IT ALL STARTS WITH A GREAT SENTENCE

By El Ochiis

You think you care about what a book is about, but, really, you care how it sounds, even if that sound can only be heard in your head.

Words are lyrics for the eyes – a line of words where logic and rhythm meet. Good sentences should be as lucid and sincere as good cooking. Even people who can’t boil water for soup will find pleasure in reading this line from a recipe: Warm two tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, then add the sliced onion. The verdict in the following sentence sounds fairer and truer in a way that those in life rarely are: Yesterday’s bread has less moisture and so makes crisper toast. Good writing is clean, full of flavor and a meal in itself.

Great sentences give a start to the beginnings of superb paragraphs which flows into extraordinary chapters, culminating to exceptional stories - a memorable sentence makes immediate sense but sounds just slightly odd:

A screaming comes across the sky. -Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. -Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. -Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. -Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. -Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories. - Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

Orwell advised cutting as many words as possible, Woolf found energy in verbs, and Baldwin aimed for ‘a sentence as clean as a bone.’ Though some of this is true, none of it is a good way of learning how to write a sentence. More ethical demand than useful advice, it forces writers back to their own reserves of wisdom and authenticity. It blames bad writing on laziness and dishonesty, when a likelier culprit is lack of skill. If someone were to order me to make a soufflé, all I could come up with would be a gloopy, inedible mess – not because I am languid or untruthful, but because, although I have some vague idea that it needs eggs, milk, flour and a lot of beating, I don’t know how to make a soufflé.

A good sentence imposes a logic on the world’s weirdness, getting power from the tension between the ease of its phrasing and the shock of its thought as it slides cleanly into the mind and as it proceeds, is a paring away of options. Each added word, because of the English language’s dependence on word order, reduces the writer’s alternatives and narrows the reader’s expectations. But even up to the last word the writer has choices and can throw in a curveball. A sentence can begin in one place and end in another galaxy, without breaking a single syntactic rule.

Can you give your readers something that’s illuminating and cherishable, all on its own as American writer, Gary Lutz once lectured, because "Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”? -L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. When you get sentences right, everything else solves itself or ceases to matter.

INNER CONFLICT

By Sharon Ewing

I’d been introduced to the works of famous authors throughout my educational career and while I loved to journal, never identified as a writer. All the authors I knew were famous people. How smug to even place myself anywhere near the company of these renown men and women.

But what about those of us who maybe never aspired to be famous; those who simply feel compelled to record our thoughts, our memories, our stories that maybe no one will ever read? I began a diary in my teens and have a stack of journals I’ve kept through the years that attest to my passion for writing. Yet, I’m only now getting used to the idea that this fervor for the written word means I am an author.

A few years ago, a fellow parishioner stopped me and commented on an article I’d had published.

“I didn’t know you were a writer,” she said.

I almost said. “I’m not.” Instead, I smiled and thanked her for her kind comments. I just thought of myself as being lucky, not as being good enough to be called a writer.

Despite my poor self-concept, I continued writing; still journaling, memoir items, inspirational, short stories. I couldn’t help myself. I needed the written outlet to feel complete and finally was forced to admit my addiction, albeit a good one. The problem wasn’t with my passion, my heart, my love of writing. It was in my head. My heart and head were in conflict and the only way I could change it was with self-talk.

That’s proving harder than anything I’ve attempted to write. “You are a writer.” I say this as I sit at the computer. “You can be a good one and will be one day.”

So, like everyone else who writes, I have those days when my fingers seem to fly across the keyboard and I become so engrossed in the story that I become one with it. Unfortunately, I have more of the days when I’m convinced that even if my story is ever complete, no one will want to waste a minute reading it. That’s when my head takes over and refuses to listen to my heart.

Maybe I also need to stack my journals nearby so I can see the passion that led me to record my thoughts for years on end while working, raising children, and keeping house. Whatever it takes, I find that I need to stoke the embers of passion each time I sit at the computer, bringing heart and head together, even letting the heart have a handicap out of the gate.

I am a writer.

WHY WRITE?

By Sharon May

I see writers on Facebook ask why we decided to write. Most answers are meant to be humorous. Serious responses tend to be cryptic statements about muses and speaking one’s truth. So what makes us get on the creative rollercoaster we call writing?

Many writers are motivated by money as some are trying to supplement their incomes, others want to make a living, and others expect a fortune from publishing and marketing their writing.

I guess most can successfully pad their bank accounts. I made several thousand for several years after publishing with four other authors a Freshman composition textbook. For those who need to make a living or a fortune, I commend you since there are much easier and reliable ways to make money. I think we determined that “our hourly wage” for the textbook was less than a dollar.

Fame or at least a stroke of the ego in having their work published motivates some of us. I admit there is a thrill and a sense of accomplishment when seeing our name on a book cover. How much fame writers have is severely limited by a society that doesn’t truly value Art. That printed book or internet post may exist long after we are dead, and posthumous recognition can still come. Don’t know if dead authors can know that kind of fame.

External rewards, like fame and fortune, might be earned, but most of us must write for more intrinsic reasons. Do we awaken one day and say “I’m going to be a writer”? Maybe, but more than likely, we toss the idea around as we read books that spark a drive to create a book of our own. We desire to see if we can sustain that drive to finish something bigger than we are.

The love of playing with words motivates many of us. Amy Tan claims she can spend hours working with a single word or sentence to make the best choice she can. One the other hand, we love when the words come easily, like manna from heaven, as we sit for hours without awareness of the world around us. The feeling of satisfaction comes from our struggles and our triumphs in trying to create meaning out of the words we choose.

Writing can be a calling, either from one’s own soul or from an external creator or muse. This calling can be tough to fulfill as we try to find the time in our lives to write while we finish educations, hold down jobs, care for family. But once we make time for writing, the act and process can bring joy.

I am motivated by all these reasons, but let’s not forget that writing is fun. Yes, that task that haunts us, that consumes our time and energy, is fun. We play while escaping or revealing the world we inhabit. Fun is the immediate gratification. Enjoy it because the other goals may not appear for years, if at all.

THE SWEET INDULGENCE of MAGNETIC WRITING

By Kasie Whitener

My addiction to romance novels is well established. I read over 100 per year, mostly through Kindle Unlimited, all unapologetically shallow. I call them “candy.”

Some of the books alternate character point-of-view and the voice is so generic I lose track of who’s speaking. Yeah, they’re not exactly literary fiction.

What they do have is magnetism.

Magnetism is compulsion. Characters drawn together, excited by one another, a sense of urgency, need, and passion. These books must establish magnetism. It’s expected of them. Romance readers want characters drawn together, kept apart, and then united in something steamy and fulfilling.

Magnetism also has me choosing to read this book instead of doing anything else. Magnetism has me desperate for one more chapter long after midnight.

One hundred romance novels later and I know (I know!) there are a million reasons not to download the next book in the series. Award-winning books. Literary fiction that is changing the landscape of the craft. Elevating language, diving into unheard narratives. Just waiting to change me with empathy and craft.

And yet, I go for the candy. Like a junky.

This year I put myself on a diet. I took 12 books off my shelf and challenged myself to read one per month. Award-winning books like Pachinko, important books like The Sympathizer. Literary books. Top-of-the-craft books.

Since January, I’ve finished 10 romance novels, three fantasy fiction, and three books on my Off the Shelf list. Three months into 2021 and I’m 16 books in, which is good, and maybe the diet is working because by this time last year I’d finished 22 romance novels. At this pace, I’ll only finish 40 this year instead of 100.

And just typing that sends me into withdrawal.

What is it about romance? It’s the magnetism. I don’t write romance novels. There’s some love, some sex, in my books. But I’m not writing romance. There’s not usually a Happily Ever After. In my books, what “ever after” there is has been hard won.

But the magnetism. I want characters drawn to one another in that romance-y way. I want them to push one another, test one another, twist each other up and let go. Let. Go. And I want readers to feel the same way. Like they can’t put the book down. Like they’re going to throw it across the room and then chase after it to get One. More. Page.

I want to write the kind of magnetism that emanates from the page, pulls you into the sizzling words, and reads like fizzy Pop Rocks. Like chewy taffy in an addictive twist. And then settles over you like the melt of rich salted caramel in milk chocolate. So, you’re satisfied. Sated. Smiling.

I want to write magnetism. So, I study it. I’m working on my craft. One candy at a time.