Where have I Been?

I have not vanished from the face of the earth. Figuratively perhaps, but not technically. I've been engaged in major revisions on my latest novel, writing query letters and synopses and querying to literary agents. Plus I'm still doing a weekly podcast .

But I have not forgotten about my blog. My writing partner-in-crime Christine Kohler and I are planning to guest blog on one another's blogs, so stay tuned.

If you're looking for a great book recommendation on building your novel or short story, read Lisa Cron's WIRED FOR STORY . She's also the author of STORY GENIUS.

Meanwhile, enjoy Pablo the cat as he tries to figure out how to get out of the laundry basket.

Happy Writing.

Revenge of the Bad Sentences

I’m revising a draft, 7^th draft to be exact, which means examining the details on the sentence level. The initial edit phase was more developmental, where I fleshed out scenes and moved things around. By the sixth draft I performed major surgery, extracted a few teeth, sucked out the fat (erroneous back story) and the manuscript is now thinner. At this point I’m stumbling my way line by line through myriad band sentences. Like this little gem:

Peri hands me a napkin and wipes her own hands.

What do I mean here? On what does Peri wipe her hands? Her dress? The grass? The back of her hand?

On the surface this sentence looks complete. It has a subject (Peri) a verb (hands) and an object (me.) The problem lies in the second half of the sentence. The subject is still Peri, the verb is wipes, but the object (her own hands)is too vague.

When I wrote it I pictured her using her own napkin, but I didn't mention this to the reader. It was clear as dry inside my head. Unfortunately most of you are not mind readers.

This is not the worst sentence I’ve ever written. Likely it’s this one from an early draft of my MFA thesis:

A seedless fruit, Columbus discovered pineapple on one of his many voyages.

What do I mean here? What am I implying? This gem gave one of my first readers quite a howl. I’m sure he still uses it as a slide in a lecture on bad sentences.

We all write them. Some of us are just better, or worse at it.

There’s even a contest for the worst opening line of a story.

 http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

Have fun creating your band sentences. Feel free to share some in the comment section.

Happy Writing.

Am I Better Than My Work?

Often my writing sucks. Big time, and I remind myself often as I am drafting a manuscript with little side bars, for example, as I write this post, I may insert (THIS SENTENCE STINKS UP THE ROOM. ) but I am not criticizing myself, just the horrible combination of words that passes for a sentence.

Elizabeth recently posted a comment on Facebook criticizing a group of her poems, and several people remarked she should stop being so hard on herself.

“I was NOT insulting myself” she said, “I was critiquing the poems. I didn't say I'm a terrible poet, I meant, these poems poems need revision.”

“One must be hard on the work in order to improve,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“You’re a good enough poet to be cognizant of when your work is weak.”

“I’m not going to apologize for myself deprecating humor,” she said. “It’s who I am. I have an excellent self esteem.

Elizabeth needled me about a posting I had shared on ‘15 things you need to do to be happy.’ “I hate when people try to tell me how to improve myself,” she said. “I like my bad attitude and imperfect life.”

I laughed, and nodded. “Our writing comes from unhappiness and suffering. We kind of enjoy our pain. Pain is a catalyst for work.

She agreed. “Just because I criticize my own work does not make mean I’m unhappy. I can write really wonderful depressing poems when I am extremely happy. Being happy is overrated. I’d rather be fulfilled”

“I once had a drawing instructor tell me when you’re content with your work, you’re dead.”

Today I saw a badge on a FB writing site that said “Write What You Like”. Depending on the interpretation, writing ‘what I like’ in the context of being free to write anything, I agree. But writing only what I ‘like’ stunts me as a writer. Real writing comes from what bothers us, what we don't understand, and what scares the bejesus out of us. If we only write about what we like, we won’t grow as writers. We won’t explore the messy layers of the human experience and its gritty ugliness. We should not avert our eyes because something is unpleasant.

When I was in my MFA program, my first mentor asked me, what bugs you? I replied, “I didn't get the whole tattoo-piercing thing.” She said, “That’s what you need to write about.” All semester I entered the foreign country of tattoo parlors, marked bodies. I even attended a three day tattoo festival where I was the only unmarked person. I spent my time asking participants about what motivated their tattoos. One heavy young man said, “I don’t fit the standard of beauty, so I find beauty in my body by making it a canvas.”

Unlike journalist Dennis Covington, who chronicles his slow seduction into the snake handling culture in Salvation on Sand Mountain, I was not propelled to cover my skin with tattoos and piercings, but I gained insight into why others do it.

Good writing comes from what we feel passionately about, either positively or negatively. What bothers you? What scares you? You might not like it, and you may not like writing about it, but your writing will improve.

Happy Writing.

What Shall I Name the Dog?

I’m trying to find a title for my latest novel and it’s like doing a word problem for Algebra. My initial title was Pagoda, a nickname one of the characters calls Michel, the protagonist. While it’s a catchy word, the underlying meaning and function of a Pagoda does not fit the book’s themes.

The novel takes place largely in summer, and Michael’s car is called the Blue Whale, but my current title, Summer of the Blue Whale sounds like a feel good beach book, which it’s not. I toyed with The Blue Whale of Summer as a nod to a line in a poem by Pablo Neruda about watermelons being “the green whale of summer,” but the reference is too obscure.

In one scene Michael gives his sister a copy of The Arabian Nights, a childhood favorite. Michael’s Tale? But the book is not just about Michael.

Kerouac already stile On the Road, so I can’t use that one. My novel isn't really a road story anyway, even though the car is a character, and one character takes a long journey.

I like From Here to Eternity. Not so much the book, but the title. The words roll off the tongue.

The Signature of All Things is another catchy title. It fits the book and has a pleasing cadence.

I like titles where you don't understand them until you have read far into the novel. The Catcher in the Rye is like that. The reader has to dig around and wait. Shadow of the Wind drives the tale on two levels: it centers around a book with the same title, and much of the tale takes place in shadows.

I don’t want my title to reveal too much, but it needs to be inseparable from with the story, almost like a tag line. Anyone who hears “yada yada yada” immediately conjures Seinfeld. When I hired Elizabeth to edit, she suggested A Whole Lot of Smirking Going On, since I had numerous incidents where Michael and Shelly smirk at one another. Another suggestion was Because Because Because as I had used the word because three times in one sentence.

Cindy S said she likes coming up with titles, such as, Tiger Lilies, Chicory and Queen Ann’s Lace. “I don’t know what it would be about, but I like the sequence of words.” I said it sounds like a good name for a cozy mystery about a gardener.

Cindy R is good at coming with titles, but she hasn't read my book, so she’s no help at all. (Note; it’s not that she refuses to read my book, she doesn't have time.)

Perhaps I will choose something simple. The Goldfinch ties this massive story together. It's a simple confluence of words, but once you read the book, no other title fits.

Friends have told me not to stress about the title because chances are it will get changed anyway, but I am trying to attract an agent, and a sucky title might put my query in the sucky query pile. It’s a Catch-22 (another rocking title.)

Happy writing and titling.

The cat ate my blog post

To the tens of thousands of you (or more realistically, the ten of you who actually read my blog), I have a litany of valid reasons why I have not been posting.

Take this morning. It’s hard to write with a cat on your lap. Pablo likes weekends because my lap spends more time at home, so I am pecking this out one handed with cat hairs on the keyboard as he head butts my other hand, demanding Pet me pet me pet me.

Blame the weather. It’s been a lovely week, dry, warm, the kind of spring weather that demands one’s presence outdoors. Yes, I’m allergic to most of what’s lurking in that soil, and I pay for it with watery eyes and needing to be in close proximity to tissues.

I have been writing: not this blog, but hard at work on my latest novel. I set a date of June 1^st to be finished with the first draft. And the book has steered itself into surprising directions. It may not work structurally, but I am enjoying this bout, so I will roll with it. My main characters nag me all the time. They’re teenagers, and they demand full attention.

But so do my other teenagers at work, especially the ones ready to graduate or skate the line between passing and failing my class. The kids are finishing up a semester long research project for which they (allegedly) written two ungraded drafts. Several have only shown me one draft, some have written NO drafts. The third and final draft is the biggie. Those who have not gotten my preliminary feedback are taking a huge risk. It’s like submitting the first draft of a novel to an editor or agent and expecting a book contract.

The REAL writing is in the rewrites. Initial drafts are fun to write, but revision is re- seeing the work, allowing the pieces to fall into place with more clarity. Here is where you find the inconsistencies (like forgetting a minor character’s name,) holes (such as undeveloped scenes, and glaring errors (your protagonist is blonde at the beginning, but later you describe him as having ebony hair).

This week in class we worked on thesis statements. I projected each students’ argument thesis to check for clarity, stance and warrant. Here is an example of how we fixed them:

Initial thesis:

Television is entertaining and informative, but has a negative impact on teens and society. Teenagers aren’t fully developed making them easily influenced, so partying, bad health, or even carelessness are all being more commonly demonstrated.

With input from me and her peers, here is what we devised:

Television is entertaining and informative, however , the bulk of shows on TV now geared for teens like Jersey Shore utilize partying, bad health and carelessness and do not enhance maturing  young adult brains.

Writing is a solitary pursuit, but we need outside feedback to make us better writers. To paraphrase Stephen King in On Writing, “draft with door closed, but revise with the door open. I frequently torture my great friend Elizabeth with my wretched drafts, and since she stands outside my story, she can find the cracks more easily.

Here is hoping my students are busy this weekend working on their rewrites, just as I need to get back to my novel. Just stopped by to say hello.

 Happy Writing.

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.

Five Writing Rules According To High School Students

Earlier this year, I asked my students what’s important to them about writing. Since teenagers are the authority on all things cool, I expected negative comments and complaints about such staid topics as writing and English, but the kids surprised me;. their responses were astute and thoughtful.

Victoria said, "If I try to add things to sound smart, it ends up making me look ignorant." Novice writers are tempted to sound writerly. In the early days of my own writing, I front-loaded stories and essays to reveal my large vocabulary. No wonder nobody wanted my work. It was pretentious.

Sure, in grad school I used ten dollar words for essays, but my reader was usually an erudite professor who ate such words for breakfast.  When I first started teaching students occasionally handed in papers with sentences like “Such cartulary  extrapolated its theophenia to provide a history of said diety.” When asked what did you mean here, the response was always a red face and a shrug.

Say what you mean in words you understand. Clarity is priority one.

2. Kayla remarked, "I never want to repeat myself so many times to where I become uninteresting or sound stupid."

Early drafts are often loaded with repetitive mantra-like words and phrases and words and phrases and words and phrases, as if the writer needs to warm up the engines, and remind themselves of the point of the essay, poem, or story. I call these false starts. For me they come in three’s: the first three lines or stanzi of a poem, the first three paragraphs of a story, and the first three pages of a novel. The holy trinity of crap.

Ok I repeated my syntactical structure there. You get what I mean in those words and phrases.

3. “Vocabulary ...can turn a bland sentence into a memorable one with relative ease," Mallory wrote. "Large words, small words, it doesn't matter, I'm happy to use them all." Words are the foundation of good writing, and fluency with them makes us better writers. I tell my students to take a foreign language. "It will enhance your English. "

Mallory is a good writer, largely because she always has her nose in a book. Readers are exposed to multiple words, and it shows in their work. Read a lot.

4. According to Katie, "Books allow a person to see the world and know things they didn't know before."

If we are doing the hard work, we aren’t relying solely on what we know; we write to explore what we don't know as if excavating for a new spin on a truth.

5.  “Writing is hard,” Tosha said. “I wish there was a handout that told me how not to make mistakes."

I hate to tell you this, kid, but there ain’t no such thing. The only way to learn how to write better is write, make mistakes, write even more failed manuscripts, screw up more of them, and eventually write something good. Next time you will write something bad, but maybe not as often, and eventually your good writing will outweigh the putrid pages. But there will be days, always, when some of your writing stinks a big one.

Exercise: I stole this from my Friend Cindy Sterling. Whenever her students were stuck, she had them remove a shoe, set it on a piece of white paper, draw an outline, then write a first person narrative through the viewpoint of the shoe. The shoe can belong to anyone famous (Madonna, the president, Clark Gable), or not ( your own shoe,) cartoon characters (Scooby Doo, Charlie Brown) etc. . What what the shoe's life like? What have they seen? Where has it been? What happens when it rains? What happens on the basketball court if you are Michael Jordan's shoe? What would the Dalai Lama's footwear know?

Happy Writing

More Antioch Highlights: Poetry with Jim Daniels

Part of the Antioch week involves an afternoon workshop group where participants either create work or critique existing work. In my workshop with Jim Daniels, a well known poet who also writes screenplays and fiction, we submitted ten poems a month ahead.  These were posted on a private link to view and copy so we could be prepared to discuss one another’s poems.

On the first day Jim quotes a tweet from Megan Fox “we live in a world where losing your phone is more dramatic than losing your virginity.”

Jim discusses his expectations and goals for the week. “Your packets are works in progress. You all need some help with the poems.” His goal is to help improve poems. “A residual effect of commenting on other people’s writing is that transfers to your own work. We are trying to help one another find a voice and do it better, not to rewrite each other’s poems in our own aesthetic.”

Jim feels it’s important to have strangers look at your work. “People who know you know what the poem is about, but we leave out details others need.”

He believes “Good critique is constructive and beneficial, and is not meant to discourage writing.” . (I’ve been to workshops where either one or more participant or the instructor makes you want to burn everything you’ve written.)

“Try not to focus on technique, but focus on engaging discussion,” Hh says. “Participate, avoid passing judgment, and make specific suggestions for revision. It's not an in exact process. We all have biases.” Jim’s bias is toward clarity.  He “wants to feel something below the neck” and have “an emotional payoff at the end.”

With ten participants, ten poems each and five days, we would not have time to discuss our complete packets. Jim had us pick two we felt needed the most work. In the end we had enough time to do here poems each.

While most of the week was spent work shopping poems,  Jim provides some insights, such  as” the title is the doorway to a poem.” It is a literal or tonal grounding, but not both. The poem “Autumn Comes to Martin’s Ferry, Ohio,” produces a physical grounding of time and place, whereas a poem entitled “Pity for Blondes” provides a tonal grounding.

“A good title cannot do both.”

In short poems there is more pressure on the title to provide grounding and contrast, which he terms the Zero Circle- where everything and nothingness compress together. He cites Robert Bly’s The Sea & The Honeycomb (a book of tiny poems) as an example for us to study.

Another interesting point I learned this week is the Sandwich Theory. Daniels claims in drafts we tend to begin and end with bread (My love of back-story!!!), burying the interesting stuff inside too much dry bread..

He recommends a book called Poetry is a Kind of Lying. This recommendation s made in context of a discussion around how “you can’t write about a subject in one poem. Get obsessed and stay obsessed. It may take many poems to express the idea.

While critiquing someone’s villanelle, I learned there is more pressure on the inside lines, non repeated lines. “They illuminate the tension against the repeated lines.”

If we're stuck sometimes point of view is the problem.”Second person can work by  creating a kind of intimacy not found in third person, and is less self centered than first.

Daniel’s reinforced how “Discovery and surprise is important in the poem..”

He also points out how  pop culture references like Coke, movie stars, etc. are becoming more common.,

He recommends reading journals before submitting work. Zoetrope.com helps one browse literary magazines to see one’s work fits.

While we didn’t do any exercises, Jim showed us some samples of a project he did with kids in Pittsburgh where they created Self portrait poems from objects in pockets.

Happy Writing.

Writing a Good Query is Like Getting a Root Canal While Hanging From a Trapeze

The clouds shimmer like aluminum in the crepuscular light as I write this.

I had a one hour consult with Mark Malatesta, a former literary agent who now offers consulting services to writers. His blog, which you can access for free, is loaded with good insight.
http://literaryagentny.com/blog/

I took advantage of his limited time offer to new clients for a one hour phone call for $97. Before our one hour phone call Mark sent me a set of questions to answer, as well as information about my work. The session includes a free MP3 recording of our conversation. In addition, Mark sends a link to another MP3 on insider secrets to getting published. Before my phone call I had already gotten a lot of bang for my bucks.

Some of what we discussed was encouraging. He praised my body of writing and knowledge of the YA markets. He feels my books are marketable and I am ready to be represented. Yet he confirmed the difficulty in breaking in. For example, one needs to contact a minimum of 100 agents, and expect only 10% to respond. There are many reasons why agents do not bite, the chief being a poorly written query. The letter is the key to the castle, and I would rather write a 300 page novel than a query letter. It’s easier.

Our dialogue provided me with ideas on how to improve my horrible query letter, and the conversation reinforced something I already knew; I have a lot of work to do. Drudge work, not the creative fun stuff like crafting characters, placing them in peril and letting them talk to you. Writing is an art, but publishing is a business, and if I want to get published, I have to suck it up and put on my metaphorical three piece suit.

If I decide to use more of Mark’s consultations, we will work on producing a query that will hopefully attract a number of agents.

So my assignment to those of writing prose (Most agents don’t represent poets) is; visit his web site, download the MP3 and sign up for his newsletter. You have nothing to lose because these things are all free.


Happy Writing.

If Only Words Were Planets

Last night my friend Elizabeth and I drove to Kent State to see/hear W.S. Merwin read. The trip was more than two hours way, and well worth the time. Merwin is 83 years old, yet he spoke and read non stop for 90 minutes. I am almost half his age, but I'm not sure I can talk that long. Perhaps he was energized by the hundreds of poetry lovers in the audience.

I'm trying to revise an old, possibly failed, novel and I can't get past the first page. If I'm bored, imagine how legions of strangers would react after shelling out money for the privildge of being tortured by my words. You, blog reader, at least get this drivel for free.

Elizabeth suggested I start where the main character conceives his "idea." Maybe. The problem is, the character posess few "rooting qualities, meaning the reader won't root for him to succeed. One friend described him as creepy. So maybe this sheaf of 200 plus pages is better off in the recycle bin, and I can free up space on my hard drive when I hit the delete key.

Writing is one bad decision after another. In revision either we make it worse, or the words find their own orbit.



Happy Writing.

Get Rid of the Wrong Words

The highlight of my week was another guest speaker, Virginia Euwer Wollf. She is a lively speaker whose passion for writing radiates from her. Ms. Wollf is probably in her seventies, but moves like a much younger woman. [later I saw her vigorously walking on the beach]

The hardest part may come as a surprise: Getting rid of all the wrong words. [this reinforces why we need NOT to revise and edit our work too quickly. We need distance from the mss in order to give it a cold read, and read it the way an editor will.]

Cleverness is not a good trait for a kid’s book

If a story is in trouble the problem is in the point of view
When you get into trouble- look at how far you’ve come. Sometimes [a fix] can be as simple as one sentence.
When it stops working create a storyboard.

[She mentioned some of the obstacles we all impose on ourselves, ie texting, facebook and other distractions. There is a web site called Freedom that for a free, will lock you out of the internet so you can write.]


Ms. Wollf uses Rachmaninoff as an example on writer’s block. After receiving terrible reviews fro his first concerto he suffered three years of depression. He went to a hypnotist, and was able to create his wonderful second piano concerto.

[Most of her session was question an answer. Ms. Wollf was interested in what WE were working on. She enjoyed it when I talked about why writers need to attend workshops and conferences. I said, “Our friends and families don’t mind that we write, they just don’t want to hear about it. All of us in this room have imaginary friends who are real to us, and we get that about each other.”

Ms. Wollf mentioned Harold and The Purple Crayon as a great motivator.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_and_the_Purple_Crayon


Happy Writing.

If There is an Axe in the Room There Has To Be a Reason

In my notes is a random page that likely came out of a First Pages discussion, but I like some of the quotes from it.

Stories are told in scenes- they move the story forward
Something changes- if not there is no reason for the story to occur
Each scene needs a hook to catch the reader. The book itself needs a big shepherd’s hook, [but throughout are all these small hooks to keep the reader reading.]

[There are only so many story likes out there.] Take something familiar and tweak it- take something ordinary and make it feel new. [We all know the Wizard of Oz, but Geoffrey McGuire gave us the Wicked Witch of the West’s side of the tale in Wicked.]

Don’t trick the reader. [I love this]If There is an Axe in the Room There Has To Be a Reason. It can’t be there by “accident.”

3 line rule in dialogue,[ otherwise you are writing monologues] Of course there are exceptions
[character] Flaws add validity. [Not flaws in the writing.]
##

Happy Writing.

Rejection is a Gift

It hurts when you open that e-mail or envelope and read, "Sorry...we don't have a place for your work."

Some rejections can be downright rude, like the one I got from an unnamed editor who returned my query letter with "NOT THIS ONE!" scrawled across the page. Really? Was that necessary? Did he not consider that I was going to doubt my ability as a writer even with a gentle, "No thank you?"

There are contemptable editors out there. (Not many, thank goodness.)Maybe this guy had just broken up with his wife, or his dog died. Perhaps he had a hernia, or a sunburn. Whatever his problem, I crossed out his publication in my Writer's Market with a giant X in Sharpie Marker. Two can play at this game, a##hole! And yes, I did feel better aftwrads.

I have framed my best rejection letter. The handwritten note reads, "Too bad we don't have enough space for all that we love. Keep trying.B." Isn't that wonderful? It was written by the late Betty Shipley, 1996-1998 Oklahoma Poet Laureate. I never met her, but when I thanked Ms. Shipley for the rejection, she sent me an autograghed copy of her chapbook "Somebody Say Amen." When I learned she died about a year later, I cried as if mourning a relative.

I used to keep rejection letters, back when they were snail mail letters. I may still have that snarky one. The letters remind me the distance I have travelled from no to yes, and I get far more acceptances now. You just have to keep writing and sending out work.

Rejection is part of writing.
One poet I know immediatly mails her poems to someone else as soon she opens her rejection notice. "If three editors say no,I reevaluate them," she told me.

It takes elephant hide and steely nerve to be a writer. You are not a real writer until you have been rejected, so get over it, send the work somewhere else, and keep writing.

Embrace the Rejection.

Thinking About My Blog, I Prepare to Come Up With Some Great Advice On Why Gerunds Create Ponderous Writing.

Look at the title of this blog. I used 19 words to say "Gerunds create ponderous writing." I’m not a math teacher, but I think the revision reveals more clarity. “Thinking About My Blog” is nonessential because one would assume I am thinking about my blog as I prepare.

Just what IS a gerund? It’s the present tense “ing” form of a verb, or a noun formed from a verb. Grammatically, it is acceptable to use them. However, too many, and your sentences become clusters of passive words.
Here is an example of a sentence that needs work:

Walking into the room, he decided to watch TV so he flipped on the remote.

Okay, grammatically, this sentence is correct, but is it necessary to state "walking into the room?” Isn’t it a given that in order to be IN the room he had to walk into it? Not every direction needs to be written unless he(watch excessive pronoun use) were recovering from an accident, and he hobbled into the room. Or perhaps he dashed in because there was something hot on the news. Or he was drunk and staggered in.

Unless there a concrete verb to move the story, just leave “walking into the room” off.

YOUR TWO BEST FRIENDS ARE VERBS AND NOUNS.

Who is HE anyway? “He” could be anybody. As a writer, you need to provide the reader with enough detail he or she can make a mental picture. Don’t begin a story or novel with a series of pronouns unless there is telling detail to distinguish the person. Wordiness is not detail. Wordiness is just a string of uninteresting words in succession that don’t add vivid imagery. Is he old? young? biracial? Redheaded? A student? A bartender? Flat footed? Fat? Tall? You get the idea.

The young man staggered into the room, almost knocking over the TV.
(Yes, I used a gerund at the end of the sentence yet it added telling detail.)

If you insist on using the verb ‘to walk’, add more detail:

Jeremy walked into the room as if he were being chased by a mountain lion.
Now we get a mental movie of how our now named character walks.

Exercise:

Look back over the opening page of your latest manuscript. How many different verbs have you used? Do you use the same verb more than once? What other words can you use to describe the action? Have you used any pronouns? In what ways can you identify your character so that “he” and “she” are clearer?



Happy (revising) and Writing.

Stripping Away the Dead Wood

I am revisiting a story I wrote several years ago with plans to submit it to the Y-City book for the Arts Festival. Revisiting, and revising. The tale has a lot going for it, yet it also contains embarrassing diction and syntax crimes that I accuse my own students of commiting: wordiness, confusing pronouns, overuse of the verb to be. Yikes. Thoughts like, “Did I really write that?” Run through my head as I edit and revise. Overall, I like this story. Short stories do not come naturally to me. I think only really GOOD writers can write them. It takes me three hundred pages to get to the point, so writing short, complete tale is a small miracle. I’d share the story on this blog, but I only have part of it. Unfortunately I do not have a complete copy saved on my hard drive. What I have is the beginning of a redo from a hard copy that is now buried in one of the million boxes stacked in my house as I get floors refinished.

Rewriting a story is a little like refinishing hard wood: stripping off the old, stained layers, filling in the chipped areas, and pulling out old nails to create an elegant sheen. I knew when I first composed the story almost a decade ago that it lacked the right furniture. I had to experience a few more years of life in order to assemble the story’s rooms. Cross your fingers I find the hard copy, otherwise I will have to lay an entirely new foundation, and that will take more time.


Happy Writing.

This Blog Was Written by Me and Other Crimes of Passive Voice

We still have one more day before National Poetry Month begins, so I will sneak in some prose advice by request. (Thank you, Amanda.)

Imagine you are lounging in the back yard on a glorious Spring day, a book lies on your lap and a tall glass of ice tea is within reach. You are reading a mystery, and it begins like this:

It was night, and he should have known not to venture out on a night so dark it reeked of danger. Menace hung in the air like soot, but Edgar needed to see Seville. He sped his gait and thought of her waiting for him in her candlelit grace, no doubt wearing red. Yes, she’d be clad in red with her blonde hair hanging loosely across her shoulders. Edgar’s pace quickened. He heard a click, like a lighter. A figure stepped from the shadow. A gun was being held in his hand and was being pointed at Edgar. WAIT A MINUTE! What happened here? THIS WRITER COMMITTED A HORRIBLE CRIME. She robbed the paragraph of its tension by using (horror!) PASSIVE VOICE.
Up until we see the gun, the passage has drama and tension. Yet the moment when we should see the most tension, that gun falls flat and the reader has either tossed the book in outdoor fireplace or he is asleep.

There are three problems with this sentence:
1. Overuse of the verb to be.
2. Passive construction makes the GUN the direct object of the sentence rather than Edgar.
3. An overly long sentence dissolves the tension.
Also, using the pronoun "his hand" might be confusing. Whose hand? Edgar’s, or the shadowy figure’s?

Here is a way to solve the sentence:
A figure stepped from the shadows and pointed gun at Edgar.

NOW we see Edgar is in danger and we want to know what happens next...

Tip: If you want to decrease the distance between you and your readers, keep your sentences active. Passive voice is like a passive person; you really NEVER KNOW WHAT THEY ARE THINKING.

Happy Writing.

Bury the dead phrases

Dead and Padded Phrases

ANTYHING THAT DOES NOT ADD TO THE MEANING OF THE SENTENCE NEEDS TO GO

What do these phrases even mean??? They sound like they are effective, but ultimately the words are wordy and empty.

Be that as it may…
That being said…
More or less …
In the last analysis …
In terms of …
The fact of the matter I, or The truth of the matter is….
Just say what you mean.

If you are writing in first person, your personal opinion is implied. There is no need to state it.

"Personally, I believe in UFOs."
Just say "I believe in UFOs."

Instead of:
Personally, I think he’s a jerk.
Just say
"I think he’s a jerk." Or "He’s a jerk."

"As for me I prefer carrots."
Just say "I prefer carrots."

Instead of "In my opinion, he should go skating."
Just say,
"He should go skating."
or "I think he should go skating."

TIGHTEN YOUR WRITING
Also,
Avoid boring and gratuitous adjectives.

Very, really, totally, truly..these adjectives don’t add anything, so don’t use them

He was really very cute
Just say
He was cute.
OR if you want to use more specific detail:

He was a tall, lean mass of muscles, and his face could grace on the cover of People Magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People issue.