Category Archives: fiction

It oughta be fun!

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I’m still at it, slogging away at a freelance writing project. I’m about two-thirds of the way through but today my brain snatched up a grenade and threatened to blow us all to hell. You can’t do that, I told my brain. We have to finish. We’ve never missed a deadline — until now. But my brain was like Trumbo’s wounded soldier. It couldn’t communicate except by banging my poor skull against the wall.

Despite my brain’s act of rebellion today, I’m not complaining. There are worse things you can do in life than write for money from the comfort of your own home. And mostly I enjoy the work. But it is just that: work.  And today I couldn’t seem to make any progress no matter how bleary-eyed I got reading over the materials.

I was avoiding Facebook but it lured me like the false-hearted siren that it is, and I clicked on it out of habit, out of boredom, out of desperation, anything to distract my brain from the live grenade. And lo and behold, the lead “status” on my feed was from Frances Lefkowitz with a list of words that she used to create a short-short story. I am not sure if these were words Frances came up with or if they came from a friend of hers. I only know that Frances hones her writing skills and garners fame if not fortune, whipping up micro-fictions based on these word lists.

I usually look at the word list when she posts it and think that looks too hard. Not tonight. Tonight I glommed onto that list. I can do this, I thought, and bam in about five minutes I had a short-short story that delighted me. It made me laugh. It was fun, so much fun, and my brain set down the grenade and started dancing in joy. And then I remembered why I am here, why I do this — for the sheer unadulterated joy of it.

To paraphrase Bukowski, if it’s not fun, don’t do it. I’m not talking about the writing you do to pay your bills, I’m talking about the writing that feeds your hungry soul, the writing that shouts out the secrets of your heart, the writing that feels like a lover’s mouth against your bare shoulder.

This is just one more way that transformative writing transforms: it makes you happy. What more could you want?

Some games for you to play:

  1. Here are some words to play with: time, milky, uncle, hey, fancy, coping, necktie, bent, bookcase, cat’s paw, sweat, choir, lake, white, childish, magnetic, forgotten, breath. Can you come up with a short-short story (say 300 words or less) around these words?
  2. Write a nonsense poem. Out Jaberwock the Jaberwocky.
  3. Write a funny sex scene! Let there be wardrobe malfunctions or . . . well, I’m going to leave it to your imagination.

A Little Help from Our Friends

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The other day I got an email from a writer-friend. She was feeling a strong desire to put more time into her writing and wanted a guide-rope to help her get up the mountain. She asked if I could recommend any writing books that might have exercises to inspire and guide her. I’m glad she asked because when it comes to writing books, I’m a believer. I used to think that perhaps it was a waste of time to read books on writing — time that was better spent actually writing. But quite early on, I realized there was a lot of wisdom in those books, as well as good company.

Now I’d have to say that all of the writing books I’ve ever read have been useful in one way or another. It’s not necessarily the exercises they offer as much as the feeling of being in conversation with another writer, discovering their thought processes, and learning the tricks and techniques they use to keep their writing honed. Whenever my writing is in a lull, I find that reading the musings of another writer nearly always manages to reboot my own writing program.

The writing book I quote the most is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. I love her admonition to give yourself permission to write shitty first drafts. But the writing book that taught me the most was Jerome Stern’s Making Shapely Fiction. The “shapes” that Stern provides are like doorways into the heart of short story writing. Of course, for building a foundation in fiction writing, you can’t go wrong with Janet Burroway’s book, Writing Fiction.

Another book I enjoy, especially for its prompt on writing the 15-sentence portrait, is Wendy Bishop’s Working Words: The Process of Creative Writing. And then there are the standby’s that no writer should be without –Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg. She’s got a new book about memoir writing that I plan to add to my list. Many people swear by the Julia Cameron books.

Recently I picked up a different kind of writing book. It’s called Citizens of the Dream and is a series of letters to Salon.com advice columnist Cary Tennis, whom I recently met at the Sun Magazine’s Writing Conference at the Esalen Institute. The subtitle of the book is “41 good, serious, smart answers to your questions about writing, painting, paying, acting and living the creative life.” And that’s just what it is. He has gathered questions pertaining to creativity (and lack thereof) and provided answers that are heartfelt, thoughtful, funny, and so human.

Here’s an excerpt from one of one of Cary’s answers:

Assume that your writing is important. Assume that you have the right to do it and that it’s necessary and important. Assume that something has happened in your life such that you must attend to certain moral, aesthetic, and philosophical needs, or that you have reached a certain passage, or phase, or that you have been blessed, contacted by aliens, touched by God, whatever works, however you want to put it. Something has happened. You have received a call. Assume whatever you need to assume in order to answer the call.

WIY: Write a letter of advice to yourself. What is the wisest, most compassionate thing you can tell yourself about your own writing? Next, Get thee to a library and check out a book on writing. Spend time with it. Treat it like an old friend. Or a new friend. Get to know it. Get inspired.

Mind Over Matter: Make the Most of POV

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A lot of fiction these days is written either in the first person or the close third person. Close third person is similar to first person because the character’s sensibility is the lens through which we receive the story. Close third person gives the writer a tremendous advantage — we get to know every thing that the character sees, hears, thinks and feels. We are privy to the character’s internal monologue. Sometimes I think this is one of the main reasons we read: we want to get in someone else’s head and find out what that is like.

But some writers don’t take full advantage of the close third person. They underutilize that wonderful device we call point of view. Here’s the thing: if you are going to use a close third person (or a first person) point of view, you need to spend some time in that character’s head. What is the character thinking? Or not thinking!

Here’s an example of the close third person from my novel From May to December:

Lolly picked up the pie from the round metal table where Aunt Jewel had left it and turned to go inside. Sue, a friend from work, had invited her to the movies, but she didn’t really feel up to it so she called and canceled. Saturday night and all she wanted to do was to eat some left over Thai food and read a book.
After her dinner she decided to take a bath. Her bathroom was small and covered in green tile. She’d need to redecorate in here, she thought. Maybe make a mosaic. She lit a vanilla-scented candle and undressed, drawing a hot bath. As she eased herself into the water on her one leg, she looked down at her body. How long had it been since a man had touched her? More than a year. Damn it, she thought. She used to see a guy named Sean. He was a French horn player, and what he could do with his lips was pretty spectacular. But then he got a symphony job in California and moved away. She missed him. Most men were afraid of her. Was it because of the leg? Or just because she didn’t take any crap from them? Being a feminist didn’t mean you were dead down there, she wanted to tell them. She leaned her head against the plastic waterproof pillow she’d stuck against the bathtub wall for just this kind of deep, soothing soak.

Supposedly we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. (I have no idea how they figured that out.) That’s a lot of thinking. You don’t need to overload your poor reader with all 60,000 thoughts, but don’t be stingy with them either. I know we harp a lot on the idea of “show don’t tell,” but sometimes you just need to tell your reader things and the best way to do that is through a character’s thoughts.

Why is it important? Mainly, it helps your reader begin to identify with the character, to care about the character, and to understand the character’s motivations. When you withhold information that a point of view character should know because you don’t want to give everything away, you run the risk of making your reader feel cheated.

Like most fiction guidelines this applies to memoir as well. The more we get in your head, the more engaged we will be in your story.

WIY: For ten minutes, write down all the thoughts that go through your head. Intersperse the thoughts with what is going on in your body and what you are experiencing externally. Now, let one of your characters talk to you. Ask your character what he or she wants to say, and then have your pen at the ready. If you’re writing memoir, that character can even be yourself.

Write From the Heart

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Last night I went to a book club meeting in High Point, North Carolina, to talk with some readers about my book From May to December. The book has been out for a couple of years, and it was a pleasure to remember the events and the emotions that inspired it.

The writing of this particular book had been driven by my love for my dear friend, Kitty Gretsch, who died in December, 2001, of breast cancer. She was only 32 years old. I based the character Lolly on Kitty and found the story flowed easily as I described Lolly’s battle with cancer and her compassion for others. One of the members of the book club said that if Lolly hadn’t had to go through so many hardships, she would not have been a believable character because she was so good. I tend to write about troubled characters who have difficulty doing the right thing (and there are several of those in this book) but I enjoyed writing about someone of integrity and kindness. Kitty gave me the inspiration — and the permission — to do so.

Whenever our writing is fueled by strong emotions whether those emotions are of love or grief or anger, the writing comes easier. Those emotions help us bypass the inner censors and get to the core of what we want to write. (Most of us have written at least one love poem in our lives!) But of course, when writing about emotions that is when we most need to adhere to that old injunction of showing rather than telling. Images and other sensory details help bring those emotions out of us and onto the page.

Here are a couple exercises that will help you get an emotional jumpstart to your writing:

Journal Exercise 1: Choose an emotion (love, hate, fear, etc) and write a prose poem that conveys that emotion without ever using the word for the emotion or using a synonym. For example, if you are writing about anger, don’t switch up and use the word “mad.” Use images, sounds, smells, actions, colors, bodily sensations and whatever else you can think of so that your reader will not just understand the emotion but also feel it.

Journal Exercise 2: Take a sniff of cinnamon or bite a strawberry. Write about the memories and associations that come with the scent and/or taste.