Go Ahead . . . Try It!

It’s not that bad, right?  Some people just want to do it and get it over with.  Some look forward to it eagerly.  Adding details to our writing is like decorating for the holidays.  Once you immerse yourself into it, you are hooked – and so will be your readers. 

 C.S. Lewis said,  “Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we ‘ve read the description.  You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

 

If you add the right detail, just a tiny word or two, you can make the reader laugh, or cry, or catch their breath.

Finding those perfect details isn’t as hard as it sounds.  Try to notice the little things around you.  What is that man doing in the car next to you?  Is he texting?  Is he weeping?  Is he picking his nose?

When you add details to your story, it becomes personal.  It goes from being any old story to being personal.  That’s when it becomes real.  

Maybe you are writing about the lady next door taking her garbage out in the morning.  Get nosey with those characters.  Ask yourself those impolite questions.  What’s in that garbage and why does she have to take it out every morning?  What’s that stain on her robe?  Are her curtains open or closed, and how come she keeps her curtains closed in the daytime?

Try to notice those little details—I call it thinking like a poet.  My favorite poets use very spare language to make the story come to life in the poem.   They make every word count.  They pay attention to subtle things, like the way someone’s voice goes up or down a little when they say certain things.  Or the way their voice catches. 

Don’t be afraid to channel Gladys Kravitz.  Spy on those people in their stories.  What’s out front of the house?  Why are all those cars in the driveway all of a sudden?  What’s going on over there?

Is there a death?  A birth?  

The cars are coming and going at all hours of the night.  Are they drug dealers? 

Don’t be satisfied with just steps.  Make them creak.

Don’t be satisfied with just a classroom.  Jazz it up.  Put some contraband in there.  Make someone throw up or want to throw up.  

Details can be deceptive, too.  They can trick us—they can trick the reader.  You can drop a tiny detail in and see if the reader notices—a bit of foreshadowing.

 

I leave you with some holiday cheer from Mark Twain:  “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning-bug.”

Now get back to your decorating!

What's it Doing in the Back of Your Refrigerator??

Annie Dillard says,  “ . . .  spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.  Do not hoard what seems good … give it, give it all, give it now.  Something more will arise for later, something better.”  This wisdom has become one of my favorite recipes for writing.

I love this, because I am guilty of saving my writing.  But really, for what am I saving it? A perfectly good idea can end up like back-of-the-refrigerator food--something that was perfectly good on Saturday, but ended up getting stashed away and wasted by next Friday.  I have a million little notebooks—I always have one going, as do most of the writers I know.  But if a good line comes to you—or a great character idea—or some fantastic setting details, find a way to put it in right now.  Don’t let it disappear forever into the pages of your journal; get it down on a page of your book.

H.G. Wells had another great writing recipe.  He said, “If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise; attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.”


I am a big proponent of writing at the same time every day.  It may just be a mind game that I play with myself, but I truly believe that my body and mind get used to this 5:00 a.m. time.  The words automatically start trickling out after I’ve had my first few sips of coffee.  The routine of it all works for me.  However, we have all gotten to a point in our story where either we, or the story feels stagnant.  So try again.  Try it at 5:00 p.m., instead.  If you are too tired at this time, because your first writing time of the day was at 5 a.m., go for a walk.  Let the ideas start to flow.  Do what makes your mind wander to your story.  Walking, running, riding your bike, cooking, baking, knitting…be open to it, and your characters might just start talking to you.

Trick . . . or Treat . . . ?

It's easy, right?  Just treat your readers with your tricks.  We beat ourselves up and rack our crazy writer brains trying to come up with the latest wowing trick.

Writer, Merrill Markoe says she struggles with her tendency toward “contrarianism”.

“If I know there’s something I’m supposed to be doing or saying or wearing, I feel compelled to resist—particularly with creative endeavors like writing.  If I see an obvious punch line or plotline driving toward me, I can’t help but make a sharp left turn into the unexpected.  I don’t like to replicate what I’ve seen done before—I don’t like to give people what they expect.  I think it’s my job to come up with a surprising angle or add some personal twist.” –Merrill Markoe

She made me think about how some people are trying to follow the market and write what they think is “hot” or selling right then.  Of course we all want to sell our work, but if we aren’t writing from our gut and our heart, it shows in our work.  It ends up feeling derivative.  We need to make our work our own, with our original, distinctive voice.  

In comedy, I think one of the reason’s that David Letterman has had such success, even early on in his career, is that he felt a strong rapport with his audience, making them feel as if they were in on the joke.

As a fiction writer, that’s exactly what you are doing.  You are making the audience feel as if they are in on the story.  –You are sucking them in without their even knowing it, from the very first page—even the very first line.

Nobody likes to feel as if they are on the outside, looking in, and not a part of things.  Remember how you felt as a kid, or even as an adult, when you were at a party, or on the playground, and you weren’t included in a conversation.  Or you felt as if you had entered in the middle or towards the end and you didn’t have the details to jump in.  Sometimes, the people were doing that on purpose, hoping that you would go away, or wanting to control the group, giving them the upper hand.  When this happens in a story, the reader never gets a chance to connect with the characters, and may, in fact just put the book down.  

One of the ways you can include your readers in your story—letting them feel as if they are “in the know”—is to give them things to which they can relate.  You have to dig deeply in order to do this.  This doesn’t always happen for me until I’m heavily into my revision process.  Again, you have to climb into the minds of your characters—not just your main character, but all of your characters—and figure  out how they would feel and react to each situation in which you put them.  What you are shooting for is for your readers to think, “I’ve felt like that, too.  That’s just like me, or that’s just like when I …”

So dig to the bottom of that plastic pumpkin.  That's where the best treats are hiding out--waiting to be discovered.

Is Your Character Driving the Bus?

 “If you’re silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.” --Alice Walker

With your first few lines, you are inviting your readers into the lives of your characters.  You want your readers to feel as if they’re eavesdropping and somehow getting privileged information that no one else has.  You’re allowing them to sneak into the house with you --to hide in the corner or to be a fly on the wall.

 

Now you as the writer need to be the fly on that wall.  Listen to your characters.  What are they saying to each other?  Are they angry?  Afraid?  --Maybe even terrified?  And, of course, ask yourself why?

What are your characters worried about?  Has someone in the room caused those worries?

What does your character truly care about?  It has to at some point in the story seem almost unattainable.  Almost. 

I leave you today with a quote from Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav:  “Many people believe that stories are told to put people to sleep.  I tell mine to wake them up.”

Everyone Loves a Challenge . . . Right?

"It has been like hacking away at a freezer with a screwdriver." --Amy Poehler (on writing her book, YES PLEASE)

Resolve is not only the perfect blog theme for the beginning of 2015, it is also the ideal theme for writing, especially in the verb sense of the word.

It means to sort something out, to fix it, to straighten it and find a solution.  It means to decide firmly on a course of action or to figure it all out.

As writers, and as human beings in general, we are constantly trying to step over that slippery puddle that has the word, FEAR hidden beneath that thin layer of precarious winter ice.

So . . . I CHALLENGE YOU THIS MONTH.  Whether it's your novel, your first marathon, that mysterious stain in the upstairs bathroom . . . maybe it's that dream job you've been dying to make your own or that intimidating volume of Proust you've been wanting to tackle . . .

Get your resolve on and make it happen.

I leave you with one more Amy Poehler quote (because I kind of want to be her when I grow up):

"So let's peek behind the curtain and hail the others like us. The open-faced sandwiches who take risks and live big and smile with all of their teeth.  These are the people I want to be around.  This is the honest way I want to live and love and write."

P.S.  Today I am cross-posting over at Smack-Dab-in-the-Middle.  Hop on over there, if you like, and see what my writerly friends are talking about!

A Finders-Keepers Place Book Trailer

Books and Chocolate Naturally Go Together

I'm competitive. It's in my nature-I can't help it.

I am currently doing a fitness challenge at work, so I am going for broke--spinning, kickboxing, running--I am into this competition. I am even wearing a pedometer to record every possible step. I'm also working very hard on Book 3. And in order to keep my creativity flowing and my energy up, I needed to get some essential supplies...

...chocolate, of course!

False Teeth, Poetry, and Formula 44 Cough Syrup

It felt as if I had been waiting for hours, but it probably hadn't been more than thirty minutes or so. And when the train finally coasted into the station, my mother could barely keep me behind the safety line.

The conductor would put out the step for her and the first thing I always saw were my grandma's black, t-strap shoes. I can still hear the clang on that metal step as the conductor helped her down. There was no one like my grandma. My cousins and I were sure she loved each one of us the best. It got a little brutally competitive at times about who Grandma's favorite was, but all I knew was, when I met her at the train station, she was all mine for a few days.

She always stayed in my room. She slept in my bed and I got to sleep on a cot next to her, a TV tray of her pills and Formula 44 cough syrup between us. She'd take out her false teeth for my brother and me, as many times as we asked her! And she had a real corset. I used to get to help her lace it up in back, because she had severe arthritis and she was born without the fingers on one hand. I loved that hand, because it was smooth and warm and it fit inside my little kid hand. I can still remember how her watch looked on the wrist of that hand.

But the most wonderful thing about my grandma was her poems. She would tirelessly recite poems to me. Even now, I can hear the ebb and flow of her words. That's probably what made me love poetry. Someone recently asked me why I made my main character in ALSO KNOWN AS HARPER a poet. I said it was to give Harper a way to feel heard and not to feel invisible. I guess that's pretty much what we all need--someone to listen like what you're saying is the most important thing in the world...and, of course, to take their false teeth out as many times as you ask them to.

Also Known as Harper...the Backstory

Welcome to The Backstory where I'll be blogging about beginnings, middles, and the details that fuel our stories.  

Backstory is pretty much hindsight without the 20/20 vision.  I think, breathe and live backstory when I'm revising and building the lives of my fictitious characters.  I am constantly thinking about what drives and motivates them. 

When I create my characters, there is usually something real that makes them come into being.  A situation, a place, an actual person.  It was a feeling I got from a person that made the characters take shape when I began writing ALSO KNOWN AS HARPER.   I had been volunteering at my local soup kitchen. I was standing behind the serving counter and I couldn't stop wondering about the backstories of the people making their way into the line.  Did they have a home or a job?  Was the dinner we were serving their first meal of the day, or of the weekend, possibly?  And then came the children.  I wanted to follow them home with a bag of groceries and make sure they had a clean, warm place to sleep.  I didn't see the defeat in their eyes that I saw with some of the adults.  The hopefulness hadn't yet disappeared.  There was shyness, but there was also a streak of strength and stoicism that seemed to be carrying them through their day.  That crept into my mind and took hold of me until Harper's story began.

So...what is your backstory?

Next week...by special request:  The Call