Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Wed: Writing Tip # 3 Mistakes I've Made
This list was compiled based on my own experience of the last 18 years as a memoir writer and as a writer seeking publication. Of course you won't make any of these mistakes! But perhaps you know a writer or two who will. Pass it on.
• Overestimate their writing ability—don’t work hard enough on craft
• Look for the easy way out
• Trust the opinions of friends/family/spouses/kids
• Do not seek professional advice
• Do not invest in learning.
ie: will not part w/money for good teachers, workshops, books & advice.
• Only think about being finished
• Give up too early
• Worry about “not getting published”
• Don’t read enough
• Procrastinate
This list and an expanded list of 27 ways to procrastinate are over on the teaching site! Go visit and leave your comment.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Fresh Writing: Summer Break
Yes, it's true! I am not writing because I am teaching up a storm and when I'm not teaching up a storm, I'm taking care of kids who are loose ends and if I'm not taking care of kids at loose ends, I'm working on this! The New Hard Copy Edition of The Writing Life Audio Series which arrived today! YAY!
Check it out and if you want a hard copy, which means a lovely four CD set, let me know and I'll ship one your way now.
If you are happy with digital download, which will save you money (and time)...that's cool too: Click here.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Book Talk: On Holiday!
Anne is devoted but like most of us, she is also busy and her Book Talk contribution will be coming next week. I've got the tip that it's going to feature David Sedaris. Stay tuned and if you are looking for some fun, go down and read the post on writing and how to make your writing more active!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Writing Tip #2: "ing" & "ly" words
Today's post is a combination of the Fresh Writing of Monday and The Writing Tip of each Wednesday.
I tell writers that in the early stages, they need to take a very close look at their word choices. Watch out for "ly" words and "ing" words.
Every time I give this very specific instruction, I get this quizzical look like, "why??"
Most are too polite to ask because this seems like a grammar lesson of some sort and they missed the lesson in school.
No, it's not true. You did not miss this lesson in school. This is my own personal "TIP." I press it out there as a way for you, as writers, to think more about your word choices and I often find that when a new writer tosses an "ly" or an "ing" word on the page it means they are being a bit lazy in word choices and a closer look reveals the writer is degenerating into "telling verses showing." These are not fatal mistakes but they are bad habits that adds a lot of time to your learning curve. Like you cut fat out of your diet when you want to get lean, cut these "ly" and "ing" words of your sentences and go for more active language.
Let me show you an example from my own writing. I pulled this scene from a memoir I wrote, five drafts back. This whole scene and character ended up on the cutting room floor. And look, I'm "ly" - ing and "ing" ing all over the place. See what I did here and come back next week to see my revision and my choices.
~
It’s early morning and I blink my eyes open to the gray cool light that is Portland in June. Heavy clouded skies hold our sun hostage until July, sometimes August. I like the cool seasons but others complain about the gray days. Portland is home to a lot of depressed people who fantasize about California, Hawaii, Mexico
Quince is inches from my face. He watches me as if this has been the case for hours. When he notices I am awake, he rolls his head on the pillow and looks up at the ceiling. It’s a purposeful move that begs for me to do our morning ritual called “the face.”
As I watch him, I flashback to last night, midnight and my arrival at the Portland International Airport. Quince was waiting just past the security area and had one rose in his long thin fingers. He was so happy to see me, almost relieved, as if I were his oxygen and his food. As we hugged, he was like a vine, cloying and suffocating.
All my thoughts, during my retreat and even before, circled around how I couldn’t take Quince and his over the top romance anymore but when I came home, alone, to the empty airport—I was happy to see him and happier to be wanted by someone.
We dropped my bags at my apartment, went to his place—firelight, music and his hungry hands that took my body to places beyond imagination.
In the dark of last night, it was perfect again and I told myself I was in love with Quince. We made whispered promises of our unending love and even a few plans about a future together as we drifted into a love-drugged sleep.
And now, here he is, waiting for me to do “the face.” It was a ritual I created at the beginning of our romance, when we’d spend all day in bed. I’d say, “I love this face,” and trace from his chin to his nose to his forehead.
As he waits, the light cutting away all fantasies, I cannot bring myself to do “the face.” I actually despise “the face.” I even hate that Quince expects “the face” treatment every morning. I hate how it’s enough for him, that perfect beginning to each day, only made more perfect by how, every night, he has another ritual I call “the neck,” where he presses his face into my neck, kisses my hairline and says, “I’m right here, all night, in your dreams—just a kiss away.”
Quince continues to wait. Patience is his thing but he can wait until the moon turns to cheese. I won’t do the face. Instead, I lean on my elbow and look around the apartment as if seeing everything for the first time. There are empty wine glasses by the dead fire. The one rose is on the carpet, wilted. The bed is surrounded, on all sides, by electric guitars, acoustic guitars, viola’s, a piano, an electric key board, goat hooves that you can shake to get a specific sound, flutes, recorders and other instruments with names I don’t know.
What am I doing here?
What have I done?
I’ve made a huge mistake.
“Shit,” I say, “look at the time.” I roll out of bed and hit the floor.
“Are you okay?” Quince calls.
The jolt hurts all my bones, even my jaw but I say, “yes, I’m fine. I’m perfect, I have to get the kids, I forgot.” I pat around for my underwear, my pants and my tank top. I’m scattered all over the place.
Quince is out of bed as fast as I am. “I thought Steve had them until this afternoon?” he whines.
“He does,” I say, “I mean, no, he doesn’t, I actually promised to take my son on a date, I forgot.” I’m tug on my panties and yank the bullshit story out of thin air. My heart beats so hard, I might faint.
In the bright light of this morning, Quince looks about a hundred years old. His body is a rickety bag of bones and the years of no-exercise have not been kind to his sagging belly and behind.
I used to tell myself his physique and looks didn’t matter. My ex husband had been drop dead gorgeous and look how well that worked out. No, I told myself, I loved Quince for his gentle kindness, his talent for making beautiful music from as little as a stick of wood and a nail, and for the praise and poetry that dripped like honey from his lips. I rationalized how Quince was a grown up, he was artistic, he was a genius but no matter how hard I try to get back to those old thoughts, I cannot find one good reason to stay here with this overgrown adolescent who is happy whiling away his days playing music and having me trace the outline of his nose.
I get into my shorts and yank my top over my head. Quince holds my bra on the end of one of his long fingers and his wilted penis is deflated in a nest of gray hair.
“So, I’ll see you later?” he asks.
“I’ll call you.”
I snap the bit of lace from his hand and thrust it into my purse. At the door, I shove my feet into my sandal.
Before he can get himself into his clothes and follow me to the car, I give him a quick kiss, clatter down two flights of stairs and dive into my car.
~
Anne, help me out here. Give me your two cents on "the grammar lesson."
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Wed. Writing Prompt
This is a recording of the free teleseminar from June 16, 2011 @ 11 a.m. PST. It was a wonderful call with more than 150 signed up!
Jason, from Vancouver, asked a fabulous question about his writing and when to submit for publication. Annette, from Seattle, was so brave and talks about her struggle over accepting deal from a small press. Great questions, deep thoughtful answers.
Listen and tell me what you think of this unique call.
To Listen Click Here
THE WRITING PROMPT FROM THE CALL:
1) Write down how you woke up and what you did this morning up the point you sit down to have breakfast. Write if you had a dream, all your early morning thoughts, fears, the weather, the people you spoke to and what you did.
2) On a second page, a morning when you were a small child and what you did that morning. It could have been a special morning or a terrible morning. Just one of your memories and if you can’t remember, imagine yourself on a morning.
3) Now, on a third page, write down a morning in the future, something you imagine, the perfect morning when you have your perfect life. Wake up from the perfect dream, living in the perfect place, having the perfect time in what you imagine in your perfect life.
This entire exercise should take no more than a hour. Write fast. To tell you the truth, this is really three writing exercises in one and the purpose of it is to have you travel through your mind for what was, what is and what you hope will be--in settings that are identical in order to see what arises.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Fresh Writing: Reason 556
She's on the phone, my friend Anne, and she tells me about her dog who is on anti-depressants. The prescription costs a fortune.
"See, that's another reason not to have a dog," I quip.
We laugh.
"It's true," she agrees.
When we hang up, I pat myself on the back for being firm and not allowing a dog into my life. This is not easy. The kids are always on the look out. They have wanted one for years. But I will not relent. I have my list. I have great reason why not. It's not going to happen. Period.
~
And then it's another day. The same conversation with the same friend only now it's some other issue with her dog. The critter has fleas.
"Reason 422 not to get a dog," I joke.
We laugh again and when we hang up, I give myself a cramp patting myself on the back for not getting a dog.
~
Yet another day. My friend is just back from taking her dog to the vet because he won't stop licking himself and now his paw is raw from all that dog saliva.
"I know, I know," she says, "reason 556 not to get a dog."
Hysterical laughter follows. This becomes our inside joke.
~
She was known as my "only successful long term relationship." Her name was Carmel and she was a buff Cocker Spaniel--the runt of the litter--who cost me fifty bucks when I bought her at The Spokane Pet Center. I got her the year my brother, Bryan, killed himself. I was twenty years old.
I remember, near the end, how she wheezed and coughed with a tired heart. Carmel and I had weathered my depression over Bryan's suicide, my entry and exit into college and then in and out of being an investigative reporter. Together we had lived in a dozen apartments in Montana, Washington and Oregon. I snuck her in and out of "no dogs allowed" apartments and had traveled thousands of miles together in my car. She had been a silent witness as I went from a lonely solo act to a married-to-the-wrong guy bride, a divorcee, and then back-to-the-bride again when I married Steve. Carmel had escorted me through pregnancy and the early stages of motherhood. She had even--somewhat gracefully--endured a toddler who pulled her ears and sat on her a few times.
And then, finally, she was done. We both knew it. The light faded from her dark brown eyes and her body gave way.
In the bathroom, as she sat on the counter where I combed out her long blond fur, I buried my face into her side. "If you are going, sweet girl, please just go," I begged. "Please don't make me put you down."
Carmel licked my face while I asked her for this impossible obedience, die the way I want you to.
Two days later, she died in the night.
~
Reason #1 not to get a dog: You are not ready yet.
It's been twelve years since I lost my girl who became a reason to live at a time in my life when I had no reason to go on. My whole family--my adoptive family--had died and my young life felt unmoored, confused and without purpose. When Carmel arrived, it was 1983. I was just a child.
I guess I'll get a dog when the time is right, when my heart is ready again or maybe I won't. Sometimes there's only one dog for one life and when that dog is gone, that time has past.
What about you? Which pet did you lose and was he or she the love of your life??
Friday, June 10, 2011
Book Talk: A Review to Read
Below is an excerpt of a review of Found which I found smart, deep and true:
Seeking a Mother’s Touch
by: Lindsay Champion
...A bit of research will uncover that Lauck’s adopted brother and stepmother spoke out against Lauck and her first book, Blackbird, suggesting that the memoir was fabricated. In the 2001 Salon article “Family Feud,” the evil stepmother, who is known as “Deb” in both books, e--mails the website: “I want a sort of mental taser [sic] or aqueous foam to immobilize the bitch, hoping to sober [Lauck] up and make her think twice before going after other people with her dolorous tales of misery.” It’s certainly possible that Lauck could have misremembered details or used poetic license to make her tale seem more “dolorous” than it really was, but Deb’s statement is at odds with Lauck’s language. In Found, Lauck’s bare-bones account of her childhood is haunting and understated. It’s not the work of a person who is trying to get attention, but a woman who is trying to work with the life she’s been given.
In Found, Lauck handles the media attention with poise and grace—she doesn’t mention it. She calmly explains her estrangement from Deb and her adopted brother, but she doesn’t point fingers or fuel the he-said-she-said fire. Instead, the author bravely focuses on her own feelings and emotions, rising far above the name-calling. Had Found contained a rebuttal against the slanderous Salon.com article, it would have taken away from the tenderhearted story that Lauck so gracefully tells. She takes the high road, and touched readers will thank her for it...
...to read more go to this link and I'd love your comments on this review.
Labels: Found, memoir, writing memoir
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Writing Tip #1
This is an idea for writing a scene and the scene, in my opinion, is the hardest aspect of writing to teach and to understand. But once you get the elements of a scene down and frame your writing in this way, you'll be a master.
Write a scene where you sit down to eat breakfast, alone and as you sit down--munching on that bagel or chewing that cereal--recall your earliest memory.
Remember, frame the memory within the confines of the scene of a person eating a meal and that means flood the beginning with the immediate details of what is going on at the most practical level.
EXAMPLE: It's a Sunday morning in June and the sky is heavy with dark clouds that won't give up rain. The kids are gone and it's just me, in the kitchen with the teapot on the back burner of the stove. The water warms over the blue flame and the sound is a low rumble, perhaps minerals that make the water dense. I don't know. 
Granola, yogurt, strawberries. A over-sized coffee cup, a knife and a spoon. I have everything I need for a quiet meal--alone--how often am I alone in my house? I don't even know the last time such a thing took place but I am resolved to be here, really be here and enjoy every quiet second of this precious quiet time to myself.
I sit at the table which offers a view of the garden and spoon yogurt into the cup. One, two, three dollops and I don't know how or why but I remember when I was a child--before memory was supposed to set in....
So you can see where this is going, from the example. I am setting the scene and then taking a trip back in time...now you try it. End your scene with your either beginning to eat or standing up to wash the dishes or whatever. Just stay in real time as you also go back and see where this prompt takes you.
Submit your example and I will pick one to feature to give some writing advice to next week!
Good luck
Monday, June 06, 2011
Fresh Writing: How to Dominate a Chicken (2nd Draft)
Thank you for reading this story! Leave your comment below: 
“Whose in charge?” Joy asks. “You or the chicken?”
“Definitely the chicken,” I say. “Hands down, I’m scared to death of that bird.”
Joy cocks her head to one side, not unlike a chicken and her pupils, ink stains within the jewel aquamarine of her eyes, retract to become dots.
The Buddha, on the eve of his enlightenment, is said to have had a view back, back, back to all of the lives he lived before that one under the Bohdi Tree. A cosmic flashback. The Buddha saw himself as an ox and witnessed another ox being beaten. He felt a wave of pity for the beast. It was called his first moment of compassion which then flowered over the course of many lifetimes.
As Joy looks at me, her wide hipped solid body that screams “farm girl,” her faded jeans covered in stains of chicken shit, her oversized gray cable knit cardigan that drags down her sloped shoulders, her curly blond hair whispered gray which is all tucked and pinched and twisted under her sun visor cap and I have a flash back too. I bet a million bucks Joy was a chicken in a past life and I was a slug she ate without thinking twice. I don’t think my compassion was born that life, not at all. I’m no Buddha but I do have a damn good memory.
“No,” Joy explains. “You are in charge of your coop.” She nods as if I am supposed to nod along and so I do it.
“I am in charge,” I repeat.
"That's right," she says. "You are in charge."
Joy leans over a crate that holds at least seven chickens and hauls one up by its chicken feet.
“Let me show you how it’s done.”
Joy and I have been chatting it up for a while now, about ten minutes and I have explained how my girl, a black hen named Shadow, up and died a few days ago. “I came down to clean the coop and she was in a hole…” I lamented.
Before she could get a word in, I said the same thing happened to our other hen, a white Brahma called Diamond, a few months earlier.
“What am I doing wrong?” I asked, tears in my eyes. “I keep the coop clean, I feed them in a special feeder, I change the water…”
Across the graveled grounds of the nursery--where it is Buy Your Pullet Day, meaning farmers are in town from all over the rural countryside to sell grown up hens to city folks like me--my children, Jo and Spencer, hold grown chickens in their arms. I have not agreed to get new chickens today. I am not sure I can handle more death but the kids--they are hopeful.
Under a wide blue sky filled with puffy white clouds, the place is packed with crates of clucky birds and chatty farmers and urbanites like me who don’t-have-a-clue. Everything smells bitter.
Joy explained that chickens, when they are in a hole and looking peaked, have been sick for a while. “Parasites or bacteria,” she said. “It happens.” She suggested a sulfur remedy to add to the water which will keep the other birds healthy and this how we arrived at the conversation about the one survivor in our coop: Sunny, a white Brahma also known as The-Angry-Chicken-From-Hell.
Joy palms a white and black hen she calls a Sex-Link and snugs it under her abundant boobs.
“So what you do is get the bird against you like this and if she struggles, you put your hand over her head.”
My heart races with fear. Sunny would take my hand off without question. I’ll have to use gloves. And a rain coat, because I am sure she’ll crap and pee all over me too.
Joy lifts her hand off the hand of the chicken and then does the maneuver again.
“See?” she asks.
I nod like it all makes sense but the truth of the matter is that I am not much for domination. I’m an Alpha dog until another Alpha dog arrives and then I go all Beta. I don’t know why or how. It's just the way it is.
I remember being at an “Express Your Rage” workshop with a small but power packed woman named Ruth King. She had us do this exercise where we picked sides as perpetrator or victim—meaning which side were we usually on in life. I stood in the line with the other victims and felt right at home. Ruth had us switch sides and pretend to be the one doing harm instead. She had us pick up pretend swords and chase people around the room in a mock battle. I couldn’t even pick up the sword without breaking down in tears. The idea of hurting another person, even in fun, was against everything I could imagine. Or was it that I had been so well conditioned to defeat and domination? I don’t know but I learned something about my character that day. I identified with helplessness.
“I’ll try,” I tell Joy.
“Try?” she says and laughs with a snort out her nose. “Honey, it’s a chicken. You gotta take charge.”
I nod like yes, okay, I’ll get in there and take charge not even seeing that Joy dominates me at this very moment. And the kids are dominating me too. They are urging me towards taking on more chickens--taking on more responsibility--that I don't really want. I don't want to be in charge of more life that is going to die for no reason and with no warning. I don't want to put sulfur in the water and guess if my hens have a parasite or come out to see one in the hole and watch her die in front of me again! Dang, I can barely handle being in charge of myself and my kids and now it's chickens and gerbils and if they wear me down--perhaps a dog.
How much can one woman handle anyway? And when, when, when will I finally learn how to say "NO"?
Joy shoves her demo chicken back into the bin and she's got that look on her face, expectant, as if it's time to close the deal.
“Do you have any Buff Orpington’s?” I ask.
(Leave your comment! And watch this story change this week in the redraft!)
Friday, June 03, 2011
Book Talk
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
Submitted by: Anne Gudger
Yes! She is back! Anne, my fantastic and wonderful co-teacher, has gifted us with a great write up on a new book. Book Talk is our gift to you, about what's out there and what's great about reading it.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces balances on the top of my stack of books—the pile that mirrors a game of Jenga meaning it's ready to topple over with one false pull. The Hero moves between the top, second and third spot on my pile. I’ve been reading it for almost a year and sometimes it feels like a thousand hours—in miniature bites—and I’m still not done. Weird for someone like me who’s been aptly accused of eating books. It’s SLOW. Or is it me who is slow?
For years I’ve heard writers say it’s the storyteller’s guide, the map they unfold and study again and again. This is where story telling starts—with myths and heroes. George Lucas credits Campbell for the shape of Star Wars. Wally Lamb (one of my favorite authors) said when he was stuck, he went back to read Campbell, back to the well for ideas. If you’ve read The Hour I First Believed, you know mythology and the hero’s journey are huge.
LOVE Lamb’s book, but that’s for another Book Talk.
For me, that message of “Read this book” is also layered with my parents’ fascination with Joseph Campbell. They read him, talked about him, loved him. When I was a teenager and trying to write meaningful poetry about my angst (awful stuff no one read—thank goodness.) I first tried to read Campbell but put him down just as fast. The man was too much for a sullen me at 14.
But now, as I struggle to write my own memoir (and suffering with so much self-doubt, which I believe Jennifer talked about during the last teleseminar...and PS do not miss the one on June 9th for more insight...), I see myself on my own hero’s journey and thus Campbell beckons me back. In The Hero, Campbell chronicles the history of myth, centered around the hero’s journey--across antiquity, across cultures. He lays out the hero’s path and flushes it out, drawing from his vast smarts. He defines the call to adventure, the initiation and the return. Each stage has multiple steps and requires specific actions of the hero.
The book is still super slow going but at 52, it's fascinating to read. Admitting this is, well, hard since I was a good student and a decent teacher. I like academics. I should feel right at home with Campbell. But then I think, hey, the guy understood James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake which puts him in a different universe from me. Of course I struggle with some of his writing.
Campbell’s writing is dense, academic, masculine. He writes to a group who get it, who get the code. I’m not in that group. And it’s okay. I hang out on the sidelines enough to get the bullet points.
I’m on my hero’s journey. So are you. I’m writing about it like crazy. I like to imagine that one of the things I carry in my backpack is Campbell’s book, so that when I get stuck I can find a good tree root to curl up next to and read the stage I’m in or the one coming up. He defines the stages of the journey beautifully and that is the gold for me.
If you read this story teller’s guide here’s what I suggest: Don’t read it when you’re comfy in bed with your favorite pillows and comforter or you just might wake up cradling the book and wondering what to make of your dream about centaurs.
And now tell me...does this book make you feel a bit intimidated? And what other books have you attempted to read and given up on because they were just too darn smart?
Labels: Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell, writing, writing advice, writing memoir, writing tips