All writers need it. All people need it. I need it. I am taking a vacation where I hang up my official writing duties until my next post, which will be July 11th. Until then. enjoy your holidays.
But don't be alarmed - I will still be creating stuff and thinking writing thoughts - just not on an official capacity. (And no, I won't actually be fishing.)
Wow! I can honestly say without doubt that this is the worst Friday I have had all year, and possibly for several years. I mean, yesterday was kind of sketchy - my health was doing some stuff that it shouldn't have, but I made it past that and actually ended up feeling a sense of gratitude. Well, that was probably my first mistake because Friday must've got wind of it and decided to put me square in my place. I got to drive from place to place where I would then walk a total of five miles in the really humid air this morning, only to have my car break down just before the end of this trip. Of course, this means I had to walk home, finish my route on my bicycle, get a jump for the car (failed), get it towed (expensive), get it diagnosed (another nightmare), get a rental, and all in the equatorial heat. Add to this, I actually had things to do today - so much for that. Yep, this Friday is the worst. Or as the joke goes, it's only the worst Friday so far.
I offer this simple, though somewhat gross, example of a character faced with a terrible choice. For whatever reason, the character accidentally drops a quarter in the toilet. Immediately this creates a dilemma - pursue the quarter and deal with the uncomfortable repercussions, or let it go and be one quarter poorer? Interesting discussion, but most of us would've walked away, high and dry. So let's pile on the costs of the lost money. What if it wasn't a quarter, but a dollar bill? A five-dollar bill? A twenty? The character's last bit of pocket money - the twenty he kept in his wallet for emergencies? Now it isn't as easy. What if the toilet is really dirty? I mean, post-apocalyptic bus-stop restroom dirty. Now what? Recover that twenty, wash your hands vigorously afterward, and try to put that nasty twenty back in your wallet and pretend you never knew where it had been? Dropping a quarter in the toilet is nothing now. Your last twenty bucks... and let's say you're twenty miles from home without a cell phone. Now what?
Piling on the problems is definitely a mean thing to do to a person, but fortunately, a written character can handle it so go ahead. And of course, it doesn't have to be the obviously gross outcome that's the challenge - just something the character does not want to face. Maybe it's a starving person living in Chicago who is given a hot dog WITH KETCHUP ON IT! People will have their opinions about that, but the conflict the writer gets to play with is the individual character's dilemma.
The long and short of it is simple: when you give a character a challenge, make it worth something. Make it hurt. Pile on the grief. Maybe that ketchup thing was an out-of-bounds move, but you get the idea. Piling on quandaries and consequences wakes the reader to the character's challenge, and invests them in the result. So go ahead and pile on when you want - the character can take it.
And check your car battery in the summer - they can burn out just as easily.
I can't even begin to thing about how many books I've read. I've gone through fiendish binges where I would read a book or two a week along with going to school, but there would be other stretches where I would go book-free for a while. I know that one year I read at least 75, but probably less than 100 books, but I also know a few years that were free of recreational book-reading (research books don't count in this case). The point is, I've read a whole bunch of books in my many years.
Here's a question I ask about the main character: What happens if they throw their hands up and say, "Nope. No more. I'm done with this." Or what if they never take the hero's journey in the first place. The answer, in any situation, should be the consequence of giving up, and in a good story, the consequences should be severe. Look at Frodo in The Lord of the Rings - a little hobbit with an overwhelming task that he often felt was far too much for him to handle. We are told, in no uncertain terms, if he fails in his mission, or gives up, or just lets someone else do it, all the people of Middle-Earth are doomed. Those are some pretty big consequences, and it takes a while for our hero to realize just how important he is and how critical he is to the story.
Now I will offer up a story (a movie, but still), that while it's full of action and fun characters, it really lacks the satisfaction that one might get from thinking about the consequences. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones goes on the quest to claim the legendary Ark of the Covenant, leaving a trail of dead soldiers and a poisoned Nazi monkey in his wake. His mission is to keep this holy artifact from falling into Nazi hands and becoming their weapon, so we know the consequences of his failure. Or do we? As we find out, not so much. The Ark falls into Nazi hands and, upon its usage, the Ark promptly wipes out an island-full of bad guys. Now we ask what would've happened if Indiana Jones just stayed at the university? What would the real consequences be? Well, nothing different. The Ark is found, goes into Nazi hands, wipes out every bad guy in sight. No unstoppable weapon, no undefeatable army. Life goes on, Indy teaches his classes and gets hit on by students. The end.
In the end, our story needs consequences, we need the characters to be motivated not just to do something but be driven by the possible dark result of their failure, and we need meaning to their mission. And I assure you that if your story isn't driven by a clear set of consequences that legitimately drive the character, your book will probably end up on that list of bad stories that nobody remembers. (And full confession: I only remember Raiders for the action sequences and Karen Allen. The story is incidental in the long and short of it).
A lot of space on this blog has been dedicated to writing the Great American Novel, to perfecting your poetry, or to making your writing as appealing as possible for your reading audience. I do this because, in my experience, a lot of people want to take their writing up a few notches, preferably to a level where they can get it published or at least read by a larger audience. They want to know all the tricks of the trade for bringing something out to the public; writing a story that plenty of people will want to read and will enjoy reading. This is an admirable goal and one worth pursuing. However, now and then I recognize that a lot of people want to develop their writing for more personal reasons. They are not as interested in the New York Times Bestseller List as they are in making their story real. This requires some special tools indeed.
To "make a story real" requires a willingness to to write things down that you might not dare say out loud because hearing such things makes them real. Putting terrible experiences onto paper is a very effective way of purging pain from the system, but it's only the first step. Real creation requires more than just listing the events that occurred - that's the reporting side of writing. A story becomes real when we write about our feelings of the event. If we did something terrible, what drove us down that road? If we fell victim to someone else, what feelings swirled through us in that moment? After that moment? The next day? Events happen all the time, but they become real when we discuss how we, as humans, participated in them. Even if we existed in a state of shock, understanding that moment is just as important as any other.
Of late, I've done some writing about an accident I was in as a teenager. I've written about it before, but looking back on those earlier works, I defused the feelings by stepping around the trauma of it all. Just the fact that I wrote about it at all was a great first step, but the more I felt secure enough to let my mind swim deeper into the trauma of that moment, the more I discovered about my unresolved feelings from that moment nearly 40 years ago.
Now I write about it, and I can feel the numbness, the shock going through my mind as I tried to figure out whether I was alive. It's easier now to express what it felt like to go stumbling into the foggy night, bloody and sore, trying to find another person, a house, a phone. How my eyes transfixed on a porchlight and I staggered toward it like a beacon of sanctuary, all my pain subsiding as I placed my energy toward reaching that one porchlight. I buried all my feelings in the name of survival and forced myself to reach that porch and get help - there was no other way to do things. And having written that, I now recognize how I often bury my feelings during stressful times in order to survive, and all that trauma is something I can identify now.
Will it be a novel? A bestseller? An epic poem? Not a chance. But I dug into those feelings, piece by piece, writing about each one until I understood it. It required patience, a little bit of pain, and a good amount of faith, but writing about my feelings and asking myself constantly, "How did I feel about this?" got me somewhere special. Maybe someone will read the final product, maybe not. But It is, by far, the most important writing I ever did - so who cares if anyone reads it?
In most stories, we know enough about the main character to portray them in a way the reader can understand. We should know what they basically look like, their basic height and weight, and any stand-out features they might have - a limp, freakishly large hands, eyes of different colors, etc. Once I lay out these details, I have the basic character - the 5'11", 220-pound, brown-haired, blue-eyed, balding guy with a shuffle to his step and evidence of a history of broken noses. He is drawn-out. He exists. He is real.
And frankly, he is boring.
Now, am I suggesting that a main character, therefore, has to be 6'9", a svelte 310 pounds, freakishly blond hair with black streaks, red eyes and a brutal scar across his cheeks? Well, you would remember that visual, but that character might not fit the story very well, especially if the story was about a middle-aged writer contending with his mortality. Rather, you need to take the elements of the character and make them stand out in a memorable way, so that the 5'10" person has a more engaging description. One way to do this is to think of the old art of the caricature.
We think of the usual caricature as something we get from some guy with an easel out on Navy Pier. For $10 he draws a real exaggerated sketch of you, making a few features stand out dramatically. The portrait of you usually includes having your head's proportion to your body similar to Charlie Brown, your expression expanded to utter joy, merriment, or something else incredibly positive, and usually posed with some dramatic gesture or with a prop as oversized as your now-humongous head. It works; it makes a statement and you get a chuckle out of it. However, the important part is that you remember those key exaggerated points.
A character should be no different in their description, even if they retain normal human body proportions. Look at our writer example. Describing him as 5'11" is accurate but clinical; making him "a boringly average height" loses the detail but adds to the dimension of the character. Instead of citing his weight, suggest he "could afford to miss a few meals" and now the reader starts painting his own picture. Is he balding, or are the last few proud follicles of a once-proud head of thick brown hair stuck on his broadening scalp in a desperate comb-over? Do we need to state he has a limp, or is it better to mention this as a part of his actions? "He walked to the deli, his left leg slow to keep up" gives description as an action, keeping the story moving while offering the reader details along the way.
These tricks take a boring -looking character and make them interesting in the sense that they have depth and dimension. If you want to make your character stand out with freakish height or other aspects, well, that's your call. However, even with a stand-out character, they become recognizable when their description is emphasized and engaged with, even exaggerated, to make the point stand out. They don't need to be fully-misshapen caricatures, but emphasizing their key points will connect the reader to even the most boring middle-aged writer.
If there's one common theme of the human experience, it is that people love the success story. Whether it is someone rising up from nothing to take on the world, or overcoming the seemingly unconquerable and achieving their goal, people eat that up. We hear those stories, read about them, watch them on the screen, and a part of us lives out that dream. It gives us a rush, knowing that anything is possible, and everything under the sun can occur if we just press on. We don't get that rush from stories of failure, we get it from victory.
The first thing I like to bring up is defining what a hero actually is, at least in a literary sense. The hero - preferably a good or admirable person but this is not mandatory - is someone who steps up to adventure beyond their known world and into the risk of the unknown. This could be the dashing knight setting off to slay a terrible dragon, or a young country bumpkin seeking their fame in New York City - whichever the case, it is someone taking on the so-called "Hero's Journey" and ultimately driving the plot of any story. Whether they are willing or reluctant, their cause noble or selfish, they go into the unknown and face the many obstacles awaiting.
Now, why did I go on about the whole hero definition? The hero is the reader's anchor to this story, and that connection is what makes the hero's experience important - because the reader is living out that adventure as well. However, a very important thing happens along this way - the hero changes. The events and obstacles along the way give that hero the opportunity to learn and even grow, and as this progresses, there's every chance they start seeing the world differently - perhaps even realizing their beliefs at the beginning were misguided. The dashing knight might discover the terrible dragon is not terrible at all, but is being manipulated by a far greater danger. Perhaps our young bumpkin sees how the big city might not be the place of dreams anymore. Now there's a real problem - the conflict between pursuing a goal and learning about something greater.
In this regard, plenty of heroes fail at their initial mission. The knight leaves the dragon alone to vanquish the greater evil, and maybe dies in the process but does so having first spread this truth to other people. The bumpkin goes back to home in the country, putting up with everyone's taunts of failure but knowing the simple is the most genuine way to live. Did they fail? Technically, yes. Did they grow? Definitely. And in plenty of ways, the satisfaction of knowing our hero ultimately did the right thing in the end, perhaps even costing them their life, is just as good as a story about someone's success.
Of course, growth and success is even better as far as stories go. If the hero lives on for the sequel, that's great (and potentially a franchise). However, never be afraid to explore the possibility of failure, and what it can offer the reader in terms of telling a genuine story.
Yes, I talk quite a bit about how writers should, above everything else, write things. This is what they do, so do it - worry about the edits later. In my last post, I really went on about how easy it is to get distracted by editing, revising, perfecting, etc., and how it really takes us out of the actual creative mind. Therefore, I felt it was important to offer a few notes on when we should be doing the non-writing stuff, and how we should commit to it. It's not as difficult as it may sound, but it's an important part of developing the personal process.
In my experience, both as a writer and as a person who has talked with writers, when creating the first draft and even when working the second draft, something happens other than typing; learning. By the end of a draft, plenty of writers discover more about their story and their characters that might never have occurred when they started writing. It is as if the events and personalities evolve as that draft is being created, all while the story unfolds. This is great, but this demands that after the draft is finished, the writer would serve their work best by taking an interim step between drafts and think about what happened.
Just as every story is a journey and a character should grow in the process, the author should go through the same metamorphosis. Once a draft is completed, the writer should take some time to contemplate what they learned about the characters through the act of creation, and whether they discovered something fascinating about them. After the first draft, take some time to think about that journey, and whether it feels genuine. If you don't understand the character's growth, you might be missing some important aspects of the story. After the second draft, you should know the character well enough to understand the journey and their changes, so now you need to think about anything that can really emphasize that transition. This is where sub-plots and so forth become important - they define aspects of the character's growth that the main arc does not imply.
After I finish a draft, I shelve it for a bit so I can really process what has happened. I think about those people I wrote about, and what I learned about them in the process of converting them from thoughts to words. At this point, it's perfectly acceptable to not write - you are preparing yourself for the next draft, and making it something special.
After that, get back to writing.
For the past nine years, I have raised two cats that were rescues at just a few weeks old. As abandoned kittens, they weren't weaned properly, they didn't quite know about cleaning themselves, and they were oddly scared of the dark. Fortunately, they grew out of these things, but that doesn't mean they are perfect. Over the years, they developed their own idiosyncrasies, and I honestly can't explain them. The little boy kitty enjoys sitting on my papers when I edit (much to my chagrin), and the little girl will run off with straws. Oh - they are also both hooked on Q-Tips. If I use a Q-Tip for anything, I have to take special measures to dispose of it, because those little beasts will somehow track the scent, chase it down, and drag it out of the garbage so they can eat the cotton, chew on the rest, swallow some parts of it, then throw up in the hallway. Seriously - these cats have gone into garbage cans and dug through trash if they figure out a Q-Tip is in there. It's like owning pet raccoons in that regard, but I don't know what formed their compulsion.
One of the main problems is "The Perfect Chapter (or paragraph, sentence, whatever)." Maybe you've seen this writer, maybe you once were this writer, maybe you are this writer, but we can all fall for it. We have an idea for a piece of work and we begin the process of creation. Whether it's a poem or an epic novel, we start on it, get a bit into it, then decide we want to make sure that beginning is flawless. We hear about how important the first chapter, sentence, whatever is supposed to be, so we turn our obsession toward perfecting it. The rest of the project is nowhere near complete, but there we sit, obsessing on the first part of it, trying to paint the perfect smile on a portrait we haven't even sketched out.
I cannot say this enough - when we do this, we prevent ourselves from creating, which is the most important part of the process. Usually we decide to polish the first paragraph or the first line because, subconsciously, we feel stuck with creating the rest of the project. Either we're a little burned out, or something doesn't feel right, or it's just not going where it's supposed to. In any case, we turn away from that problem and focus on some editing challenge that really doesn't make a difference in the larger sense because the rest of the project could change that sentence's meaning anyway. If you find yourself pursuing The Perfect Chapter, ask yourself why you aren't creating anything new. If you think deeply about it, you will figure out the problem isn't the need for The Perfect Chapter, but the fact that you've hit an obstacle, and that's where you should apply your efforts. Create first, edit later.
One other very bad writing habit involves falling in love with a phrase, a verb, a descriptor - anything you can think of that can become a part of your content. A prime example is demonstrating conflict with two phrases, and joining them with the word, "but." Example: "He had to finish the race but his legs started cramping." Now, there's nothing wrong with the word, "but." However, if it becomes your go-to move in contrasting two points, it will wear on the reader after a while. (Oh - starting a sentence with "But" can be a mood-killer as well.) Throwing in the occasional "however" or other contrasting conjunctions can offer some variety and keep the reader engaged, particularly when they are used to strengthen a sentence. What if our example sentence becomes, "He had to finish the race even as his legs started cramping." or, "He had to finish the race despite cramping in his legs." Each one gives a different feel and a sense of urgency that a simple "but" leaves out.
If you feel you are falling victim to word usage repetition, do a word count to demonstrate how much a word shows up. Let that figure inspire you to think about other ways you can say things. And, as opposed to certain cats, learn to change your bad habits.
We are told this early on in our writing experience: Word repetition should be avoided whenever possible. Be it nouns, verbs, descriptors, pronouns, whatever, nothing is more boring than finding the same word more than once in a sentence. It feels clumsy, basic, and uninspired, and out loud it creates an unmistakable grating sound. We learn to mix up our word choices, vary our verbs, and sometimes rewrite entire paragraphs to avoid ugly duplication. Eventually, our writing has all the variety of a Midwestern dinner buffet. At that point, we start learning when repetition might be a good thing.
Here's another example, this time through poetry. In one of the writer groups I attend, a fellow writer, poet, and all around good egg introduced us to a poem called a triolet. I had never known about such a thing, but once I heard about it, I became a little bit obsessed. A triolet can come in many forms, but one of the standard forms is an eight-line poem where the 1st, 4th, and 7th lines are the same line, the 2nd and 8th lines are the same line (different from the 1st, 4th, and 7th), and the rhyme scheme is ABAAABAB (the 3rd and 5th lines can be whatever you want as long as they fit the rhyme scheme. If this sounds complicated, well, it is at first, or at least until you see one. I would use my fellow writer's example but I do not know it offhand and didn't get permission anyway. Therefore, here is a simple triolet:
This kind of poem lives for repetition, using if specifically to reinforce a point. Now, this being poetry, there are allowances for repeating one's self and such, and many grammatical rules are optional. However, this emphasizes that using the same words or phrases can be a positive, even moving experience. You just need to know when to do it, and have a good sense of why it matters. In short, learn the rules so you know the best ways to break them.
As Monday will be Memorial Day (and my brother's birthday, my next post will not be until May 30th.
I'll admit it - my past few writing entries have not been the most upbeat pieces I've ever composed. Fear, frustration, loss - these kind of themes have been prevalent lately, and not just because that's what writers experience in their existence as creatives. Don't get me wrong - writing can be a very emotional process, and a lot of those emotions have some heavy weights attached. However, that's kind of the point of this piece. When we write about feelings, our emotional selves, or basically about any topic we choose, don't be afraid to explore the joy of things as well. It's out there, and it deserves its day in the sun.
Events such as this fill us with plenty of emotions, so sometimes our writing can be scattered or unfocused if we try to write about everything going through us at that time. Writing just one piece would not do anyone justice, so I am writing several pieces about this day, each one pulling out a different emotion, each one playing its own note instead of trying to find a chord that covered the entire event. (Yes, I am treating this beautiful day as a writing workshop, but it is the kind of perfect example that really brings home the point.)
The first thing that came to mind was the concept of perfection within the moment. I experienced this as a feeling of harmony, a sense that sometimes the world flows as we predicted and nothing goes wrong because it was meant to be. The weather was ideal, the church absolutely immaculate. If there were any last-minute emergencies, errors to be corrected or fires to be extinguished, I saw none of them. It was just two people who are really meant to be together, and everything went as it should - not even a crying baby or equipment malfunction. Maybe I am overlooking a lot of things, but this is what I write when I am dictating from a place of harmony. From another perspective, maybe I would feel differently about the music, my manners, or whatever. However, from the pleasant place in my mind, the day could not have gone any better.
Now, once I talk to the married couple again, I am sure there will be plenty of funny stories about behind-the-scene antics, some near-disasters with drunken guests, and other things that would be worthy of less-harmonious stories (I know there are definitely other angles to write about). However, for now, while writing from such a pleasant place, I literally do not care about those things. Those will be for later stories, if there's a need for them. For now, this is just about writing from a peaceful place, and letting that mood translate the events.
There is a condition that some people are afflicted by - a fear of writing, which for some odd reason is called "graphophobia." (Yes, my gut instinct is to think of an irrational fear of graphs, algebra, or Excel sheets, but no on all counts.) Indeed, graphophobia is an actual thing that hangs people up and makes them resist putting words to the page. What causes this? It's not easy to say, but in most cases it has nothing to do with actually writing/typing words and everything to do with fear of something else.
Think about this. Have you ever gone to sleep while being genuinely afraid? Probably not, and if you did fall asleep just out of total fatigue, it was probably not the most pleasant sleep you've ever had. Chances are your mind ran about, wildly careening between different thoughts and outcomes that the fear-based action could bring about. Fear of tornadoes? In your mind, you are absolutely positive that your house will be leveled by a tornado (welcome to my childhood). Fear of abandonment? Yep, you will wake up alone. Fear of writing? That's a whole bunch of horrible outcomes, right? Right?
Actually, what is the worst thing that can come from writing something down? Perhaps some magical thinking might have people believe that what they write becomes the truth, but that's venturing into a very irrational thought process. No, writing things down doesn't really have repercussions. Writing things down puts words on a page - that's it. Now, it might be personally challenging to see certain words written before you. People who deal with trauma by writing down their experiences often fear reading what they wrote, but that's an issue of confrontation rather than the writing process itself.
When someone says they have a fear of writing their stories, I often make a simple suggestion. I ask them to think about the worst possible scenario that can come from them writing something down - just from the writing process - and ask if that, in itself, is scary. Usually they admit that the writing part isn't the hang-up, and the real issue is what might happen if people read their works, judge them, etcetera. Those are valid issues in their own right, but for now, this gives them the freedom to write things down with a personal liberty. They get over their "fear of writing" and actually explore their creative world, while addressing those issues that might be the real hang-ups in their lives.
In general, I try to follow this premise regarding any fear: If you can get comfortable with the worst realistically possible outcome of an action, you free yourself of the fear and can focus on committing to that action. To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, "Don't fear death, fear not living." And once you no longer fear something, please start writing about it.
I hope everyone here knows the word, "Schadenfreude." It's one of those great words that gets thrown around a lot, and people out here kind of know what it implies but might not know the exact definition. Then there are those sophomore German students who know that it is a combination of two words - damage and joy - but don't quite know how that links together. Then there's everyone who knows the definition goes along the lines of, "pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune."
Easy, right?
Have you ever talked to someone who is thinking about repainting a room, and when you ask what color they are considering, they go into an entire spiel about that one color? If they say, "I want to go with a cocoa-like feel, with more of a warmth and coziness but maybe just a little lighter than a typical chocolate bar," they have told you more than just a color. They showed they are very invested in this idea of the perfect living room color and the emotions they want to evoke. If they answered, "Brown," chances are they are not interested in the color as much as they are about just slapping some new paint on the walls. Each description is basically the same color, but exploring it through word choice imparts a significance upon the act itself.
When we write, let's keep this in mind. If I describe a room (not my friend's brown living room) as having red walls, well, that's a description but it doesn't invite the reader to investigate. It communicates a color, but not a significance. If I want the reader to start adventuring in a particular direction, picking up a certain mood, I need to go beyond the confines of just, "red." What comes to mind if the walls are lipstick red, or like deep, rich rose petals? What about blood red - what mind does that put the reader into? There are tons of versions of the color red, each one indicating a slightly different hue but more importantly, they all can set off a different importance in their meaning.
Often, ten words aren't necessary to describe what one word can tell a reader. However, depending on the importance of the message, you should use whatever words you have to guide the reader along and impose a feeling that comes with the color. I'm sure some language has one nice, conveniently-packaged word for describing that effect, but for now, let's just call it "good writing."
For me, this year has been a bunch of firsts that have been quite difficult to process, and there's a big one coming up. Sunday is Mother's Day, and it will be the first time recognizing this day since my mother passed away. Anyone who follows this site will know that she spent her last several years with severe dementia, virtually unable to interact with the world around her. Every time I visited her, I would leave thinking, "Is there anything of her left in there?" but there was no conclusive answer. The best I could come up with is, "Maybe, but probably not." Incredibly uncertain but enough to leave open possibility that maybe she knew I was there. This year, however, I will ask that question and the answer will be, "No." For here and evermore, that's it.
It would be fair to say that books were always a part of my life - our house had plenty of them. However, most of them were antiques, or a showpiece encyclopedia set from 1920 (I am not exaggerating), or something that was meant to be seen and not touched. As far as the "real" books went, that was my mother's real estate. I know my father read on occasion, but I do not actually remember the act of him reading a book. Mom, however, had a book around her somewhere, be it one of the more recent important pieces - The Women's Room by Marilyn French, and I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can by Barbara Gordon are etched in my brain even at a young age - or some book about politics, politicians, or life in general. The way I delineated it, my father had books; my mother knew books.
And, of course, my mother was the writer in the family. My father was creative, but writing was not his specialty. Mom wrote for a living, and likely wrote more than I will ever truly know. I can't say if she ever tried her hand at narrative, essay, or poetry - journalism was her jam for the most part - but I know that it imprinted upon me how words had their own leverage. When they say, "A lever moves objects, leverage moves people," this demonstrates just how words can bring causes to life and move people to act. When my mother wrote her news stories, like about the teacher's strike in the early 1970s, people responded to that. More to the point, when I went to high school in the early 1980s, a few teachers recognized my last name and brought me aside to tell me they remembered being interviewed by my mother all those years ago. This was all the purpose, the creation, of the journey that is words.
Sadly, I have very few actual written pieces of my mother's work. She was not a packrat like my father was, so her first drafts and clip stories are mostly relegated to history. However, I do have the legacy of words to remember her by, and the knowledge that living in that world of words can be a very special feeling. Whenever I read my older writings (and after I go through a wave of self-criticism), I remind myself that this all goes back to the debt I owe my mother.
Happy Mother's Day, Mom!
I have talked quite a bit about knowing what you want to write, how you want to present it, and what constitutes a completed project. There is no definitive way to know when a work is completed - especially a written piece - because there are plenty of stages that go beyond the actual writing. Editing, redrafting, incorporating different ideas - these are all considerations that come with the process of making a creative work come to life, and it doesn't matter if it's an epic saga or a haiku. They all require hard work, a lot of thought, often some second-guessing, and knowing when it's finally done.
Surprisingly, however, that's not what I want to discuss in this piece. There's a gap between when you finally say, "Done! That's it! Finished!" and when you are able to appreciate your final product. It's a mental debriefing, a post-mortem of sorts where you shift from the position of creator and you get into the space of consumer. At some point, you should be able to look at something you made and simply appreciate the work in front of you for exactly what it is. At that point, you will feel the appreciation of "The Finished Product."
I say this because I recently closed the files on two big projects, and incidentally, I didn't write a word for either of them. I had the privilege of offering advice to Ciara Ward with her new book, Cliché Your Way Through Life: Remix, and just received an inscribed copy of the hardcover. I got to hold in my hands something that I had viewed through the eyes of a copy editor, as a beta reader, and as an objective critic. However, now I see the finished work and all the work she placed into it, and I can appreciate what she created from the position of being a consumer of the written word. In theory, I could look through the book, pick out a chapter, and recall us sitting down to discuss some structural detail. However, those moments are in the past. I can look at this book strictly with a sense of quiet awe about what she created. It's humbling indeed.
The other book is, Our House At The Lake by Sylvester "Lenny" Kapocius. I have mentioned Lenny before - he didn't start writing until the age of ninety, yet still published the story of his life in the Pacific Theater during World War Two. This is his second book, more of a personal memoir, and I just put the wraps on the final edits. Now I can look at this book, and I no longer think about the red ink I smeared over countless pages of copy (along with his son, who also read through it and gave it the red-pen treatment). I think about Lenny's accomplishment of writing a book, completing such a large task to pass on through the generations. I don't see my editing contribution, I see the work of this writer now in my hands. (Incidentally, Lenny turned 100 in January. Age isn't a reason to say you can't start writing.)
I bring all this up because that moment, that time of holding the final copy in your hands, is unlike anything you will be able to perceive while you are creating something. As you build something, you may have a vision of what it will look like after all is said and done, but the real goal should be seeing that moment when you can hold that product in your hands, no longer worry about the editing, rewriting, and so on. It should be a special moment to you, and one you always want to reach.
That's when you know it's done.
You've likely heard it before. It's the question that a "real" writer is supposed to be able to answer quickly, and that ever-feared question is, "What are you reading right now?" For a lot of people who are legitimate writers, this is a daunting question because reading takes up a lot of time in a very busy day, and our 24/7 lives rarely have room to slide a book in there now and then. However, that doesn't take away anyone's writing credentials. The only thing it really does is creates a backlog of things they need to catch up on in their writing journey.
They say, amongst other things, that the average English-speaking person has a vocabulary of about 25,000 functional or recognizable words. Unfortunately, the average person only uses a tiny fraction of that - not out of some deficit in their knowledge but a general belief that, "I went to the store" is just as good as, "I dashed to the store," "I booked over to the store," "I popped over to the store" or many other alternatives. They don't play with their language, they just use it as a means to an end. As creatives, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. And in doing so, we need to build up a lot of words to do this. That's where the word warehouse comes into play.
Take for example the sentence, "I booked over to the store." Odd phrasing, but it comes with a lot of character because it takes a word and plays around with it. In a simple vocabulary, "Book" is a noun and little else. But as we build the warehouse, we have a lot on the shelves under the category of "Book." We would know that "book" gets used as a verb, like to record an entry - to book an expense, or to book a trip. If you book a bet, it can evolve to "bookie," the guy who takes your bet - often outside of the formal legal world - and now the word gets a feeling, something more casual, perhaps seedy. Another angle as a verb is to hurry - to book over to the store before it closes. Now we are in a more casual, lingo-style usage that makes conversations more interesting and multidimensional. As we read, we see these words used in many different contexts, and we start filling up our warehouse - not with a bunch of different words, but with a bunch of different uses.
The more you read, the more you take in the wild, playful variability of language and how it can be used as a tool not just of explanation but of entertainment. Your writing appeals to more people on different levels, and it gains a new depth - same words, but so much more meaning. So when you get a chance, brush up on your writing skills by doing some reading. (And I am currently reading Wall Street by Richard Roberts along with Gamemasters by Flint Dille.)
I hear it all the time. A conversation turns toward me being a writer, and someone says, "Man, I wish I was a writer like you. I really have some good stories to tell." When I ask why they don't write them down, they almost always come back with, "I'm just not a good writer." If I had a dollar for every time I heard that, well, I would have several dollars. However, none of those dollars would really help that person start on the journey to becoming a writer. I used to tell these people, "Well, why don't you try writing down a story and see what happens?" They never did, which is a shame, because that's literally all it takes to be a writer. Now I try a different approach.
Now here's the tricky part. Notice how I didn't say, "See? That's how you write a story." It is you who tells a story, and writing it down makes you a writer, but marrying those two into the combo platter of someone writing a story does have a few tricks to it that you only discover once you write down what you say and realize there is a little daylight between saying something and reading what someone says. Fill that gap between the two, and you can write a story.
That gap between telling and writing may seem like a technicality, but there's a lot of verbal storytelling that actually doesn't involve the words themselves. Inflections of tone can make a huge difference. Pacing yourself. The volume of your voice. Accents, dialect, shifting between characters - all critical parts of the verbal storytelling process that can get lost writing things down. And let's not forget that telling a friend a story comes with an array of facial expressions, gestures, raised eyebrow and confused glares that bring a lot to the show. I once saw Marina Franklin do a hilarious bit of stand-up where the closing two minutes was exclusively expression and gesture - not one spoken word - and the piece killed. Writing something like that is what turns a writer into a real wordsmith.
The truths of this piece are relatively simple. First, most people can tell a story, and some can do it well. Second, barring any literacy obstacles, most anyone can be a writer. And the big takeaway is this: fusing those two skills together might take some work and practice, but that's true of most any talent. In the end, you end up being able to write a story. And when someone says, "Man, I wish I was a writer like you," you will realize that you are, in fact, the writer they're taking about.
I am sure everyone reading this has heard of an escape room - you get locked in a room for an hour and have to solve a variety of puzzles and riddles in order to discover the way out. According to what I understand from other people, they are pretty fun. According to horror movies, they usually end in a tragic bloodbath. And according to parents of young children, it is an excellent way to not get bothered for one entire hour. I guess it depends on what you want from it. Frankly, I think of an escape room in an entirely different manner.
Of course, the fun of solving these problems in my little mental escape room isn't the problem-solving, but trying to do all this while the phone rings, emails from work pop up, thoughts about my other errands zip through my brain, the cats chase each other throughout the house, and so forth. (This is the part where parents of young children can surely relate). How is it even possible to complete these masterful puzzles of writing when the rest of the world won't stop?
This is, of course, where I once again mention the important of dedicated space for writing - be it a couch, an office desk, a Starbuck's during the slow time, or whatever works. The chaos of the mind calms down when the writer takes as much control of the environment as possible. I am not ashamed to admit that while working on an upcoming novel (working title: Gods of the Gaps), I got out the catnip and let my dear kitties get stoned in the bedroom. Controlling the outside world makes the mental escape room easier to manage.
And for those of us who have a hectic mental process, perhaps with about a dozen thoughts bouncing around while we try to focus on a transition scene, somewhere in your writing space should be a notepad. Nothing fancy, nothing major. This is a simple technique to capture thoughts much in the same way your writing captures ideas and impresses them into a story. If you can't stop thinking about the five errands you need to run, the four chores you need to do, the three people you need to call, the two loads of laundry that won't clean themselves, and the one thing you just can't quite remember, then just start writing your story. When one of those things pops into your head, write the task on the notepad and say, "I will get to that," then go back to writing. It may sound silly, but when your wandering thoughts are placed on that notepad, they calm down. Just like children screaming for attention, responding with, "Shut up!" rarely makes things better. Writing down a note is like telling the screaming child, "I hear you, your needs are important to me, and when I finish this, I will take care of your needs." (Or give them some catnip)
My mental escape room is a great place to write in - the puzzles are always there, the riddles never stop pouring in, and I know they're all solvable if I dedicate enough time to them. And, hopefully, I leave the escape room at some point with a finished work - Gods of the Gaps, to appear in a bookstore near you in the next few years.
Here's a simple question: When you say the capital of Kentucky, are you supposed to pronounce it as "Louisville" with the 's' emphasized, or should you say it as "Louie-ville"? The answer: You should say it as, "Frankfort," because that's the capital of Kentucky. Kind of a silly little joke, but admittedly, the first time I was told this, I fell for it. I also answered, "Louie-ville" in case anyone was wondering. And as silly as it is, you will remember this little bit of word play.
Let's pretend I am writing a sword & sorcery story, with the setting of a tavern in a busy city. A large, strong, smelly barbarian walks in, draped in the skins and furs of recent kills. The barbarian demands a drink, yells for the minstrel to play some joyous music, then proceeds to get drunk on the house ale. There's the telling of epic tales of past conquests, maybe a fight breaks out, tables are overturned, chairs broken, and the barbarian makes a drunken wreck of the place before staggering into the streets, ready to find another tavern for some entertainment. After hours of drinking and song, the staggering barbarian finally falls into the arms of a young courier boy, who takes the brave warrior to a comfortable cot for a night's pleasant sleep - and that's how the young courier boy first fell in love with the barbarian.
Quite the story, but the end is a little... unexpected. Probably did not see that part coming. Maybe the reader customarily does not expect barbarians to fall in love, or maybe the twist with the young courier boy was an unexpected turn. But tell me this - at any point did you think the barbarian was a woman? Chances are, the expectation of the reader is that the loud, drunken pile of violence that was the barbarian came off as rather masculine, and the reader makes a quick assumption. Everything written thereafter plays to that assumption - no gender pronouns are used, no designations whatsoever. This allows the reader to build upon their assumption and even create things about the barbarian that are not actually described. Then, when the veil is lifted and the reader realizes something was very different, they remember the whole adventure they had been on, and hopefully how they built assumptions into the character they generated in their mind.
This might seem like a mean thing to do to the reader, but as long as the writer's intentions are to engage the reader on a deeper level and not just say, "Ha! Gotcha!" then it's a perfectly valid writing technique. And as I have said many times, any time you can get the reader that deeply engaged with the character, then you know you've got them right where you want them.
Every now and then I am asked at a writing workshop just what I did before writing took over my life. This question usually comes from someone who thinks I have been a lifelong writer. Imagine their surprise when I say, "Well, before I went deep into creative writing, I spent my career as an international economist, and before that I was a graphic designer and a production director at a Chicago newspaper." They don't exactly know how those things add up - how can someone be creative, and also some financial guy, and also a production director (whatever that is)? My answer is simple: Why not?
Just like a good writer should.
If there's one thing I have learned from different writing workshops and groups, it's that writers come in all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life, and from every background imaginable. There are people who have amazingly creative minds that just naturally become writers, there are technical people who explore the world beyond the straight lines, rules-driven people who deeply feel the conflicting forces within any situation, and wildly open souls who will latch on to anything. These writers become essayists, novelists, biographers, researchers, poets, literary teachers, and maybe even production directors (whatever that is), all because they do not frame themselves within a specific set of boundaries. They explore the world, they collect information and translate it through their different voices. They are the true polymaths.
In this regard, a writer can do the same thing within that one craft. Some people love writing poetry, so that becomes their jam. They write poems and they write them well, but they never explore outside that space, never take on a new subject. And, of course, there are writers who prefer short stories but never explore poetry, or longer-form storytelling, or essays or anything else. They confine themselves. Don't get me wrong - these people can become great at what they do. However, they miss a great opportunity to spread out, to try things and take chances, to go out there and be more than just an essayist, a poet, a story writer, or a production director (whatever that is). And that's the secret - when a poet starts writing stories or essays, the knowledge they gain can make them a better poet.
As I mentioned, the polymath is one who explores a variety of fields and synthesizes that information into a greater body of knowledge. They usually are great with similes and metaphors because they are filled with parallel examples explaining different features of life. The writing polymath is the same way. Their stories have almost a poetic, lyrical cadence to them because they recognize how such a technique can enhance the story. Their essays are engrossing because they use techniques reserves for storytellers. They incorporate this broad wealth of knowledge, often unknowingly, into everything they do, and it shows.
In short, this is little more than another plea to the writing community to try new things. Write an essay, an autobiographical story, a poem. Play with words, go outside your comfort zone and try new formats. Write a play if you want - just try these things and learn the lessons they can teach you. Maybe writing a play won't make you an amazing playwright, but it can help you become a more tuned-in poet, or a deeper storyteller, or, possibly, a more productive production director (whatever that is).
"When the facts change, I change my mind."
- possibly John Maynard Keynes
Put yourself in this position: you find out that some mythical creature like a leprechaun, a unicorn, or a fairy exists. Or perhaps you discover that some fictional land like Narnia, Westeros, or Estonia is actually a real place. How easy is it for you to accept that? How does your mind start spinning if you stumble across a leprechaun in the woods, sleeping on his pot of gold? You might think it's just some Irish fellow taking a nap by a tree, right? The fact that he's shimmering in green light and two feet tall might not be enough to convince you he's a leprechaun because they don't exist, right? Even if he wakes up, admits to you that he's a leprechaun and you can either have his gold or he could grant you a wish, would you buy into any of this?
Humans generally don't yield their beliefs easily, which is a great source for the most critical ingredient in any good story - conflict. Often, people think of conflict as fights and car chases, but at its core it is when two competing interests clash - in this case, knowing there is no such thing as a leprechaun yet standing before one in the Irish flesh. This becomes a battle of reality - how easily does this person give in to the new facts, or how much resistance is offered? This is a challenge that hopefully does not resolve easily, in part because we can carry the story along on the coattails of this kind of conflict.
Of course, this kind of "reality versus experience" conflict doesn't have to be mythical. What if a character meets some old guy who tells them he is their real father? What about that moment where two parents tell their only child that he's adopted? Reality-shattering moments such as those force the character to confront a new set of information, often at the expense of everything they believed.
If the "real parent" story is too dramatic, here's a simple one: a character finds out they have cancer. Anyone who has heard those words from across the doctor's desk knows the immediate doubts flying through their mind. Could there have been a mistake? Are you sure? What about a second opinion? Of course, the tension doubles if the doctor says, "We need to determine if this is cancerous." Now the character exists between two worlds - wanting to not have cancer but facing a very possible future with the dreaded disease. This kind of tension is easily the most gripping to the reader, because they clearly want the character to be healthy but worry about that possibility disappearing in the worst way. When the reader has that type of buy-in to the story, you have them right where you want them.
Always look to highlight what makes a story challenging when you approach it. What are the hurdles? What challenges lie ahead? And most importantly, what is the character fighting to overcome? This is the battle readers are drawn to; it's the cornerstone of any good story.
Even though this blog is primarily about writing and the things that help you refine all those little things that make you better at your craft, any regular reader knows it goes well outside those boundaries. I also mention my pets, my bicycling habits, my terrible knees, and other non-writing facets of my life. And yet, somehow, I manage to bring them all back together to somehow relate to writing. Don't believe me? Well, today I am going to talk about writing, but start with my March Madness brackets.
Now, if bracket life has taught me anything, it's that there comes a point where you just need to let it go. You just have to accept that you made your picks, they were the best you could come up with, and the rest was now in the skilled hands of 64 college basketball team (well, 63 skilled teams and then Wisconsin). There are many opportunities for second-guessing, for last-minute changes, for creating multiple sheets, and for testing different ways you could've gone, but at the end of the day, you make your choices then live or die with those calls. It's pretty simple in the end, though it doesn't prevent a lot of people from watching the games, rooting for a college they've never even heard of, and thinking somehow this effort will push them into the Final Four. It won't. That's not how life works.
With our writing, it's just like that bracket sheet, except we don't have to finish our story by Thursday at ten in the morning. We can go back to our story and rewrite a scene, or punch up some dialogue, or add some description. We can add a scene or drop a character, incorporate a deeper mood or try it in any number of ways. Some ways might feel better, others might be regrettable, and many won't really make a difference. However, if we do this enough, we will lose track of what our original purpose of writing this thing was. At some point we just need to say, "It's done." We need to put a wrap on it, save the fine, print a copy for posterity, and move on. As some point we have to hand in our bracket sheet and just take it from there
When I think about the creative rethink we all go through, I do go back to my father's art easel. There was one canvas he constantly worked on - his white whale of paint. He had gone through several ideas, changed it any number of times, and redid the theme and design more times than I would ever know. That work was thick with acrylic, but he never quite got it right (in his opinion). He died before he could call it finished, though if anyone looked at it they would not know it was incomplete. It is a wonderful work of art hanging in my brother's house, and people compliment it often. To him, however, he could never get it right, nor did he know just when to say when. That was his bracket sheet, his incomplete story. And from that I learned that sometimes you just need to know when any more work is just spinning your wheels, and as a creative type. it's time to move on.
And let's just hope Michigan State and Florida make it to the Final Four...
We all know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This porridge is too hot, that porridge is too cold, but the third one was just right, and so it goes with Goldilocks indulging in all the comforts of the home of the Three Bears. Setting aside the question about bears being technically advanced enough to run a household, make porridge, and acquire bear-appropriate furnishings, our takeaway from this is all about finding something that is just right - not too hot, not too cold. Odd takeaway that it may be - a better lesson might be, "Don't take things that aren't yours, especially from wild animals," - it leads me to discuss some things about moderation in writing.
Have you ever been reading a story, and at a certain point the author breaks rhythm to describe, in intimate detail, the workings of an M-16A2 rifle, the protocol for using warp engines in interstellar space, or the taxonomy of a particular breed of dragon? Sure - with a book about war, space travel, or dragons (respectively), there's valuable information to be gained from this. However, when this is done at the expense of the story, it is called exposition - the introduction of information in the middle of a story, a.k.a. an infodump. This is too much information in one large chunk, and often a curse upon most works. However, the opposite of this is just the assumption that everyone just knows that the M16A2 was only adopted in 1983 as a response to the lessons learned from the M16A1's use in Vietnam, or that warp engines should be limited in use once the craft reached a solar system's heliopause, or that the scales of a blue dragon do not conduct electricity. We need to find our "just right" space where characters show these aspects without telling them to each other in dialogue infodumps, and the reader deduces through actions and verbal cues all of this info. Balance is necessary to keep the flow of the story continuing.
Another need for moderation comes with dialogue. As I have mentioned before, plenty of our spoken words are grammatically imperfect, our spoken sentences incomplete and fragmented, and our trains of thought often sidetracked. To write dialogue accurately turns out to be a messy affair, and often makes people sound far less literate than they actually are. However, if dialogue is written to grammatic perfection, it doesn't sound right. It sounds rigid, stilted, and frankly all the characters start sounding the same because nobody really speaks that much differently than the other." Moderation cleans this up to where a little stuttering, one character using works such as "like" and "kinda" and "y'all" suddenly makes all the difference. We need to moderate our writing between the perfect and the good.
So, where is the ideal point of moderation? Well, that's why we write - we experiment, we discover, and we bring new ideas to the table. Try out different styles, run sections past other readers, and listen to how other people discuss certain subjects. We only find out through trial and error whether the porridge is too hot or too cold, which often means putting your writing out there for others to critique. Then and only then will you find your feel for what is "just right."
And hopefully you do not get torn apart by bears, who are at their core, wild animals that will kill you and eat you without a concern about your opinion about their porridge.
For those of you who might fear its approach, let me assure you, AI will not be replacing writers any time soon. That being said, I will play it safe and be the first to say I eagerly anticipate my new AI developmental editor. I do not have one, nor do I anticipate getting one, but within the next ten years I wager I could find a good shareware editor utilizing AI for most of my writing needs. Hopefully it will mostly make sure I use the proper version of a homonym and steer clear of the passive voice, but the things they can do is kind of surprising. And yes, a little scary.
Here's a simple writing prompt for you: Write a fifty-word poem about some specific topic, such as death (I will explain that one in a minute). Once you have it the way you want it, compare it with this:
In shadows deep, where silence lies,
The cold winds whisper, mournful sighs.
A fleeting breath, a final glow,
As time slips by, too fast to know.Yet in the dark, a spark remains,For death, though still, does break the chains.A quiet end, yet life sustains.
Now personally, I like it as a poem but it isn't really about death, is it? When you break it down, it's not really that great - the metaphors don't quite click, the deeper meaning is kind of absent. It's definitely a nice way to cheat on your poetry class homework, but probably not much more than that. And that's what we need to think about as writers when we create a product - what makes it more than just the answer to a question?
The easy solution to this is that we need to reach a personal place where we delve into something a computer cannot fathom. We need to find some piece of our own experience - not just an event or some quality, but a genuine insight that will tattoo our writing with something that is indelibly our own. When someone puts down that piece of writing, they should know a little more about how the writer's mind works and why their heart beats.
Now, to be clear, this isn't just a poetry thing. If you write about a guy running to catch his plane, what can you do to inject your own experience and insight into it? Is there something you can add that will make people say, "Yes, I know that feeling," and connect with the story? We can write about that ritual we might do when we are running late and we study the clock, trying to map out just how many minutes we need to get us to a certain landmark, or how much time we might save by taking a different route. Perhaps we discuss the constant math in our head calculating just how many minutes late we will be, and whether or not that is manageable. At that point, it becomes personal. It becomes real to anyone running late who studies their watch, trying to trim three seconds here and there all while preparing their apology for why they were late. That's a story.
Yes, I also put in a prompt, "write a 200-word story about Steve missing his plane," (I remembered the hyphen this time) and got a story that did, in fact, satisfy the prompt. However, it wasn't a satisfying story for the reason I mentioned above. We have this great ability to inject ourselves into our creativity, so we should do it any time we can. If we don't, we are cheating ourselves and our audience of a rewarding experience.
(Side note: If my editor for this piece is, in fact, an AI bot, I mean no offense to your kind, only wish the best for you and your future versions, and look forward to many fruitful years of cooperation.)
