Reading, Writing and Scratching the Itch

Well, it's been one week since I blogged about getting back in the writing saddle, and I find I'm still struggling to straddle the obstacle of scheduling time.  In my defense, I did work 9-hour days T-F, and this week's plan is to hone those hours down so I can begin anew. Although I haven't yet sat at the keyboard (aside from copywriting hours), I awoke from 2-3:30 a.m. one night and spent it re-reading essays in my thesis manuscript. Something about that etherial time of night lends itself to imaginative meanderings of the mind, so I was able to sit with the pages I thumbed in my lap without judgment, but with curiosity. There are three essays with braided stories and my next task is to untangle them on Scrivener so that I can reweave the strands into something new.

My bedside pile of books and magazines

As always, deadlines help propel me toward my goals. I did sign up for the fall Writer's Inspiration + Support Workshop, which meets once a month for three months, starting Sept. 21. And there's a Sept. 22 deadline for a Creative Nonfiction contest on a theme that my particular story addresses:

For an upcoming issue, Creative Nonfiction is seeking new essays about WAITING. We’re looking for well-crafted true stories of delays, postponements, and pauses that explore and examine our relationship with time.

In the meantime, reading (and hearing others read) also serves as inspiration. Recently I went to a Get Lit event at one of the wine bars in my town, Petaluma. Among the three featured readers were Stefanie Freele, whom I've blogged about, and Daniel Coshnear, whose fiction class I took four years ago and whose book, Occupy and Other Love Stories, I wrote about for the Press Democrat. I purchased a book from each, and have been reading and enjoying Coshnear's short story collection, Jobs and Other Preoccupations, which offers much food for thought for rethinking and revising my own short fiction. And last week I bought the cartoon memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a laugh-out-loud but poignant portrait of aging in America by New York Times cartoonist Roz Chast. So, I didn't write, but I spent an entire afternoon reading in the park.

Character-driven: Stefanie Freele at the Wheel

Fiction editor of the Los Angeles Review, Stefanie Freele was the featured speaker (for the second time) of my local Writers Forum last month. She's a sassy gal with a wicked sense of humor, so it's no wonder I find her workshops, as well as her writing (Feeding Strays and Surrounded by Water) fabulous. This time she taught us several techniques for rounding out characters. English novelist, E.M. Forster, first coined characters as flat (fixed throughout a story) vs. round (surprising, moving), according to Freele. The latter steers character-driven fiction, changing as the story develops.

Here are five fun exercises with prompts (and my somewhat revised samples) from the session:

1. Someone is to be a your stand-in, so you have to clue them in about your quirks: a fear of accountants, a phobia of brooms, why you take the long way home, etc.

Prompt: "You'll be me tomorrow. Here's what you need to know..."

I lie awake some nights with my mind on fire, chasing words into the shadows. On a good day I giggle, make up songs with silly rhymes, feel as young as twelve sometimes. So don't be shocked when you look into the mirror in the morning and see that your eyelids wrinkle at the touch of a hand.

Open Mic: Aqus Cafe's Speakeasy Literary Saloon

Photo Credit: Argus Courier

 

This month, in an effort to immerse myself in a post-MFA literary life, I attended the Aqus Cafe Speakeasy Literary Saloon. This quarterly reading, hosted by Ransom Stephens and Susan Bono (of Tiny Lights, which I've blogged about), showcased the extraordinary talents of local authors such as Stefanie Freele (fiction editor for Los Angeles Review, whom I've also blogged about). They always have a drawing for two open mic slots, so attending writers are encouraged to come prepared. I haven't read to an audience for almost two years, so I brought an excerpt from an essay that was recently accepted for publication in the literary journal South Loop Review: Creative Nonfiction and Art (slated for fall, 2013). The whole time that I sat listening, I had the almost certain feeling that my name would be drawn. And it was! As one of the last readers, I was pleased to see the cafe was still full and was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. There's something so exciting about getting one's work out there. Reading aloud brings with it the gratification of an immediate response, but also the increased vulnerability of exposure before one's audience.

Writing in medias res: Stefanie Freele's sprinting exercise, part 3

Here's the last writing exercise and sample from Stefanie Freele's workshop:

a) Begin with "she always/he typically/it usually" to sneak in the back story first:

He typically prayed in the middle of the night while the children were sleeping. Above the din of their snores in the next bedroom, he would sit, head rested in hands, body rocking on hard wood floor.

b) Write a few sentences, starting with "tonight"-- back to present action.

Tonight he was restless. The words wouldn't come. They felt stiff, caught at the back of his throat as if it had swelled shut.

Writing in medias res: Stefanie Freele's sprinting exercise, part 2

In last week's post on Stefanie Freele's workshop, starting fiction in medias res, I described a writing exercise, followed by my free write sample. Here's another "sprint," as she called them--

a) Choose an active verb (cries, slams, grinds, stutters, teases). Combine it with a character or pronoun, followed by several sentences. Stay in present tense for the action:

She slams the door. Selfish fucking bastard, she thinks. As soon as her body sinks into the mattress, the tears come, stinging the corners of her eyes. She dabs at them with a tissue from the box she keeps by the bed.

b) Insert some back story with 2 sentences, starting with "Something about this image reminds her..."

Something about this image reminds her of Mimi in La Boheme. Was it when Rudolfo revealed his love for her? Or when she realized it was too late?

c) Continue the story with more action:

 She refuses to let the sobbing begin. She must make dinner for the kids, having promised spaghetti. But they won't be getting dessert tonight.

Writer's Forum: Stefanie Freele grabs readers in medias res

Stefanie Freele, fiction editor of the Los Angeles Review and a 2010-11 Healdsburg Literary Laureate, led a dynamic workshop at our Writer's Forum on beginning a story "in medias res"--in the middle of things. Think of a mystery novel, she said, which rarely starts with a description of place. Rather, it begins in the middle of the action, the madness, the hunt for something.

"It's a technique that makes a galloping entry," said Freele, a prolific author of fiction, including the short story collection Feeding Strays, as well as nonfiction and poetry. But there's a common challenge when we write dramatic action: where to fit in the back story, which, as Freele described, is how the character got to this place in the plot. While action is usually written in scenes, back story can be explained through exposition.

But too often the reader is ripped from the action, then dropped in the character's past (an effect my thesis adviser says is like being pulled from a dream). Freele, who has reviewed hundreds of submissions, has seen it countless times. By the time she returns to the plot she is lost.

What to do? Weave in the back story with a sentence or two--just a few facts or clues. When there's too much back story, the author isn't trusting the reader to understand. "Words should be to create beauty and have fun without bogging the reader down," she said. "Pare it to the waist. Get rid of the soft and saggy spots."

After participants read and discussed several examples from literature, Freele led us through some writing exercises: First, we brainstormed a list of active verbs (nothing dry like sighs or stares): runs, shoots, claws, shoves, jiggles, rushes, screeches, falls. Then, we chose a character (an old man, a wife, a girl). Finally, we wrote for five minutes, staying in the present tense--which kept us in the action.

After a few people read aloud, we continued writing action, beginning with "Here is what/where you will find..."

Finally, we continued our stories, using "Her father/his teacher/their aunt used to say..." as a starting point, revealing character through just a few lines of back story.

Here is my free write, inspired by news of tragic accidents while I was in Yosemite last week as several people plunged to their deaths above the Mist Trail into Vernal Falls:

"The water, ice cold, rushes past him, up to his neck now. He claws at it to no avail. Fir branches snap against granite. He hears shouting above the storm, everything churning too fast, their voices growing distant. Blurred bodies hover at the edge. It is no use. He knows this as the currents pull him down.

Here is where you will find she is lost below the torrent. You've no idea how long it's been. Only that there was a splash, followed by the shock of absence.

Her mother used to say, stay back from the ledge. Don't stand at the rim of the canyon, peering in. The strange thing was, she hadn't. Hadn't balanced on a boulder above the river or leaned over to reach for a butterfly. Their little girl had only done as she was told, smiling her missing-tooth grin for the camera, her sandals scuffing the gravel underfoot. Then falling away beneath them. A smile, a slip, a shriek."

Try it! Stay tuned for two more samples of Freele's writing exercises next week...