Monthly Archives: June 2012

Writing In The Voice of “I”

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by Heather Michon

I don’t write about myself.

It’s nothing personal, really. I just don’t find myself all that interesting. Yes, I’ve lived a life and had experiences. Yet I’ve never been seized with the desire to try to shape those experiences into something for the masses.

Over the years, it’s almost become a phobia. At a seminar this past weekend, the instructor gave our group the simple task of writing a very short personal essay on whatever we wanted. All around me, classmates were spinning off wonderful ideas and thoughts and events. Every single one of them seemed brilliant. I, on the other hand, couldn’t think of a bloody thing. I ended up writing about Thomas Jefferson.

This inability wouldn’t bother me if we lived in different times, but this is the Age of the Memoir. Creative nonfiction, which almost always means self-referential narrative, is all the rage. Everyone from celebrities to bloggers to people who happened to survive for a news cycle or two are ready to spill their dysfunctions and stories out into print, and publishers race to sign them.

This raises a question for people like me: in an era where so many writers seem to expose every shred of themselves to their readers, what do the more reticent among us do? Do we do our audience a disservice by being less willing than others to bring our stories back to our selves?

I was heartened yesterday morning when I followed a link to an Atlantic Magazine article about George Orwell’s 1946 essay, Why I Write. By coincidence, he and I share a birthday; apparently, we share similar views on writing about the self:

“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a POLITICAL purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.”

Because there is always something to be learned in what we resist, I will try to get beyond my fear of the “I” voice. Who knows? Maybe to write prose like a windowpane, the writer has to learn to peek out from behind the curtain from time to time.

Heather Michon is a blogger, essayist and WriterHouse volunteer. She welcomes visitors to her website, http://www.heathermichon.com

 


Companionable Solitude

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by Jacquelyn Lazo

Less than a week ago, I was in Boston visiting an old friend. We decided to take a day trip to Walden Pond. We rented a Zip car, and within thirty minutes found ourselves in the paved parking lot of Walden Pond State Reserve. The day, drizzly and cold, echoed Thoreau’s description of a gentle rain storm:

…both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening…A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflection, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important.

The rain kept most visitors at bay, leaving the woods around Walden Pond quiet, open and deserted. We plodded across wet leaves down to the shoreline, the mist rising off the water, landing dew across our cheeks. We stood by the boathouse, eyes fixed on the opposite shoreline’s slender trees. Two bald men, like oversized buoys, bobbed in the water past the swimming raft. Their clothes and well-worn Nikes were perched on the rocky ledge near where the water lapped the land. A paddle boarder slipped across the pond, his tall, thin frame steady as the board glided over the still surface. Just beyond, a figure the size of an ant made elegant breast strokes. The sky, heavy with precipitation, hung like a hammock, ready to fall.

After a few minutes, we climbed back up to the path that took us half a mile to the site of Thoreau’s house, where only an outline of his chimney still stands, a tiny, oblong ring too small for me to stand in. A mound of stacked rocks sat adjacent to the chimney, forming small pillars of stone. A large wooden sign read: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

It was easy, in the midst of the wet woods, to understand Thoreau’s transcendental experiment, his desire to live without grandeur on his friend Emerson’s land. For two months, two weeks and two days he embedded himself in the landscape, observing the animals instead of lusting after lumber or hunting deer. Although I had imagined Walden Pond to exist in a more secluded space, distanced from everything by pine tree acreage, it was less than a mile and a half to Concord. Thoreau had visitors and he saw his family on a regular basis. But he repeatedly nestled back into the wilderness’ silence.

Having just recently moved from Los Angeles to Charlottesville, from an urban apartment complex to a guest house in the middle of seventeen acres, I understand the urge to sit still in the woods. The solitude of late evening, when the sun slips below Fox Mountain, always echoes a homecoming. Imprints of the day’s color, lavenders and soft corals, follow the sun in its wake, and it seems as close to a lower heaven as I have ever known.

Jacquelyn Lazo is currently working on her first non-fiction book about sleep disorders. She moonlights as a copy editor and book reviewer for several publications. After receiving her Masters of Professional Writing degree from the University of Southern California and working as a publicist in Los Angeles for several years, Jacqui decided to venture back to the East Coast. She has a blog about her migratory observations from CA to VA called Adventures in Hooville. You can read her latest updates at adventuresinhooville.blogspot.com.


5 Free Virtual Tools to Help You Keep Your Focus

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by Elizabeth Derby

Today I’d like to address an issue that every writer loves to hate (or just hates, actually).

The Problem:

Let’s say you wake up on Tuesday morning and vow to write this week. In the hustle and bustle of a busy day, you manage to carve out an hour for writing.

You congratulate yourself before you even sit down. The cursor blinks merrily against the white screen, and you smile. Now come to me, Muse.

You blink once, then again. The cursor winks back. You settle into your chair and stare at the wall, at your bookshelves bowed with masterful tomes. Inspired by verbiage, you type three or four words, but they sound wrong. You hum a little as you tap delete.

You glance at your notes and out the window where a squirrel perches atop the fence. Cocking its head like a furry pigeon, the squirrel meets your eyes. “Shouldn’t you be writing?” it seems to say.

You bare your teeth. It scurries away.

Sooner or later, your wandering mind triumphs over willpower. When you open your browser, the game is over. Your hour passes, and maybe another, and all you’ve written are two tweets and a comment about “Glee.”

The Solution(s):

Luckily, a number of virtual tools exist to help writers like me you focus when the going gets tough. These are my five favorite ways to stay on the prolific track.

1. Written Kitten: ”Fresh kitten every ____ words.”

Are you addicted to the internet? I Can Has Cheezburger? Then you’re in luck! Written Kitten operates on the assumption that carrots work better than sticks, and positive reinforcement in this case comes in the form of adorable kitten pictures. Just enter your text in the word box on the screen and savor the fluffy-faced rewards. Whether you opt for new photos every 100, 200, 500 or 1000 words, be sure to save your work!

2. #WordWar: “Anybody want to wrangle words with me?”

This past November, I participated in my first-ever National Novel Writing Month. This annual event challenges writers to create a new novel by writing 50,000 words in thirty days. It sounded impossible, but two things saved me: 1) the group of WriterHouse members who cheered each other onward; and 2) word wars. Operating on the idea that no one wants to be a loser, NaNoWriMo encourages “word sprints” or “word wars,” timed bouts of communal typing in which each participant attempts to write as much as they possibly can. I attribute at least 30,000 words of my 2011 novel to word sprints, so I’m happy to report that you don’t have to wait for November to cash in on peer pressure-induced productivity. Just search Twitter for #wordwar and jump right in.

3. The Daily Grind: “a lightweight approach in keeping track of time spent on tasks”

I once thought The Daily Grind referred only to my alma mater’s on-campus coffee shop. Now I know it’s also a dashboard widget for Macs. (Sorry if you’re not an Apple subscriber. I couldn’t find a PC version, but no doubt something similar exists.)  This color-coded app allows users to categorize tasks and press ‘play’ to begin timing–simple as that. I organize my work by writing projects, and I’ve discovered that the ticking clock acts as a sort of psychological taskmaster. I don’t want to waste The Daily Grind’s time, and I doubt you will, either.

4. Spaces: “a tool to organize your Mac desktop and optimize those cluttered workspaces”

Another Mac tool. (Seriously, PC lovers, I’m not trying to be a jerk. I wouldn’t be surprised if other computers have awesome equivalents. I just don’t know what they are.) Spaces is a system program that allows users to organize their desktop into four quadrants. Only one quadrant is shown at a time, so you can relegate temptation to far-off corners. I keep Word separate from Safari (but in the same space as Spotify. Whatever works.).

5. Ommwriter: “a writer’s haven”

By far my favorite writing tool, Ommwriter offers a Zen-like retreat from the chaos of modern word processing. Since their wordsmiths say it better than I do, here’s the PR:

OmmWriter is a beautiful writing environment that helps you concentrate and create. It has the necessary tools you need to write and manage files, without the distracting elements that you normally find in conventional writing applications. OmmWriter opens in fullscreen mode, and has a number of backgrounds and audio tracks to increase your concentration, and to create an open space where your creativity can roam freely.

What does that mean, exactly? Several neutral-toned skins that swath your screen in linen or snowy fields; a variety of soothing soundtracks, such as delicate bells or water trickling; a vacuum-like space that isn’t too hard to leave, just hard enough that you won’t click away. In other words, Ommwriter is the bomb[dot]com, and you should download it ASAP.

Do you have a favorite method for keeping your virtual self on track?

At a corporate soiree two years ago, Elizabeth Derby won the “Many Hats” Award. She still has the beanie (with a propeller on top!) and wears it in moments of reflection. A marketing communications freelancer, Elizabeth helps artists and small business owners get creative while connecting with fans. From website and social media basics to innovative storytelling ideas, check out her blog at doctorderby.com. 


Why You Should Never Use the Dash

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By Don Fry

I like to think of my sentences as journeys, with punctuation as road signs to guide my readers. Readers have never seen my sentences before, and punctuation shows them how to divide them into parts, making it easier to extract meaning. A reader coming upon a punctuation mark asks unconsciously the same two questions as a driver: what does this signal mean, and what comes next?

Let’s ask these two questions about common punctuation marks, with examples:

  • A period [ . ] means the sentence has ended, and a new, not necessarily related sentence begins next.

EXAMPLE: All writers are crazy. Food writers are even crazier.

  • A semicolon [ ; ] means the clause has ended, and a new, related clause begins next.

EXAMPLE: Garden writers love writing; they write about what they love to do.

  • A colon [ : ] means a list follows, and then the list begins, although it might have one only item.

EXAMPLE: Writers need a lot of things: time, money, and an agent who answers e-mails. They want one thing from critics: praise.

  • An open quotation mark [ “ ] means a quotation begins, and will end with a close quotation mark [ ” ].

EXAMPLE: “Writing is easy,” said Mark Twain. “All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

  • Ellipsis [ … ] means something’s left out, and the sentence will resume.

EXAMPLE: “Writing is easy, … cross out the wrong words,” said Mark Twain.

  • A comma [ , ] means this unit has ended, so pause, and something else will follow.

EXAMPLE: This unit has ended, so pause, and something else will follow.

  • An open parenthesis [ ( ] means an insertion has begun, and will end with a close parenthesis [ ) ].

EXAMPLE: Parenthetical statements (such as this one) slow down sentences, and (even worse) make them confusing.

  • A dash [ - ] means – well -  you don’t know – and you have no clue what comes next.

EXAMPLE: Dashes – especially a lot of them – create for the reader – sometimes without design – a feeling – or worse – an impression – of indecisiveness – neurosis even.

The dash is an ambiguous road sign, and readers don’t know what to do or expect. Most readers interpret a dash as an open parenthesis, and wait for the closing parenthesis. But the writer may have meant it as a pause, or just used it out of habit. The reader ends up confused.

CONFUSED READERS STOP TRUSTING YOU, AND MAY STOP READING.

I might consider using a dash in one situation. I like to indicate how the speaker spoke in quotations, and the dash is the only way I know to indicate a pause that’s not a grammatical signal. I can’t use ellipsis because the reader will interpret it as something left out, and wonder what.

I never use the dash, and you shouldn’t either.

Yet I know you love the dash, and this campaign will never win you over. So here’s how to minimize the damage. Draft a sentence that contains a dash; in revision, ask if another punctuation mark might be clearer to the reader. If you value clarity for your readers, choose clear road signs. 

AVOID THE DASH.

Don Fry has just published his latest book, entitled Writing Your Way, Creating a Writing Process that Works for You (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest, 2012). He has helped over 10,000 writers worldwide to write better and faster, with less agony. Don first taught Beowulf and Chaucer at the University of Virginia and at Stony Brook University. Later, he headed the writing faculty at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. As an independent writing coach, Don improves the writing and editing at newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, and non-profit organizations. He has coached over a thousand authors, helping them create writing processes that work for them. Don has published hundreds of articles and 18 books. His writing blog appears at www.donfry.wordpress.com, and he posts a daily writing tip on Twitter at @donaldkfry.