“It would be endless to run over the several defects of style among us: I shall therefore say nothing of the mean and the paltry, much less of the slovenly and indecent. Two things I will just warn you against; the first is, the frequency of flat, unnecessary epithets; and the other is, the folly of using old threadbare phrases which…are nauseous to rational hearers, and will seldom express your meaning as well as your own natural words. ” Jonathon Swift

“The strength and balance of his (Swift’s) sentences are due to an exquisite taste. As I had done before I copied passages and then tried to write them out again from memory. I tried altering words or the order in which they were set. I found that the only possible words were those Swift had used and that the order in which he had placed them was the only possible order.” W. Somerset Maugham

I learn by going where I have to go. ~Theodore Roethke, "The Waking"

Summer in Words Registration now open

Folks, the registration for the Summer in Words writing conference is now open. Places are going to go fast and more information is at http://summerinwords.wordpress.com and you can email me at jessicapage at spiritone dot com for a registration form. 

National Poetry Month

If it's April, that means it's National Poetry Month. For all the news that's fit to print about poetry, go here. You can sign up for a poem delivered by e-mail every day. Also, if you haven't registered for the Writer's Almanac which delivers a poem and news into your inbox every day, well, what are you waiting for. Now that it's truly spring with all its flowers and flooding and newness and noise, let's celebrate with words. I cannot suggest too often, that all writers, no matter their genre, read poems. All the time. They'll change your life. Really.

How can it be April already?

Writing Prompt:

Openings

More gloomy skies and rain in valley, and there has been piles of new snow in the mountains so the skiers and snow boarders are happy.

If you’re trying to get a novel or memoir published, you’ll likely spend the most time fine-tuning your first fifty pages because you’ll be showing these pages to editors and agents, and your story lives and dies on their strengths and weaknesses. So let’s talk a bit about openings---since your beginning must lure readers into lives and into a world that is as palpable as the real world.

The key to writing openings is to focus on immediacy and to reveal at least one character stressed out by some change of circumstances. Generally backstory is a minimum; because you need to get the story moving thus police blotter descriptions of characters; backward glances at the protagonist’s childhood and musings about the history of the place slow the opening . So jump in and get the story firmly rolling along, employing backstory after the story question is raised and the protagonist has established his first goal.

The first fifty pages are densely packed, introduce people and a world, and are where the first intricate pieces of a puzzle are set in place and the first plot point occurs. Every element must establish the writer’s credibility, push the story forward, introduce conflict, and propel the reader into a complicated and believable world. So with all this going on, there is often room for large amounts of backstory, because the onward progression demands most of the words be lavished on it.

Here’s a brief checklist of what the first fifty pages contain:

• language that entices the reader to keep turning pages
• establish the main characters
• depict at least one character under stress 
• ground the readers in time and place 
• introduce the story question introduce 
• set in motion the central conflict 
• establish the cauldron, meaning that the place or situation for gluing the characters together as the conflict boils over
• insert the first plot point

Once you have all those elements nailed down, then you can allocate space for backstory. Now, some days it seems that there are as many story structures as there are stones in the Great Wall of China. You can walk to your own bookshelves and find books written by best-selling authors that sneak in backstory fairly early. But if you look closely, you’ll note that some device has created a hook, a question, a hint of conflict, or a twinge of sympathy or worry for the protagonist in the opening pages. Some stories will open with a whopping dose of tension and unease as in Jane Hamilton’s The Book of Ruth, others, particularly mainstream novels, will start off in a more low-key manner. But don’t use another author’s structure as an excuse or justification to use unnecessary backstory.

This can be accomplished by making it a kind of ultra-condensed piece of information. Take the beginning of Stephen Crane’s The Open Boat: None of them knew the color of the sky.

Jhumpa Lahiri's A Temporary Matter starts like this: The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight p.m. A line had gone down in the last snowstorm, and the repairmen were going to take advantage of the milder evenings to set it right. The work would affect only the houses on the quiet tree-lined street, within walking distance of a row of brick-faced stores and a trolley stop, where Shoba and Shukumar had lived for three years. "It's good of them to warn us," Shoba conceded after reading the notice aloud, more for her own benefit than Shukumar's. She let the strap of her leather satchel, plump with files, slip from her shoulder and left it in the hallway as she walked into the kitchen. She wore a navy blue poplin raincoat over gray sweatpants and white sneakers, looking, at thirty-three, like the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble.

Isn't that last sentence a clincher? Keep writing, keep dreaming, keep fixing those first pages.

David Mamet
The sky is many shades of gray and it's been raining on and off, the whole place sopping and strewn with puddles. It reminds me of how when Lewis and Clark spent a winter at the Oregon coast that members of the group developed toe rot and all the rain drove them round the bend.

Here's a link to an interesting memo sent by David Mamet to the writers who worked for a canceled show called The Unit. It includes this:
QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.
SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.
1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?
THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE LITMUS PAPER. APPLY THEM, AND THEIR ANSWER WILL TELL YOU IF THE SCENE IS DRAMATIC OR NOT.
IF THE SCENE IS NOT DRAMATICALLY WRITTEN, IT WILL NOT BE DRAMATICALLY ACTED.
THERE IS NO MAGIC FAIRY DUST WHICH WILL MAKE A BORING, USELESS, REDUNDANT, OR MERELY INFORMATIVE SCENE AFTER IT LEAVES YOUR TYPEWRITER. YOU THE WRITERS, ARE IN CHARGE OF MAKING SURE EVERY SCENE IS DRAMATIC.

Not sure why Mamet is writing in all caps, but the information is great . Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart. 

TIP of the day:
Plots don't typically happen to normal people. Or, if you plan on basing your story around an Everyman or Everywoman character, then extraordinary events must make them vulnerable. And, of course, your character is fascinating. Writing is about the writer moving out of his or her comfort zone, and in the case of writing fiction, moving characters out of their comfort zones also. Take risks, plunge your poor protagonists into vats of trouble.

“Writing a novel is like opening up an imaginary hotel for the phantoms of your subconscious. You cannot be guaranteed that guests will turn up on any given night, but you need to have the light on and the door open just in case.” ~ Dermot Bolger

"Let us think of the still nameless poets, still nameless writers, who should be brought together and kept together. I am sure it is our duty to help these future benefactors to attain that final discovery of themselves which makes for great literature. Literature is not a mere juggling of words; what matters is what is left unsaid, or what may be read between the lines. Were it not for this deep inner feeling, literature would be no more than a game, and we all know that it can be much more than that." ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Congratulations
Blue skies this morning and the neighborhood is filled with noisy trucks and crews lopping off the tops of trees so they don't interfere with utility lines. A big congratulations to Sherman Alexie for winning the 2010 Pen Faulkner Award for War Dances. War Dances has short stories interspersed with poems. It seems to me that Alexie serves as a good model for taking risks as a writer (his most recent book was a novel for young adults, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian ) and for staying true to his voice and roots. Also, if you haven't seen the film Smoke Signals based on one of Alexie's novels, you're missing out. Keep writing, keep dreaming, stay true to your vision.

"Sit in a room and read—and read and read. And read the right books by the right people….When you find an author who really grabs you, read everything he has done. Don’t say, “Oh, I want to know what So-andso did”—and don’t bother at all with the best-seller list. Just read what this one author has to give you. And then you can go read what he had read. And the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view. But when you go from one author to another, you may be able to tell us the date when each wrote such and such a poem—but he hasn’t said anything to you."~ Joseph Campbell,  The Power of Myth

Tell Me a Story

Storytelling often begins with a life closely observed, and might relate experiences known or understood by ordinary people or the storyteller might weave a tale of fantastical happenings. As in storytelling of old, there is a ritual for beginning—the “once upon a time” or “a long, long time ago” when the world was full of wonders. The opening of a story is a moment of change and it signals the listener that we are entering into dreamtime, or a place where anything, including magic, might happen.

As when storytelling was an oral tradition, pay attention to the role of your listener, your active participant in the story. The listener’s or reader’s mind is the canvas on which the story is painted. Understand the parts of storytelling such as how themes connect the parts of a story and use a style that includes vivid word pictures and pleasing sounds and rhythms. Find moments where you can draw readers close into a moment for the dramatic appeal and always, always make your listeners or readers worry about the outcome.

But mostly remember that you’re a storyteller foremost.

Remember that storytelling is a need for connection and understanding so deep even whales partake. It is a fundamental communication like lullabies. In stories we try to understand the human heart.

So tell stories because you love Charles Dickens or Mark Twain or Jane Austen or Edgar Alan Poe or Margaret Atwood. Tell stories because you cannot hum the tunes of your heart and lullabies are not always appropriate and you’re not yet able to dance a tale.
 
Tell stories because silence affords only so much comfort. Tell stories because it is the opposite of war. Tell stories because your cat doesn’t understand English and your dog has a limited vocabulary. Tell stories because you don’t own a movie camera.  Tell stories because it’s the only way you know to contain whimsy. Tell stories because you remember the way things used to be. Tell stories because you cannot know the future. Tell a story because you can only stare off into space so long before you need to talk about the ideas that alight, struggling toward some kind of meaning. Tell a story because your heart has been broken or because you’ve wept for joy. Tell stories because childhood was such a huge place. Tell stories because you have stood at a river’s bank, an ocean shore, a quiet lake at dawn. Tell stories because you’ll never again experience your first kiss or taste of champagne. Tell stories because you love casting metaphors. Tell stories because you’ll likely never get a chance to name a species in Latin. Tell stories because the particular slant of light slipping in the window right now will soon disappear. Tell stories because in real life you’ll rarely hear “Encore!” or enough whispered endearments.

Tell stories because they are like a match to kindling on a winter night.Tell stories remembering that a reader wants to be swept away into a world far from his own. As you settle back, about to begin imagine that the moon has taken up residence in your heart. Imagine your reader as hungry for meaning and intricacy and searing truth. Or imagine your reader in a windowless place small as a prison. He wants mischief, humor, and a deeply emphatic understanding of humankind.Tell stories like he or she is a tired traveler arriving at your door at dusk, needing a place near the fire, the solace of a story. The rain is drumming on the roof and the shadows are violet and black. “Come in,” you say reaching for the teapot or brandy. “I’ve got a story for you.”

Winner of 3 Minute Fiction
Sky is mixed hues with blue coming through and the rains have stopped.
The winner of NPR's third 3-Minute Fiction is Please Read by Rhonda Strickland. When you connect to the link you can also view the picture that inspired the story. Next week they'll be announcing round four of the contest and the judge is Ann Patchett. Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart.

To get published you have to do what every writer in history has done. You have to sit for thousands of hours and hundreds of days in solitude. You have to read and write on a daily basis. You have to be utterly vulnerable on the page, and utterly ruthless in revision. To something you have to want it so bad nothing else matters. ~ Chris Offutt

Investment

Dusty-looking skies this morning and rain is predicted. I’m sipping my first cup of Early Grey tea, such a lovely morning ritual, and reviewing at my to-do list to clarify what needs to be accomplished first.

Awhile ago I was working on an editing project for a client—I don’t want to mention any details about the project because I want to protect her identity. As I read her manuscript it was clear that she was a beginning writer. She’d paid little attention to the basics of forming beautiful sentences such as using the active voice or vivid verbs or figurative language. But the story didn’t simply have a language problem, it revealed that she didn’t have a firm understanding of many techniques needed to write a book. Such as story comes first. Voice is your signature. Write for a reader, not yourself. Leave out the boring parts. Don’t repeat. Create layers in your writing.

Yet this person had quit her job intending to become a full-time writer. And this is when I became worried about her. Now, there are no magic formulas for the writing life, no road maps that will transport you from the Land of No to the Land of Published Author. Man, I wish there was because I’d sit on a corner outside of Powells in Portland and sell these maps, the way hawkers sell the map to the stars’ homes in Hollywood. Or maybe it’s Brentwood and Beverly Hills,

But if you plan on being a published writer plan on investing in your career with more ferocity and logic than you apply to other parts of life. And plan in putting in a long, unpaid apprenticeship. During this apprenticeship you’ll be experimenting, learning forms such as the novel and short story form, creating snappy, believable dialogue, and finding perfect details that bring a scene to life. You’ll study published authors, you’ll learn the basics of the publishing industry, but mostly you’ll sit at your computer day after day, getting it right.

Happy Spring!

More blue skies in Portland along with warm temperatures. Here's a photo from local photographer William Burge. It was snapped on the Waihee Ridge Trail in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart.

So you want to study writing? What should you do? Write. Read the masters. Read the poets. Be patient; time is nothing. Study. Listen. Allow yourself to fail and to learn the lessons your own failure affords you. ~ Thomas Kennedy

I See You Everywhere

Pale blue skies again today and spring is rioting in the streets here--flowers popping up everywhere, soft temperatures, and a sweet sense of newness. In the past week I had a cold that morphed into a bad cough and bronchial infection so I spent a lot of time in bed reading. I finished Mait Haig's book (and lost faith with him along the way) and then turned to Julia Glass' I See You Everywhere and The Whole World Over. And by the time I finished reading her books, I was sort of wishing I wasn't an editor. I just wanted to sit back and read uncritically, without noticing slip ups and inconsistencies. Because, of course, I spotted some. But mostly I can recommend these books and I find that Glass has an intriguing take on life and creates vivid casts of characters in her stories.

At powells.com Glass described her second book:
"The Whole World Over is, like so many other novels (certainly the ones I love best), about the search for true love among people old enough to know just how hard and devilish a journey it is — yet human enough to fall victim to their vanities, passions, and tenacious longings for the one true soul mate, the perfect family, the happy home. From a less lofty angle, it's the story of four characters and their intertwining lives: Greenie, a pastry chef and devoted mother; her husband, Alan, a psychotherapist facing midlife reckonings; Walter, a gregarious restaurateur in love with an unattainable man; and Saga, a young woman whose life was derailed by a severe injury and who, for the time being, finds her purpose in rescuing and caring for animals. What happens? Well, I like to say that The Whole World Over is a variation on that classic set-up, "A stranger comes to town." In this case the stranger — the governor of New Mexico — comes to town and orders dessert: a piece of cake made by Greenie, in Walter's Greenwich Village pub. He meets Greenie and offers her a job out west; impulsively, she accepts it, taking along her young son and setting in motion a series of events, encounters, and decisions that ultimately bring the four characters together in a moment of common crisis. And the rumor is true: Fenno McLeod, the hero of my novel Three Junes, is back, on the sidelines, yet his quiet presence also plays a crucial role in the fate of more than one of these people. I was surprised when he showed up; such surprises, I find, are one of the greatest rewards of writing fiction. Another is hearing what readers see in the lives I've created: there, too, I am often delightfully surprised."

And here is the opening paragraph of I See You Everywhere---it's just the sort of tease that invites a reader into a story: "I avoid reunions. I'm not a rebel, a recluse, or a sociopath, and I'm too young to qualify as a crank, even if it's true that I just spent the evening of my twenty-fifth birthday not carousing with friends or drinking champagne at a candlelit table for two but resolutely alone and working, glazing a large ovoid porcelain blow while listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing songs by the Gershwin brothers. (A crank would never love Gershwin.) My one real boyfriend in college, just before we broke up, told me I'm nostalgic to a fault. He professed contempt for what he called "the delusional sound track to our parents' deluded lives." He informed me that you can't be nostalgic for things that had their heydey before you were so much as born. Just about any  member of my family would have laughed him out the door and down the garden path. "