Category Archives: writing

Why Write?

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When it’s just you and your manuscript in a tiny house for a week, both truth and lies are going to ricochet like crazy off those old walls and you know some barbs are going to get stuck in you.  You’ll go from imagining your impending wild success to realizing that you’re a complete fraud.  The only reassurances you can find are electronic—Facebook, texts.  You drink them like water, but even then, you think what do these people know anyway?

This has been happening a lot lately, you think. This up and down, this rollercoaster.  You’ve tried to tell yourself it’s just the writing life, the way things are.  And to some extent, this really has to be true.  But you’ve got to find some solid footing or you’re going to go insane.

So stand on this: you don’t write because you want to be published.  You write because you love writing.

You love sounds and rhythms and the way words work.  You love that challenge of finding that exact right word—the one you’ll know when you see it—and so you dive through the thesaurus and spin in circles until you finally find capacious or sentinel or intrepid and think yes, yes, that is the one.  You love the characters and the way they take on their own personalities and force you to share the decision-making with them.  You love the modicum of control you retain over the rest of it—the smells, the sounds, the setting.  (Even if you can’t manage what your characters will do or say, you can still toss them onto a roof together or in a car wash or a parking ramp.)  You love story.  You love the way that truth sometimes is clearest in fiction.  You love alliteration and imagery and all those uncontrollable verbs.  You love the way one perfect line can steal your breath.  You love that you get to be a little creator.

And you love the writing community—how it’s full of quirky, broken people who beat back the darkness by stringing words together.  You love how you can understand one another, and how at one point or another, they all need to be reminded of the same thing you did this week.

Life of a WriterdeviantART by seetheduck

Life of a Writer
deviantART by seetheduck

books books books

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Just finished …

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling |We’re not in Hogwarts anymore, Toto.  This is Rowling’s first book after the Harry Potter series, and it is absolutely nothing like them, which I’m sure was her point.  I mean, how do you compete with one of the most popular children’s series ever?  You avoid the competition and write an adult novel instead, I guess.  The Casual Vacancy was hard for me to get into at first– I felt that Rowling was trying to shock me just because she could.  Also, I couldn’t tell what the story was about for quite a while.  It is a book about smalltown politics– both literal politics and also the inner workings of a town that is all interconnected and where people often say and do things that are different from what they think or believe.  The book is very well-written, but very raw, real, gritty, and sad.  Very, very sad.  While I will re-read the Potter series for the rest of my life, I think one time through of this book will be enough for me, period.

Map of Time by Felix J. Palma | I had heard this book likened to The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, one of my favorite books I read this whole year.  But it just wasn’t true, and I’m not sure at all where the comparison came from.  Map of Time started off fascinating– telling the story of a man in love with one of the Whitechapel prostitutes in the time of Jack the Ripper.  (I have researched Jack the Ripper in both high school and college, so this was particularly interesting to me to hear about the incidents from the other angle!)  The premise seemed interesting, and I was starting to care about the characters … and then suddenly, I felt duped and we were onto the second story of three in the book, and the person I thought had been the protagonist had to climb down off the stage.  It was just such a strange format, and it didn’t work for me.  In the end, the book was too shallow for me, and I never felt like I really got to know the characters.  Palma tries to trick his readers multiple times throughout the book, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.  In most books, I am thrilled when I discover a twist, but Palma’s just disappointed me.

Gorgon in the Gully by Melina Marchetta | As I just posted recently, I think everyone should read Marchetta’s books.  Unlike her usual writing for teens, this book is for younger readers.  It still appealed to me because 1) Everything she writes is marvelous and 2) It is about Danny, the younger brother of Jonah Griggs (of Jellicoe Road).  It is a delightful little story about pulling together a group of friends from various groups.  I think it would be the perfect read for a middle schooler!  It inspired me to re-read

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta | Masterful.  Just masterful.  And so absolutely original.  A book centered around the territory wars between the boarding school kids, the town kids, and the cadets in the visiting military school– but really, that’s just the venue for the story.  The real story is one of love and friendship and generations.  This is such an incredible book, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.  If you read it, you will fall in love.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni | So, this is obviously not the usual type of book I review on my blog, but it was quite fascinating.  It is a “leadership fable” about a team that needs to work together better and how the CEO makes it happen.  I read it in two days!  The majority of the book is a story about this fictional company/team, but then the last part of the book goes into non-fiction details of how to put this into effect at your workplace.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis | Yes, the whole series.  Yes, again.  Yes, just as incredible as the last time through.

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson | This was only my second time reading this story, and somehow I forgot how magnificent it was.  The writing is absolutely stunning, which is not surprising, since the author has two MFAs– one in poetry and one in writing for children and young adults.  It is the story of Lenny Walker, whose older sister/best friend Bailey died suddenly about a month before the book starts.  She is trying to navigate her grief all while falling in love for the first time, and it is just so good and sad and good.  If you have a sister, you’ll probably shed a couple tears.  This book will break your heart.

Currently reading …

Reached by Ally Condie | The third book of the Matched series, and again … my opinion is still out.  I liked Matched but was not very into Crossed.  We’ll see if Reached can win me back!

I did just get Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta on audiobook, and I am so pumped to listen/re-read that one!!  I have so many books that I want to read, and I just keep amassing books (I just bought a new bookcase that is back in my apartment waiting to be assembled after my writing retreat) and am not able to get through them as fast as I’d like (especially since I spend a lot of time re-reading favorites, which I know some people can’t understand).  I guess that’s the problem when you love reading but you LOVE writing.

Questions for today: what are you reading right now?  Do you like to re-read?  If you’re a writer, do you, like me, find a hard time balancing reading and writing?

reading16

writing retreat this week!

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On Saturday, I drove about three hours to a small town in Minnesota (pop. 1,200) to retreat from friends, family, work, distractions, responsibility, chain restaurants for the week so that I can focus on my novel.  I have so been looking forward to this!  And now that I am here, I am even more excited.

This town is one of the sweetest little things ever.  You can drive from one end of it to the other in about 20 seconds since the town covers about 1.5 square miles.  I ventured out to find the grocery store and eventually located the large (and old) brown building proudly claiming to be “Dean’s Country Market.”  Inside, the far left is a gift shop and the right is the grocery store.  I was looking for some Advil, but instead I found two choices: low-dose aspirin or some kind of “non-aspirin”-labelled bottle.  Love the variety and selection!  Oh, and the taxidermy on the walls in the meat department!

grocery

For those of you who don’t know, I am not actually a Minneapolis native.  In fact, I grew up in a small town much like the one I’m retreating in now, so all of the small-town-life makes me smile and think fondly of where I grew up.  It also makes me think of Green Lake, the fictional Minnesota town where my novel takes place.  This week will be a wonderful reminder of what life is like for West, my protagonist.  It also reminds me that Silas, my character who just moved there from a large city, should probably be a little more shell-shocked.

I’m happy and snug in a tiny BRIGHT GOLD bungalow.  I am so unused to complete solitude that I keep imagining that someone is going to come over/drop by, and it’s just not true.  I honestly believe that I could stay in this house for the next seven days, and I would see no one and hear nothing but the bark of the neighbor dog and the rustle of the train on the nearby tracks.  Even though I am an introvert, I feel quite sure that I will be lonely by Saturday.  Leave me lots of blog comments this week so I don’t feel so alone!

At the same time, right now I am thrilled to be alone.  The days are stretching out before me with such a promise of productivity.  This week will be about words.  I plan to write and edit like a maniac, and when my creativity dwindles, I will read the books I brought along, and when my mind can’t process anymore, I will sleep– lovely, deep, long bouts of sleep from which I will allow myself to wake up naturally.  Who cares if I sleep till noon and then am awake till three AM?  I am all alone.

When I retreated this past summer, I was in Hudson, Wisconsin, so I had access to a Target, Dunn Bros, Perkins, and even home, since I was only 45 minutes away.  This week, if I am people-starved, I will head to the public library, the cultural center, the Eagles Cafe, or the Bake Shoppe.  The people at the cultural center (where I checked in and got the house key) are so nice that I want to just shoot the breeze with them like one of the locals.

My hope for this week is to revise as many chapters of my novel as possible.  I just finished revising chapters 1-4 based on feedback from my writing group, but– nice timing, right?– I am headed into this week to revise chapters that have not yet been critiqued.  I am hoping that I will have great intuition!

Leave an encouraging comment– I need human interaction and encouragement this week!

dream argument

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I could have guessed the tiny Green Lake Library in City Hall wouldn’t have any Billy Collins books.  I asked Janice Boggs, the librarian, to request a few from another branch, then headed out to Legacy House, since Gordon Leimbach had a book collection to rival the library.

“Billy Collins, you say?” he asked.  “I know I have a few of his collections, over there on the middle shelf of the barrister—just go ahead and lift the knob.  The whole glass front panel swings out and tucks right back into the shelf.  See anything there?”

Through the glass fronts of the antique bookcase, I could see the whole thing was dedicated to poetry. Langston Hughes and John Keats.  Calvin Miller.  Robert Frost.  Dickinson and Whitman and Donne.  I saw a few books by Collins, took one off the shelf, then closed the barrister behind me and sat down on Gordon’s couch.  He sat in his rocker and started to pack his pipe.

“Gordon, why do you keep so many books around if you can’t see the pages anymore?”

“They’re just good company,” he said simply.  “Read something aloud, would you?”

I chose a poem called “The First Dream,” which ended with a woman puzzling over her original experience of the phenomenon.  I could hear my voice listing with her as I read:

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.

“Brilliant,” said Gordon, pipe now between his teeth, dark glasses on, looking for all the world like some jazz hepcat.  “Mmm.  Brilliant.  Yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Makes me think of the week on August Arms all about dreams.  Back in, oh, maybe January or February, remember?”

“I do.”  It had been a fascinating week in which I had learned that the faces we see in dreams are all ones we have seen in real life and that those who have gone blind after birth can still dream in images.  Gordon had told me then that his late wife Mavis was the one face that had never faded from his memory after he’d lost his sight.

But Gordon was thinking of a different episode.  “René Descartes’s dream argument,” he said.  “I can’t remember if we discussed it.”

“Briefly,” I said.  “I’m not much of a philosopher.”

Gordon smiled.  “I just find think it’s fascinating, the way people can sort these massive existential topics into numbered statements.  One, if I have experiences in waking life similar to the ones I have in dream life, and two, there is nothing to help me distinguish between the two, then three, it is possible I am dreaming now.”

“Oh, that,” I said, his words prompting a distant recollection.  “I sort of remember that episode.  I guess I never understood why he thought it was so important to go there—you know, to take it that far.”

“Well,” said Gordon, now in his professorial element, “he was trying to establish doubt.  Universal doubt.  You know his famous statement, ‘I think; therefore, I am’?”

“Yes.”

“It was all en route to arriving at that point, which we call the Cogito.  If you strip things down and start with the Cogito, then your philosophy—however you re-build it—is not connected to tradition.”

“But is that a good thing?” I asked, doubtfully.  “I’m not so sure.”

Gordon grinned with pride.  “And you say you’re not a philosopher.”

why you need to read Melina Marchetta’s books

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Having just read Gorgon in the Gully, a children’s book by Melina Marchetta that is not available in the United States (thank you, Fishpond!), I can now say that I have read every single one of Marchetta’s books.  And you need to read them too.  Here’s why:

1) The writing is unbelievable.

“Guess what?’ Fitz said.
‘I don’t know,’ Jude said. ‘What? Narnie smiled?’ He glanced at her for the first time.
‘When you guys see a Narnie smile, it’s like a revelation,’ Webb said, gathering her towards him.
Jude stopped in front of her and, with both hands cupping her face, tried to make a smile. Narnie flinched.
‘Leave her alone,’ Tate said.
‘I need a revelation,’ Jude said. ‘And you’re the only one that can give me one, Narns.”

2) The characters are people you want to know in real life.

“We make weird friends,” I say instead.
“I’ve never been into the f-word with people.”
“I’m privileged, then? Why me?”
He thinks for a moment and shrugs again.
“You’re the realest person I’ve ever known.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s fucking awful. There’s not much room for bullshit, and you know how I thrive on it.”

3) The books are laced with wonderful humor.

“…what was it like out there? Kind of describe it to us,” Jessa says, beaming at them and then at me. Trini beams at her and there’s a lot of beaming happening.”

4) You can’t guess what will happen next.

5) She knows how to write about teen romances without being cliche.

Finnikin of the Rock – Sun and Moon
deviantART by ~leabharlann

6) She is consistently good.  Every. Single. Book.

Start with Jellicoe Road.  Then choose Saving Francesca or Finnikin of the Rock, depending on whether you want to stay in Australia or enter a fantasy world.  The Piper’s Son follows Saving Francesca, and Finnikin is the first of a trilogy (Froi of the Exiles and Quintana of Charyn round it out).  Looking for Alibrandi was her break-through novel, but it’s probably last on my personal list. Gorgon in the Gully is meant for younger readers.

Every single one of them is like eating an incredible fruit– but all of different flavors.  Her talent is incredible and enviable.

the colors

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As far as colors go, my favorite is a thick, heavy red – a deep red, a red with a spoonful of brown.  Then an olive green, sage, light-colored but strong enough that it could never be mistaken for a pastel.  Then gold – but not yellow – true gold, goldenrod, a marigold tiptoeing across the line toward a field of pumpkins.

I love muted blues that seem so rare and precious, a petrol, for instance.  That particular mix of blue, green, and gray reminds me of a picture of the Tulsa sky I saw in a book.  That blue hit me so hard it landed a line in one of my poems.

 

I love when white is washed in a watercolor, just a slight trace of the concentrate left to whisper to the otherwise blank canvas.

 

I love terrific greens that knock you senseless.  I love the purples that really are too good for you (and know it) but abide you anyway, notably the plums.

 

Navy is an old friend, a good listener.  Brown is like the sexy girl in glasses you never noticed until today.

what I call good writing

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There are essentially three reasons I will like a book:

1) The writing is beautiful.  If the writing is lyrical, or the prose almost reads as poetry, or if the writer has great diction and uses sounds to her advantage, I’m captured.  When an author does a dance with words and creates images that burst like berries on the tongue, I’m sold.

2) The plot is fascinating.  I love books that have twists and turns and surprises.  I don’t need them to be action-packed, just interesting, with interesting scenes and a great storyline.

3) The message is profound.  When the story tugs at my heart or opens up my mind to new ways of understanding something, the book touches (and sometimes changes) my life.

Some books fall under one of these categories, and it is enough to make me love it.  For example, Annie Dillard’s book For the Time Being is beautifully written (for that matter, pretty much anything she writes is!), but there is not really a plot to it, nor did its message truly change my life.  Harry Potter has a thrilling storyline that completely pulled me in, and the series also has a wonderful theme of good versus evil, but I wouldn’t say that Rowling (in those books) is a lyrical writer, although she does have her moments!  Hinds’ Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard is an allegory, and as such, the plot is pretty obvious, but the message deeply touched me and wrenched tears from me left and right.  As you know, The Chronicles of Narnia are my absolute favorite for their fun plots and the deep truths in them, but the writing is not as beautiful as some other things Jack Lewis has written.

To me, some of the best writers are those who combine all three of these elements.  Some of the best examples I have of this are The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (gorgeous writing, super fun storyline, excellent message), C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy (the writing is so masterful it makes me want to curl up inside of it, the plot is riveting, and the takeaways are tremendous), Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (literary writing at its very finest, interesting characters and storyline, an underlying message that is like a rock to stand on), and The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle (breathtaking writing, intriguing fantasy plot, message that lingers long).

Your turn.  What makes you like a book?  Are you drawn to one of these three reasons over the others?  What are your best examples of books that fit these categories?

brought to you by the letter V

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I love letters.

AEIOU.  I like vowels, but I suppose if they were people, they would be cocky.  The jocks or cheerleaders.

What about P?  I think P would be a quiet girl who wears glasses and reads lots of books.  She would be intimidated by the vowel clique.  H would be an overweight boy.  F is immature, short, and insecure, telling P and H, “It takes both of you to equal one of me.”

I bet R, S, and T would hang out with the vowels; they are pretty popular letters if you think about it.  S’s are vowel groupies.

Y is unsure, a girl in puberty, without a solid identity yet.  She fits with the vowels – but only sometimes.

V is the metro boy who wears tight pants and is a mystery.  Even the vowels would be secretly jealous of V. V, you must know that you’re distinctive, above the others.  Go write your poetry, your song lyrics, a love song for a beautiful girl.  Remain a mystery to the others, but share yourself with her.

Gala at Death

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As I wrote yesterday, sometimes heaven scares me.
Here was an attempt to process my thoughts while in college:

Gala at Death

Consequently, my poems all died—even those unwritten—
when I realized that Revelation promises the annihilation of my pages,
that I will not be archived in Heaven’s library,
my words jacketed in celestial gold.

So now the hollow worth of writing’s result faults me
for delighting in my bookcase of sale-annex idols,
bothered by heavenly boredom—
nothing to read but the Bible for a slow eternity.

The apocalyptic book humbled my hands, but bowing, I knew
I’d wear white to the funeral.  There all poems everywhere
then died to me—how easily paper curls and burns.
But literature’s epitaph reads, The Author of Life Wins,
and that graveyard is where writers worship God.

Distance

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Saturday.  “Mail for you,” his dad would say.  “On the table.”

“From?”

“Doesn’t say.  Minneapolis.”

Interested, he would pick up the small envelope and see his name written in handwriting he knew.  It’s been a while since he’s talked with her, so he opens the letter quickly, but he does not tear the envelope.  He is a neat man.

He reads her letter and can picture her, sitting in front of him that night at the pub, eyes wide while he talks of Europe and Jesus.  She asks great questions.  In his memory, her eyes are intense, but he does not know what color they are, and it makes him sad.

The letter is very much her, and she is still praying for him.  Not giving up on me.  She misses him, wants to see him.  I should at least give her a call.  But he hasn’t finished processing his thoughts about the Twin Cities and about her, and those eyes of an unnamed color have been in many of his dreams.  It is good to be missed. 

It’s been a crazy time, but her note is like an anchor—or like a magnet.  She makes him feel as if he could tackle life again.  She pours spirit back into him; he can feel his confidence stretching against what he feels are his limits.  “I’ve missed you,” he thinks.  He wants to sit across from her again, hear her stories, regain his energy somehow through their time together, and this time, he will be sure to note the color of her eyes.