A Nut For Every Bolt

If there's one thing I learned from the recent Printer's Row Lit Fest, it's how subject matter abounds no matter where you look. Stories where the protagonist is some form of monster? We got that? Epic dystopian sagas with a surprise LGBT twist? Of course. Alternate history fiction-fantasy that also contributes a degree of magic? Aisles three through eight. And for the non-fiction fan, well, there's plenty to work with as well. Biographies from every direction, historical events analyzed and dissected, and the rise of any social movement under the sun has brren written about. Indeed, for the curious reader, there is no end of content to explore.

However, this is about writers and writing, so let's explore this wealth of literature out that. Does it help our writing process to know there are plenty of stories about warlocks, steampunk dragons, and misunderstood 23rd century warlords? What good is any of that when we just want to become a better writer at whatever subject we prefer to focus on? Frankly, the teen cyborg section of fantasy literature has very little appeal to me, so does it help me any to read about them?

The answer depends on what you are looking for. Reading for personal adventure can be fun but exploring different genres can be hit or miss. Maybe teen cyborgs adventures works very well for those who it is intended for, but I am most likely not one of those people. I like my dragons large and pompous, I enjoy spaceships that are for some reason built in an aerodynamic fashion, and the vampires should be life-draining narcissists who are inevitably destined to get a stake through the heart.

The benefit we do get from reading some of these more off-beat and unusual topics and weird subject matter is examining the writing. Think about some of the more interesting books you've read, and consider what part of the writing itself drew you in. For me, I have discovered a lot of techniques from reading stories about anti-heroes, and examining how the author presents to you a character who is at face-value unlikeable or has some very dark traits, but gets the reader to walk around inside that character and feel for their personal story. In doing this, the genre falls by the wayside relative to the story and the person I am reading about. It becomes more approachable, and yes, even enjoyable even as I read about, say, a serial killer.

The hook that pulls this all together is as follows: There is plenty out there to write about, the story is up to you. However, there are plenty of ways to make the character - person, dragon, teen cyborg, whatever - someone interesting to read about. Learning these little hooks and techniques isn't specific to genre necessarily, but by reading a variety of things, you can uncover techniques that will apply to anything you choose to write. At that point, the best part of the story is the presentation, and you can find more fans in good presentation than in trying to create a new genre.    

The Social Side of Writing

I hold a twice-monthly writing group at the local library, and it is usually well attended, even in the summer when people get that urge to play outside rather than sit in a conference room and go over their projects. I enjoy facilitating these meetings and listening to everyone's writing, but here's a secret: I am kind of hoping nobody shows up tomorrow. Not that I don't want them there, and not that I would enjoy a day of my own to go frolic outside - my secret hope is the members are spending the day at an event better gathering, the Printer's Row Lit Fest.

Lit Fest has been going on for over forty years, and has picked up a reputation as the go-to place for writers, writing-curious people, and anyone who just wants to feed off of the vibe of a bunch of creatives all in the same place. As a free-of-charge event, it attracts quite a crowd, and it's more than just an opportunity for independent authors to gather and sell books to each other. Aside from the vendors, they have non-stop programs, speakers, and literary programs to choose from. It is a veritable smorgasbord of writing nourishment.

Now, I can understand if a number of people say, "But I'm not a writer. I want to be a writer, but I'm not ready to go out in public and pretend I'm one of these real writers." Of course, whether you're a writer or not is irrelevant. This is about walking amongst them, breathing in the atmosphere, seeing all the amazing things going on, and finding if anything catches your attention. There are gatherings and speakers talking about topics from dark humor to non-fiction environments to the Golden Girls, and all points inbetween. This is the chance to stroll around, find something that catches your interest, and let your mind just play around with different ideas, thoughts, and concepts. Any person who believes they might be a creative type will benefit from the experience simply because they will be exposed to the full range of the writing world, maybe see a famous face or two, and realize just how all-encompassing the world of the creative can be.

And, in case I didn't mention it, it's free.

Now, whether the members of my writing group go is up to them. Maybe they will show up to the meeting tomorrow, we will share and discuss our works, then they will go and check it out Sunday. Maybe they will all go Saturday and leave me in the conference room (it's air-conditioned, which is nice). Whatever their choice, I hope they get out there and expose their creative spirits to the entire spectrum of what's possible. It's good for the creative soul. And as for me, well, if they don;t show up tomorrow, I will gladly welcome them back into the conference room when we meet again in two weeks. I am sure they will enjoy the air conditioning as well. 

Finding the Unusual

Over the past few posts I have mentioned about how things have been changing in my life. In a way, I feel like I live in some kind of Bizarro world where everything is reversed - night is day, good is bad, etc. - but at the end of it all, I am still on the same planet, same country, same little patch of real estate. The only difference is I am seeing it from a different angle. That being said, during this adjustment I saw an opportunity to try and understand the differences in this same world and figure out just why it felt so weird even though it was no different in the bigger picture.

It all hit me last night at about 11:20 pm, when I stepped outside. The clouds were moving in, but for a happy little minute I got to see the peak of the partial lunar eclipse. They said it was about 96% coverage in my territory, which meant the moon was just a sliver of light, slightly rounded, peaking out from behind the shadow of our planet. It was not as impressive as a solar eclipse, with temperatures dropping, birds freaking out, and real stubborn people staring at it then saying, "Why do my eyes hurt so much?" However, there it was - a near-total lunar eclipse, and I witnessed it before the clouds buried it away. 

Now, what exactly hit me at that moment? Well, first off, it was 11:20 pm and I was wide awake, in a strange location I was still getting accustomed to. I was out by my car, which I still have to look for in the parking lot and remind myself it's mine as opposed to the one I drove for eleven years. I was in my Bizarro world, but yet things still went on. Clouds appeared and disappeared, the weather changed, and yes, the occasional lunar eclipse came by to draw the eyes of many spectators. The world was both different and the same.

That last sentence is the important part to me as a writer. Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, your mission is to take the reader from their comfy chair in the living room and drop them smack-dab into the middle of a new world. This new land doesn't have to be some fantasy world to be new - you can drop them into Manhattan and start from there. And yes, I mean Manhattan, New York, or Manhattan, Illinois, or Manhattan, Kansas - you are placing them into a space they are not familiar with and creating the world around them. Even if you write about something very familiar to many people, you need to give it the new appearance. I always note how my golfing buddy Saul Bellow (inside joke) wrote very passionately about Chicago, and even Ukrainian Village, where I lived for six years. I knew the landmarks he mentioned, I walked the streets of his characters. However, seeing Division Street through his character's eyes, through that new perspective, made it a fresh and exciting environment for me to experience. (Read Humboldt's Gift for reference.)

So, your job as a writer is not to offer up an accounting of the territory making up the story's background, but to give it the unique flavor and texture to make it seem different, special, even unique, but still very relateable. Give the reader elements they can connect to, even if those things have nothing to do with the reader's own lives. Make the observations things they can associate with, even if it's something as simple as looking up at the moon.   

A New Kind of Thinking (for writers)

I admit this next post will date me a little, but I grew up in a school system that was big on "New Math." For those who are not familiar, New Math was simply teaching certain mathematical principles in new and different ways, often to the confusion of second-graders like myself. Before this, everyone was familiar with the numbers 0-9, and how they were arranged in columns for the ones, tens, hundreds, etc., then they learned how to do all the mathematical operations. New Math, however, explained this numberical concept as "Base 10" - there were ten numbers to choose from and build off of - and then taught us Base 8, and even Base 16 where the additional six numbers were A, B, C, D, E, and F. Now, a simple problem such as 7+7 changed around depending on the base. In Base 10, the answer is 14, in Base 8 it's 16, and in Base 16 it's E. Yes, E. In short, second grade was confusing for me.

What this mathematical madness did, however, was teach us how to think outside the standards we assumed. Base 10 is a given that we just take for granted, so realizing there are other ways gives us new perspective. (As an aside, Base 16 connected to the foundation of computer processing, which was a burgeoning field at the time, so best to teach it early.) Anyway, this New Math didn't change how I did my mathematics and I stayed in Base 10 for balancing my checkbook and other manual operations we performed with numbers back in the 20th century. I didn't count my change in Base 16 or anything, but I knew when it could be applied and I knew D2 was larger than 8F.

When it comes to the creative mind, we have to flex our creativity by exercising it in different ways. This usually means blowing away some preconceived notion and seeing what the world looks like. This isn't the easiest thing to do because a lot of assumptions are so predefined we don't even realize they're there. If I were to suggest you write about your favorite food dish at Thanksgiving dinner, you would likely offer up a bit about the big, juicy turkey, a wide variety of pies (including pecan), a savory side dish, or maybe even a special holiday relish. 

All of these are fine things to write about, but it limits us creatively because the moment I said "food" is the moment you went toward the concept of how the dishes taste. The taste is the preconceived notion we can remove to really do some creative flexing. If the assignment becomes, "Write about your favorite food dish without using references to taste or smell," this forces you to examine the other sensory inputs underlying that meal. Maybe the aforementioned pecan pie now becomes enjoyable with the blending of crispy baked walnuts within the gooey filling and a crumbly crust. Maybe you go back to the hot, moist turkey breast, or the creaminess of the rutabaga pudding (I can DM you a recipe). Whatever the case is, you now think about something common through an uncommon lens. You get that creative flex.

This doesn't mean that writing always has to be about something other than the obvious. A forest can have its greenery, the sky can be blue, etc. However, when you really want to understand something on a deeper level, you need to see past the obvious and try to explore those aspects. If you write about painting your living room, make references to the crackling sound of the roller on the wall, the tacky feel of paint on your fingers, and I challenge you to find a way to describe the smell of housepaint. The color is incidental - the real challenge is making the paint tangible as something more than a can of blue stuff.     

Adjustments, Big and Small

Over the past few weeks, it seems everything is changing in my life - some by choice, some by the will of the world. Aside from being deprived of electricity for five days after last week's storm, other things are shifting. My old car finally drove its last mile, so now I am driving a different car. I am trying to settle into a new sleep schedule, which my middle-aged body is resisting, and I have a bunch of new people and new adventures I am taking on for various reasons. It's a lot to digest, and it can feel overwhelming. However, I constantly remind myself that I went through some very similar changes when I decided to adventure into writing, and yes, my mind resisted. I just had to keep telling myself that this was change for the better.

Here's a simple example most people experience when they dive into the writing pool. They have a story in their head, perhaps one they've told many times to others, or just mulled over in private. When they first decide to take that step into writing, they transcribe the story from brain to the page as quickly as they can. They take pride in this accomplishment (as they should), but realize all too quickly - perhaps as quickly as their first writing workshop - how the voice we think in and the way we tell a story do not satisfy the requirements of the written page. Often, we verbally tell stories in the passive voice, but this will hit the page with a thud. The written word needs to move quickly, reducing the excess baggage and offering sharp, concise verbs, adjectives, and descriptions. Telling a story and writing a story sound completely different, and one of the first things a writer must do is learn the new langauge of the written page.

Also, while writers often benefit from possessing a broad vocabulary, they need to learn how to throw out certain words - or at least restrain them. There are little words such as "that" which often have no purpose other than add to word count. I once edited an 80,000-word manuscript and did a quick check - "that" was used over 700 times, mostly with no purpose (It is allowed if it is the object in a sentence, but that's another subject). There is a whole list of words I will discuss in a later post which a good writer needs to scrub out of their vocabulary. Just for the moment, accept this as change for the better. (And yes, I still proof my own writing for unnecessary uses of "that.")

And of course, the newly-minted writer who may explore the first-person point of view will come to a striking realization of how many things don't need to be said. A sentence such as, "I thought to myself, 'That's weird,'" explains the character's mindset but forgets that we, the readers, are already in the mind of the character. We don't need to be prompted with, "I thought..." because we know the perspective we are coming from. And, of course, when a person thinks, who else do they think to but themselves? Wipe out the "to myself" part. In short, that sentence could (and should) be rewritten as, "That;s weird." with the italics used to suggest internal dialogue. Same sentence, two-thirds fewer words.

There is a whole laundry list of adjustments we make as we explore creative writing, and they are all a hassle. However, such as my change of cars and sleep schedule, it works out better when we accept these things as moves for the better. Uncomfortable, yes, but also necessary.    

The Story of the Storm

I feel it necessary to offer a modest apology for the tardiness of this post. Now, as some of you know from my posts or from having talked with me, I have been recovering from surgery in June. Well, my recent lack of content has nothing to do with that. Rather, the larger influence on my creative process has been the impact of the tornadoes that rolled through this region a week ago, downing trees everywhere and knocking out power lines wherever they could be found. I spent five days without power, sitting in the dark, listening to everything spoin in the refrigerator, and I was one of the luckier ones. There are souls who still don't have power and might not see electricity for another week. I am guessing they won't be posting much either.

Now, when about half-a-dozen tornadoes come storming through your area, etching a path of destruction in their wake, we want to tell this to others. Writers want to turn this into a story, of course, but this is where it gets difficult. Tornadoes are terrifying things - everyone knows that. They sound like freight trains rolling toward your house, and the sound of a one-hundred-year-old oak tree snapping its trunk resonates like an explosion. The wreckage afterward can be other-worldly, leaving us just slack-jawed at the carnage surrounding us. And yet, where is the story? What is it that we, as writers, can pull out of this to bring the interest to our story? This is where it gets tough.

For a story to be something more than just reporting on what happened, there needs to be a thread woven through the entire thing that contains a unique mood, a sentiment, a perspective, or something the reader can follow through like a clear path through the disaster. Without that, stories drift around aimlessly, providing a lot of information but not really taking the reader through an experience. 

I offer my experience as an example. I had been outside for over two hours that morning, and the humidity was unreal. Even though the sun was not very intense, my clothes were saturated with sweat, my energy quickly draining. Then, just as I prepared to walk back home for a video call, I felt the air change. The sweat on my body chilled as the air pressure dropped, and heavy clouds rolled in, their ominous green tinting speaking of dangerous weather. I walked a little faster as the wind picked up, the first rumbles of thunder coming in from the west. I wasn't inside five minutes before the rain sheeted down in torrents, and with one flash of lightning, the power went out. I made my video call on my phone and tried to focus on the other voices, but for twenty minutes there was the constant interruption of thunder, of something hitting off the house, of a tree trunk rupturing, and the rain trying to sweep away the house.

And then it ended. Within a minute, Nature's wrath was over, the torrent was a drizzle, the green sky now just a boring, overcast gray. However, looking outside, the weather had rewritten the geography of my street. Mighty trees were horizontal, pulled up from the very roots, my street now a river of branches and garbage clogging up the sewer drains. My shirt was still damp with the sweat from a muggy morning, yet I was in a new, unrecognizeable world.

My thread in that story was change, my vehicle simple sensory pickups. I was lucky - no large trees fell on my house or car, no structural damage, just no electricity for about 121 hours. People a few towns over would have much worse stories to tell, so I am not complaining. For now, I am just offering this as my story - it's what happened to me, and this is how I offer it as a writer.

And I do apologize for the recent lack of content. I will try not to have disasters interrupt me in the future.    

Nobody's Perfekt

Now that I am getting back some of my energy and feeling a little more up to speed, I thought it best to provide some fresh content. More to the point, I wanted to bring up a writing trait worth complaining about. Or, rather, I should say, a not-writing trait worth complaining about. It has everything to do with the art of perfection, and what some people do to their writing in pursuit of this goal.

Let me preface this by saying there is nothing wrong with perfection. By definition, that statement is true. Pursuing it is also admirable, since such an endeavour forces us to become better writers. Now, having said all that, let me drop in the little caveat: We should all pursue perfect, but we should never expect to achieve it. This is where a lot of writers go off the rails.

I was reminded of this by a story told by a fellow member of the workshop I facilitate. He told a story of someone known as The Maker, who tried to create the perfect being, only to be disappointed each time, leading to an obsession that eventually brought about The Maker's own destruction. This is very much the writer's dilemma, and I have witnessed it in many people trying to write their stories. They know their story, they have it all in their heads, but translating it from neurons into words on a page becomes a challenge they did not expect. They get bogged down in details, trying to create the perfect page, the perfect paragraph, the perfect sentence. The frustration takes them away from the act of creation, and often that story never gets told in full. This is truly a tragedy.

Now, do I complain about these writers? Hardly - I try to push them to write first, to create before they edit, and to commit to the story before working on the grammar. The rest is up to them. Then there are writers who bring a rough draft of their story to the workshop - any workshop, really - they read their rough draft, then apologize for it being a rough draft. At that point, I let them know a few facts. First, I tell them there's no need to apologize because what they have done is created something. That's the win for any writer. Then I ask them what feels so rough about what they just read. This forces them to do a little self-critiquing: Was there word repetition? Passive voice? PoV problems? Usually their instincts are on par with exactly what I would've commented about. Sometimes they admit it's not the story they were hoping to tell, and we discuss that as well. But all of this comes with the insistence that there's no need to apologize.

So, what do I complain about with writers? My one complaint is when a writer wants to tell a story but decides in advance they don't have the skill, tanent, vocabulary, or whatever, and they never try to write it. That one gets me every time.