20 Something Monstrous This Way Comes

I hope some of you who read these posts have had a chance to look at the books pictured on the home page. If you have, thank you, and I hope they've rewarded your time! I'm happy to announce a novel coming out in 2018. The title is Wiskalo Chookalo; it's a ghost story I've set in early 1930s Wisconsin. TCK Publishing is bringing it out maybe in early summer in paperback and e-book. I'll post again when it becomes available. Yes, I know the title sounds strange. No, I'm not going to tell what it means. The title holds a couple secrets to the story, and its meaning unfolds as the story does--I don't want to spoil either. The story has a peculiar genesis. A couple of years ago on a frosty Wisconsin fall night with just a hint of snow in the air, I was looking out the back window into the yard, and the ghost dropped over the fence, sending the proverbial chill up my spine. Fortunately for me, it disappeared, but it left its story clear and complete in my mind. I needed only a little concentrated free time to tell it. At Christmastime my father-in-law passed away. He wasn't a literary man, but he always complimented me on my work and encouraged it, and shortly after he passed, I felt a special urgency to write that ghost story, as if he were saying, "Time for that work, son." The first draft, title and all, finished itself in twenty-two days. I took some time to refine it and spent the next year and a half looking for a place for it. Those of you who have experienced a similar passion for a project will know how great it felt to find that place. Perhaps I've mentioned before that while people in our time say "I thought that," the ancients said "the thought came to me that": this story came to me. I hope it proves as enjoyable in the reading as it did cathartic and fulfilling in the writing. I wish you similar inspiration, and may you find a place and readers at least for your favorite stories if not for all of them. 

19 Thinking (and Reading) about Publishing

If like me you like to write and share your work, maybe you look around for resources and information about publishing. I've found an online source that's both helpful and interesting: everywritersresource.com. I recommend it if you like to surf the net both for new work and for advice. You can pause there to read poems or stories or search the lists for magazines and publishers seeking submissions. I also got through email a new e-book, Anna Faktorovich's The History of British and American Author-Publishers. It includes not only information on famous writers who have either self-published or struggled with traditional publishers, but also a (polemical) discussion of the current state of the publishing industry. Many folks will tell you that publishing is easier than it's ever been. Self-publishing is both easier and cheaper, but trying to develop a steady and fruitful relationship with a traditional publisher (or with a group of readers) is, from what I can tell, much harder than it's been for a very long time (unless one has already published one or more blockbusters). Faktorovich's book makes a number of notable points about the state of the book industry.  I'll quote a few. "The top classical American and British authors [she includes, among many others, Scott, Byron, Shelley, Dickens, Woolf, Franklin, Poe, Twain, Melville, and Walker] either founded their own publishing ventures or occasionally subsidized their less 'marketable' books." "Authors' greatest obstacle . . . has been censorship of radical, non-conformist, reformist, and otherwise contrary positions that stood in conflict with monarchs, Presidents, corruption, and crime. Giant publishers use self-censorship to appease the demands of despots." "The number of independent publishers in a society reflects its ability to evolve and grow, both fiscally and culturally." "The freedom to publish both great scientific and literary innovations is more important than the freedom to vote." I suspect many writers will find something in common there, and the discussion deserves attention and consideration.I don't know what course publishing will take in the future. One of the problems, perhaps, is that so many of us write now, and many of us read much less than we did. Publishing has become a matter of insider trading: writers must have contacts (agents or editors or advocates of some sort), and writers must do more and more of their own work (especially with marketing), which, if you're like me, takes a set of skills you may neither have nor desire to develop. The old notion that if you write something good enough, you'll find a place for it hardly holds true anymore. I remember reading once that Robert Pirsig got Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance rejected 99 times before he found a publisher (since then I've read quotes of an even higher number of rejections). Yes, we must persist, but how many of us have that much stamina? So what shall we fall back on together? We can't support every small press, but we should support those we can. We can't support every good writer, but we should support those we can. And we need to keep trying to do our best writing and making our best effort to get it out because we believe in the effort as well as the product. I wish you the best of success. And thanks again for stopping by to read! 

18 Thinking about the Moderns

I've repeatedly been struck by how much the contemporary world of arts owes to the Moderns.  Obviously we have more technology than they had, but their own technology thoroughly astonished (and appalled) them in their own time.  We can hardly innovate more than they did, and in most cases we continue their experiments (if with more powerful and expensive tools).  So here's a little poem honoring the Moderns, moving desultorily--with a little influence from a very early Modern:  John Skelton.

Moderns Van Gogh came and wenta manly gentwith his heart bentto slow, failed sadly to gowith the flow. Gertrude Steinfelt just fineon whisky or wineor shared a cigarettewith her favorite petfrom the Parisian set. Duchamp was a chiefof each aperitifbut avoided all pomp, had a rompwith la Giocondain a gondola. T. S. proved a pestin his Anglican nest, found a fascist Poundon the rebounda tender editorand tenderer creditor. Wallace Stevens went farwith the image of jar, farther still to Key Westand a blackbirdian jestfrom Hemingway's nest. He, too, crossed the bar. Children of the Sunwanted just to have fun, made a run with religiontroubled over contrition, found a Woolf too awareof Modern despair. And so they all tumbledas Great War guns rumbledand finances stumbled, stubbing impressionson the Great Depression. It died on another bloody sigh. 

Not happy with that, but sometimes the point is just to try something.  Thanks, as always, for reading!

17 Four Technical Tips for Writing

If you find acronyms useful as you work on your writing (or to help you teach or coach others to write better), you may find the following offerings useful.  They've helped me for nearly thirty years. PRISM. This acronym slightly revises one I found in a business writing textbook by Jeanne Halpern, Judith Kilborn, and Agnes Lokke.  It works best for expository or critical writing, but it can help with fiction, too.  The P is purpose:  get your purpose for writing clearly in mind before you begin--and keep it there.  The R means reader:  who will read your work, and what will they need or want to find there?  The I reminds us to collect all the information we need beforehand, and make it clear and complete in the text.  The S indicates we must select the proper style for the task at hand.  The M refers to method of organization:  how can we best structure the text to make it easy to follow and enjoy?  I recommend putting PRISM right at the top of one's page to assist in the composition process:  it immediately eliminates that deadly enemy:  the blank page. SAD. This acronym revises one from the linguists, SVO:  subject, verb, object, the simple deep structure of English sentences.  It casts the idea in a way to remind writers to focus on using active verbs:  subject, active verb, direct object.  Replacing passive verbs, being verbs, or boring verbs with good, descriptive, active verbs immediately improves sentences by an order of magnitude.  The word SAD implies not the construction of melancholy sentences, but the Renaissance and Romantic meaning of the word:  serious and pensive.  Even humor writers must take their work seriously and think it through. THUMB. One of my "rules of thumb" aims to help writers think about structure:  remember to include a clear, informative thesis statement that gives the reader the main point of your work; think as you go about the unity of the whole work (it shouldn't stray too far from its purpose); in the Poetics Aristotle mentions the power of metaphors, and we should remember that trope as we write--a few good metaphors can improve even the most technical piece or writing (all words are, after all, metaphors); finally, balance implies giving all aspects of a piece of writing appropriate and sufficient weight, avoiding excess and sentimentality, comparing and contrasting, trying to keep the piece fresh and energetic throughout. PATS. For you football fans, I'm not thinking of points-after-touchdowns, but punctuation as traffic signals.  I've read the work of even brilliant critics who do so badly with punctuation that they annoy readers and drive them away rather than easing them in.  Punctuation clarifies for a reader when to stop, pause, yield, or maintain or change direction.  Writers should know that even though a hyphen and a dash look a little alike (the dash is longer), they mean each other's opposite:  a hyphen says "link these two things," and a dash says "separate these two things."  A semicolon implies a two-way stop (the same grammatical unit on either side), while a comma implies a yield (giving way to a new syntactical unit).  Thinking through the process provides a fun and helpful way to think about punctuation in a logical and repeatable way. I hope these acronyms prove as useful to you as they have to me, and, as always, thanks for reading.

16 One More for Poetry Month

As April turned into May, feeling bad for those under water literally I got under water figuratively, and so fell behind on my goal for National Poetry Month.  Here's my last for April, submitted, as Rod Serling would say, for your approval.

A Certain Kind of Man 

A certain kind of man can wear snakeskin boots, a white cowboy hatand a bola tie. He will eat steak rareand order beer in a wine bar, and no one will blink. A certain kind of manwears a tweed coat and waistcoat, a tweed hat and oxfords and half-lensed reading glasses. He will eat sushi or tapas, order tea in a bar and no one will blink. Each can be diffi-cult. Each must be diffe-rent. Neither gets diffi-dent. Neither shows defe-rence. 

Thanks for reading, and happy May!

15 Final Volleys for National Poetry Month

In the next couple days I'll try to get some new poetry up to help celebrate the month along with the rest of you.  Together we can make Eliot's cruelest month into something more enjoyable for all of us. 

A Certain Kind of Woman

She likes money, cares less for renown, wears a tailored suit and never a gown. Her shoes polish bright golden-brown. Each sentence concludes with a frown. She stays at the Hilton Downtown. 

You won't hear her haggle or fuss. Her hair has a slight, stylish muss. She'll sometimes ride home on the bus. Politics she will never discuss. She stays at the best Western Plus. One lives in New York, visits Boston. One drinks Chardonnay and reads Austen. 

Thanks for visiting--more tomorrow.

14 Imagination

I was thinking about an exercise to do with the poetry students today. For class I asked them to read Rich's "Diving into the Wreck, Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium," and Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," all poems that can lead to spirited discussion of the power of the imagination and how to reach it and use it. I also did a little reading, thinking, and note-taking on ideas of the imagination.  One that always comes back to thought is Coleridge's distinction of the primary imagination (receiving impressions and perceiving deeply), secondary imagination (an effort of will to make sense of perceptions), and fancy (the aggregation of association of images by superficial resemblance).  All three, even the sometimes denigrated fancy, contribute to the poetic process. Not everyone thinks imagination a good thing--I'll sometimes hear someone speak of it as a waste of time dreaming about things that aren't there--but I think most folks value it because it can lead to new thoughts and ideas and potentially to solutions to problems that may have seemed intractable.  I see imagination also as a way to keep the mind active, alive, engaged, and ready for new challenges. So here's the problem for today's class--let me know what you think. Look through the poems we've studied, and try to find examples of fancy, primary imagination, and secondary imagination.  Explain why you think them good examples.  Take your example of primary imagination and try to explain or guess how the poet got to it (i.e., what if it's an objective correlative rather than a simply description of an experience?).  Now, by using first your sensory perception to collect impressions, try to open your secondary imagination to move from those perceptions to an entirely new and fresh observation about the world.  (For the impressions I'm going to bring to class an especially fragrant tea bag in case they have trouble recalling strong sensations.) Yes, I know:  that's a really hard exercise.  Don't worry:  I'll be doing it right along with them.  Even if it doesn't work, it may help them get into the imaginative process to build something unusual, surprising, and pleasing.  We always aim for that.

13 Favorite Poems

Every now and then one of the students will ask me if I have a favorite poem. I think that's a kind and thoughtful question for someone to ask, but I always have to think about it for a bit before I can give an answer. Do you have a favorite poem, or maybe several favorites?  Has your favorite been your favorite since you first heard it or read it, or does your favorite change over time?  Would it come to mind immediately were someone to ask you that question, or would you need time to think about it, too? One of my professors told me he liked Wordsworth more and more as he got older.  That made sense to me, though for me it has probably gone the other way around--not that I have ever come to dislike him.  "Tintern Abbey" and The Prelude remain two of my favorites.  Another professor chose Donne and Herbert:  he said they had the best combination of intellect and emotion.  Another favored Keats:  she said she found the odes the greatest poetic achievement yet in English.  Another favored Shakespeare, claiming he never wrote a bad line--as much as I love Shakespeare, that struck me as an overstatement. In my experience, in general younger readers tend to prefer the Romantics:  they like in their poetry what Wordsworth called the "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion recollected in tranquility," though they often forget the remainder of Wordsworth's statement, that it tends to happen only for those who have thought long and deeply.  Sadly, many of the Romantics didn't live long enough to think long and deeply. Yet two of Keats's poems have been among my favorites also:  "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "To Autumn."As I've gotten older, a few others have climbed my list:  Adrienne Rich's "Diving Into the Wreck," Gwendolyn Brooks's "Kitchenette Building," A. E. Housman's "On Wenlock Edge," and Langston Hughes's "Weary Blues."  Maybe you need to be a little older for those poems get a firm hold on you.  Shakespeare's sonnets 29 and 30 have been close to the top of the list since the first time I read them. Many readers I've talked with chose their favorites almost exclusively by content regardless of what they or anyone might call independent poetic quality. I know when the students ask that question they mean lyric poems, but can't a person have an epic poem as his or her favorite?  Sometimes I answer Paradise Lost or Beowulf or Omeros or even Dante's Commedia or Blake's Milton.  Those answers tend to draw wide eyes and uncertain looks. Another of my old professors, Dr. Margaret Berry, once said in class, "Students, The Iliad and The Odyssey:  everything else is a footnote." And that leads to another interesting question:  between the two do you chose The Iliad or The Odyssey?  The answer to that one can tell a lot about a person.  Or do you make a bold leap for Aurora Leigh or Prometheus Unbound or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?  I think with any of them, you'd find yourself in good company. And how do you chose your favorite?  Do you go for the poem or poems that you think the best, or those that stay in your memory and move your thoughts and emotions regardless of how you may rationally judge their quality?  That question is, I think, especially worth asking--and answering. 

12 Another Poem for Poetry Month

Though I knew I couldn't manage a poem per day, I'll try instead for one per week.  Here's this week's--again, apologies to those who don't like poetry.  Perhaps you'll check in on Bingley instead. 

At Dinner, In Praise of Potatoes

Potatoes, like cats and whales, can do anything. Well, not anything. They can swim, sit meditatively, face the heat. They can fly, though not unaided. Potatoes go with anything. Well, not anything: not with starches, like rice, but with vegetables or meat, with eggs or alone, with herbs and condiments, dips and onions and beans, not with pasta, but with talk or silence. Against all odds, they're now good for the heart, good for the waist (in moderation), good for the soul with milk or greens or coffee (in moderation). I will treat my potato respectfully, pray over it, and then devour it.

11 A Poem for National Poetry Month

A friend informed me last week that April is National Poetry Month.  She plans to add a new poem to her blog every day for the next month. That really impresses me, and I intend to read each one. I won't add one here each day, and I won't even write one each day.  But I'll add one poem to these notes so that I will have contributed something to the month's poetic output.  Perhaps this small effort can encourage you to read other poets' work and to write poems of your own. For those of you who don't like poetry:  apologies.  For those who do like poetry:  I hope you enjoy it. 

Crossing the Bridge

1 The river has its own seasons, regardless of calendars. From the middle of the bridge you can see them all as they shape the water to their own ends. I cross the bridge daily to keep an eye on the water: someone must. . . . In earliest spring, as the day begins to stretch its light, the last perplexed rays cast demon eyes on the water. High with unseasonal rain, the water, in a vast shadow, rises, meets the eye with obsidian, and sunset casts clouds overtop in orange and blue. Eliot's fog skitters over the water and its clouds,making depth impossible.

2 When air and water finally warm with summer, the surface oblates a layer of green algae.Thin and oily, it fractals its own course, ignoring the water beneath. A goose, too slow in rising, squawks as it nearly crashes into the bridge, aborts its course, and sinks again, unhappily, onto the ooze.

3 In autumn pigeons, testing their flocks, fling themselves like fisherman's nets over the water that rushes to the dam beyond the bridge.They drop, twist, rise again above the bridge, empty of everything but resiliency.

4 Winter, before it can scratch the water into ice, turns it black:  thick as coal tar, it moves as though the bridge has squeezed it from a large-mouthed bellows.  Oh black water--soon months of stillness will hold itcreaking, yellow-white with streaks of false, blue youth. The bridge is its own place, and can, through us and its waters, make a heaven of its hell, a hell of its heaven.

10 A Ghost Story

Over winter holiday I wrote a new book:  a ghost story. I had never written one before, nor had I thought ever to write one. I've read a fair number of them, but don't especially like the genre. If you've heard of ghostly possession:  this was a case of story possession. On a fall evening, around midnight, I was standing in our sunroom (which also makes a very nice moonroom) looking outside.  The light was a strange silvery-white, the ground was beginning to frost over, and the moon hung lopsided over the fir trees. Over the south fence crept the ghost.  It dropped down beside the garden and began looking around and sniffing. I don't think it saw me, but it sensed my presence.  I hunched down by the sofa to get a good look at it without giving too clear a view of myself. The neighbors' dog barked.  It barked again, and then it howled.  With two steps and a leap the ghost had disappeared over the west fence. The image of the ghost took me back to a nightmare I had in childhood.  I must have been five or six years old at the time, and I woke up frozen and shaking from that dream.  I wonder if Mary Shelley felt that way when the monstrous image first struck her imagination. Then the story hit me with as much surprise as had the vision of the ghost.  The story came nearly whole, minus only historical details, in an instant, and it insisted that I write it. I held it off until after Christmas, when I had the opportunity to work, and then I could hold it off no longer.  I didn't want to write that story, but it wanted to be written. The research and outline took two days. The story took twenty-two days and 64,000 words.  Not a long story, but long enough--long enough. I took three more days to edit it and make sure I felt comfortable with it. I thought of Horace's entreaty that the poet should put a new poem away for nine years before showing it publicly. Then I shrugged off Horace and sent the manuscript to an editor who had asked me to send my next book when I had it ready. I don't know if that editor will take it.  I hope so.  I hate the process of sending, rejection, sending, rejection, sending, rejecting . . . sending, half-hearted acceptance.  You know what goes in the ellipsis. I've heard and read accounts of writers completing books in unbelievably short periods of time.  I've written one in a summer or in a sabbatical semester.  But this one dashed ahead at a nearly unearthly speed.  I held on and typed as quickly as I could. I told a couple friends what had happened.  One said, "Don't send it out yet.  Keeping reworking it, or even put it away for a while, and then go back to it.  You don't want to feel embarrassed later about having sent out something unfinished. But it does feel finished.  I told the whole story as well as I can, I think. The other friend said, "Don't worry.  This one will do well.  When they come that quickly and naturally, that will be your best work.  If not this editor, the next editor will take it." I don't know.  Who does? By the way:  the two friends weren't named Justinus and Placebo. I do wish you that experience.  To be taken over by a story that so eagerly wants you to tell it is a very strange and interesting experience.  Perhaps you've had it already.  It's much easier and pleasanter than having to grind out and work up every small plot detail from scratch.  But I hope for you it's something less unsettling than a ghost story. Unless, unlike me, you really like ghost stories.  In that case:  have a good scare! 

9 Being a Writer

Once upon a time (yes, it does seem that long ago) I was attending the wedding of a friend, and at the rehearsal the father of the bride kindly came over to talk with me.  "I hear you're a writer," he said. That was what he said, but not what I heard.  I heard, "I hear you're a rider." Americans often do get mushy with our consonants, a trait not exclusive to dialects different from our own. "No," I said.  "I admire the animals, but I've had very little experience with horses." He gave me one of the strangest looks I've ever seen. We had an awkward moment, with a few mutually unintelligible attempts on each side, until finally he made a sign of someone writing with a pen on paper. "Oh!" I said.  "I beg your pardon.  Well, I write a bit, but I haven't accomplished enough that I would call myself a writer.  Very kind of you to say so, though." We had a little more conversation, less awkward as we progressed, and then he went on to speak with other guests. I've thought about that brief conversation periodically not only for its mixed embarrassment and humor, but also for the pertinent (where it isn't impertinent) and difficult question it raises. When can someone say--confidently, accurately, honestly, humbly--"Yes, I am a writer"? Now and then I'll encounter an indignant student (usually a teenager, and usually after getting a "B" or something even more intolerably horrible and insulting on a paper) who will argue, "But I'm a published author!"  Right:  not just a writer, but an author:  I certainly do beg your pardon. To that person author is a term of honor that he or she has won by appearing in the high school's annual creative publication or from having answered an add in the back of a magazine from a grocery store rack that invites, "Become a published author! Win cash prizes!"  The result brings a chance to buy an enormous book with hundreds of willy-nilly poems sent in by others who read the same magazine and couldn't resist the call to fame and prize money.  I don't condemn anyone for doing that, nor do I intend to make fun of them.  Figuring out how to write well and publish reasonably is as hard as or harder than it has ever been, and the only way I know to learn is to try.  The attitude is the problem.  I've worked also with students who have self-published their own books.  In a couple cases, the books have been pretty good.  I don't at all blame them for that, and I admire their energy, commitment, and courage, especially if they have produced something fun to read.  But that doesn't make them authors yet.  It does suggest to me the possibility that someday they may well become authors:  they have work ethic, drive, desire, and the hope to please a reader. If they aren't yet authors, they may well be writers--beginning writers, anyway.  To me author implies someone who has gained a readership and credibility by publishing over time substantial work that is at least pretty good--the person has probably supplemented his or her income if not made a living by writing.  Writer:  again that means commitment and practice over time, though it may not imply regular successes.  Is a person who writes only for his or her own pleasure, without sharing the work with others, a writer?  I don't see anything at all wrong with that.  Writing can provide a means for self-reflection and development while helping a person clarify thoughts--how do I know what I think until I see what I say, E. M. Forster said.  To me writer implies commitment to craft, desire to do well, and the ability to make pages--and maybe at some point the intention to share that work. I'm just now beginning to think of myself as a writer, and I don't yet think of myself as an author--though I hope to get to that stage, after death if not before.  I've done many sorts of writing over many years with the aim of sharing that writing with readers, but it has served as part of my profession, not as a sole endeavor or means of making a living.  Many readers have said they've enjoyed the work; some have said they hated it and me.  As Kurt Vonnegut wrote:  so it goes. If you are an author:  congratulations, and well done!  If you are a writer:  press on, and let's do our best together to write well and find our audiences.  If you want to be a writer:  it takes lots of work, but we gotta do what we gotta do.

8 Let It Become What It Wants

Lately I've been wanting to write poetry, but I've been able to get myself to write only fiction (oh yes:  and a few blogs). More often than not I write nonfiction, but I haven't felt in the mood for that any more than for poetry. I'm teaching a poetry course right now, so I should be writing poems to keep myself in the right frame of mind to help the students.  In class, when the students do exercises, I do them, too, and I've been able to scare up something pretty quickly that fits the assignment and also has a bit of fun in it.  But I don't save those:  they're for practice, and I erase the chalkboard when class has ended.  About a week ago a colleague asked me for a new stanza for an old poem, and I was able to get back into the state of mind of that poem and write something pretty decent right away.  But for starting new poems:  my thoughts just aren't moving in that direction right now. I've long had this idea about a piece of writing:  we have to let it become what it wants to become.  We may feel in the mood to write a poem, but it may want to come out as a story.  We may want to compose an expository essay, but it may want to take the shape of a one-act play.  It works out better if we let it organically achieve the shape it wants to.  I suspect artists, composers, and choreographers have this issue, too. Of course, that's a problem for students.  We tend to ask them for something specific:  an argumentative essay, a brief autobiography, an annotated bibliography, a journal of their responses to readings.  We don't--because of academic restrictions we often can't--always consider that, like us, they may feel in the mood to produce something quite different.  And of course professional writers must complete what their editors ask of them, at least if they want to make a living. But that doesn't mean the intermediate product must be the final product.  Even something we write for now may yet reshape itself into something else, something better and more complete.  The imagination, I believe, will naturally lend the right form to an idea if we keep at it and let it become. A friend recently told me:  "When I think of the word blog, your name isn't the first one that comes to mind for something like that.  It probably isn't even in the first million." I know.  I know.  I'm not a tech savvy type person.  But I'm glad that for now some thoughts are very much wanting to take that shape. Do you think consciously about form, or does your subconscious take you right where you need to go?

7 Happy Happy, Joy Joy

Most people have heard at least a few really good jokes, even if we can't always remember them to tell them at parties. How many really good comedies or happy stories can you think of, either in short stories or novels or plays or movies?  Compare that to how many good tragedies or sad stories you can remember in the same genres.  Most of the "greats" are more serious and troubling than light and happy, probably because we need them more to help us deal with human problems.  When we're happy, we don't want to write; we want to enjoy ourselves. Funny bits can appear in sad stories as well as happy ones, but the sad tends to overwhelm the happy or funny.  I've never believed in the idea of "comic relief," not in serious writing; I'm more in Thomas De Quincey's camp:  comic elements place the tragic elements in greater relief to make them stand out and astonish us all the more.  Sad or tragic stories also seem to me easier to write:  we understand pain and describe it better than we can joy or pleasure, which may quickly become trite in print or on stage or screen.  Can we write comedies with "tragic relief"?  Or can we use the sad bits to make the comedic elements more powerful by contrast?  Krazy Kat may say "Happy happy, joy joy," but Ignatz the mouse is usually waiting around the corner to fling a brick. Here's something I'm trying now:  to write a happy story.  Not a story that goes only from one joyous moment to another, but one that mostly highlights joy and happiness and understanding rather than suffering and pain and violence.  One of my friends calls that the "nicey nicey" approach to writing.  For now, I'm willing to accept that term, derogatory though its intent, because I think it's an exercise worth trying.  I'm not meaning a story with no tension at all, nor am I thinking of one where the characters go through all sorts of trouble to get to a happy ending, but one that focuses mostly throughout on characters finding reward or satisfaction in each others' company and in what they do. The attempt may fail.  If it does, that's all right.  I think it's an exercise worth trying.  What do you think?

6 Git'n 'er Done

Stephen Crane wrote in one of his letters that he had figured out how to turn his writing on or off like a spigot.  He could write when he wanted to and stop when he needed to. I haven't learned quite that much control.  Once I get it going, the words will go and go.  I have enough things to write about that I don't have to search for subjects, but getting over the inertia to start sometimes poses a problem.  I have a little computer game, and sometimes twenty minutes of that will get me going.  Sometimes I need to read a little first to get words going through my head.  A walk or some tai chi practice will nearly always work if I have enough time for them to get my brain waves working right. Once I get ready to start, I have a few commandments--not Commandments, and they're for me, so they may not work for you.  But they help me, so maybe they're worth thinking about. Get words down on a substrate, in print or on an electronic device, whatever, just so it's on something--even if I have to borrow pen and note paper.  Then find a way to save or keep those words.  I've lost too many good thoughts by not writing things down in time or losing them after I did. Try to spend more time writing what I'd like to write than what I must write, while always doing my best with both.  I can never know who will read what and what good it may do. Edit as well as I can without going mad.  I'm the monarch of typos:  I fix every one I can find, but I'm always going to miss some.  I must live with that and not punish myself too much.  Also, a writer must know his or her bugaboos.  I write sentences that are too long.  I don't stop myself as I'm composing, but when I edit, I try to cut long sentences into two.  Or three.  Or four. Get work into somebody's hands:  a piece of writing never matters to me until someone else reads it and likes it.  I don't write for myself alone:  it's too hard (I'm not saying that someone else shouldn't).  Know that some pieces will get bad reviews just because some bad reviewers take great joy in writing them.  Keep writing anyway. Don't worry if a piece takes a long time to finish.  Some do regardless of how hard one works at them.  Lucky for me I don't have to write for a living:  I have a job that requires writing, but as long as I'm working on something, that's all right, and I will get it done. Have more than one project to work on at once:  on any given day I may not want to work on one, so I can work on another. Try to put something fun, funny, and interesting in everything, even in a (boring) prose report. Keep working on bilocation.  Who knows?  One day it may work. Remember that having time to write is a blessing.  I do. 

5 Writing What You Want?

Have you ever felt that you wanted to write one thing, but your imagination kept pushing you in a different direction? Lately I've been wanting to work on novels: for someone like me, that's about the only sort of writing for which one can actually get paid (and even that's a maybe). But I've gone on a short-story binge instead. If you haven't seen it yet, please look up www.kristydeetz.com and scroll down to "The Adventures of Rabbit and Kitty Boy." The paintings are the best part, of course, but beneath each painting you'll find a quirky little story where two characters respond to the paintings and discuss their own adventures--light reading if you don't mind finding a little art criticism sprinkled in. You'll find twenty paintings with accompanying prose bits. In addition to the adventures, I finished two ghost stories for a collaborative project with my sister and four new pieces to complete a collection of eleven Harmon Falls stories to accompany the little book of poems you'll find on the main page of this website. Yes, I know story collections are hard to place--that's why I've been trying to write novels instead. When students ask me about how to shape a new piece of writing, I always reply, "Let it become what it wants to be." I've been finding myself taking my own advice: I've let the stories come along as they wish and take the shape and content they seem to me to be aiming for. A short story always brings its own challenges, because the writer has only a small space to accomplish not only situation, complication, and epiphany, but also a little character development and at least a movement towards some sort of theme or purpose. Most of us, when we started writing, probably began with short poems and short stories: we could conceive them and finish them. But as I get older, I need more words and more pages to say what I want to say, to tell stories that I want to tell. But as long as the ideas are taking shape as short stories, I'll let myself be glad with that: a certain charge always comes with finishing something, with having made it into a complete and self-actualized whole. Good short stories are hard to write, but when we think we have one, the sense of satisfaction appears even as it does with long works--we just don't take quite as long to get there. As always, happy writing!

4 Working With a Net

Occasionally someone will ask me about pursuing a career as a writer:  is it possible, how should prepare for it, how should one do it? Quick answers:  it's possible, but not easy--a writer needs extraordinary drive and patience; read, read, read, and write, write, write; I don't really know how to do that, since fortunately for me I don't write for a living.  I write because sometimes I want to, and sometimes I must. W. H. Auden told a story about a young would-be writer who asked him about being a poet.  Auden asked, "Why do you want to be a poet?"  The questioner thought for a moment and replied, "Because I love words."  Auden followed, "If you had given me any other answer, I'd have suggested you spend your time otherwise."  Auden's is an interesting answer, but not the only answer, at least as I understand it.  A person could also say, "Because I love stories" or "Because I want to try to add something to the great storehouse of literature that I have always loved so much" or simply "Because I have to do it.  I can't eat, sleep, or think clearly if I don't." Often I'll get a question about how or where I get ideas.  That's a kind of embarrassing one, since I've never had trouble getting ideas.  I have more than enough.  My problem has been getting the confidence, focus, and time away from my employment life to practice enough and learn how to start, continue, and finish pieces of work.  The ancients used to say not "I think that" but "the thought came to me that":  I suspect ideas come to most of us pretty often, but we brush them off as random thoughts of little use. Sometimes the real issue behind that question, when it comes from younger persons, is simply that they haven't yet lived long enough to have clarified for themselves what they really want to write about.  More living means more experiences, and more thinking means more ideas for writing. Now, when I get an idea that seems to me to have promise, I start with list-making:  the blank page is my worst enemy.  Get it down, with as many details as possible, as quickly and clearly as possible, then go back to it later to see if it deserves more thought and more effort--that's my main method.For the young person who wants to write, I also suggest what I call working with a net.  If you want to work the trapeze of writing, find a reasonable and decent way to make a living.  Auden said to take up carpentry:  something very different that requires different skills and thought patterns so that one sits down to write, the mind isn't already tired and clogged with word-business.  Then writing time is language-time and pleasure-time, not drudgery.  Carpentry is good, but anything that helps you gain experience and make and save money and puts you in a position where you have some leisure time to write will do. Every writer must find his or her own methods through practice and persistence and an open mind to ideas that come from anywhere and everywhere. Good luck, and best of success!

3 Senses and Metaphor

Last week some students and I were talking about what I like to call the "tools of the trade," that is, the technical things a writer must know to write well, everything from grammar and punctuation to manuscript format to basic narrative structure. John Skelton, the Tudor poet laureate, called the collection of things he knew how to do his "conning bag," the ideas and strategies he understand and could use any time he needed them.  Writers should always keep filling our conning bags, and every now and then we should dump them out and clean up everything we keep there. Aristotle wrote that of all writing techniques, metaphor has the greatest power:  odd and fascinating that the most moving item is the one that isn't there, the one to which we compare something that is there. Metaphors and every sensory detail we can think of, we start with them:  they bring abstract ideas to breathing life.  Years ago I participated in an evening poetry reading at the university.  I had stuffed my poem full of all kinds of detail, making sure I hit every sense at least twice.  After the reading, another of the poets came up to me and said how much he had enjoyed the poem, but that he couldn't remember anything after the line about bacon frying in the skillet.  It had made him hungry, and he couldn't hold on to any of the lines after that, though they had been pleasant enough as they floated by.  Hunger wins out over poetry most of the time, and olfactory images may be the strongest of all. I've always liked the line from one of Keats's letters:  "load every rift with ore." That is, fill every line of poetry with as much life, energy, experience, truth, and power as you can.  One of the many astonishments I experience every time I read Paradise Lost is that Milton left hardly one toss-off line in the whole poem, as long as it is.  He filled every rift with ore, and my copy, which I've used for more than twenty-five years now, has nearly every line underlined and annotated--which makes the underlining no longer helpful, but makes me laugh with wonder at what a great poet can do. Now I feel like reading Milton and sizzling up some bacon, but I don't eat that anymore.  Maybe a nice warm, cinnamony bagel with soft raisons and some melted butter, dripping yellow-gold onto the plate.  Tasty.  Or maybe just some crunchy celery, with bitter, savory leaves, to save some calories . . .

2 The World of the Text

Theorist Paul Ricoeur wrote about what he called "the world of the text," the space between the text of a book or story and the reader.  The imaginative space in between isn't quite exactly the book, and it isn't exactly the same as the person doing the reading, either.  The reader negotiates that space as a place to experience and interpret the text. I've always liked the term, but I like to use it in a different way.  The world of the text is the world that the text creates and into which the reader or viewer can step:  the deep, old, intricate world of Tolkien's Middle-earth, the dangerous but darkly scintillating world of a Raymond Chandler detective novel, or the icy, ambi-gendered world of Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. I believe that, not just for fiction writers and movie makers, but also for poets and often for non-fiction prose writers (such as biographers and essayists), creating a textual world where a reader wants to stay for a time may be the single most important skill.  Yes, characters and style have great importance, and they may seem to many readers to be the most important components of writing, but if a reader enjoys the world of the text, he or she will return to a book again and again even knowing the plot (and maybe even having almost memorized the book).  That's true for adults as well as for children--if you read children their favorite books, they want you to get every word just right, because every word helps make up and fill out the world of that book. In the world of The Lord of the Rings readers can tolerate orcs because they also get to meet elves.  In The Left Hand of Darkness one can tolerate all the difficulties Ai experiences mingling with a different species of humans because of the friendship he and Estraven build.  The masterful peculiarities of the world and how the author weaves them all together into a believable place win readers' fascination and loyalty.  And we often hope that the writers will go back to our favorite worlds to build more stories into the spaces they've created. My wife says the experience can be much the same for "reading" a work of art!

1 Some Ideas on Writing

Since you've fallen upon this website, I assume you're interested in reading and writing and maybe even enjoy them. I intend to add some thoughts here periodically, practices I've learned of and tried or realizations that have hit me, hoping they may have some value for you, too. Let's start with some of the best pieces of advice I've ever run across for writers, some public secrets that you may or may not have read or heard. First, the main secret to successful writing (or any writing at all):  make pages.  As a painter must make paintings and a song writer must produce musical compositions, a writer must make pages.  Years ago I was reading Ray Bradbury, and he advised that a person who wants to write should compose three pages a day--every day, no excuses.  As I recall, Hemingway said something very like that.  Three makes a nice choice, but I'd say:  any number you like, even one, just so you do something regularly.  If not three pages a day, try ten per week, or fifteen per month, or whatever you can do.  But make those pages. Second, on a tv talk show I once heard an interviewer ask Mickey Spillane, writer of noir detective stories, why he wrote what he wrote.  He answered, "I write what I want to read but can't find."  There's a pretty good chance that, unless you have the great misfortune of horrendous taste, if you'd like to read something that you can't find, someone else is looking for the same thing.  That means you already have an audience.  That's secret 2.5:  write for that audience. Third, read, read, read.  You probably want to write because you've liked things you read.  Read so you don't repeat what someone else has written, and read so that you know how good writers put words together. Fourth, and here's another powerful one.  I was going through notices in an old copy of one of the many useful Writer's Digest publications, I think it was the Poet's Market.  The editor for one of magazines listed there gave this advice:  when you submit something to this magazine, reward me for the irreplaceable living time I'll spend reading it.  Yes:  spot on.  Always reward your reader for the kindness he or she shows you in reading your work, whether it's published or not. I hope you've found something rewarding here.  If not, I'll try to do better next time.  And thanks for sharing your living-time.