Writing Time

5 Characteristics of Well-Crafted Creative Writing - Your Questions Continued

10.  What are the advantages of writing an experience into a story?  If you’re a writer that’s simply what you do, it’s the juice of your writing, your own experience even if covered up with the veils and masks of fiction.

But for those of you who are not looking to be published, but want to write to express yourselves, it’s emotionally satisfying, healthy actually, to write out an experience, especially a traumatic one. 

Dr. James W. Pennebaker wrote a wonderful book about this called Opening Up. He had tested the immune systems of two groups of his students who wrote twenty minutes a day for four consecutive days – one group wrote about superficial subjects, the other group wrote about an extremely stressful event in their life. Blood samples of the students were taken before writing, after the last session, and six weeks later. Dr. Pennebaker found that the students who wrote about painful, traumatic events showed heightened immune function and also paid fewer visits to the university’s health center in the following weeks. There was another study on writing reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association - people suffering asthma and rheumatoid arthritis who wrote about traumatic events showed clinically relevant changes in their health compared to a control group.

I conduct a writing workshop at the Wellness Community www.wellnessandcancer.org) a place for people who have cancer, or who are close to someone who has cancer, and I’ve found over the years that writing out their stories is cathartic – especially when they read what they’ve written aloud.  There’s such identification and connection. It’s different than talk therapy. And amazingly, more laughter than tears. I certainly don’t believe writing can cure cancer but it sure can make the journey through it easier.

The Wellness Community workshop inspired my last book, Writing Out the Storm: Reading and Writing Your Way Through Serious Illness or Injury. I’d intended for the book to be just about the workshop, what everybody wrote and the poems and bits of memoir that I’d found to inspire them. But I couldn’t get the book to jell. Finally I realized I had to include my own story of having breast cancer because that’s part of what I’d talk about in the workshop and it would give a narrative to the book. I didn’t really want to go back to that scary corner of my life, but once I started writing I was amazed to discover how I was letting go of the experience by going back into it in a deep and honest way. (The paradox of writing about trauma.) I also found some humor in it.

11. What specific courage does a writer need?  The courage to be honest. To not fudge the truth because you’re worried what people will think. And again, the courage to keep going even with negative criticism and rejection of your work.

12. Do you think the amount of courage required to write a memoir is also necessary to write a novel?  It probably differs for everybody. I personally find writing memoir or personal essays easier and require less courage because the story is basically there and I pretty much know the boundaries to what I’ll reveal (i.e. I won’t write really personal stories about my kids, stepkids or grandchildren that could embarrass them in any way.) Everything else in my life is up for grabs.

But writing a novel – I don’t think any kind of writing is harder and requires more courage. You live in a parallel universe, sometimes for years, when you write a novel. You have no idea if it’ll sell. You’re just sitting at your computer day after day in your bedroom slippers hoping someone will want to read about these people and stories you’re making up.

13. What is the most common mistake that aspiring memoirists make, and how would you suggest they guard against it?  Worrying about what other people will think.  You just can’t focus on your mother’s reaction or what your spouse will think while you’re trying to write the truth.  Let it rip – you can always go back and rewrite or change names.

14. As a rule, are memoirs more or less ‘truthful’ than biographies?  This question has stumped me ever since I first read it. It’s a whole philosophical discussion of what’s truth - perceived or objective reality? The subject of a whole essay.  Would anyone like to venture an opinion on this one?

15. How is it that one small book (Courage & Craft) can address the process of writing both fiction and non-fiction? The process of getting started writing is the same for both non-fiction and fiction.

16. What are the 5 characteristic of well-crafted creative writing? I could write a number of versions of this.  But I’ll go with my current thoughts.

One – Clarity: It doesn’t confuse people. (This sounds so obvious, but you’d be surprised at the number of writers who think they have to be clever or coy or literary which just leaves the reader in the dark.)

Two – Form: It has a beginning, a middle and an ending. The beginning draws readers in and the ending is satisfying. This holds true for fiction, memoir, personal essays, autobiographies, and stories for kids. Occasionally a writer who’s a genius ignores this,  but most of us aren’t geniuses and can’t ignore it.

Three – Emotion: It’s emotionally charged and the reader cares what happens to the protagonist. We either cry or laugh or are scared or feel something.

Four– Meaning and connection: It’s about people or situations the reader can connect to. Either a story we enter into with the author for entertainment, or a subject or emotion that we too are dealing with or want to learn about, or can find humor in.  It is not a story about the author gazing at his or her belly button. In some way the writing connects to the rest of the world.

Five  - Language. The author cares deeply about words and their power.  No overblown adjectives or adverbs (and only those absolutely necessary for information.)  No flabby cliches. The author loves language and hones and rewrites every sentence. The author has read The Elements of Style.

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Please hit the Comment button if you have any thoughts or alternate answers to any of these questions. 

Your Great Questions Continued

Some of the questions you sent in:

1. Who is the book (Courage & Craft) for?  It’s for people who want to become writers, or who were writing and then got stuck or who want to try a new genre, or for people who simply want to write the story of their life for their children and grandchildren. 

2. What does courage have to do with it?  Everything. Courage doesn’t mean you’re not afraid, it means you do what you need to do even if you’re scared.  And writing is scary. Ultimately it’s exposing your deepest thoughts and fantasies and emotions.

3. Are good writers simply born good writers?  Sometimes, but a lot of us are born with potential for becoming good writers. And we become good writers because we work so hard at it.

4. What does it mean to “write your life into story?”  It means turning all the chaotic bits and pieces of your life into something that has form and meaning. Life is such a mess really and it goes so fast – but when you write you can grab on to part of it, figure it out, make it mean something and communicate that meaning to other people. And isn’t that what we all long for – to be heard? To be known and understood?

5. What do you consider the most challenging part of the writing process?  Continuing on after negative comments and/or rejections of your work. Trying to rev up your energy and enthusiasm for a story no one seems to be interested in and resisting the temptation to bury it the backyard. (This is why you need to find a nurturing writing workshop or group!)

6. How does Courage & Craft differ from other books on creative writing?  It covers both inspiration and the nuts and bolts of craft.  This is the book I was looking for when I started writing and also when I started teaching.

  7.  If a writer could take any one piece of advice from your book, what might it be? Writing is a two part process. First you create and then you edit. You can’t do both at once. (and one more: get something, anything down on paper. Your can always rewrite. But until you have something down on paper it’s just fluff in your head.)

8.  Can creative writing be taught?  I think guidelines can be taught and students introduced to wonderful writers for inspiration – but mainly a creative writing teacher’s job is to find what’s truly valuable in a student’s writing and encourage that. I always tell my new students: Here’s how you learn to write. (And they all whip out pens and paper.)  Then I say, 1. Read 2. Write.  And that’s it .  That’s the secret of becoming a writer.

9. What inspired you to write this book?  My students. I was looking for a book that would encourage them, tell them that writing is scary but that’s okay, you write anyway, and at the same time give them specific nuts and bolts of craft for all the different genres of creative writing. There are a lot of really marvelous inspiring books out there (Bird by Bird, Making a Literary Life, Writing Down the Bones etc.) and a lot of books about the nuts and bolts (Making Shapely Fiction, The Art and Craft of Novel Writing, Writing the Romantic Comedy, A Poetry Handbook etc.) but I couldn’t find one that combined both, and I also couldn’t find a book that told you how to write a personal essay.

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To be continued later, including the Top 5 Characteristics of Well Crafted Writing! (I finally came up with an answer.)

Your Great Questions, My Dumb Answers

A few months ago I asked readers of this blog to help me with an author’s questionnaire that I was filling out for New World Library.  (When you publish a book you’re asked to come up with questions about the book that can be sent out to interviewers.)  I came up with four questions about Courage & Craft (www.amazon.com!) and then went brain dead. I couldn’t think of another one.  So I asked you readers to send in questions and you did – you came up with wonderful ones. I made a list of them and sent them off to the publicity department of NWL, and never gave it another thought.

The thing was, I hadn’t answered the questions. (Well, I wrote the book didn’t I? How hard could the questions be?)  In the first interview with Dr. Lara Honos-Webb on The Sweet Spot Podcast  you might say that answers to questions about my book didn’t exactly flow from my lips. The real stumper was when I was asked about the 5  characteristics of well crafted writing.  What five?  I hadn’t a clue. I’d forgotten there was even such a question. Somehow I faked my way through the podcast and vowed I’d study that list of your questions.

So last week before my midnight interview with Brad Walton I studied those questions. I wrote answers to them like I was taking a test. So when Brad asked what are the five characteristics of well crafted writing I was ready. I had answers.

I think your questions are so good that I’ll use them in the next couple of posts. And for those of you who sent them in – a million thanks.

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Psychjourney Audio Book Club Blog

http://sweetspot.libsyn.com/

What Would You Stay Up Until Midnight For?

Or (for those of you who are night owls) what would you get up at five am for?  I don’t  know about you, but I’m staying up until midnight for a phone call from Brad about – surprise, surprise – my book. The marketing whore is back.

Normally I get up at 5:30 am which means I go to bed pretty early.  But Kim Corbin, the hardworking publicist from New World Library (a woman who now qualifies for sainthood in my estimation for all the interviews she’s set up for me) called the other day and asked if I was a night owl. I said, “I arrived at the gym at 5:45 this morning. I’m an early bird.”  She said, “Well, I have a midnight interview for you. Number one audience in 27 to 38 states.”  “I’m a night owl,” I said. 

So now I’m waiting for my midnight call from Brad Walton on WCCO (CBS) and thinking about how much I like phone interviews whatever the hour – no wondering what to wear, no parking problems – just the chance to talk about Courage & Craft .Which is kind of thrilling because at this point all my friends and family, and quite possibly the readers of this blog, are sick to death of hearing about it.

Now all I have to do is stay awake.

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“I belong to a vanishing breed that thinks a writer should be read and not heard, let alone seen.”    William Gaddis

More Inspiration from Ron Carlson

Last Sunday in  the L. A. Times book review section, Susan Salter Reynolds reviewed Ron Carlson’s writing book – Ron Carlson Writes a Story: From the First Glimmer if an Idea to the Final Sentence  The review and the quotes she used from the book were so good, I ordered it right away.  A few months ago on this blog in a post entitled “Stay in the Room” I quoted Carlson from an interview as saying, “A writer is a person who stays in the room. So you do your work, and when you’re tempted to leave, you don’t. You push on, even if it’s for just a few minutes.”  In the book he expands on this idea:  “No one among us suffers the radical appreciation for coffee that I do. It calls to me, but I have learned not to listen.  All the valuable writing I have done in the last ten years has been done in the first twenty minutes after the first time I’ve wanted to leave the room.”  (Italics are his.)

Also in his book is this so true idea of what he calls “the outer story.”  The setting that all five senses of the reader pick up. The outer story is “evidence that will convince us that the story could actually happen….(It’s) the motor, and the inner story is the freight.”

The reviewer writes this about Carlson: “He came to believe that craft, vision and the idea for a story come together in the very act of writing. What sinks a lot of books about how to write is their utter lack of humility. Carlson’s fiction has so much humility, such raw respect for his readers, his characters and the efforts of human beings (fictional or not) to live whole, decent lives that his advice, which is always concrete, has a quiet grace and authority.”

Amen.

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Again, for those of you who live in Minneapolis I’m back again on the radio there this Friday night at 2:00 am on the Brad Walton show. (Midnight in Santa Monica and it will be amazing to simply be awake at this hour, let alone talking.)

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And for those of you who are female and no longer wear your jeans four inches below your belly buttons, check out this website for a new book of essays by women writers about their bodies and growing older. For Keeps, edited by Victoria Zachheim. (Coming out in December.)

http://www.victoriazackheim.com/forkeeps.htm

Random Inspiration

 

Quotations scribbled on small pieces of paper are rising up in my office as I continue my quest for order out of the chaos.  Some quotes are not only incomplete but also incomprehensible: “My mother is saving the wings of the termites to – “ (Is this is a note for something I was writing? Did I overhear it ?)

The majority of the quotes are more inspiring:

                                          

“There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.”  Joy Harjo

“Failure is an event, never a person.”  William D. Brown

“Lower your standards and keep writing.”  Willliam Stafford

“There’s nothing more interesting than a wall behind which something is happening.”  Victor Hugo

“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon.  In life may you proceed with balance and health.”   Patti Smith

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And this quote that I copied down at a museum the year I started taking writing classes, and it still keeps rising up out of piles of papers:

“Behold, nothing surpasses books. Would that I might make you love them more than your mother.  Would that I might make their beauty enter before your face.  For it is greater than any office. You are to set your heart on books.” 

Anon. 2,150 BC

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If by any chance you're reading this Saturday evening and live in Minneapolis/St.Paul, I'll be on the Jill Spiegel Show tonight at 9:20 pm, FM 107.1

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4,327 Pounds of Revised Manuscripts

 

I just mailed the first complete draft of the novel-that-I’ve-been-writing-forever to my agent last week (complete in the sense that it now has an ending.)  So I’ve spent the entire day cleaning and organizing my office. This is a horrifying experience, but it has to be done because I’ve begun to feel guilty about this mess I work out of.  Actually (to be honest) it’s not guilt but shame. I began to think if I got hit by a bus my secret would be revealed: I work in chaos. I work knee deep in cat hair. I have every single draft of a failed novel, drafts of the new novel, all drafts of Courage & Craft, and something like 182 lined notebooks of my journal dating back to 1972. I have copies of handouts from every class I’ve taught since 1992. I have student papers I couldn’t bear to throw away. I have newspaper clippings saved for reasons I can’t remember. In one particularly scary drawer I have dozens of failed pens, a bottle of very hard White-Out, hundreds of business cards from perfect strangers, and a very good recipe for gazpacho that I copied down about the time Carter was president. This office of mine is like one of those rooms that eventually has to be shoveled out. And shown on local evening news.

My friend Kara is the most organized person I know. (One of those people you wish you could hate but can’t because she’s not only organized and beautiful, but also kind and smart.)  She told me that she doesn’t mind moving because she has all her stuff in these little plastic boxes and crates and never keeps anything she doesn’t need. So every time I dig into a project like today I think not what would Jesus do, but what would Kara do. So far I have two cabinets in pristine order, a couple of drawers – (and five large black bags full of my writing ready for the trash) I have two more drawers, four filing cabinet drawers and one more cabinet to go. Not to mention all those handy folder holders on top of the desk which are now bending under the weight of about a thousand folders.

Is anybody else out there having a chaos problem with their work space? 

Courage & Craft Published: The Marketing Whore Returns

Courage & Craft: Writing Your Life Into Story has just been published by New World Library. (www.amazon.com)  It covers all the genres of creative writing, offers guidelines for each, inspiration, reading suggestions and writing exercises.  If you know anyone besides yourself, anyone at all on this planet who wants to write his or her life into a memoir, essay, novel, poem or whatever – please buy this book for them as a present. And multiple copies for yourself.

I’m not really good at this. I want to write, not become a huckster. When my first novel was published I showed up at an Author’s Luncheon without a copy of my book. A veteran writer said to me in a stern voice, “Always carry your book!”   And when I set up a website for my last book (www.BarbaraAbercrombie.com), my  friend Deb who’s in advertising called me and said, “You need a link to Amazon on the site with a big flashing button that says: Order now! Operators standing by!”

The thing is most of us writers really just want to sit around in our sweats writing our stories. (I’ve gone on and on about this in another post in case you’re new to this blog). The fact is though, if you want to have your next book published you need to get your current book sold. And you also feel obligated when you have a terrific publishing company behind you like New World Library to get out there and do whatever you can for sales. (I’ve worked with publishers who don’t seem to care if your book sells or not, but NWL has been holding my hand every inch of the way.)

So: Courage & Craft: Writing Your Life Into Story! Available at Amazon (www.amazon.com) or wherever you buy your books.  If you live in LA please come to Dutton’s on October 12^th to buy a copy.

(Here’s a dirty little secret of published writers: you know those glowing reviews of books on Amazon? Well, we beg our family, friends and blog readers to write them.) 

Order now! Operators standing by! 

And Coming to Your Neighborhood Soon

I’ll be in the Bay Area (northern California) October 4^th – 7^th  -  a free mini-class at East West Bookstore on 10/4 and a sign-up workshop Saturday 10/6 from 10:30-2:30. 

Book Passage on 10/7 for a sign-up workshop on Writing Your Family History from 11-5

I’m giving a wine and cheese party at Dutton’s Bookstore in Brentwood

on October 12^th at 7:00.  If you live in LA (or love to drive long distances on a Friday night), please come!

Also at Laguna Beach Books on 10/27 and Palm Springs

11/10 at the Book Festival.

Your Own Black Hole of Space

Here’s another approach from another billionaire Brit: I just heard Paul McCartney interviewed by Nic Harcourt on KCRW and he said he writes songs only when he’s in the mood. He said he sits down and looks into this black hole in space and “I wonder if there’s a song in there.”  Then he tries to craft whatever he sees as a song.

The bottom line here is we all do it our own way.  Some of us show up daily at cafes like J.K. Rowling (see below), some of us do it like Paul, when we’re in the mood.  But it’s September, people, and I’m going into teacher mode as well as clearing the decks for my own work and I personally need schedules and routine.

I’ll tell my new students who are taking Courage and Craft at UCLA Extension, that I expect them to write every day for six weeks (the length of the course) and to read one book a week at least.  You too could try this – devote six weeks to focus on your writing and reading.  It’s not for the rest of your life; it’s just six weeks.  When I start class next month, I’ll post assignments so you can follow along if you want.  (And you have over three weeks to get your life in order to do this.)

Together we can all stare into that black hole of space for our stories.