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I Answer Some Questions About Writing V

10/23/2020

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All of the answers, none of the questions....

I think an occasional ALL CAPS might work. Italics are the usual way of emphasizing.
Be careful—readability is very important....
Guilt won't get your book written—it just makes you feel bad.
Find something that makes you feel good—knitting, fly fishing, basketball, old movies, video games....
The process of learning something is for me the best part of any activity....
Playlists for books are a great idea….
Do it.
The "real" person will be transformed by the magic of imagination and the exigencies of the story into a "fictional" person.
My response was pretty basic—don't base your characters on people who will be hurt.
Your life as you live it is your most precious writing resource. Don't be afraid to use it.
What does your focal character see? There's your description—maybe, if it's needed
I actually think Tolkien was doing this….
The best novel? Oh—War & Peace, by my boy Tolstoy.
You'd don't want your best writing buried where no one will notice it!
Setting is always important, unless your characters are floating around shapeless in a formless void. They are some place.
Remember—the BODY is also a setting....
Probably The Great Gatsby, for the punctuation.
Yes—I am inspired by em-dashes and commas!
I may have talked about this before....

Shelby Hearon, my first creative writing teacher: "It's never the book in your head."

Larry Heinemann, my last creative writing teacher: "Revision is where the money is."

You can tag the dialogue through action or setting, too.
What are your characters doing while talking? What are they seeing?
Read it backwards, aloud.
This removes the context of the paragraph, and you can see (hear) each sentence in all its glory/ignominy.
Fifty-one years, ha!
You have to be persistent.
I think foreshadowing is best accomplished as an aspect of revision.
In your first draft, going forward, it's more important to just get to the end.
They disappear into the background—which is what we want.
Obvious isn't always bad, and what's obvious to you—the author—isn't necessarily going to be obvious to the reader....
Are they talking on the phone or face to face?
They could be walking, shooting zombies, fishing, watching tv, washing dishes, sitting on the can, shopping, driving, in church, in a meeting, fighting—they could be doing whatever it is people do....
Also—it's important to think: are they actually listening to each other?
I mean, really—how many times do people actually fully pay attention to one another?
Good question! I'm trying to figure this out myself!
Try going for empathy.
No one is really frightened.
I would keep moving forward and get the story written and then look critically at what you have.
Do you really need a backstory with past relationships? Maybe—but maybe not.
You take something you've written that has a lot of problems (all texts are flawed) and then you fix the problems.
It takes time and attention and is really rewarding.
I think the aging process has left me more easily distracted than I once was.
The problem with writing is that life gets in the way.
How much time can you afford to spend on writing? For most of us—not enough.
Having a roof over your head and food in your belly is probably more important than writing!
A lot of writers do practice writing….
It's great to treat yourself when you accomplish something! Everyone needs to do this!
For me—champagne and turkey legs!
Many years ago in a class like ours I wrote a story I thought was pretty good. But I know now it was a good student story....
I know for a fact that at the time I wrote it, I didn't know what the heck I was doing….
There are any number of writers who have gone down the road of pomposity.
The best writers—the best revolutionaries, the best eye doctors, whatever—are informed by a sense of humor.
My advice--always be aware of the absurdities and ridiculosities. And embrace them.
My whole life up to the point I finished...?
The difference is—LIFE.
A LOT OF TIME.
Just keep going down one path or another until you find the right path....
DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING! Keep all your variations. Trust me—you have room on your hard drive.
Each round of revision I focus something else—dialogue, setting, transitions, colors, textures, whatever....
Write a story with a strong beginning.
From looking out the window, from the things I see in life. From dreams. From snippets of people talking that I overhear. From things I learn....
I look at a situation and ask, "What if...."
There are often big big BIG differences between "Truth" and "Fact."
The highly personal voice is always very engaging. You can do a lot with a memoir
Do you have a citation for that?
(I could also be stupid!)
Borders are interesting—they are where things come together, and where things come apart....
Life gets in the way. You just have to do the best you can with the time you have....

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Pandemic Status XI

10/23/2020

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All indices up. Rage still leads the way, but Terror up the most.

Because this is a terrifying world.

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Odd Job: Wolfe Nursery

10/16/2020

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Wolfe ad, 03/13/1982

Several years ago I was on an AWP panel chaired by the late great Larry Heinemann. The theme of the panel was work and jobs, and how these basic human endeavors affects and influences us as writers. Larry thought it was a good idea to introduce the panel by listing each job the panelist had had in their lives. The panel was at 800am (insane!) and I remember sitting there hungover and tired and feeling more and more depressed as Larry introduced me and read through the list of 17 jobs I had given him. I sat there thinking I have made some bad fucking life decisions….

(Then I got up and gave the worst presentation I’ve ever given, but that’s another story…).

(And of course bad life decisions make for good literature, maybe).

So, anyway—this is one of those bad life decisions. Wolfe Nursery. I worked at the south location for about four months in 1982. I sold shade trees, unloaded trucks, did whatever the stupid bosses told me to do—I even mopped the floor once (a fiasco).

I sold a magnolia tree once—got a $30 commission. Yay! Real money for broke-ass me.

Much of my time was wasted unloading trucks of fertilizer and peat moss. There was a competing nursery just on the other side of Ben White and we used to denigrate their manhood because they used forklifts to unload their trucks. We used our backs! We used brute strength!

A semi would back into the soil additive section, and three guys would get to work—one up on the flat bed of the truck, one in the middle, and a stacker on the end. The truck guy would peel the 40-pound bags of sheep or cow shit off the pallet (peel because the plastic bags would stick together) and toss the bag to the guy in the middle, who would spin and toss it to the stacker, who would arrange the bags into an orderly, stable stack. The middle job was the best, I thought—you could sort of catch the bag in mid-air and flip it to the stacker without too much effort. The truck position was the worst—you had to pull those bag up and throw them.

Three of us on a job like that on a fully-loaded semi? Five or six hours.

And at the end of a shift—yeah, you smelled like you’d been working in the soil additive section.

Selling shade trees was better. Or selling roses! Or just about anything else.

I see in this ad the little box for “spring bulbs.” Yeah, I remember those fucking things. There were crates and crates of bulbs, and each bulb was in a little cellophane packet closed off with a tiny tight rubber band. It was my task, one rainy afternoon, to remove those rubber bands. Hundreds of them. For four hours or so. I was cross-eyed by the time I finished.

After work I stopped by the Deep Eddy for a beer or ten, and I was complaining about my day. Peter Nye said, “You realize that on the other end there was some guy putting those rubber bands on, right?”

And I did realize that! I had actually spent the cross-eyed afternoon thinking that we were all victims of the vast capitalist conspiracy! That this work was meaningless, that my labor would never be adequately compensated….

I was happy when they laid me off in May.

Yeah, look at it.

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Pandemic Status X

10/16/2020

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Here's a pandemic life note: I look better in a mask than I look without a mask.

I wonder why?

All indices up this week because of course they are.

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I Answer Some Questions About Writing IV

10/9/2020

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As usual, all answers, no questions....

I'm a huge procrastinator, too.
This works.
You'll have to experiment around and find the best time for you. Me, I write at night….
The easiest thing in the world is to not write—this is true for everyone
I hate getting started. But once I start, I'm fine.
Most of the time we'll never know the autobiographical relationship of poet and poem.
Poems tend to be more personal than stories—there are fewer places to hide in a poem.
I would always prefer that students analyze a text rather than talk about their feelings about the text—analysis over autobiography.
A university class is not a book club.
As writers we might strive to be perceptive, rather than judgmental.
It’s (mostly, probably) perfectly okay to find the behavior of a fictional character repellent!
The super-badass character is also aspirational for many readers….
The discomfort perhaps comes as we recognize the limits of our empathy and the difficulty of truly imagining the experience of another human.
Factual aspects of a story can always be researched, and research is always important to a creative writer.
Take your knowledge of these emotions and give them to your characters.
It means reading for HOW a text means, not what a text means. It's reading as perception, not judgement.
It's maybe like when dreams fade once you wake up.
When you're bored with what you're doing.
All writers have an internal editor. I sure do! As writers we have to find a way to shut up that voice, dodge around it, suppress it.
When you've accomplished one thing and want another challenge.
When your vision of the world changes.
When you learn something new.....
Keeping notes is a really good idea! Most writers I know have overflowing notebooks with will all sorts of ideas and inspirations....
I think this would all have to depend on the writer and where they are at that moment in their lives....
Said is NOT dead. I would strongly advise you to stick with SAID and ASKED (almost) all the time.
They are inoffensive little words that become invisible.
When they are invisible, readers can actually focus on your character's brilliant talk.
Maybe try skipping the things you're having trouble with.
Add those things later as part of the revision process...?
Is this writer's block or is it the voice of your internal editor?
Not necessarily.
In a short story, you can get by with only one "round" character. You can distinguish between secondary characters by giving them distinguishing physical characteristics.
(I learned this from my man Tolstoy, in War & Peace).
For a long work like a novel, you want to keep character notes just so you don't suddenly change their educational background or eye color or whatever.
You can improvise as much as you like, but keep notes on your improvisation.
I feel pretty confident starting when I know more or less how I want the book to end, and I have an outline that will get me at least 40 pages or so into the first draft. But even better is a BIG outline.
I use both. I love my little notebooks, and I love my phone.
An advantage of the notebooks: when you're at a meeting (in pre-pandemic times) it's considered impolite to mess with your phone while someone is speaking. But you can write in your notebook and say whatever you feel like saying, even if you're slagging the speaker! It's fun.
Getting any book out is a big deal. After that, you can't control how many people read it, and you really can't control who likes it.
So much of what is considered success is luck. But—you have to work hard to put yourself in a position to have luck.
Research! Creative writers do research!
Show their character through action. Just like every day real people show who they are by how they act....
Yes, I think all of us should be writing in response to the pandemic.
This historical crisis we're going through right now is complicated and exhausting—it calls for writers to pay attention to it.

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Pandemic Status IX

10/9/2020

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Of course all indices are way way way way up again. This is America 2020.

Let's look back at my pandemic status for late April. Such an innocent and stress-free time!

Terror was actually trending down. (I didn't know Terror).

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Almost Five Things That Are Good

10/2/2020

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Everything is a mess right now and poor America is sadly trending negative. Here are five things that are good:

Deven Green—her Friday couch concerts are the capstone of my week. Deven Green makes the world a better place!
The new Elizabeth Hand novel, The Book of Lamps and Banners. I just started it and it’s wonderful and Cass Neary is one of my all-time fave fictional characters.
Beer—always. Plus pandemic beer deliveries!
Turkey—always. Plus turkey probably has at least as many anti-viral benefits as hydroxy, and tastes better.

Well. Four things are all I can come up with right now. Maybe the world is worse off than I thought.

Better for you than hydroxychloroquine!

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Pandemic Status VIII

10/2/2020

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Well, of course all indices are way way way up this week. We’re in pandemic chaos around this here sea to shining sea.

Thank god for beer deliveries.

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I Answer Some Questions about Writing III

9/25/2020

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Here are some of my answers to written questions from students this past week….
(Yes, as always--just the answers—no questions).

This is one of those things in writing you have to discover for yourself—what works for you, and what doesn't.
And what works for you now might not work later, as your life goes through different stages....
Time works best for me, since I have so little of it.
Some days are better than other days. There are days when your brain is dialed in and the words come almost effortlessly.
Characters need to earn the happy ending.
(Of course, what a happy ending consists of is highly subjective. What's "happy" for one reader might come off as "prison" for another!)
Life gets in the way of art, sometimes.
Keep trying different things until you find what's right for you.
I'd recommend reading good, critical biographies of writers you like. You can safely cancel them if they turn out to be jerks.
Maybe see yourself as the true role model.
The real problem is in life trajectories….
Everyone has to deal with the internal editor. But—the internal editor is always wrong!
It's possible to accept that your first draft is terrible and keep moving on, because the real work comes through in revision. So just keep moving forward.
Remember, ALL TEXTS ARE FLAWED.
I'm not so sure I have a passion for writing—rather, maybe, I have a passion for understanding the world I live in, and storytelling is how I accomplish the understanding...sort of.....
My first memory of thinking about writing was in Fall 1969, reading Tolkien where they’re going up into the Misty Mountains and thinking "I could never write something like this." (Still true, btw).
Advice to me in the past: find a way to get over/around shyness and depression.
It's a weasel word, like all other weasel words.
Is it a problem?
I missed four days in June and three days in February. Other than that, I've written every day this year. But I'm in a different place in my life than you are.
You're young—you have time to meander.
It's good to write every day but you shouldn't feel pressure.
(Always good, btw, to keep a writing log. I have a simple excel spreadsheet to keep track of words written per day on various projects).
Long works are always intimidating! Every day I think--omg how will I write 100,000 words!
But you know what? A page a day is a book a year.
Slow and steady really does win the race, without burnout.
Telling a story visually and verbally are different things.
I don't know if it's better or worse, but it's something you can do.
I think 1st person/past is easiest, because it sort of mirrors how we (or most people) think.
But 3rd certainly has value. 2nd is mostly writers showing off*, but it can be fun....
*this is a joke, in case you're writing 2nd person stories! Really, go be your 2nd person self!
Just the usual imagery, language, and genius!
But poems rely on a more intense language
I don't know how page numbers/story titles/author names can get left off a submission, but they do get left off—a lot. Sad!
A voice that sounds like a person talking.
Anything done well is fine by me!
I once answered this question by saying that prose writers think straight ahead, while poets think sideways.
That doesn't help much, does it?
Poetry generally has more emotion in it because there are fewer places to hide. That can be scary!
You should be as specific as possible.
It's just empty words.
You make a statement—then take the statement another step.
This...I do not know.
Read the stories we've looked at so far this semester.
Listen to yourself talk—listen for the punctuation in your words. It's there. Listen for the pauses.
Everyone has a different rhythm. Your characters should probably have different rhythms, too.
It's not that hard. Like everything else it will come with practice.