An Upside-Down POV

By Kim Byer

Betty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, teaches her art students to turn photographs upside down in order to trick the mind’s eye while they’re drawing a portrait. Seeing an upside-down nose and philtrum allows the right side of the brain to accurately capture shadows and lines without the pesky left hemisphere insisting a nose is made up of two vertical lines with two dark circles along its bottom edge.

When I create a logo, illustrate a cartoon character or layout a Web page, I flip my designs upside-down to note spatial gaps, channels of white space and linear slants that I wouldn’t otherwise have noticed. This process is similar to editing. Of course in writing, turning pages or storylines upside down is a conceptual technique, not a physical act.  

In Naomi Epel’s The Observation Deck, she suggests flipping over ideas, plots, or character traits—in fact, seeking any opposite in your literal writing practice or story that allows you to write with a different perspective. Write on a computer? Write by hand for a day. Does your heroine always do the right thing? Have her screw her life up in a single, imploding paragraph. If you’re writing a non-fiction piece with point of view, give the opposite viewpoint. Or, put your outline in reverse: Start with the baby and end prior to the pregnancy.

Perspective-shifting devices work well for single creative sessions. In the next day’s session, when you’re back in the groove of your original storyline, you’ll find your right-side-up point of view refreshed and your focus renewed.

The Time, the Space, the Noise and the Grace

By Kim Byer

I’ve spent most of my weekend changing a closet filled with turtlenecks and boots into one filled with tunics and sandals. This is my rite of spring: turning my clothes palette from black, gray, navy and brown to white, pink, tan and turquoise. And as I fold one last coat into a lumpy square and place it in the cedar chest, I complete my ceremony.

My chores are over. It’s time to write.

“Not so fast,” says my inner voice. “You need space!”

And so I clear my writing desk. I throw away torn tickets; I stack magazine clippings; I roll strands of used Christmas ribbon into small golden nests. I uncover an expanse of waxed, wooden possibility where I place my laptop. From my desk, I can see my entire backyard. The peach-plum tree is in full regalia, its giant arms waving in the wind, vivid with pink and magenta flowers. It demands my attention. After all, its parade only lasts for two weeks.

I walk outside—I know, I’ll write by hand.

I drag my chair across the lawn and my dog barks, wanting to participate in this unfamiliar game. My inner voice sinks inside the wake of a small plane flying above in the clear, afternoon sky. Lining the wires, the birds are chatty with travel gossip. Nearby, a lawn mower crawls across the new grass, moaning like a monster. My inner voice, agitated, yells, “You need quiet!”

By the grace of God or muse or some cosmic, mystic force powerful enough to quiet dogs, birds, airplanes and inner voices, I forget my excuses and settle into my writing. I scribble in cursive, my thoughts tumbling onto a blank page like Tinkertoys. I catapult sentences through the air with arrows, lines and sweeping X’s. Then, as the soft, beaming sun is slowly replaced by dancing, silver shadows, I circle several handfuls of cogent paragraphs and smile.

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Cola II Blogger

KIM BYER

Atop one of my high school essays, in looping red ink, my English teacher warned me of the dangers of "cutesy phraseology." That was over thirty years ago, yet I still find myself dipping my pinky in the inky black waters of darlings. I love to play with words, perhaps a bit too much. I’m new to the Columbia II Writer’s Workshop, where I’m learning to love the bomb or kill my darlings or something equally sinister.

When I’m not reading, making up stories or blogging on PaperApron.com, I am cooking, photographing food, eating, shopping or designing. To earn a living, I design web and application interfaces for corporate clients. I live in downtown Columbia with my husband Rich, my cat Servo, and my indoor prancing pony (a.k.a. Golden Retriever,) Mazy.

Kim's first post follows.

A Writer's Winter Feast

By Kim Byer

Beyond a beautiful piece of art or the occasional puppy, a new book is my favorite Christmas gift. During the holidays, my bedside table swells in waves of books, precariously stacked and teetering. At night, donning reading goggles, I dive in head first to read Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, Little Bee by Chris Cleave, and Knives at Dawn by Andrew Friedman. Beneath this stack, an undertow of old favorites: A.M. Holme’s Things You Should Know and several colorful spines highlighting the venerable editions of New Stories from the South, edited by Shannon Ravenel.

In the morning, new interior design books inspire my day: Design*Sponge at Home by Grace Bonney and The Perfectly Imperfect Home by Deborah Needleman. Beside an afternoon fire, I listen to Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson, narrated by Steven Kaplan. Little in life is more luxurious than getting lost in a good story on a winter afternoon.

As writers, we are passionate readers. We read not only to enjoy the suspension of disbelief, but also to listen to our muse sing along to the cadence of a well-paced story. We appreciate a hook that leaves us hungry and a plot twist we wish we’d thought of first; we are amused by an odd simile and pained by a mischievous typo in a published work.

Winter is the most wonderful time to feast on words. Unlike summer’s pink-hued and thin paperbacks, winter kindles our intellect with thick bound classics and historical memoirs.

At the beginning of each year, we rush out of January’s gate with good intentions of healthier eating, cardiovascular overhauls and literary conquests. Easily discarding our first two resolutions, we are determined to maintain our third. We scour the book reviews and journal picks, making our lists and checking them twice. We linger in big box bookstores sipping pumpkin lattes and secretly filing titles behind our ears, which we’ll check later on Amazon, hoping for a deal. We download eBooks and update wish lists. We sit in dark theaters thinking snarky, hideous thoughts about a screenwriter’s adaptation, and upon leaving, say too loudly to our companion, “The book was much better.”

Back at home, we curl our legs under a crocheted throw and snack on a delicious sentence, nibble away at a chapter, and munch through an entire mystery without stopping for a sandwich. Thanks to writers, we are satiated in the exquisite cerebral feast we call story.

So, what exciting and wonderful stories are stacked on your bedside table?

Here are my recommendations for a five-course feast of online book resources:

www.Audible.com: If you love listening to books as much as reading books, you may want to try this audio library. For a fifteen-dollar subscription, you can listen to one book per month. If you are familiar with audio book prices, you’ll appreciate this deal. Discounted specials allow you to purchase additional books for less.

www.Goodreads.com: This free site allows you to collect and share book reviews. It helps me remember what I’ve recently read as well as find new books through fellow readers’ reviews and ratings. Are you a member? Add me to your friend list.

www.Gutenberg.org: Project Gutenberg is an iReader’s dream. Over 36,000 eBooks are available for free download. Through its affiliates, an astounding 100,000 books are shared.

New York Times Book Review Podcast: Authors, editors and critics discuss books and the literary scene with Same Tannhaus, the editor of the NYT Book Review. Listen to the mp3 episode of your choice or subscribe to the podcast.

www.PBS.org, Arts & Entertainment section, subtopic Literature & Writing: Although DVR and TiVo may be two of our favorite acronyms, we still miss some of the best book talk on TV when we don’t program these devices. Going online to the PBS site can fill the void. The site offers one stop clicking for all of your video feeds and literary needs. Check out Jeffery Brown’s thoughts on "The Year (2011) in Fiction."