April in Portland

Cloud cover taking over the sky and I'm trying to handle a bunch of correspondence and phone calls that I've been putting off.(Injuries from my car accident--doesn't that sound like fun?) And I'm working on some new projects...more to come on that. The spring time glories and weather over the weekend couldn't have been lovelier. Never spent April in Paris, but April in Portland is magical.  And here's a shot of redbuds in bloom to prove it: 

 











And then there are the rhodendrums and other beauties joining the throng of blooms.

Writing Prompt

Since April is National Poetry Month, keep writing by adding on to a first line of a published poem. However, it is not necessary to continue writing a poem. Try switching genres; pen a story, essay, or scene.  Try these first lines written by Richard Hugo. Or try the first lines of your favorite poems. 

This is the final resting place of engines  

One tug pounds to haul an afternoon  

We had to get him off, the dirty elf-  

In gold life here a small guard  

A field of wind gave license for defeat  

This summer, most friends out of town  

You remember the name was Jensen. She seemed old  

Dear Bobbi: God it’s cold. Unpredicted, of course, by forecast  

He is twice blessed, the old one buried here  

Town or poem. I don’t care how it looks. Old woman  

Believe in this couple this day who come  

Now I’m dead, load what’s left on the wagon  

You might come here Sunday on a whim

From Dylan Thomas
“The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself I had come to love just the words of them; the words alone. What the words stood for, symbolized, or meant, was of very secondary importance. What mattered was the sound of them as I heard them for the first time on the lips of the remote and incomprehensible grownups who seemed, for some reason, to be living in my world. And these words were, to me, as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of mild-carts, the clopping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a window pane, might be to someone, deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing. I did not care what the words said, overmuch, nor what happened to Jack and Jill and the Mother Goose rest of them; I cared for the shapes of sound that their names, and the words describing their actions, made in my ears; I cared for the colours the words cast on my eyes.” Dylan Thomas, Notes on the Art of Poetry

Endings
Pale skies this morning and it's supposed to be in the 70s today. Time to stow away the winter clothes for good...I love that whole ritual of packing and unpacking seasonal clothes. Last night I met with one of my critique groups and we got into an involved discussion about fiction endings. We've been meeting since October and we're heading toward the proverbial finish line.I think I'm going to write a column or article on endings because of course they make or break the book. Sometimes a reader will overlook a so-so beginning, but a lousy ending means he or she won't read your next book.

One of the worst endings I've read in recent years was in The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Murial Barbery. I will never read another one of her books and felt manipulated as a reader. Ditto for Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island although because he's written a number of great endings including Prayers for Rain, I'm going to crack his books again..

Endings need to culminate the story that came before, but also provide a logical progression of the previous actions. Endings in fiction provide the most drama and excitement, but they also must leave a lasting impression, a lingering magic. But mostly endings stem from every element in your story, including tone, voice and genre type, but particularly from your protagonist’s motivations.

Good endings can be suggestive rather than spell out every aspect of the characters’ fates, and can allow the reader to imply some of his or her own meaning, but are never confusing. Satisfying endings always provide closure. As Nancy Kress says, “Closure means you give your readers enough information about the fate of the characters for them to feel that the book is really over.”

A good resource on the topic is Nancy Kress' Beginnings, Middles, & Endings
More to come....keep writing, keep dreaming, and nail the ending

Poetry picks on NPR

In case you  missed it, Nancy Pearl recommended several poetry collections in honor of National Poetry Month on NPR this morning. The poems she read knocked me over and I now need to track down Blue Dusk by Madeline DeFrees. And maybe all her poems
. 
"I've discovered over my years of reading poems that voice is incredibly important to me. Whether it's the voice of an omniscient narrator or a narrator who's telling the story in the first person, I need to be captivated by the tone and language in order to get into the work and keep reading.

I also most appreciate writers who use everyday language and straightforward diction, without any attempt to puzzle or frustrate the reader. But at the same time I want the poems to somehow say more than the words themselves do. I want the mystery and the glory of a poem to arise from the way the poet has put words together. I think that the poets I describe below all exemplify this kind of writing, which is why I like them so much."

Good news story behind the latest Pulitzer

If you're having one of those days where you wonder if writing is worth it, or if you'll ever get published, check out this story about how word of mouth helped propel a novelist to win the Pulitzer in fiction. The author is Paul Harding and his novel is Tinkers. And here's an interview with Harding at bookslut.
Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

Make your readers hear the pauses between the sentences. Let them see characters lean forward, fidget with their cuticles, avert their eyes, uncross their legs. -Jerome Stern

Blue skies woven with fragile-looking  cirrus clouds. If you have questions about some aspect of writing, please send them to jessicapage (at) spiritone (dot) com.

I'm adding a link to Author magazine published by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association here because it's fabulous resource for writers.

From the latest issue: As always, remember to visit Editor-in-Chief Bill Kenower's daily blog where he looks at the intersection of writing, creativity, and life in general. His motto: Writing the book you most want to write is the same as living the life you most want to lead. Here's an excerpt from a recent blog:

Every story has its own idea of what it must be. A writer's job is to follow that idea along its most natural route. The worst thing you can do is to decide ahead of time what that route must be-to think, I must write something post modern and clever, or I must have at least three women between the ages of 35 and 50 appear by page 100. Most readers, most editors, most agents, despite what they might claim they require in a story, actually just want a story that feels authentic. This is great news. We don't have to figure out what an authentic story is, we need only listen faithfully to the story delivered to us and we will be guided toward an authentic journey.

Spring memory

When I was a girl, one of my aunts tenderly dissected a bleeding heart and turned into a ballerina. A spring never goes by that I don't recall that memory, especially since I've planted a pink bleeding heart bush next to the front door.

 

Thinking about style and the need thereof:

“Grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules concocted by a committee in Zurich. It’s a system whereby words can be combined in the head to make magic.” Philip Gerard

“There is nothing more human (that is, less mineral, vegetal, animal, and even angelical) than grammar.” Jorge Luis Borges

“You may think the sense of motion and pleasure depends on the subject matter. That is not so. It depends on tone, rhythm, sentence structure, selection, and organization.” Jacques Barzun

“Before stirring an inch in the direction of fiction, is a review of the fundamentals. No one can hope to write well if he has not mastered—absolutely mastered—the rudiments: grammar and syntax, punctuation, diction, sentence variety, paragraph structure, and so forth.” John Gardner

“With the proper help and the proper book, any good student can cover the fundamentals, once and for all, in two weeks. The proper book, in my opinion, is W.W. Watt’s An American Rhetoric, the most accurate and efficient book on composition available, also the most interesting and amusing.” John Gardner

“The Elements of Style was Will Strunk’s attempt to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric down to size and write its rules and principles on the head of a pin.” E.B. White

“I can’t get across this argument that if you write, then surely you must respect things like grammar. Grammar is a bore as an academic subject, but it’s the basic good manners of writing.” John Fowles

“Unlike medicine or the other sciences, writing has no new discoveries to spring on us. We’re in no danger of reading in our morning newspaper that a breakthrough has been made in how to write a clear English sentence—that information has been around since the King James Bible. We know that verbs have more vigor than nouns, that active verbs are better than passive verbs, that short words and sentences are easier to read than long ones, that concrete details are easier to process than vague abstractions.” William Zinsser

“We are all writers and readers as well as communicators, with the need at times to please and satisfy ourselves (as White put it) with the clear and almost perfect thought.” Roger Angell, foreword to The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, Fourth Edition

“Our standards for writing are higher and more formal than for speaking. They have to be, because when we read, we don’t have the speaker’s voice and expression and intonation to make half-finished sentences and misused words clear. We have only the words. They must be clear. And, to be clear to as many readers as possible, they have to follow the generally agreed-upon rules, the shared rules, of grammar and usage.” Ursula K. Le Guin

Are you ready to be published?

I realize that if I keep posting my sky watch descriptions of Portland's morning sky it will sound like Transylvania or some gloomy outpost around here. But the truth is that it did rain like crazy here last night and the sky is now a soft shade of pale blue-grey. However, since we're 60-some miles from the ocean, marine air often jogs in here each night and is sometimes slow to leave in the morning. I'm sure you  know that climates near the ocean generally have moderate, cool summers and warm winters, with not much variation in temperatures. That's usually how it is around here, although with climate changes happening, it seems to me that all bets are off.   

I want to draw your attention to this fun, helpful and zany poster by Anna Hurley, entitled "Are You Absolutely, Positively, and Wholeheartedly Ready to Publish Your Novel?" - is a last minute checklist for budding authors everywhere. Are you ready to be published? 

"Writing chose me. I think if your really a writer, you just have to write. I've always incorporated writing into every single job I've had. In some form or fashion, I've had to write. I think it goes to the core of who you are. It's about having to write, and sitting down every single day. Having to write and going through the soul-crushing moments where you can't find anything to say. Writing novels gives me an ability to express myself and explore a totally different part of myself that I never really let come out before." Elizabeth Flock

The marine layer is still coating the sky, but blue is appearing. According to the latest edition of The Writer magazine, PoetrySpeaks is a new web site that takes a multi media approach to poetry. It was conceived by Sourcebooks and seems to be trying a new approach to bringing poetry to the people, including downloads and building an online community.

Favorite Poem?
I'm supposed to be teaching tonight but am home nursing an incredibly painful lower back. So between icing and pain pills and cursing my fate, I've checked my email. The lovely poet Sage Cohen has launched a lively discussion this month on Facebook. Today she's asking What is your favorite poem? Of course most questions with 'favorite' in them are difficult to answer, but I'm weighing in with W.S.Merwin, Mary Oliver, and Gerald Manley Hopkins.  Spring by Edna Vincent St.Millay was suggested as were poems by the illustrious Richard  Brautigan,  Sage voted on The Name of a Fish by Faith Shearin which is also one of my favorites, although I first read it last month when it appeared in The Writer's Almanac. In fact, I copied it into my writer's notebook.
Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

Kurt Vonnegut on writing

Mysterious-looking sky this morning. I'm still fascinated with how authors explain craft, especially if their advice is reflected in their work. Here's Kurt Vonnegut weighing in on storytelling.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
 Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.

"Write what you know ...and prepare a toast. To a life without stars that carry strange life forms, talking animals, machines that come to life, mysterious strangers, sudden revelations, words you've never head before--and the thoughts in other people's minds. You may have to forfeit forever the music of a close-range gunshot on a cool blue morning or the clash or battle-axes at the gates of Mordor (although you may not miss the hiss of the demon who's taken over your spouse's body).

Indeed, you stand to sacrifice much more than you gain by following this stale and unexamined bit of advice (which is offered with relentless frequency in writing programs, workshops, conferences, articles, etc.). In fact, the list is so very long of what you stand to lose that it forms a curious index of precisely what so many of us might well consider to be what literature and therefor good writing actually is about (including a lot of passion and bizarre situations that us aroused.)"
Kris Saknussemm, The Writer, May 2010

Glimmer Train Contest

Guidelines for the FAMILY MATTERS category: We are interested in reading your original, unpublished short stories about family! We don't publish stories for children, I'm sorry. It's fine to submit more than one story or to submit the same story to different categories. When we accept a story for publication, we are purchasing first-publication rights. (After we've published it, yohttp://www.glimmertrain.com/index.html can include it in your own collection.) To make a submission: Please send your work via our new online submission procedure. It's easy, will save you postage and paper, and is much easier on the environment. Just click the yellow Submissions button above to get started! Dates: The category will be open to submissions for one full month, from the first day through midnight (Pacific time) of the last day of the month. Results will be posted at www.glimmertrain.org. April. Results will be posted on June 30. October. Results will be posted on December 31. Reading fee: $15 per story. Prizes: 1st place wins $1,200, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies of that issue. 2nd-place: $500 3rd-place:$300 Other considerations: Open to all writers. Stories--about family--not to exceed 12,000 words.(Any shorter lengths are welcome.) This category has stimulated lots of questions about fiction/non-fiction/creative nonfiction, since many people have significant real-life stories they want to write. It seems to us that a substantial proportion of fiction submissions are heavily rooted in actual experience, which is entirely fine with us, but we do want stories to READ like fiction and anything we publish is presented as fiction. (Also, sticking too tightly to "truth" can limit the larger truth that fiction is able to reveal.) I would certainly recommend changing details that would allow the real-life people to say, Hey, that character is--without a doubt--me. I hope that makes sense. We look forward to reading your work!

Glimmer Train Press, Inc. • 1211 NW Glisan Street, Suite 207, Portland, OR 97209 USA • All Images Copyright © Glimmer Train Press, Inc.; Copyright © 1998-2010 Glimmer Train Press, Inc.

There is still time to attend a workshop in Vancouver BC

Anatomy of a Scene
Sunday, April 18
Time: 10-4:30

ETC:Cost: $90 American funds
Includes beverages and snacks, participants provide their own lunch. Space is limited so please contact me soon.
      “A scene is a miniature drama in which a single issue is decided in specific circumstances.” Philip Gerard
Scenes are basic units of storytelling that dramatize both everyday life and key moments in fiction and nonfiction. In scenes something significant happens, it has not happened before and will not happen again. A scene—an unbroken action― brings the story to a new place in the narrative, it offers something fresh and somehow stirs reader’s emotions Thus scenes are a means of perception and the intimate moments in the story that create emotional involvement with the reader. Fully rendered scenes are dramatic high points and help the readers see the events, but also experience them via their senses.
But crafting compelling scenes isn’t merely a trick of assembling actors onto a stage. The best scenes and are built on character’s goals meeting opposition, and often include an emotional reversal. Our discussion will define: half scenes, sequels, action scenes, transitions, and set pieces. This workshop is suitable for fiction and nonfiction writers. We’ll also cover using scene cards, using setting to enhance drama, and the role of dialogue.
Participants will learn:
• Which events in the story can be summarized and which are written in scenes.
• How scenes advance at least two things in the story—the theme, the plot, a subplot, or develop or change characters.
• How a scene must be vital to the overall plot; suggests more scenes to follow; and tension and conflict in scenes is cumulative.
• How to move in and out of scenes quickly; when you need transitions and when to use cliffhangers.
• How to structure action scenes.
For more information contact me at jessicapage (at) spiritone (dot) com

Hugo Nominations

A fascinating collection for the Hugo nominations have been announced. I'm happy to see a novella by Nancy Kress and the film Moon in the line up. And I've been meaning to read Boneshaker and am fascinated about how the awards include fan fiction, editors, graphic stories. This is such a vital, evolving genre, don't you think?

Water Our Thirsty World

The skies are clearing after our last storm. Yesterday afternoon the sky was the color of a day-old bruise and the wind was roaring through here, the tall firs across the street bending and waving, till it seemed they might bow or break. A bicyclist was riding past and was bent forward, struggling against the wind. And since the ground is saturated around here, trees started toppling over, although none in my neighborhood.

 I just wanted to call your attention to the April issue of National Geographic which is focused on water (it's the print edition). In it, Barbara Kingsolver the novelist and essayist has written a lovely essay about the simple miracle of water.

It begins: "We keep an eye out for wonders, my daughter and I, every morning as we walk down our farm lane to meet the school bus. And wherever we find them, they reflect the magic of water: a spider web drooping with dew like a rhinestone necklace. A rain-colored heron rising from the creek bank. One astonishing morning, we had a visitation of frogs. Dozens of them hurtled up from the grass ahead of our feet, launching themselves, white-belied, in bouncing arcs, as if we'd been caught in a downpour of amphibians. It seemed to mark the dawning of some new aqueous age. On another day we met a snapping turtle in his primordial olive drab armor. Normally this is a pond-locked creature, but some murky ambition had moved him onto our gravel lane, using the rainy week as a passport from our farm to somewhere else."

"The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion." ~ Tom Robbins

Deep Fiction Workshop, April 10

 If you're feeling the urge to spend a day at the Oregon coast and have your writer's brain rattled in a good way, join me in Manzanita for a practical, as in you can immediately put these techniques to work, workshop.

Date: Saturday, April 10, Time: 9:30-4:30
Location: Center for Contemplative Arts,
Underhill Plaza, Manzanita, Oregon
Cost: $80
Readers want to be haunted by stories, characters and specific scenes that linger in their memories. They want to carry a story within them as they go about daily activities. They want to be transported to another time and place. The best fiction does this; touching the deep layers in us. A writer achieves this effect by embedding dozens of techniques into his story to create a deep and simmering story world. Yet since some elements in fiction are suggested or handling with delicacy, they’re difficult to analyze. This workshop brings these fictional elements into the light so you can create a nuanced, layered, and compelling story. In this workshop we’ll combine discussion and exercises to cover methods for creating depth including:
 How to focus the storyline on a single, dramatic question.
 How to weave in back story, via flashbacks and other means.
 How to structure scenes then layer them with mood and tone.
 How to write with balance, unity and subtlety.
 The how and why of balancing subplots with the main plot and secondary characters with the main players.
 How theme and premise underscore and unify fiction.
 How increasing complications and motivation drive fiction forward.
 How tension and suspense contribute to every page and the part foreshadowing plays in achieving it.
 
Contact me at jessicapage (at) spiritone (dot) com

The Mother Lode

Easter was rainy and cool here, and this morning looks like more of the same. If you don't follow Jane Friedman, the Editorial Director of Writer's Digest Books, you're missing out on red-hot news in the publishing industry, an amazing resource, and all-around wise woman. She's the mother lode, writers.  Every Sunday she compiles Best Tweets for the Week (I watch Twitter so you don't have to) at her blog There Are No Rules.

Also, if you're interested in penning flash fiction, check out  round four of NPR's  Three-Minute Fiction contest, the next deadline is April 11, the judge is the amazing Ann Patchett, and the words that must be used are: plant,button,trick and fly.

"They're dull little words, little everyday words that I want to see in all of the stories," Patchett tells NPR's Guy Raz. "People can use them as nouns, as adjectives or as verbs." You can also use the words in any tense, if used as verbs.

"It's really nice to have little markers to go by, something to sort of occupy one side of your brain while the other side of your brain is being very creative," Patchett says. "I think of these four words as the splint that will hold the story together."

Patchett says she picked those four words because they work in a lot of different ways. For example, she says, "you can plant information, and you can have a plant on your windowsill."

It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I’d had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. . . . If I started to write elaborately . . . I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline. ~ Ernest Hemingway

"Perhaps the questioner is more than just curious, yearning for a jealously kept prescription on how to be a writer. There is none. Writing is the one "profession" for which there is no professional training: Creative writing courses can teach the aspirant only to look at her or his writing critically, not how to create. The only school for a writer is the library - reading, reading. A journey through realms of how far, wide and deep writing can venture in the endless perspectives of human life. Learning from other writers' perceptions that you have to find your way to yours, at the urge of the most powerful sense of yourself - creativity. Apart from that, you're on your own." ~ Nadine Gordimer

Writing Prompt

Drizzly skies and the forecast calls for more rain. I'm writing my monthly columns and have just made a big mess in here because I was looking for a file among the thousands of papers I've got stashed here. Some days I can work amid a paper cyclone, but I suspect this might not be one of them.

Continue writing a poem, essay, or story, using one of the following as the first lines by William Stafford:

Tomorrows ago the world spun

Everyone first hears the news as a child

Every rock says, “Your move,” and then waits

Winter stops by for a visit each year

They made a wolf out of sheet iron

When they criticize you how do you

He wants to go north. His life has become

A hand appears.

Have the phone ready

Now it seems that I am not sad enough. Some

A blank space on the page,

At the store the gave me the wrong

Think about Gypsies—

One time a clock said midnight

Everyone first hears the news as a child

Some people don’t know this:

A balloon ascends on that path it finds in the air

On a corner you meet a face. It follows you,

Once I feel bad, it takes chocolate

Fog in the morning here

Time used to live here

I like to live in the sound of water

Under the earth a great river has found

Look at me.  My family are gone. I am old and alone.

Don’t just stay tangled up in your life.

Trees are afraid of storms. Even big ones.

Little things hide. Sometimes they

Bent over a ship in a bottle, on an island

“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. " 

Fiction critique opening....
Folks I have an opening in my upcoming fiction critique group.
The session begins on April 7th, and runs for 8 weeks in northwest Portland. Times are 12:30-4.  Cost is $270, and group is limited to five writers. This group is for people serious about writing and becoming published,  and able to participate in collaborative sessions. Contact me at jessicapage at spiritone dot com.

Power Writing, a workshop with Jessica Morrell

Date: Saturday, April 3
Location: 1241 N. W. Johnson (Pacific Northwest College of Art room 138)
Hours: 9:30-4:30
Cost: $75
Powerful writing simmers, brims, sweats on the page and slips into the reader’s brain, senses and emotions with a compelling vibrancy. Yet, writers often incorrectly assume that editors make decisions about buying or not buying a writer’s work based on the concept or subject. In truth many editors decide if writing is marketable based on the precision and specificity of language and descriptions, on voice, and overall writing style. In fact, your skill level is often broadcast within your first few sentences. With this in mind, Power Writing is a workshop that gives you an advantage in the increasingly competitive marketplace. This session explains how to create writing that is sensory and grounded while using sounds and specific language to communicate meaning. By using precise images and information and working with sounds and rhythms of language, we impart force, and leave a lasting impression. The session will include writing exercises, examples and extensive materials.
Session topics include:
 How to write descriptions based on sensory data.
 How voice is used and enhanced in fiction and nonfiction.
 How high-energy verbs are the engine that powers sentences.
 How to murder your darlings, especially excess modifiers.
 How figurative devices deepen prose and add music to writing.
 How to use word grenades, sound bursts, and wake up images for punchier prose.
 When to employ subtlety and subtext and when not to.
 Why and how we use alliteration, onomatopoeic, sentence fragments and run-ons, and parallelism.

“Could I put those starry deeps and lamplighted elms into words that sang like the night wind now rinsing my senses and shivering the spring leaves?” Donald Newlove 50

Jessica Morrell is the author of Writing Out the Storm; Between the Lines, Master the Subtle Elements of Fiction Writing; Voices From the Street, The Writer’s I Ching and Bullies, Bastards & Bitches, How to Write the Bad Guys of Fiction and Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us: A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing is Being Rejected. She has been teaching writers since 1991 and you’ll learn more than you thought possible in her workshops and sessions.

To reserve your place: Please send a check for $75 to Jessica Morrell, P.O. Box 820141, Portland, OR 97282-1141. A confirmation e-mail will be sent so please include email address and phone number. For more information: contact Jessica at jessicapage@spiritone.com

"Perhaps the questioner is more than just curious, yearning for a jealously kept prescription on how to be a writer. There is none. Writing is the one "profession" for which there is no professional training: Creative writing courses can teach the aspirant only to look at her or his writing critically, not how to create. The only school for a writer is the library - reading, reading. A journey through realms of how far, wide and deep writing can venture in the endless perspectives of human life. Learning from other writers' perceptions that you have to find your way to yours, at the urge of the most powerful sense of yourself - creativity. Apart from that, you're on your own." ~ Nadine Gordimer

• Writing Prompts
•    Write about a wedding where the attendees are unhappy with the union.
•    Write about a wedding where the attendees are thrilled about the marriage.
•    Write a scene or story about someone who is emotionally needy or clingy.
•    Write a story or scene where a third party tries to break up a relationship.
•    Write a scene where trees, plants or flowers play a prominent role.
•    Write about a person or character who has problems sleeping.
•    Write about a character or person who seems to have lousy luck.
•    Write about a person or character who has terrible personal grooming.
•    Write about how the heady scent of night-blooming jasmine causes a woman  to lose her self control.
• Write about an elderly man or woman bitter with life’s regrets.
• Write about a picnic for people on an extremely restricted diet.
• Describe a crime scene, teeming with experts and a corpse as it centerpiece.
• Create a story about a newlywed caught committing adultery.
• Create a story when a performance is interrupted by an audience member’s h   heart attack. Write about a nuclear plant with mechanical problems.
•  Base a story on invitation to a high school reunion.
• Shape a story around a mountain climbing team that is running out of supplies a and realizes that they cannot make it down the mountain before nightfall.
• Create a scene where an athlete denies a drug scandal.
• Create a scene in a crowded elevator that comes to a sudden halt.
• S Shape a story around a woman who carries home eight romance novels from  h her local library.
• Write about a group of bird watchers in the rain making an unusual discovery.
• Write about what happens when a foot of rain falls in 24 hours.
• Write about a child discovers that there is no Santa Claus.
• Write about a person obsessed about uncovering the truth.
  

Another Blueprint for the Writing Life

Cirrus clouds wispy across the sky this morning and I've got a pile of email correspondence to catch up on. I want to pass along a blueprint for the writing life that I wrote in in 2005. My blueprint changes from year to year, but I’m always striving to not be tossed away by churning emotions or the events of life so that the writing comes first. I work to settle at my desk every morning feeling rested and clear. What I know is this: I am writing and learning more at this point in my life than I ever imagined, and daily add to my knowledge about storytelling in all its forms. So here is my blueprint—it’s not particularly original, but it works for me, so I’ll pass it along.
Face your fears. Most people are afraid of some aspect of writing. Fear is okay, it’s how you face it that shapes your life.

Pay attention to the words and joys of small children.

Walk through your days and nights with deep awareness, noticing, always noticing.

Take a writer’s notebook with you everywhere and use it to collect all you see and hear and smell and taste.

Take risks with projects, characters, sentences.

Have two or three projects in the works at all times, so if one bogs down you can slip into another project.

Read like a writer, always analyzing how an author has worked his or her magic on the page.

Tap into your dream life for images, metaphors, drama, the hidden aspects of self, and proof that you have a limitless imagination. Dreams are best captured by keeping a dream journal. Linda Seger, author and Hollywood guru suggests that you open your dream journal each night and date it for the next morning.

Use your writing to bring meaning into your life, introspection into your days, and to leave your footprints in the world.

Write your first draft as fast as you can and as soon as you can after the inspiration strikes.

Create a system for editing and rewriting.

Find other writers for camaraderie, inspiration and support. If they don’t provide this, dump them and find other writers who do.

Use potent verbs.

Use mostly words of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Write for all the senses.

Avoid adverbs and be able to justify every modifier on your pages. 

If you have a blueprint that works for you, please pass it along. Meanwhile, good writing and don’t be tossed away.

Henry Miller's Blueprint

Then there is Henry Miller, another Beat Generation author of Tropic of Cancer and other daring tombs, some considered scandalous. He once said: “Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.”

Miller composed a work schedule for 1932-1933 from Henry Miller Miscellanea found in Henry Miller On Writing.

Work on one thing at a time until it is finished.

Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”

Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is at hand.

Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

When you can’t create you can work.

Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

Don’t be a drought-horse! Work with pleasure only.

Discard the Program if you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come after.

Blueprints

The morning sky has blue appearing. My allergies have been so severe lately I'm not feeling tempted to venture outdoors, but I just might change my mind if the sky keeps changing. When I write books or teach workshops I like to use terms that convey the practical, working parts of the writing life. I like to dissect stories of all kinds and reveal the skeleton and innards to writers. And I love the term blueprint. It has such a solid ring since it is a map of an architectural or engineering design. So I'm going to run some blueprints from authors and myself that can reveal ideas that just might make writing easier.

I meet lots of writers and have noticed how often that they appear bedeviled by all the rules that confront them, how they’re looking for definitive answers. It’s so easy to become confused and be thrown off course in the writing life. It’s so easy to give up or not even begin at all. One answer is to create a blueprint for writing and living that keeps you balanced and steady, like the captain at the helm of boat on stormy seas.
Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy.
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Believe in the holy center of life
Be in love with your life
The jewel center of life interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Write what you want from bottom of the mind
Write for the world to read and see yr exact picture of it
Accept loss forever
Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

Wish I'd Written That

I woke this morning to the sounds of rain and wind lashing the roof and windows and the world is a burnished silver. I've only got the final pages of Matt Haig's The Possession of Mr. Cave to read and I've been musing about the book and Haig's themes. Like The Dead Father's Club, this book is about grief and a ghost has a role in this story and the shaky line that separates madness and delusion, concern and obsession is being portrayed. And as I read along, I kept finding words, phrases, and paragraphs that I was just plain envious of. Now, I love to pause while reading to admire beautiful prose as long as the writer doesn't get carried away.  When a writer goes overboard it feels like I'm on a museum tour, or that the author has decorated the house of his novel with frescoed ceilings and way too many trappings and I'm tiptoeing along since I don't want to topple rare 16h century statuary. So no, don't give me overdone, but give me beauty along the way.

In a scene Terrence Cave follows his daughter into a raucous nightclub: "It was like walking into a panic attack. No, that makes it sound too cosy. It was like walking into someone else's panic attack, someone I didn't know and didn't want to. Someone closing their eyes on a railway platform at a quarter past midnight, debating whether to end it all under the next freight train that passes through."

He muses about grief: "My experience of grief has never been that of intense sadness, as people often claim to feel. Sadness slows things down, presses you into the sofa and drags out the day. Grief doesn't do that. Grief throws you out of a plane. Grief is terror, in its most undiluted form. The moment in the fall when you realize the parachute is not on your back. You pull the cord, but there is nothing. You keep pulling and pulling, and you know it is no good, but you can't stop because that would mean accepting the rather appalling fact of the ground, a fact that is moving at an impossible speed towards you, and that will smash you to pieces. And you want to stay whole, unbroken. But there you are, falling, and there is nothing you can do except keep believing in that parachute."

If not in hope of beauty laid bare

"Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed ? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show."
~ Annie Dillard

"So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free." ~ Tom Robbins