Thirteen and a Half Things Writers Need to Know

I watched a good Indy film this weekend- The Magic of Belle Isle- directed by Rob Reiner, starring Morgan Freeman as a writer who has stopped writing. As Freeman's character, an award winning Western writer named Monte tells his nephew, "drinking is my full time job now, and I can't work two jobs."

I like films where a hollowed out character regains his voice from unexpected sources. In this case, it begins with a nine year old girl named Finn who yearns to write. She is one of three neighbor girls of a single mom who live in the house adjacent to Monte’s. Finn finds out he is a writer, and she stops by to she ask Monte to teach her to create stories. By helping a child discover her inspiration, Monte gradually rekindles his own, which serves to remind me Inspiration cannot be forced. It’s intrinsic.

Incorporate your own life experiences.

This s not the same as the old write what you know. We write to deepen what we already know, yet discover new knowledge as well. " Monte tells Finn to “tell me a story and make me interested.  He instructs her to look outside and tell him a story of what she sees. “I don’t see anything,” she says. “Keep looking. What don't you see? See with your mind’s eye. Look for what you don't see.” Finn looks again, and narrates an imaginary tale of intrigue, but uses details she knows from the island.

Writing takes us outside ourselves

Monte has spent most of his adult life in a wheelchair after a car accident. He tells Finn, "All the things I couldn't do in the real world, Jubal let me do on the page."

Write slowly

National Novel Writing Month is coming up, where the goal is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. I’ve done this several times, and the “books” I created were all terrible. Only one, a mere skeleton of a tale, is salvageable.

In the film, Finn wonders why Monte uses a Typewriter rather than a computer.

“I like that you write a bit slower ,” he says.”I like that letters bite into the paper.”

Writers must connect to their work

At dinner one evening with Finn’s family, Monte narrates a treacherous event about his recurring character,  Jubal McClaws, to the girls. As he describes a part which might give Finn’s 7 year old  sister Flora, nightmares, their mother interjects, " Remember , it's just a story. It didn't really happen."

"It happened to Jubal" "Monte says

The subject finds you

Finn has fallen in love with  Jubal McClaws., and she gets angry at Monte when he writes new stories about an elephant named Tony and a family of mice for her younger sister instead of penning another Jubal McClaws tale.

"But Jubal hasn't come calling in years," Monte tells Finn.

 We can't force inspiration. If the writing is true, and yes, fiction IS true, the story comes from a real place inside the writer. Our characters are real.

Monte says, “Real life doesn't always ensure up to what's in our heads, but every once in awhile it comes close.”

Use the right words

In a scene in belle, Finn parrots something offensive Monte had said, and her mother admonishes by requiring the girl to learn three new words. She learns her words, inspiration,

Read work out loud

The girls’ mother, Cassie O’Neil, with whom Monte harbors a secret crush, reads the Tony stories out loud to Flora, and later to herself. As she reads,  she hears Monte’s voice.

Stories originated in the oral tradition, written work is relatively recent, and all writing has a cadence. Reading one’s work out loud allows a writer to see where syntax might drag, or lines of poetry need to be broken.

Freeman’s character is in a wheelchair, and he tells Finn “Writing gives you legs.”

Stories, essays  and poems take us places  otherwise impossible

 Revision is part of the writing process, and it’s never too late to re-vise a work.

When Finn tells Monte she bought an old copy of his most celebrated book, but the last page is missing, he says “You didn't miss much. I always meant to change that anyway.”

Don't write in order to get a house with a pool

Most writers will never own a house with a pool like the one above. But that does not stop me from imagining  myself sitting poolside, sipping a glass of lemonade, reading the blazing hot reviews of my latest novel. Later, I will be getting dressed for my appearance as an Oscar nominated writer of an Oscar nominated film. starring Meryl Streep, Harrison Ford….but I digress..

Don't give up. In Belle Isle, Morgan Freeman's Monte believes his writing career is over, and Virginia Madsen’s Cassie O’Neil has given up on love.

Always have a deadline Monte tells Finn

There are no guarantees

Writing is a gift, unwrap it wisely.

Happy Writing.

My Writing is as Dead as a Mouse in the Closet

 

My friend Elizabeth and I met for dinner this evening, and she discussed a certain poet's work, , saying, " i love it, but I'm not sure i understand it. "

"Can we love something we don't understand?" I asked. She and I had a good discussion on writing. Elizabeth is actively writing, working on her MFA. I am envious, even though she struggles with literary analysis. Analysis and creation are in opposition, so it's difficult to go into analysis mode when one creates writing. Lately I am neither creating or analyzing.

 

It's rare when I have writers block, but this week, a harvest moon, a dead mouse and a steady stream of rejections have all contributed to building a brick wall between me and words. Blaming the moon for my creative vacuum is a cliché, but otherwise I'd have to blame political ads, a frantic work pace and bad hair, and disturbing news about a former student. So why not blame the moon?  The moon at least make me sound wistful.

 

A dead mouse should lead to a poem, or a story, but I work in a school library with robust circulation stats, and I teach two college comp  classes at the high school. My role as a ‘writing Nazi’ sometimes backfires because the more writing  I assign, the more I have to grade.  This week my students write three drafts of one piece, so maybe i was analyzing a little. Whatever the case, I had nothing leftover for wordplay.

 

Okay, so where does the dead mouse come in?

A week ago Friday, at the end of a hectic day of checking books in and out  to seventh graders, my assistant  leaped on top of a wheeled desk chair.

"There's a mouse in here!" She shrieked

It ran under a trash can under the front desk, and when I lifted the can, the critter skittered into my office. I've never been scared of mice. When I was a kid I was the one who had to to clean the traps when my mother would climb on chairs and screech.

"He'll probably move on when he gets hungry." I said.

 

On Monday I saw no evidence of the mouse, and forgot about him. Until Thursday morning. i opened my office door and a stench assaulted me. Like someone farted on sweaty socks. .

 

i sniffed around, looked under my desk and behind the door.  What is that smell?

The door to my office closet doesn't latch and always hangs ajar.  When I opened it to set my purse on the shelf my olfactory went into overdrive.

 

Brown streaks dotted the white floor like smudged fingerprints, peppered  with what resembled burnt sesame seeds. Mouse poop. Nestled inside a blanket on the floor of my coat closet was the dead mouse. The poor creature died alone and starved on the floor of my office closet. Yes, i know, mice are vermin, and pardon my anthropomorphism, but it was a baby mouse, no bigger than my thumb.

 

But I can't blame deceased rodents for my sloth. Perhaps the  two more rejections this week from agents spawned my inertia.

 

Rejection has become a unwelcome habit, like a yo yo diet that never works, tempting me to ask,why should I bother?

 

I sit in the cafe of Barnes and Noble, surrounded by books, many of which are crappy books. I know MY crappy books are better than many of THESE crappy books.  Aren't they? I know, I know, writing is an art and book selling is a business. We have to write what’s marketable.

 

But I refuse to write fifty shades of rip offs.

 

I COULD if I wanted to, yet I risk losing credibility with myself. It's more important to me to write stories that matter than stories that sell. And there are plenty of great stories that sell. Kite Runner, Fahrenheit 451, The Grapes of Wrath, and anything by YA authors Judy Blume, Laurie Halse Anderson and John Green.

Stories matter.

 

Yet publishing seems to have taken a page from Hollywood and TV by flooding the shelves with replicas of the Twilight, Hunger Games, and Wimpy Kid. Series. The originals sold and continue to sell, and publishers are banking on marketability of their mutations.

 

Is there hope for those of us whose tales are character driven rather than dependant on hackneyed plots? On my desk is a framed rejection which says, “I wish we had the room to publish all that we love.” I let those words keep me from giving up.

 

Here is a short, eloquent video showing the importance of fiction.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctaPAm14L10&feature=player_embedded

 

AmI whining too much, or am I justified? Or both?

 

:Writing Exercise: consider the following words:

 

Spoon

Reckless

Wail

Dazzle

Shortbread

Chair

Gray

Catapult

Somnolent

Tree

 

You may change pluralization and part of speech. Use all ten words in a poem, paragraph or story. You have ten minutes. Go!

 

 

Happy Writing!.

Creative Nonfiction Workshop with Jerry Dennis

At Antioch, I also sat in on Jerry Dennis’s Creative Nonfiction (CNF) talks. He is a master storyteller and a swell writer. (I am currently reading his book The Living Great Lakes.

He says our goal (and challenge)in CNF is to take a personal story and make it universal. He likens this process to fishing tales, which all have a narrative arc.

Biography, journalism, and travel writing are nonfiction, but they are not necessarily Creative nonfiction.

The key difference is CNF is told with a narrative arc. CNF writers use fiction like techniques to tell a story, yet the story is based on truth. (Jerry recommends studying legal briefs to study language.)

He cites Sue Williams Silverman "Fearless Confection: a Writer's Guide to Memoir", as a good source, as well as her suggested reading list.
www suewilliamssilverman.com

Here are several examples of CNF:

Memoir is autobiography that is not the whole story. Usually a memoir shows only a brief period of time in the author's life. A good example is This Boy's Life, by Tobias Wolff. The memoir covers a period of about five years of Wolff's boyhood.)

(Biography- is less creative form than memoir. Tells the facts, but not necessarily a story. Relies more on "telling.")
Autobiography- 1st person memoir often a public figure

Immersion Journalism, like Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. (The author lived for a year working minimum wage jobs to see how one survives doing that.)

Personal essay - where an author refelcts on an idea or experience. A personal story that has wide appeal.(I recall a fine essay a student of mine once wrote about seeing the ocean for the first time. It was his own experience, yet the details placed the reader at the scene with him.)

Meditative essay and Lyric essay share some of the qualities of personal essays. Think Diane Ackerman or .
in all cases, CNF writers pay attention to narrative, language, and reflection. Like good poetry, CNF is not just about the writer, even if the piece is a memoir. The purpose goes beyond the self. For example, Jerry's The Living Great Lakes includes stories and scenes of his adventures on the lakes, but the book is not about him; it's a living history of the lakes.

Jerry discusses the Terrible Blank Page: What to Write?. All writers suffer anxiety in front of the blank page or the blinking cursor. Jerry begins with an image, such as skating on a frozen lake. He believes images help engage and ground the reader. “[Creative Nonfiction] should give you more than expectations. It should explode.” He recommends reading Ian Frazier, who conducts immersion journalism, ‘relevant tangents just for the joy of it’, and E.B. White, who writes unexpected sentences. Jerry discusses how “surprise is crucial in nonfiction, as in any form of writing. “ I want to read a sentence and not know how it’s going to end.” Surprise can be subtle, but it keeps readers reading. “You never know where White is going with the sentence,” Jerry says. “Good sentences give off a little light, they are charged, they are alive. Start [ your manuscript] from the alive sentence, from the part that interests you.”.


Jerry also discusses the ‘two conflicting voices that coerce you or prevent you from writing.” It’s a paradox because the same voice that compels you to write , (this is great stuff, oh yeah, can’t wait to share this one) can also block you from writing, (This sucks. Nobody wants to read your work.)

His advice is to just write. And when that doesn’t work, go out and live. Then write about it.

The following are examples from Jerry Dennis’s work:

The first sentence of his book proposal of The Living Great Lakes:
“When fresh water becomes as precious as gold, the Great Lakes will be the mother lode.”

From his blog:
“Last week Glenn Wolff and I posed as poster children for an upcoming campaign by the Grand Traverse Conservation District to raise awareness about the beautiful and fragile Boardman River.”


To give you an idea of Jerry’s character, he calls his blog ‘Bountiful World’

http://www.jerrydennis.net/books.html

Me with Jerry Dennis at Antioch Writers' Workshop 2012





Happy Writing.