Learning to Write

A group of writers were discussing how to teach writing. Most of us agreed that writing teachers should be published authors, whether or not they also have teaching credentials. Those who disagreed were unpublished but had credentials sort of indicating they knew a lot about writing.

"Of course, writing can't be taught. It's just something you're born with," someone said.

"Hmm. I'm not so sure," I countered. After thinking about the issue for a while, I realized that certainly one can learn to write news, stretch that into magazine articles, and extend it to a nonfiction book. Tools and guidelines abound. I had on-the-job training in journalism.

On the other hand, writing good poetry and fiction does seem to require certain intangible attributes. I'm starting to suspect these mysterious qualities relate to memory and verbal skills (as measured by I.Q. tests) and a sensitivity to stimuli that sometimes accompanies other less desirable conditions like alcoholism, agoraphobia, and anxiety disorders. The elusive muse may be innate traits that can be coaxed, nurtured and guided.

David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQmight find this point of view more appealing than my review of his book. His notion seems to be that we all begin life with roughly equal potential, but only a few take time and energy to develop to full capacity. He writes:

"Somewhere in a freshman writing class, a kid with more ability than I'll ever have is wondering if he could ever write books for a living. The answer is yes, if he never gives up and is lucky enough to get with the right people."

It's less an either/or situation than a more or less one. I wonder if developing a minimal creative writing talent wouldn't result in a mechanistic style, rather like formula writing: plug in a character from list A with an adjective from the B list, a verb from list C, and a D-list adverb. These days adverbs reside on the D-list anyway. Repeat until the story's done.

But wait! We have that kind of writing already. See genre offerings in Romance, Westerns and more than a few Mystery series. Many of those don't even bother with different main characters. The series are about the same character repeating the same steps sometimes in varying settings.

I'm not saying that all such books feature bare-bones writing. I love to read about Alex Delaware's adventures, and I'm wondering what Kinsey Millhone of the Sue Grafton mystery series (another fave of mine) will do for titles when she runs out of the alphabet.

Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls

Here we are again at the "Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls" -- my favorite news headline. Every year a local publication uses it to announce a Dias de Los Muertos celebration. Every year I puzzle over it the first time it runs. By now the people in the organizations having the events must be reconciled to having little to no control over what parts of their news release are used and how the information is presented. They probably write it as a regular news article, and that's not always the best way to go about it.

Professional Advice

In his book Trash Proof News Releases publicist Paul Krupin suggests that a good release has six essential parts:

The Call to Action
A Real Story That Relates to Real People
A presentation of The Value to the Audience
The Crucial Information
The Highlights of Qualifications
Access to Key People

Do This, Not That

Take a cue from advertising. Put enough correct information in your announcements for people to know what you're talking about, who it's for, when it is happening, how much it costs and where they can find it.

I just spent a frustrating five minutes trying to track down what looked like a chat on writing. The poster wrote two items about whatever it was. The first gave a day and time, but didn't list the time zone. The second referred to "yesterday" (always use a date) and provided a wildly invalid link to what was supposed to be a blog post about the event--whatever it was. She also gave a different time, still without reference to time zone. Here's a hint: on the Internet, not everyone lives on the east coast of the U.S. even if they're dogs.

And call a spade a spade to cop a cliche. If the event involves streaming audio/video online, don't call it "radio." If it requires a long distance phone call, explain that your "webinar" will probably cost participants, even if no fee is involved. Don't call it "free" unless you're providing a toll-free number that works worldwide.

I like to think I have at least average intelligence, but I'll bet no one other than the originator of the announcement I read knows Who did What, When, Where and Why or How. Gee, now where have I heard that before?

"Quotations or Quotes"

Vetted, edited and extended from the original posted of Thursday, September 02, 2004

The grandaddy of all quotation sources is, of course, John Bartlett's FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS, the tenth edition of which is available at the Bartleby's website. I keep my old THE SHORTER BARTLETT'S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS on my desk with other writing reference books, but I admit I haven't used it in years. My fingers prefer to skip across the keyboard.

Another websites that I like is Brainy Quote which claims that it "is the largest, most user-friendly quotation site on the web. We are a quality educational resource and provide free access to our extensive database of prominent historical figures and today's newsmakers - famous celebrities, athletes, politicians, authors and other public figures." The site is painfully ad-driven, and I could find no quote count, but it's database's search engine is speedy and handy.

Many of the sites and quotation purveyors are playing on Twitter these days. Find their offerings by searching on the #quote and #writequote hashtags (and related @ identities that may lead you to newer online resources).

In fiction we create quotations for our characters, although sometimes you might want to use an authentic quote, either in narration or for a character. In nonfiction, we always need the real deal. To find a quote's author, or to find the entire quote from a fragment, one resource is the Quote Land (formerly Quotations Forum). Another useful one is the Quotation Ring, which links 130 quotations websites. The ring sites are all listed, and there's now a search feature, too.

Charlie Fink's Quote-o-Rama has a couple of interesting services. One is its Archives and the other is a mailing list to receive a weekly quotation. The sign up form is on the home page. Charlie warns, "I must confess there has been no attempt to verify the accuracy of the quotes or attributions." They're still fun and you could use them in fiction.

For more serious endeavors, or any instance when you need attribution, try The Quotations Page which purports to be "the oldest quotation site on the Web, established 1994" and sources its quotes and offers many services and methods for searching its database of over 26,000 entries.

If you're unhappy with the ones I've listed, you can search the Yahoo! Directory references listings of websites offering quotations. Scroll below the list of categories to see the sites sorted by popularity or alphabetically. Of course, you can always Google "quotes" or more properly "quotations" six ways from Sunday.

Write Better Metaphors

Originally published Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Update: Project Gutenberg's main page currently begins with the sad news of the death of its founder, Michael S. Hart on September 6, 2011. Begun in the 1970s, the site is the oldest source of free US public domain material. Offerings number now over 36,000 free ebooks to download to your PC, Kindle, Android, iOS or other portable device in ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.

I had mentioned Project Gutenberg in an earlier post, when it had only about 12,000 ebooks, CD and DVD images, audio ebooks, and digitized sheet music. The material they were uploading was so interesting that I subscribed to their RSS feed to keep tabs on it.

Reading the daily feed is like a trip to a store named "Free Old Books & Assorted Ephemera." Project Gutenberg is readers' candy. After perusing most of a 1922 tract on metaphors, I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable about my own writing. An extended diatribe against habitual use of "dead metaphors" hits too close to home.There! Right there is what the Society for Pure English would have called a dead metaphor -- hits too close to home Or is that just a cliche? A metaphor is supposed to draw a comparison, though not so overtly as a simile, which includes the word like.

"Metaphor becomes a habit with writers who wish to express more emotion than they feel, and who employ it as an ornament to statements that should be made plainly or not at all," the Society said. Ouch!

"Writers fall into habitual metaphor when they fear that their thought will seem too commonplace without ornament; and, because the motive is unconscious, they choose metaphors familiar to themselves and their readers." That's better. Now it's a conscious habit I can break.

A lengthy list of dead metaphors contains phrases I use daily (but not "on a daily basis," still an overused phrase). Either my writing is archaic or dead metaphors are zombies. Read about them for yourself in this lengthy tract. For more up to date, albeit dreadfully intellectual,  information, see the Metaphor Project. And for practical advice about using metaphors, consult the good old OWL at Purdue.

Editorial Irritants

A compilation of posts from late 2004

Just when I thought it was safe to write again, someone alerted me to Diane Sanford's My Pet Peeves. She's billed as the Grammar Goddess. She asks in the section Trite, common, and overused phrases, "How often have you heard someone use these phrases?" and lists:

dumb as a doorknob
go the mat for you
like the pot calling the kettle black
no pain, no gain
on the same page
out of the frying pan and into the fire
poor as a church mouse
push the envelope
think outside the box
white as a sheet

Those dead metaphors will do you in. What's worse, Sanford thinks that "Trite phrases are the mark of a thoughtless or lazy writer. If you've heard a phrase before, then do not use it. That is the rule, period. Perhaps other, lesser writers can use common phrases, but you may not." She'd be a good playmate for the Punctuation Goddess, Lynne Truss, who is equally outspoken. Her Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is applicable to U.K. writers, but equally hilarious for all English-speaking ones.

Sanford's column continues with even more self-abuse that you can heap on your headlines. She pinpoints eight more areas, including a Miscellanea, and offers resources to pursue this line of writerly naughtiness. For avoidance, of course.

Not so for the author of a query I received. Now, I've seen all the faux pas Sanford lists in many clients' manuscripts and email messages. But the strangest one I've ever received was a query for a "good cliche" to use for a headline in a newspaper. "Why in the wide world of writing would you want to use a cliche?" I asked. I could have referred the fellow to the websites below:

• The Book of Cliches
• Cliche Finder

At the last, I dredged up these random ones for our amusement or edification as needed:

busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger
let bygones be bygones
eighty sixed (as in 86'd from a bar)
if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen
break a leg
came the dawn
bust in the mouth
"Your mother was a thief - she stole the stars in heaven and put´em into your eyes..."
thick as thieves
back in the brown shoe days

Have you heard that last one? For me currently it's "back in the day" that drives me nuts. Truly, if a phrase trips off your tongue or comes easily to mind -- drop it like a hot coal.

How to Avoid Head Hopping

Original post published Tuesday, September 28, 2004

In fiction we get to choose the narrator's point of view or who tells the story. Here's a brief description of the basic ones from Jerz's Literacy Weblog:

• First Person. “Unites narrator and reader through a series of secrets” when they enter one character’s perceptions. However, it can “lead to telling” and limits readers connections to other characters in the short story.
• Second Person. “Puts readers within the actual scene so that readers confront possibilities directly.” However, it is important to place your characters “in a tangible environment” so you don’t “omit the details readers need for clarity.”
• Third Person Omniscient. Allows you to explore all of the characters’ thoughts and motivations. Transitions are extremely important as you move from character to character.
• Third Person Limited. “Offers the intimacy of one character’s perceptions.” However, the writer must “deal with character absence from particular scenes.”

The omniscient author P.O.V. appears attractive at first glance. The all-knowing writer tells us what's happening, what people are thinking, feeling. Oops! This contradicts the good advice to "show, don't tell" what's going on, a better method of engaging readers. Also, frequently shifting the P.O.V. (head hopping) keeps readers off-balance and often confused.

Speaking of confused, I find many new writers confusing point of view, person, and verb tense. The narration is telling the story from a character's perspective or point of view, which can be any of the three persons (I, you, she/he). Tenses are present, past, and future times. First person does not mandate present tense. Avoid writing in the present tense until you're more experienced. It can be very tricky to handle well.

A third person P.O.V., telling the story through the eyes of one or two characters, eliminates the potential hazards of omniscience, but it also limits what the readers can know. Still, it is the easiest one to manage when you are new to writing fiction.

Even more restrictive is writing in the first person. The character cannot know more than the narrative voice. Not only must you know the experience you write about, but it takes high technical word skills to avoid every sentence containing the word "I." Try it! First person is enormously seductive for first time novelists, who are usually writing about themselves. No one else knows their agonies emotions or experiences, right? And it's a great story! Save the first person storytelling for a time when your writing skills have matured.

The worst P.O.V. to choose is speaking in the second person. It sounds like the writer is telling the reader what to think and feel. It's all tell and no show. Playing with the P.O.V. can help when you're stuck in a plot. Maybe the story needs telling from another character's perspective than the one with which you began.

Marge Gilks' article on this topic at Writing World suggests using only one viewpoint per scene. Break up the action if you must, and give readers a visual clue that the P.O.V. is changing with a line space, asterisks, a pound sign, or some other signal.

How to Get Published

First published Friday, September 17, 2004

I've been listening to a lot of talk lately by beginning authors who aren't submitting their writings. They have numerous excuses for why finished works sit on their desks or disks. I had to dig deep into the memory pit to unearth how it felt to have that kind of writers' block, to remember when each piece of writing felt like my child or even a tender part of my own body. Those precious gems of prose or poetry sparkled brightest just for me. To send them out was to risk rejection. I took it personally.

To overcome this fear (for that's the reason behind the reluctance), a writer must separate self from manuscript. Getting that involved with your work is an unhealthy codependency. Don't be a dysfunctional writer. It slows your career and hinders your development. Detach from the finished pieces. After all, you can't sell reprint rights if they haven't been published. They won't be published if you don't send them out. Courage is acting in the face of fear.