Monthly Archives: June 2016
IT’S FOOT STUBBING TIME
IT’S FOOT STUBBING TIME!
I’ve discovered the biggest boon to writers ever. A broken toe!
What’s the most difficult thing that writer’s face? It’s their own procrastination, I’m sure. Listen to ourselves: “Oh, I should sit down and write, oh, yes, I’ll sit right down and write after I scrub the bathroom, I’ll sit down and write after I make this call, I’ll sit down and write when the timer goes off, when the sun goes down, when the moon comes up.”
When hell freezes over could be more likely if procrastination has taken hold. I’ve spent whole days away from writing, doing anything else I could think of.
But, what if ones toe becomes broken (not on purpose, mind you, but because of an accident or even stupidity), and one is forced to sit down? (It doesn’t necessarily have to be through stupidity, I’m only writing from my own experience.) One does have to sit down a lot when something like that happens.
Of course there are many things you can do sitting down, you don’t have to write. You can read. Ah, but if you read. What happens then? When I’m reading a book that I genuinely enjoy, one that speaks to my genre, and has characters I can identify with, I drift away into an inward looking mode. The creative juices flow and the muses are tap, tap, tapping. I’m visiting my story, my plot and my characters in my mind. The book falls by the way/chairside, and I head over to my laptop. Now, of necessity, I must grab something nearby, hoist myself up and hobble off to my laptop, but the result is the same. Once seated I can get into the nitty-gritty of the problem that had banished me to procrastinationhood.
There was a sticky area in my cozy under revision (before I ran my flip-flopped bare toe into the wheel of the grocery cart), one that had driven me into a an outwardly delightful, but inwardly frustrating procrastination of several days duration. But because of the broken phalange I’ve been sitting more and reading more. I’ve been led into daydreams and back into a groove. I’ve beaten the inertia.
But, aren’t there less painful ways to achieve that desire to sit down and write?
Look on the bright side, oh ye of broken toe, six to eight weeks is a lot of revision and reading time.
Reading and writing as a hospital visitor
My mother has been in the ICU for eleven days now following heart surgery. I’ve visited her every day; sitting in a hospital room watching a muted television stuck on the HGTV channel has not inspired me to write fiction. Reading–I have done a fair amount of that. Of squiggly lines and numbers, not words, a constant stream of changing numbers that I struggle to interpret.
The writing I’ve produced has been non-fiction, texts updating my family on my mother’s condition and progress, answering questions, explaining things that I don’t understand in a reassuring way that won’t set off any alarms. I try to wring the emotion out of my electronic updates using simple words and, often, emoji. (A picture is worth a thousand words, and I love my emoji.)
I don’t report when my mother moans, talks in her sleep, or the look on her face when she is awake and uncomfortable, tired, depressed, discouraged. A moan from my mother is more revealing than when she verbalizes that she is uncomfortable. A moan is just one sound yet I know immediately that there’s a problem. I don’t include that in my family updates, other than to report the extent of her pain, but as a fiction writer the opposite is true. I must convey pain through “showing not telling”.
I would like to work on that in my fiction writing: increase showing and decrease telling. Instead of saying “I’m tired of the drive to the hospital,” I could say “I feel like putting my head down on the steering wheel and going to sleep.” (If my daughters read that, I imagine I will generate a flurry of texts among them concerned about my well-being.) My intent is to convey weariness not tiredness. As a writer, my job is to insure that my writing is interpreted correctly—whether by my daughters or my readers.
I aim for clarity and brevity in my writing. Yet fiction writing is improved through the use of metaphors, similes, analogies, and emotion. In the above example, I would use “weary” in my family text, if at all, but in my fiction writing I would incorporate the steering wheel.
Writers glean writing material from every experience, whether through an overheard conversation between two nurses in the ICU or observing a frustrated woman help her elderly mother navigate the security line at an airport. Most of us can’t resist recording these tidbits so we can refer to them when needed. Some writers carry tiny notebooks. I prefer to record them in my phone. It’s always with me and less conspicuous. Who knows? I could be typing a text response to my daughters: “No, I am not suicidal.”
REVISION IS AN EIGHT LETTER WORD
REVISION IS AN EIGHT LETTER WORD . . and that equals two four letter words.
The dictionary says that to revise means to reconsider and alter, and I guess that that is what I’ve been doing.
(Have I ever mentioned Jasper Fforde in any of my posts? (I can hear groaning and moaning. What? I’ve mentioned him before? Too often? Sorry). In one of his Thursday Next books he goes into a long riff about the use of ‘that that’. Totally hilarious. But not to digress from an unsavory topic to a more pleasant one. Oh, no. Never that.)
I find myself revising my cozy- again. This time there’s a plan. I will go over it twice, perfect the first page and write a log-line. Then I will pitch it to whoever is (un)fortunate enough to be in my sights at the Maine Crime Writer’s Crime Bake in November.
That’s two revisions by November. The beginning of November. I think I can do it.
A long time ago I submitted to this post a triangle which delineated the hierarchy of revision. I thought it was a great plan. I need to dig it out and put it to good use. I need to put a lot of ideas to good use. I need help.
At our last Thursday evening’s group therapy, writer’s weekly critique, admonition, encouragement and jam and cookie session, the most horrible plan I had ever heard of, in regard to revision, was put forth. I didn’t say so at the time, but I was horror struck. This revision entailed putting aside your first (second, third, fourth, whatever) draft, let it rest, and then rewrite it without availing yourself of the benefit of whatever written draft you had just written! Rewrite blindly from scratch! Have you ever? One would have to be mad.
Maybe this works for some writers. I’m willing to bet they’re short story writers. And I bet that that (!!!) method wasn’t one of the levels on the hierarchy of revision triangle.
I’d be willing to try it on a short story. A short short story. Maybe flash fiction. An e-mail that disappeared before one’s very eyes, before send was hit, now that’s the place to try it. Actually, that has happened, and I think the resulting e-mail was worded a lot better than the first.
So, there are methods and there are methods, and they all lead to some form of madness. As the Cheshire Cat once said to Alice when she remarked she didn’t want to go among mad people:
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad,” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Here is where I am now. In the middle of a muddle of revision.
Eleanor Ingbretson
Karen Whalen
llandrigan
Heidi Wilson
Mike M
Thursday Night Writes 