point of perfection. If there's one exercise that will drive the young, energetic, creative-types utterly mad, it's the circle exercise. They want to churn out portraits, placing their burning passions onto to pad, on easels and across canvasses, and not sit there drawing a bunch of damn circles. And yet that's the point. The budding artist learns the motions to portray exactly what is needed, to skillfully translate an image to paper. Once they have control, those things they want to sketch and paint become that much easier because now there's discipline behind the translation of their passion.

When I first learned about writing in school, I learned about the importance of description, and we wrote descriptive paragraphs where we would take the most simple object and write everything we could about it. Every sensory detail about, say, an apple, got thrown into these paragraphs. Did any of this writing amount to anything? No. Would any of these paragraphs be useful? Only for getting a grade. I wondered why we did these things. It didn't make sense. After all, when we read great literature, they never described the fruit, so why were we doing that? Many years later, I realized it was not just practice in thinking of things descriptively, but learning when and how to really fill a page with just a few perfect words. I no longer needed a paragraph to describe an apple because I now knew the one part worth describing - or when to not worry about it.

Now, lastly comes the part of reaching your goal of success. I was asked recently, "What do I need to become a successful writer?" My answer was simple. "You need to know what you consider success to be, then do everything you need to get yourself there. If your idea of success is writing down your life story, then start writing. If you want to sell a million copies of something to consider yourself successful, then start learning technique, style, and read everything any famous author has ever written about writing - then apply it. If you want to be a success, define what will make you happily successful then fill in the blanks that will get you there."

Yes, the person was wildly disappointed. However, they checked out Stephen King's On Writing from the library and started reading, so they are on their way.      

Writing and Typesetting

This next statement may give away my age, but I will run that risk. My first desk job was right around the dawn of the desktop publishing era, when laser printers became more than a rich man's toy, people in a small office could produce camera-ready copy, and the company newsletter could be produced in-house instead of through some print service. Yes, it was a glorious time learning about fonts, point sizes, text wrapping and photo placement. However, the greatest thing I ever got to learn about was every single way I could embellish a word or sentence to make it really pop off the page.

I would later learn why this was a horrible lesson.

These days we see it everywhere: ALL CAPS to scream at someone, bold letters so something cannot be missed, underline being used to point out that something is important, and the MONSTROUS COMBINATION OF ALL OF THEM if something is just that important. Really? Is this all necessary? Well, apparently, once people had access to them, they went crazy with all the emphasis added to different parts of a sentence, to where you could see the important parts of a page from five feet away. This changed a lot about styles of writing. Unfortunately, most of that change was for the worse.

Back in the day of the typewriter, people could not boldface a word, or italicize, or do a lot of things without an extensive amount of work, and style manuals explained things through very explicit rules meant to keep everything consistent. All caps was usually only used in declarative form, such as referring to a statement on a billboard or some non-narrative function. Then people learned about typesetting and that all went out the window. 

While a few typing effects have gained a degree of acceptance - italics in dialogue to emphasis an inflection - the rest are still shunned. The argument behind this as that the writing should explain if something is screamed out, important, or urgent, and none of this should depend on a visual crutch. Think of the way you talk. Nobody sees your words, so we shift our voice in tone and rhythm to make a difference. When we yell, we have exclamation points. When we are emphatic, our facial cues and body language change, which is portrayed through descriptors. When we pause, enter the comma or ellipsis. So many simple tools with grammar and punctuation are built right into the process, but writers become lazy and rely on the typesetting to convey a point.

Our simple commas, ellipses, and exclamation points are great tools to stylize a character's voice, and when we pivot on a particular word, our writing can express that along with fleshing out the character. In many ways, part of the art of writing is working with the tools you have in grammar and punctuation in order to create things that go beyond words. Leaving behind the crutches exercises your legs more than anything else will, so try and step around the typesetting shortcuts when possible.

It's All About the Point of View

In every workshop and writer's group I attend, there's always a good discussion about point of view: Which one is the best? What's the easiest to write? Why use one view versus another? Usually, the discussion involves whether the story is best in the third- or first-person perspective. I'll cover that briefly, but I think it's really worth exploring some of the more exotic perspectives that can be used, such as fly-on-the-wall, omnipotent, and second-person. But first, as promised, the first versus third debate.

First-person perspective is simply a story from the intimate view of the storyteller. This is the, "I got up, I walked around, I sat down," way to tell a tale. The only catch here is that when we write in the first person, we have to see the world from that point of view, so we are not allowed to get in anyone else's head. We can't say, "I told her the truth about last night. She secretly didn't believe me." From first person, the character has no way of knowing whether she believed him or not unless he can read minds, so it has to be written to acknowledge this: "I told her the truth about last night but I could tell she didn't believe me." First-person is very intimate, but stays from one perspective so there can (and should be) a lot of mystery about other events the main character does not know about. Clearly, this is a good style for suspense and thriller writing, as well as stories meant to dwell deep within a character.

Third-person perspective tells the story from a narrator outside of the characters, though the story can still be from one character's view. In third person, the story would be, "Tom got up, walked around, then sat down." However, depending on the point of view, interactions get wildly different. Written from Tom's perspective, the interaction in the last paragraph is similar: "Tom told her the truth about last night but he could tell she didn't believe him." We follow the rules of writing about things as Tom experiences them, but the reader is not seeing it from Tom's eyes. This is a good form to use for writing about personal experiences but through an alter-ego or made-up person to hide any personal involvement.

Now here's where third-person perspective goes on an adventure. Fly-on-the-wall perspective is outside of any specific perspective, so the reader has to interpret the events without any cues from a character. In the interaction example, it would be written as, "Tom told her about last night. She stood there, arms folded, facing him in silence." The reader becomes the interpreter, and can be misled by how they see an event. This requires good character development and consistency of character, because all the thoughts are hidden from the reader and have to be deduced through a logical process. Very tricky indeed, but the reader will engage with trying to understand these people.

Omnipotent is just the opposite; the narrative is all-seeing, all-knowing. We get insights from all characters, their stories fully available. "Tom told her the truth about last night, for the first time having nothing to hide. She wanted to believe him, but she had heard these stories before and they were usually lies." All the conflict, all the tension is right there for the reader no consume. It does diffuse the tension of secrets, but this perspective allows the reader to try and think about how this situation will end up. The reader starts thinking ahead, trying to predict what will happen.

Second-person perspective is a completely different creature, and very difficult to use. In this style, the reader is Tom, and the story is told to him. "You got up, you walked around, you sat down," becomes the format, forcing the reader into Tom's shoes. The reader is guided along Tom's path whether they like it or not, and their interactions are understood as Tom's actions, but from the reader's view: "You tell her the truth about last night. She looks back at you in silence. You know that look. She doesn't believe you." The reader relives Tom's story through Tom, which is very difficult because the narrator explains everything to the reader. It is incredibly intimate and can be very engaging, but it is a pain to write.

There are other variants, and many stories bend between perspectives, points-of-view, and styles depending on the wont of the author (or sometimes just from lazy writing). The best way to get a feel for any of these perspectives is to find a short story, determine its perspective, and rewrite it from another view. You will discover things about what makes the story good from its written version, and also feel what other perspectives can bring to the table. (Try writing The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe in third-person and see what happens.)             

Why Writing Matters to Me

For reasons I will never be able to explain, I was a natural reader. As a child it took me longer than usual to start talking (interpret as you wish), but I picked up reading very quickly. My parents would read to me at night - a combination of traditional childrens' books and Grimm's Fairy Tales, depending on who was doing the reading - and I would watch in silent attention. Apparently, I would learn as well, though that emerged as a big surprise.

My mother would often tell they story of when she first realized I could read. I had just turned three a couple of months earlier, and we were driving up to the city where my great-aunt and great-uncle could babysit me while she visited my father, who was in the hospital. This was the early 1970s, so naturally I was in the front seat with Mom, who was paying more attention to the highway than to me. As a three-year-old, this would not do, and I decided to get her attention. How? I started reading the billboards aloud to her as we passed them.

That got her attention. She actually pulled over on the highway to validate this, and I read her a few more signs. Amazed, she rushed me to the city, and showed this amazing feat to her aunt and uncle, who were surprised if not amazed. I eventually visited my father in the hospital and Mom showed him what I could do. He's the one who discovered I could read things upside-down as well as rightside-up, but that's another story. My mother knew I could read, and she just went with it. I just wanted some attention, but I got much more.

Whenever she got the opportunity, Mom would read with me - not to me - and put me to the test with whatever she had - newspaper articles, magazines, her ever-present books, whatever. As I have mentioned in past posts, she was a journalist amongst other professions, and she would let me sit by her and read her stories as she wrote them. I learned to read her incredibly proper cursive at the age of four (although I never had the penmanship to match her skill in that regard), and I walked into Kindergarten fully literate. 

By then, I realized what reading and writing were - they were more than communication, they were connections between people even when one wasn't there. She taught me that with something as simple as the written word, messages could transcend our existence and our voice could arrive at any location we wanted. I could now read the letters sent from my Aunt Isabelle (a teacher who taught us kids plenty over her many years), and I could send letters to my grandmother in another state. I could talk with the whole world now, and Mom made sure I was as skilled at it as possible. My mother made all that possible, and of course she was in the dedication for my first novel.

My mother passed away Tuesday night at the age of 86. She was an avid reader, but as her health declined she lost the ability to enjoy a good book, a story, and eventually any engagement with the world. However, everything she wrote is something I can read thanks to her, and in that regard she is still very much around. The conversations will be different, but I will always have that connection.

Thanks for teaching me to read, Mom. And thanks for everything else.

So it is Written...

I have no idea where this phrase comes from, but it has been echoing through my head all day: "So it is written, so it is said, so it is done." If anyone can help me find the source of this, I would definitely appreciate it. I fear it is too generic and/or too old to be accurately sourced, and I also have a sneaking suspicion plenty of people will confuse it with Pharaoh from the Ten Commandments. However, none of those are my concern. What concerns me is how writing became such a powerful thing for people, and why it still carried weight today - perhaps even more so.

(Incidentally, Pharaoh's quote, "So it is written, so shall it be done" does apply to this situation as well, but his quote is not the actual one going through my head. I have to be fair about these things.)

Back in the old days... like the real old days before we had things like civilization, we had language that allowed us to communicate thoughts. This was an amazing breakthrough, because as people, we were suddenly able to break out of ourselves and share our worldly experiences to others. We could let other people know that a particular plant was good to eat, that danger lurked to the north, that those mushrooms I stumbled upon really shouldn't be eaten unless you are in a safe place for a few hours - stuff like that. We could also gain information from others, and our worlds grew together a little bit.

However, this intricate form of communication was ephemeral. Our experiences were sounds that vanished quickly, their lessons left to the interpretation of others. We could tell about an experience with those mushrooms, but the recipients of that information might not hold it for long, might change it into their information, or lose it altogether - especially if they tried a handful of those mushrooms my ancestors stumbled upon. We could share and even commune, developing experiences into stories and even lessons, but they were temporary.

That's when language took form and everything changed. Man could suddenly live beyond their voice. Experiences could be shared, and through teaching of these written words, people could hear the lessons of their ancestors. Language allowed us to escape the boundaries of time, reaching across the generations to tell people that we existed. We thought things and had feelings and tried those mushrooms. We made great leaps forward as a people, transmitting so much information that we lost the sense of just how amazing our gift was. I think about how archaeologists have discovered ancient clay tablets, and the writing imprinted on them, lasting through the millennia, are things like receipts, debt and obligations, and even complaints about someone's bad working habits. These people, these authors are permanently bound to history, though their words amount to, "Steve is always late." (I don't think the guy's name was Steve.)

Every now and then, I remind myself that any time I write, it's a gift granted to me from my distant ancestors who thrilled each other with stories and handed down words for their descendants to learn from. I can hold handwritten notes from my great-great-granduncle and know that his voice from the 19th century is still bouncing around to this day. Are his words important? Maybe, maybe not. But they remind me of how my words, if I choose to write them down, can feed the minds of countless generations to come. Hopefully, my words will have as great an influence on those people as those first few words of warning did so many thousands of years ago. Hopefully they will carry value. Hopefully they will be heeded, even if it just prevents one person from eating those mushrooms everybody seems to stumble upon.      

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (for writers)

Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog knows already that this post has nothing to do with the holiday season. Rather, today is the kickoff of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. During this fine month of celebration, writers task themselves with the mission of writing an entire novel in one month - that's a minimum of 50,000 words between now and the end of November. It's a daunting task, forcing writers to kick into full-on creative mode and bring forth a truly epic story... or just something remotely readable. Many will try, some will succeed. All will gain something from this endeavor.

So, if you do the math (which writers often loathe doing), this works out to 1,667 typed words a day, every day, for thirty days. Do you have your words for the day typed up? I sure don't. I'm not participating this year, mostly because any idea I have for a story is already partially typed up, and I have a bunch of other life things to manage as well. Oh - there's also the other holidays as well, which I really should start preparing for. However, I am not letting a good NaNoWriMo go to waste, so I will get something from this endeavor. Just not a novel.

My task - and something that I offer up to all my readers - is to write something every day. It doesn't have to be a chapter or a full essay every time. On cheat days it can be a poem, a haiku even. Just something that allows you to put that part of your brain to work with the process of creation each and every day. When you curl up under the blankets at night, you should be able to reflect upon having brought something new into the world through your words.

Now, this is a little different than NaNoWriMo in one special way. If you decide to write this grand novel, your goal is to write a complete story of at least 50,000 words by the end of the month. You can have days where you type nothing, as long as you have days where you make up for that lapse. If you write 2,000+ words a day, you could theoretically take five days off - perhaps even Thanksgiving - and still complete your mission. My writing assignment, however, does not require volume as much as it requires consistency. No days off. No time out. And yes, that means you need to write something on Thanksgiving as well. Thirty days, every day. Did it just become a little more difficult?

NaNoWriMo is very much about helping writers realize that they can, in fact, write a novel if they want. It's a condensed version of the process, but an important lesson nevertheless. My mission is to get you to develop one of the writing habits necessary for developing the creative process. If you have to create something every day, and hold yourself to that rule, you start thinking about different things, different ways to approach situations. You look for that thing that sparks your creativity. And by the end of thirty days, you hopefully will have discovered something new to add to your creative process. 

For those of you who are doing NaNoWriMo this year, the best of luck, and I look forward to hearing about your progress. For those who are trying my mission, please drop a comment about anything you've written that really clicked in your head. But in any case, enjoy this most festive month of writing! (and Thanksgiving as well)