Monday, January 30, 2012
Writing Tip #20: Setting the Scene
Painters, like Monet, understand that location is "everything." Afterall, without a location, what would they paint? Location is what holds people, events, experience and without location, there is nothing but emptiness.
As a writer, using words on the canvas of the page and later, the mind of the reader, how do you establish location. Do you do this at all?
Writers new to the craft traditionally write 90% mental activity and this includes "telling" what happened--that is, event downloading. They usually give about 10% to location and setting. I offer up a different formula and invite you to flip the equation around. 80% showing of space, place, people, time, objects and senses and 20% to "what happened." And this includes the setting.
To ground your reader in time, space, place, a good writer knows that location is as vital to the story as the people and the events that take place. Without a location and the details that establish that location, the reader is unable to “land” and truly "experience" what the writer is sharing. Setting grounds the reader and grounds the experience. Setting also holds the forward moving action and can be referred back to again and again.
Prompt: Think about a significant moment from your life such as a turning point or a marker of transition. IE: the day your child was born, the car wreck that changed your life, the day you met your partner or realized you were in love (or told that person you were in love with them), a death in the family, a national disaster (9/11).
Before you write about the event, recall the setting which includes the day of the week, the time of day, the weather on that day, the season, the year (and events in the news that were happening at that time), the way the light moved through the room (if you were in a room), the direction of shadows, the foliage on the trees (if you are outside), the smell in the air, the sounds around you (was music playing, children laughing, dogs barking, bird song, toast hopping, water boiling), the furniture and what collected items lay around, the décor and so on. In one line write: The day so and so happened …and then spend the rest of the writing establishing the setting.
Example: Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad, pg. 1-2
February 19, 1979. At seven that morning my dad, his girlfriend Sandra and I took off from Santa Monica Airport headed for the mountains of Big Bear...
The Cessna 172 lifted and banked over Venice Beach then climbed over a cluster of buildings in Westwood and headed east. I sat in front, headphones and all, next to pilot Rob Arnold. Rob fingered the knobs along the instrument panel that curved toward the cockpit’s ceiling. Intermittently, he rolled a large vertical dial next to his knee, the trim wheel, and the plane rocked like a seesaw before leveling off. Out the windshield, way in the distance, a dome of gray clouds covered the San Bernardino Mountains, the tops alone poking through. It was flat desert all around the cluster of peaks, and the peaks stood out of the desert as high as 10,000 feet.
I was feeling especially daring because I had just won the slalom championship and I thought about the big chutes carved into those peaks—concave slides, dropping from the top of the peaks down the faces of the mountains like deep wrinkles. I wondered if they were skiable.
Behind Rob sat my dad. He read the sports section and whistled a Willie Nelson tune that I’d heard him play on his guitar many times. I craned my head around to see behind my seat. Sandra was brushing out her silky dark brown hair. She’s dressed kinda fancy, I thought.
How long, Dad? I said.
He peered over the top of the newspaper.
About thirty minutes, Boy Wonder, he said.
Homework: Notice setting in the book you are currently reading, or go find a few memoirs and make note of the setting in each one.
Remember, a well-rendered memoir establishes setting within the first few paragraphs and allows the personality of place, revealed through attention to detail, to lift and influence the story.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Small Talk & Annoucements
Fred Meyer on a Thursday. Jo, me, 2x2 dressing room and overhead florescent lights that are so bright they feel as if they beat me between the eyes. A man with a gritty southern voice, a loud talker who works the various check stands and who I avoid because of that voice, announces fresh and hot sourdough loaves have just come out of the oven in the bakery
"Which one do you like?" Jo asks.
She's down to two dresses. One is white, drop waist (think Flapper from the 20's) and the fabric seems to have been drenched in glitter. I have sparkles on my hands, my arms, my sleeves, my shoulders, my legs, my books. There is a circle of glitter around Jo's feet.
"I'd go with the pink one," I say.
"I always do pink. I've never done white."
Another announcement scratches out over the intercom system and I uncross and re-cross my legs. I have been sitting in this closet sized dressing room for too long. My leg is cramped.
"Mommy," she says, "I can't pick. I love them BOTH. I always get myself into this kind of a pickle."
This makes me laugh. Out loud. And that's unusual. Jo isn't the one who gets me to belly laugh. The comedy job has been filled by Spencer for all these years (he's 14) but Jo--a few days from ten--is funny. Like her body grows, this sense of humor blooms too. She's busted me up several days in a row now. These one line zingers that come from no where.
"Don't yell at the teacher, he has more power than you do," I overheard her tell a friend the other day.
"A-t-t-i-t-u-d-e," she whispered when her brother was being a pill.
"That Eli," she said, after a boy asked her what time it was and then walked away, "he's a nice fellow."
"Pickle," I say. "Yes, I suppose you're in a pickle."
The search and purchase of a birthday dress is my little ritual, I don't recall when I got it started, but Jo has latched on the way kids do. They love routine. And now, every year, we go shopping for a dress.
"Which one would you get?"
"Pink," I say again. "Your skin is perfect with that pink."
And then it happens. Jo, her own person, makes a decision--not based on what I think but based on what she wants.
"I've never had a white dress," she says. "I'm taking the white."
You would think, maybe, that I would care that she picked a dress that I didn't necessarily like. You might think, "well, that girl is going to be a handful when she's a teen." But I don't think about things that way.
While it's almost her birthday, I am the one who just got a huge gift. Jo, my child, is on her way to being her own wonderful self with her own tastes and thoughts and conclusions. I have given that to her, hard earned in a way because I still am not as confident as Ms. Jo. Jokes are easy but confidence--true confidence in yourself and your choices--that is hard.
As yet another announcement for hot fresh sourdough bread grates over our heads--sound pollution.
We leave the pink dress behind and take the white dress to the check out stand. Hand in hand we walk, Jo happy with her choice and me. well, I have glitter all over my hands.
~
CLASSES & RETREATS:
I'm planning the spring/summer schedule and it's going to be packed. In February, I begin the Critique Circle of just six writers reading their work to one another. This is a tight, salon style teaching and will be lovely for those who are working on a larger body of writing and want support, instruction and community.
CLICK HERE for cost and details.
Over at The Attic Institute, a memoir technique class is nearly full. It's affordable, it's intense and you will savor this experience.
A spring retreat is shaping up in Palm Springs, thanks to Tammy Coia, The Memoir Coach and those details are found by clicking here!
Finally, I have set the dates and times for the annual Beach Retreat. This one will be about you, about time to write, about relaxing and about WRITING! Read on and sign up early. This will be closed at eight writers.
~
8 Writers, 3 Days ~ Write, Relax & Restore. 
The 2012 Summer Retreat is for writers in search of depth instruction and personal mentoring. Come to Manzanita, a tiny coastal town snugged on the Oregon coastline, and savor four full days to write, receive teachings and read your work aloud. This unique, once a year opportunity, combines the best of camaraderie, solitude, teachings and celebration.
SCHEDULE:
Fri:
10-1 p.m. Breakfast & Teachings
1-6:30 p.m. Personal writing time
6:30 - 9:30 Desert, teachings, reading & conversation
Sat:
10-1 p.m. Breakfast & Teachings
1-6:30 p.m. Personal writing time
6:30 - 9:30 Desert, teachings, reading & conversation
Sun:
10-1 p.m. Breakfast & Teachings
1-6:30 p.m. Personal writing time
6:30 - 9:30 Desert, teachings, reading & conversation
COST:
$375.00 Early Sign Up (Prior to May 15, 2012)
$450.00 Late Sign Up (May 16, 2012)
Jennifer covers your teachings, breakfast and evening desserts.
You cover your travel to and from Manzanita and your accommodations.
While we can help make accommodation recommendations for writers and can arrange meetings between students for ride share, we will not be responsible for your travel or accommodations. You are encouraged to find a place to stay that allows privacy, relaxation, restoration and space to write.
RECOMMENDED LODGING:
(Luxury)
Inn at Manzanita
Coast Cabins
Ocean Inn
(Affordable Shabby Chic)
Spindrift
Sunset Surf
(House Share Opportunities)
Sunset Vacation Rentals
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Book Talk: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
In this book, a loaded gun appears in the second sentence of the opening page. Mom is passed out on page 13.
To me, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller is a big story, seemingly as big as the continent on which it is set—Africa.
Fuller’s life in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was a dangerous combination of poisonous spiders, snakes, terrorists and drunken parents who were farmers, colonists and soldiers in the newly formed white-only government.
My question, in reading this book (and considering my own memoir), is this: how do we share our stories that are simply too large? Even for writers who grew up in one house, in a small town, without African wildlife and war, the story can overwhelm. The setting and the people can take over. The tragedies can be more than the reader can bear.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight bulges with history, geography, the author’s larger than life parents and sister. Fuller’s accounting of the war could be it’s own book and yet, in the writing, she takes command of her story. Even in the years when Bobo (Fuller’s nickname) is a very young girl, she is the story. With big open eyes, she describes this enormous world of hers and we stay riveted with the young girl as narrator. She is the smallest in the family, smaller than the ghosts of previous siblings who had died.
This exchange with her father, after she had a night of little sleep, and much to fear, displays seven-year-old narration in a pitch perfect tone.
“Morning Dad.”
“Sleep alright?”
“Like a log,” I tell him. “You?”
Bobo is stoic. She is in a dance with her father. She does not whine about her fear of the terrorists under the bed. She is a third generation white African farmer after all. 
When her family moves, “right into the middle, the very birthplace and epicenter, of the civil war in Rhodesia and a freshly stoked civil war in Mozambique,” her life goes on as any young girl who attends school and wears fresh clothes on her trips to town. When she has to say goodbye to her father, she shares,
There’s a lump in my throat that hurts when I swallow and I can’t talk or I’ll start to cry. Mum puts down her hand. I slip my hand into hers and we begin to walk back to the house. It feels strange to hold Mum’s hand and too quickly there is an uncomfortable film of sweat between us.
Her father leaves to fight in a tangled and bloody war and she, like many of us who must say goodbye to Dad, won’t allow comfort from her mother. She is a tough girl, tough like those of us who’ve never even seen a poisonous snake or an Uzi gun.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight reminds me that the only way through a big story is straight through. A writer must keep her senses on alert and her ears open to the narrator in her heads. A writer must also trust the reader will come along on the journey when we simply describe our story with wide eyes. A big story is harder to tame perhaps, I have learned that a writer must learn to keep command of her story. ~ By Clover Cohen
I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, a long time student in the Master Class. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Writing Tip #19: Your Place in the Family
Writing about our family is hard. Here are some questions I hear all the time:
"What if they read what I write and they disagree?"
"What if I'm wrong?"
"What if I hurt someone I love?"
"What if I break our generation-long 'code of silence?'"
Here are a few ways to practice breaking into these fears and breaking out of the habituated ways you look at the people in your life. Your family members are not props on your stage, they are mysterious and complex. You don't have to figure anyone out, you just need to present them accurately and with a level of complexity. Good writing is being a great witness and also being able to describe people in such a way that you touch on the mystery of human beings and human interactions.
Prompt: Create a picture of your family based on some simple gesture: the way they sign, laugh, cry or kiss. Begin with a vivid, original description of these gestures, then describe your father, your mother, yourself, or any other family member. Try to see how examining these small gestures reveals larger details about the family. (Thank you to Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola from Tell it Slant for this prompt)
See an example of how to do this prompt by reading this excerpt from The Fine Art of Sighing by Bernard Cooper 
You feel a gradual welling up of pleasure, or boredom, or melancholy. Whatever the emotion, it's more abundant than you ever dreamed. You can no more contain it than your hands can cup a lake. And so you surrender and suck the air. Your esophagus opens, diaphragm expands. Poised at the crest of an exhalation, your body is about to be unburdened, second by second, cell by cell. A kettle hisses. A balloon deflates. Your shoulders fall like two ripe pears, muscles slack at last.
My mother stared out the kitchen window, ashes from her cigarette dribbling into the sink. She'd turned her back on the rest of the house, guarding her own solitude. I'd tiptoe across the lino-leum and make my lunch without making a sound. Sometimes I saw her back expand, then heard her let loose one plummeting note, a sigh so long and weary it might have been her last. Beyond our backyard, above telephone poles and apartment buildings, rose the brown horizon of the city; across it glided an occasional bird, or the blimp that advertised Goodyear tires. She might have been drifting into the distance, or lamenting her separation from it. She might have been wishing she were somewhere else, or wishing she could be happy where she was, a middle-aged housewife dreaming at her sink.
My father's sighs were more melodic. What began as a somber sigh could abruptly change pitch, turn gusty and loose, and suggest by its very transformation that what begins in sorrow might end in relief. He could prolong the rounded vowel of OY, or let it ricochet like a echo, as if he were shouting in a tunnel or a cave. Where my mother sighed from ineffable sadness, my father sighed at simple things: the coldness of a drink, the softness of a pillow, or an itch that my mother, following the frantic map of his words, finally found on his back and scratched.
The Lesson: Cooper gives us a terrific sense of how to examine something as unique as the human sigh. I have seen other students take this lesson and apply it to eyebrows, hugs, the way men in the family cry and waistlines. You are only limited by your own imagination.
As you write, keep asking yourself where you fit in your family and if you can observe, with minute detail, your place and their place. Can you separate yourself out and make room for the largess of the others? Can you be the more complete witness?
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Book Talk: Found: A Memoir by Jennifer Lauck
Taking a swerving diversion off the Book Talk path, I am using this time to speak a bit about a "web tour" that has been orchestrated by Lori, an adoptive mother and a writer. Lori, via her website, coordinates book tours where interested bloggers sign up, read the book and then--on a designated day--review the book.
Found was chosen. The tour posts began Friday, continued Sunday and were done by Tuesday.
To read for yourselves, click here. Beware. Some of these posts are not fun to read. Others are simply stunning. To save yourself a whole lotta of cruising around, I list my favorite blogs here:
By Adoptees
Neither Here Nor There
Insert Bad Movie Title Here
Rhonda Rae on Examiner Book Tours
Birthmothers
Letters to Ms. Feverfew
A Birth Mother's Path
Those Who Adopt & Experts in Adoption Counseling
Zeina
Parenting Your Adopted Child
Mommies Here
Too Many Fish to Fry
Mommy Musings
Production, Not Reproduction
I want to note that of the twenty bloggers who took on Found, only three were adoptees, two were birth-mothers and the rest--15--were adoptive parents, people who are advocates of adoption and experts who are part of adoption placement.
This is pretty typical of the demographics for this type of conversation and while I would have something to say about this, under less formal circumstances than this blog, I will keep my opinion of the demographics to myself.
I will say this tour transcends issues of "good" or "bad" reviews and goes to the essence of what it is to write a memoir. One writer seemed to find it vital that I provide my "sources" for information in Found, and this writer cannot be faulted for the request. I've had similar requests, especially from people who are so stirred by the writing they are bent on proving me and it wrong in some way.
Let's do a little primer on memoir: Memoir is not biography, autobiography, journalism, novel, poem and/or critical paper. Memoir is a unique genre which is defining itself with each book published.
Memoir is memory explored via literary devices and memoir is the truth of the writer at the moment the book was written. Memoir is, at the core, lived experience mulched for meaning. The reader of memoir is not the writer of memoir, although often a reader will become entangled in emotional wires that lurk within their own psyche. The reader is, and can only be, a voyeur. The reader stays in the relationship with a memoir for many reasons but I believe this is the primary one: the reader sees the writer working to get to the meaning of lived experience and in that effort, the reader is able to then derive some meaning of their own which can be applied to similar experiences.
Effort is the point. The memoir writer makes her best effort to be truthful, she struggles with truth and works hard to find meaning.
In Found, I know I did my best. I wrote my truth and it is a powerful truth that touches many. I get emails everyday. The person I hoped it would touch most deeply was the adoptee. I was changed by the zigzaggedy path I took to find my way home and I hoped that perhaps there would be something in my experience that would help another adoptee see herself and himself. 
You see, to be an adopted person is to live a lie and many of us are asleep to the lie. We are the living Sleeping Beauties who live and work and love among you. We live as if we are part of the greater whole but within so many of us, there is a gaping wound only we can feel and a few others can sneak a peak at now and again. We are not found yet. We are lost and we are angry and we are sad. But we'll never tell you this is the way it is. We will become Steve Jobs, wow you with our super powered ambition, we will blend, fold, talk the talk and walk the walk, but deep down--the hunger and the sadness is complete. It owns us.
I wrote Found for you--adoptee. I wrote it like a little map to help you find your own way home and I wrote in a language you would understand--the language of the heart.
In the end, I had a global comment about the weblog book tour and placed it on the site where I felt it would be best heard. I did not know Judy before this tour and now I do. If you want to read it and post your own comments, please do. Click here.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Writing Tip #18: 16 Editing Must Know's
Blatantly stolen from: Tips for Writing Well by Austin Govella
My advice: Print this and keep it near your writing space.
Be vicious when you edit. Vicious. Follow these recommendations with zealous fervor. They help your writing say what it should in a way we’ll understand.
1. I think, I’d say, in my opinion, what I’ve found, in my experience… Yeah. We know. You wrote this. These are your thoughts. If they’re not, provide a reference. If they’re yours, the byline is enough to remind us.
2. Delete all adverbs and adjectives unless they’re absolutely, totally, inherently necessary. Each unnecessary word weakens your impact and clarity.
3. Remove prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases are less important than your main point. If it’s not important enough to deserve its own sentence, it’s not important enough to read.
4. Active not passive. Kill “to be” verbs. All of them. Always.
5. Kill -ing words. Restructure your sentence so the -ing is an active verb.
6. Lead with the bottom line up front: BLUF. Then include an example, re-state the bottom line, include an illustration, and when you end restate the bottom line. For every point you make, follow this pattern. That’s bottom line, example, bottom line, another example, and then the bottom line (again).
7. Telegraph and signpost what you will say and why we care. We’re not reading mystery novels. We want to know who died, how, who killed them, and why we care up front. That way, we know why we want to read before we begin.
8. Use clear, informative headers. Cute or artsy might be pleasant on the first read, but when we reference it later, the cute header makes it a pain to find things. What you’re writing is worth going back to, right?
9. Introduce new terminology in the intro. If you’ve created a new term or applied a new phrase to describe something, define it at the beginning, and use the new terminology throughout your writing. Readers need the entirety of your piece to learn and assimilate the new phrasing.
10. Typically, sometimes, often times, usually… Yeah. We know. You don’t have to tell us.
11. Say “you” and “your”. Don’t use nouns when talking about your audience (like “User Experience Practitioners”). And don’t use “one”. Speak to us.
12. Ditch clunky words. Instead of “via”, write “using”. Instead of “upon”, say “on”.
13. Remove cliches and common phrases. Every time you take a common phrase shortcut, you’re telling us it’s not worth our time.
14. Use contractions. Write with proper grammar, and people will read. Write like you talk, and people will listen.
15. No pronouns. Repeat the noun over and over again. If you get tired of that, use synonyms.
16. Delete your best lines. We don’t care about poetry, wit, or slyness. We care about what you want to say.
After you edit…
The finished piece should be so tight, terse, concise, and clear that it’s boring.
Boring.
Then sand off the rough edges.
Write like you talk. Where the concise feels awkward, add conversational. Where tight lacks nuance, tease details. Where terse is cold, be warm.
The first 16 recommendations remove fluff and force you to think and communicate. Once you’ve finished editing intellectual work, go back and make sure you write like you talk. Writing begins a conversation. If we feel like you’re talking to us, we’ll listen.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Small Talk & Annoucements
The holiday season is officially over and it's "back to work," with a full roster of classes. The Master Class has met twice and I'm teaching for The Attic Institute Monday, Jan. 16th. That class, on Downloading, is full but keep an eye on The Attic schedule for additional classes.
My studio is hosting two more classes this winter: 1) a Critique Circle for writers to workshop pages each week and 2) a class on how to Market, Sell & Publish your book. These are going to be terrific classes so don't miss out.
Here are the details:
Sell It: Market, Sell & Publish Your Book the Creative Way
This class will be helpful to you at any stage of your writing process. You could just be at the beginning phase, at the 4th draft phase or you could be ready right to sell it right now. This five week class will teach you the creative way to sell your book. You will hear the unique story of how I was able to publish my first book as a totally unknown writer. You will be given prompts to create your own way to achieve your goal. And you will be taught the tried and true way of getting published. Learn about marketing comparison survey reports, platform building, networking and how to call on stores of courage you will need to see your book in print! You leave this class with a 85 page workbook and an audio CD of instructions. DAY/TIME/DATE: Tuesdays, 7-9 p.m., February 7, 14, 21, 28, Mar. 6
WHERE: 2325 E. Burnside, Suite 102
COST: $325.00 (see refund policy at bottom of school page)
Students leave with a Workbook & a CD of the class
Six Writers-Six Weeks–Critique Circle:
This class is for the more advanced writer who is progress on a manuscript or essay length work (articles are acceptable too). You needs to hear yourself read and to get skilled critique. You will be part of a very small group, just six writers and are invited to bring 8-10 pages of your current work per week. You’ll read and discuss your work in the circle.
REQUIREMENT: You must have taken a class with Jennifer or have an interview to discuss your project.
DATES: Tuesday 7-9 p.m., Feb. 6, 13, 20, 27, Mar. 5 & 12
COST: $40.00 per class/$240.00
NOTE: Yes, this class has the virtual option via Go To Meeting