WRITING LESSONS

By Sharon Ewing 

I don’t have an English degree and never took a journalism course, so I suspected writing my first novel might not be an easy task. But having endless books on the subject and a dedicated group of writers willing to critique my writings, I was ready to do battle. I figured, the more armor I could gather, the better my chances of winning this war of words. I believed, innocently enough, that I’d readily accomplish my goal. Grammar, punctuation and other structural elements were easy-peasy, having taught them over and over ad nauseum for the last several years. Now, I expected I’d master all the intricacies of plot, character development, tension, crafting dialogue and everything else needed to fashion an enjoyable narrative and planned on having my book ready in about a year. I set this goal shortly after retirement, nearly two years ago and true to my expectations, I’ve learned a great deal.

I’ve learned that the road to success is “paved with good intentions.” Mine, I discovered was also mired with innumerable procrastination habits. I indulged in my natural gift for organization to the limit. But setting up my desk, sharpening pencils, arranging my files alphabetically, and buying supplies, sooner or later had to end and putting words on the paper had to begin. I’ve learned that my cell phone is another great distraction, and I must put it out of reach, or I’ll find myself checking e-mails, texts and, oh yes, it’s my turn on “Words with Friends.” I love natural light, but discovered I can’t be facing the window or I’m soon lost in whatever is happening at the bird feeder or daydreaming because something outside triggered an errant thought.

I’ve given myself permission to clear a portion of my day for what I want to do – write without guilt. I’ve learned to put aside the thought of my house gathering dust or worry about the dirty dishes in the sink when I’m writing. (No one is coming during COVID-19 anyway.) I’ve learned it’s okay to tell my husband, “I’m writing when the door is closed, please don’t disturb,” and believe it won’t send me to neglectful spouse’s hell for eternity. On the flip side, I’ve also discovered how supporting other writers can be when presented with copy that is, no doubt, far below their standards, along with their willingness to offer suggestions and encouragement at the same time.

The naïve expectations and assumptions I began with have been disproved. I’ve called out my procrastinations and hopefully exorcised most of them. In short, while the bulk of the novel still resides in my head, and I haven’t come close to the time expectations I now understand were unreasonable to begin with. Yet the many lessons I’ve already picked up on this path allow me to forge ahead. I remain undaunted!

MAYBE THE RULES FOR WRITING FICTION IS TO IGNORE THE RULES

 

By El Ochiis

I once read an article about the “Ten Rules of Writing Fiction” and one of them was to never begin the story with the weather. What if the very thing you needed to write about was central to the story you are about to tell? I meant, if your character is stuck on a road in a remote part of the Yukon, in the dead of winter, weather will be central to the plot. And, a great opening would be: “It was one of those white-outs in Yukon Territory where the blizzard fought for dominance over the impending wind and freezing rain.” Would you not get a visible image of that scene – even if you lived in Bali?

Dorothy Parker once famously quipped, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

Rarely is a Parker quip a compliment, but, speaking of the “Style” Bible, it’s been over one hundred years after the birth of E.B. White and good number of years after I first encountered his classic style guide (originally written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918 – but much expanded by White), it may be time to admit that it’s not all it is cracked up to be.

"Don’t use active voice, paragraphs should be more than one sentence, place yourself in the background, avoid foreign languages; stay clear of accents"... Nabokov’s novels are full of foreign languages, and if Nabokov did it, it can’t be that wrong.

Then, there is Rule Sixteen which implores the writer to “prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract.” The book presents two examples, the first, in each, being “wrong:”

A period of unfavorable weather set in.
vs.
It rained every day for a week.

and

He showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward.
vs.
He grinned as he pocketed the coin.

Excuse me, but I prefer “a period of unfavorable weather set in,” if only because it’s less usual and banal.

Recently, the New York Times attempted to explain Jane Austen’s enduring popularity by unpacking her word choices – what they discovered was that Austen had a propensity for words like: quite, really and very – the sort that writers are urged to avoid if they want muscular prose. So, writers are to avoid the very language that has made Jane one of the most beloved writers of all time?

Professional writers probably won’t be tied to any rule book, but, students will need to be taught that clarity is king – still, rules learned early on can be tough to shake, and most of us learned, at least a little, from Strunk & White. I understand that writing teachers know that most people need to master the rules before they can break them. But, as a reader, I prefer the offbeat to the standard – in word choice, in subject matter and in structure.

I think my greatest rule is that a piece of writing should follow a path – if readers don’t have a path to follow, they will get lost. Truth is paradox – in the greatest story ever told, the universe was created “as something out of nothing” – the first and most basic creation metaphor. Opposing ideas form the tension of its very premise. My point, there is no writing guide that can teach you style with any skill – it is in choosing which rules to learn and which to break – to what end – that you can begin to construct your own.

BAD FICTION

By Bonnie Stanard

American Book Review has posted online “Top Forty Bad Books.”  However, this is not a list. Rather, numerous college professors discuss what makes a book bad. They get beyond subjective opinions, at least in the sense that theirs are educated subjective opinions.

Does “badness” belong to the book, the reader, or the situation of reading? John Domini of Drake University asks, “Why isn’t bad in the eye of the beholder? Why should a reader go with anything other than their gut?” Readers should go with their gut, but when it comes to giving a book a reputation, one opinion’s not enough.

Terry Caesar wrote, “Can we conclude today that there are no more bad books, only bad readers? Such readers don’t know how to make even the worst books productive.” What? Blame the readers? I can’t buy that. It’s taken me a long time to overcome reader-inferiority. For most of my life, I’ve thought myself a bad (read that moronic) reader if I didn’t like critically acclaimed books.

Terry Caesar also says that Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is wondrously bad: stylistically precious, lavishly sentimental, ludicrous of characterization, and incoherent of theme. However, he excuses these problems with “Whether from the point of view of feminism or African American culture, Their Eyes is a damn good book.” Huh? Did the word bad just collide with political correctness and end up on the trash pile?

Though our workshop critiques sometimes get into technicalities, good or bad writing isn’t found in sentence structure or word choice. So what does make a book bad? These are samples drawn from the college professors.

• Does not have inherent empathy.

• Does not take risks. Is not curious.

• Makes direct and obvious attempts to call forth an emotion.

• Romanticizes two-dimensional, cutout characters.

• Plot is obviously manipulated.

• Its “message” remains obscure.

• All story is all pointless. Emotions give the story meaning.

• Makes mistakes in its representation of the material world (realistic fiction).

You could write a book on each of these weaknesses, which apply to concepts. It’s not the details they’re talking about. These mistakes originate with an author’s approach, even with their way of thinking. According to Christine Granados, “The novel is a blueprint into a writer’s soul. When I read what I consider to be a bad book, I notice that it is usually written by an arrogant person.” She explains with examples from Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.

Even books by celebrated authors have ended up on bad-books lists. For instance, novels by Kerouac, Hemingway, Jane Austen, and Milan Kundera are on Nicole Raney’s list, “14 Books We Give You Permission Not to Read.” 

Looking at the sampling of American Book Review’s list of fatal flaws, I see criticisms that suggest character goals for myself as a person. I need to have more empathy, curiosity, and subtleness. I need to be unbiased, spontaneous and audacious, principled, unafraid of emotions, and accurate in perceptions. Does this mean that if I improve myself, my writing will be better? Now let me see. Where to start?

Below are samples of books the professors dared to list as bad books.

Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence - It’s like someone put a gun to Nietzsche’s head and made him write a Harlequin romance.

The Genius by Theodore Dreiser – Dreiser had a mind so crude any idea could violate it.

Pierre by Herman Melville - so extravagantly mannered as to be barely readable.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - protagonists’ tribulations attributed to their alcoholism.

The Great Gatsby - manipulates conventions in order to be a “charming” book.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown – formulaic knock-off of fascistic conspiracy theories.

GET BACK TO PLAY

By Kasie Whitener

I’m a swimmer. I started early, as a four-year-old on the six-and-under squad of my neighborhood team. When people ask, I say the only thing I’ve been doing longer than swimming is breathing.

I’m a writer. I started that early, too. In third grade I wrote stories about what happened at home after school that made my teacher chuckle and declare I’d be a fiction writer. In seventh grade I wrote my first novel on four spiral notebooks. When people ask, I say the only thing I’ve been doing longer than writing is swimming. And breathing.

I have left the pool for long stretches of time. Months, sometimes years, go by between me picking up the habit and slowly drifting out of it. When I return, I remember how fun it is to dolphin-kick through the deep end, to take that hard thrust off the wall and glide suspended in the quiet for just a moment.

Likewise, there were long periods of time when I didn’t write fiction. In graduate school I focused on literary criticism. My early career was spent developing marketing copy for print media. As a corporate trainer, I wrote process documentation. During my PhD program, I wrote weekly essays connecting ideas I’d read, demonstrating I was learning and understanding concepts. There was a decided purpose to my work, a destination for it, and I got used to writing being task oriented.

For years, stories bunny-hopped over meadowed pages in my mind, ducked behind trees in a sunlit wood, slipped in and out of shadows. The voices were there – Brian the spoiled college kid mourning his best friend’s suicide, Blue the vampire time-traveler falling for Lord Byron’s sister, Maisy Diller the aging rock star returning to her hometown, even Breezy and Sean circling one another like a pair of twin moons. The voices occupy me like permanent residents of a beach motel: ready to play in the sun whenever I am.

Once I began writing with purpose in 2012, I learned what needed to be done to become read-worthy, and the voices lined up dutifully to complete their tasks.

“Make us ready,” they said. “Share us with the world.”

And fiction writing became work. But that is only one frame through which I can see my writing life.

The other frame, shown to me by Derek Berry at last week’s SCWA Writing Conversations session, is: Writing is fun. Writing can be play.

Writing can be where I come, not to bleed on the page or forge a career for myself, but to explore ideas and fantasies and play with sound and smell and taste and feel.

I shouldn’t have to be reminded that I love to write. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. And yet the reminder to enjoy it, to play, was such a surprising relief that I couldn’t wait to get back to the page.

To type this blog and tell you about it.