The Posture of the Writer - Part I

Okay, before you laugh and go way, let me just say that by "posture" I am not talking about the way a writer sits at her desk, hands poised ergonomically over the keyboard. This is not about yoga or zen meditation, however cool both those things may be. In using the word "posture" I'm thinking about the writer's view, the way she sees, the attitude she possesses. I'm thinking about something that exists within the writer herself. 

I think most of us will agree that good books--enduring books--stand on more than the author's mastery of skills. But would you also agree that the author's inner life effects the execution of his or her work? 

The late great Madeleine L’Engle meditates on the writer's inner life in WALKING ON WATER, particularly in regards to the posture of the writer towards art, or writing.  And Anne Lamott talks about the idea in BIRD BY BIRD, by concentrating on the posture of the writer towards the world.

For today, let's consider the posture of the writer towards her art:

L’Engle says that for her, writing involves “being.” 

“When I am constantly running, there is no time for being.  When there is no time for being, there is no time for listening” (13).

Listening to the “work,” the art, she says, is essential. This is because she claims “the work often knows more than I do” (24).

L’Engle sees the artist as the “birth giver,” or the servant of the work (18).  The art is larger than the artist; therefore, if the artist does not listen to the work, the result will be less than it could be.

This makes me think of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott,” (hence the gorgeous Waterhouse paintings above and below!). Shut in her high tower, away from the cares of the world, she can weave her “magic web of colors gay.” She can pay attention to her art. But if she looks away from the mirror that shows her the things that are happening in Camelot and sees the world with her own eyes, she will be cursed.

Thank goodness we’re not under such a curse. But it is a delicate balance, isn’t it?

I’ve found that this sort of single-mindedness toward writing requires me to plan ahead, as well as be a bit ruthless about what I take on beyond my normal daily responsibilities. Sure, I long for the Lady’s tower, but since I live in the real world and have a growing family, I have to schedule in blocks of time to contemplate and listen. I’ve also learned to be cautious about what sort of noise I allow into my life, so I don't have a cell phone, or cable, or GPS. For me, they  invite too many disruptions. Blips that turn into pauses, pauses that turn into minutes, minutes that turn into half-hours. Time that I need to stay simple and focused on the tasks and people at hand, the ones right in front of me. Going without  in this way helps me to listen to my work, even when I am not “doing the work.”

I don’t think L’Engle is saying this sort of listening has to be a solely passive activity. The paradox of any artist is that she must work.  L’Engle herself says,

“We must work every day, whether we feel like it or not, otherwise when it comes time to get out of the way and listen to the work, we will not be able to heed it” (24).

I think she is talking more about a constant, intentional awareness of the importance of this work we do. L’Engle gives us permission to acknowledge its magnitude and see it as our master. To realize the “privilege” it is to serve it (23).  She helps me see that writing ultimately isn’t about me. The moments of sharp, bright, consuming inspiration don’t make me special. They are gifts. But if I’m not listening, I could miss them.

Kind of humbling, isn’t it?

So how do you make time to be, instead of “act?” How do you make sure you are listening to the work?

(check back next week for Anne Lamott's wisdom on the writer's posture to the world, okay?)

Worthy of Study

We can learn a lot about writing great books by reading great books, right? I read over 20 novels last year, mostly YA, but a few MG too. There were many I liked, but not enough to label a crush.  

Then there were those that really stuck with me. Personally, I know I’ve got more than a crush when, after I’ve finish the book to find out how it all ends, I want to STUDY it. Not in a general way, but in line with a specific question I have. It is usually because the author has done a particular thing so very well.

So here are my top picks from 2011 (not necessarily that were published in 2011, but that I read in 2011 J) and why you might want to pull them apart and study them. English class, anyone?

If you want help with Plot:

THE REVENANT, by Sonia Gensler—The time period and historical setting real stuck with me. That and the creepy haunting of the main character, Willie. The narrative feels very confident, all the loose ends are tied up at the end, and Gensler does a good job of making Wille’s story-worth problem (she’s a runaway hiding her identity) intersect with and affect her ability to solve the story’s surface problem (the haunting of a Cherokee girl’s school). The story begins in just the right place with an inciting incident that intrigues and reveals just enough about the character to keep us reading. The narrative makes and keeps its promises too, with plenty of satisfactory surprises thrown in. I think you’ll love it.

If you are considering how to handle Multiple Points of View:

ENTER THREE WITCHES, by Caroline B. Cooney—Actually, I was a bit put-off at first by the multiple narrators, but once I figured out who each “speaker” was, I found Cooney’s handling to be quite intriguing. This is because even with the varying viewpoints, the narrative still feels like Mary’s (the main protagonist) story because the others only relate information that agrees or disagrees with what Mary thinks or says. They also allow us to look at Mary through their eyes, which gives us a broader picture of her than we might have had if the POV had been restricted to Mary only. Lastly, each sequence and p.o.v. change moves the story forward with almost cinematic effect. The reader doesn’t have to redo points of time from one p.o.v. to the next, the narrative just keep moving ahead as though we have changed cameras. Plus the book is a retelling of MACBETH, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays.

 If you are looking for a vivid and compelling use of Setting:

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, by Beth Revis—A spaceship? I mean, can there be a cooler setting choice for a murder mystery? Revis does an excellent job, not only of painting the setting for us so we feel we are walking around inside the ship, but of showing us how the setting affects the main character, Amy. I feel just as pressed in and trapped as she does. I wonder if there is any hope that she will ever get off that ship, just as she does. I feel the ship hurtling through the black expanse of space even now, months and months after reading it. If you are developing a setting that is essential to the narrative arch of your story (which in my opinion, should always be the case), pay attention to all the places where Amy is not only acting within her environment, but thinking about her environment. I think that is precisely why the setting feels so real.

If you want to understand how to create memorable Character:

LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER, by Deb Wiles—I will never forget Ruby, her poignancy, her flesh-and-blood feel, the way she speaks and thinks. This is up there with Gilly Hopkins, and Anne Shirley, and Ramona Quimby. Wiles gives us Ruby in layers – images, quirks both verbal and physical, descriptions, actions, reactions, emotions. Study this one, and you will be glad to have spent time with this dear, dear girl.

And as a bonus:

BLACK PEARLS, by Louise Hawes—every short story is incredibly well-done. Just wait until you read the retelling of Cinderella from the Prince’s point of view, or the one about Snow White. But my absolutely favorite is “Naked,” from the rhyme “Ride a cock horse to Coventry Cross.” A perfect treatment of a relationship gone wrong and the nobility that can rise from the cracks in the human heart. I cried. And then promised to study it several times over. I am so glad I did.

Have you read anything recently that you want to tear apart and study and put back together again? Feel free to share your recommended reads from 2011!

Could This Be the South's First Ever YA Book Tour?

Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. YA authors Beth Revis (ACROSS THE UNIVERSE), Myra McEntire (HOURGLASS), and Victoria Schwab (THE NEAR WITCH) are the sort of women who make their hometowns proud - they don't wait for opportunities to promote their books, they CREATE the event. After feeling frustrated that most book tours are limited to big-name cities, the women have launched their own book tour "Asheville to Nashville." From August 3-8, 2011, the authors will stop in 8 Southern towns in NC, SC, and TN.

I, for one, am ecstatic. What better way to spend a Southern evening in the mountains? And the trio isn't limiting themselves to their own books. Stephanie Perkins, ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS will join the girls Aug. 4 at Malaprops in Asheville, NC. Other authors will include Alan Gratz, Michelle Hodkins, and Ruta Sepetys.

Here's one more reason to check out the tour - they are giving away signed copies of each featured book! That's right, SEVEN books YOU can win! To enter, go to AshtoNash or click on the link in the column to the right.

See you in Asheville!

Why Books Are Like Chocolate - and How the Latter Might Be Used To Rate the Former

Books are like Chocolate.

Fiction, that is… and I mean more than fact that they are both highly addictive.

Just think of the last time you bought a Hersey’s Bar. Maybe you purchased it at the grocery store, the gas station…. Tractor Supply Company – seriously, they’re easy to come by.  You’ve eaten one a thousand times, and part of the pleasure of downing it is getting just what you expect. You ate without much thought, except to say, ‘Yum,’ as you licked the last of it from your fingers. Then you went on with your day.

I'd wager that you didn’t really think about details of taste and feel. The nuances, the color, the scent. But the next time you crave a quick chocolate fix, your brain will tell you that a Hersey’s Bar is an acceptable and yummy choice. It’s satisfying for the moment, but not really MEMORABLE, is it.

By contrast...there’s the gourmet truffle you had yesterday or last week or last year at that fancy chocolate shop across town. You had to drive through traffic, pay to park, walk a block or two to the shop, get there and realize you forgot to lock your car just as the heavens open and it sheets – I mean SHEETS – rain, borrow a dinky umbrella that does absolutely no good against such a force, slosh back two blocks to your car, lock it and slosh back to the shop. But when once you had finally ordered ‘The Buddha,’ a truffle made with coconut milk, ginger, and cayenne pepper (not to mention a thick, dark hot chocolate and 7 layer chocolate cake to go with it), eating it was a mind-altering…no life-altering experience. The truffle demanded to be savored. You couldn't do anything but ponder its detail. Wonder over its depth. You had to put it down for awhile and ask if you were ready for such a complex melding of flavors and textures. You even wrapped it up and took it home to enjoy later. And oh – the exquisite pleasure of that last bite. And the stab of sorrow over the fact that it was gone.

You can’t look at chocolate the same way now. Sure, that itty-bitty truffle took a lot of effort to purchase and cost a heck of a lot more ounce for ounce than the Hersey’s Bar.  

But you do see where I’m going with this lengthy analogy, right?

Some stories are like that Hersey’s Bar - fun and engaging and a terrific momentary ride. Others have a depth you aren’t sure you’re ready for, but the challenge is so compelling you can’t help but nibble and brood and question until you hit that perfect center and finish it with every sense heightened and your very outlook changed.  Weeks, months, years later, you remember how it impacted you. You want to experience it all over again. You want to study the reasons it worked so well. You want to ponder and wonder and tell people how much you loved it and why. And soon, someday soon, you will read it again.

Okay...I admit that the comparison has me craving the dark stuff (and I don’t mean the kind mentioned in Meghan Cox Gurdon’s article for the Wall Street Journal, “Darkness Too Visible,” an essay that has the YA community in a frenzy).

I’m thinking more along the lines of a cup of Ghirardelli Hazelnut Hot Chocolate and a microwaved s’more….

But just imagine if publishers or bookstores (or reviewers such as Gurdon) categorized books by chocolate, rather than commercial vs. literary, ‘boy’ or ‘girl’, genre or targeted age group. “Now if you like Godiva…” my favorite librarian might say, “Try ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS. But if you’re going for a 80% cacao content, you’ve got to read, OCTAVIAN NOTHING.” Sure would make browsing the shelves a lot more fun, don’t you think?

You try it. What chocolate (brand or bar or otherwise) would you compare your most recent YA read to?

Me? I just finished ARIEL by Grace Tiffany. I’d say it’s a gourmet version of Butterfinger. Kind of weird and fantastic in a peanut-buttery-sweet-stick-in-your teeth sort of way. 

Now it's your turn!

New Crush

My good friend Karyn Henley has a top-notch YA fantasy releasing June 21. I was priviledged to read and critique very, very early versions of BREATH OF ANGEL several years ago, and I can't wait to read the final form!  *wheeeee*

Check out the book trailer - I guarantee you'll want to pre-order!

Grace Notes - the Measure of Your Skill, Part II

Intensify Your Reader’s Experience

As promised, here is Part Two of our examination of the merits of using “grace notes” in writing for teens, and once again, we’ll look to award-winning SHADOW SPINNER, by Susan Fletcher for examples. For those of you just joining us, see Lee Wyndam’s argument for the use of figurative language here.

Readers like to be grounded in a story. At least, I know I do. I want to know whose skin I’ve slipped into and what the environment is like. I want to forget the chair I’m sitting in, the cup I’m drinking from, the way the light falls across the page. I want to fall into the story’s landscape, and walk around as though I am the MC.

Fletcher makes this easy for her readers. She uses common figures of speech – Simile and Metaphor, both to relay her protagonist’s feelings and paint vivid pictures of the setting.  

Look first at how word pictures containing Similes make Marjan’s feelings more concrete:

Anxiety/Powerlessness -

·         When the Khatun questions Marjan about the reason Shahrazad has brought Marjan to the harem, she says, “I felt as if I were blindfolded, groping my way through a maze full of hidden traps” (37). 

·         Marjan later feels powerless against those in authority and says, “they played with our lives as if we were tiles on a game board.  As if our lives were only of value if we were serving them” (41). 

Loneliness –

·         When she first arrives at the harem, Marjan observes that she has “no one even to sit in the same room with me, to stir the stagnant perfumed air with breath” (53). 

Hopelessness/Despair -

·         Perhaps the most stirring simile occurs towards the end of the book: “My life - what was left of it - seemed to shrink and harden, like the dry, brittle husk of a rosebud starved for water” (163).

           

Fletcher also paints Marjan’s surroundings using figurative language. Consider how these images of setting are intensified by the addition of Simile:

·         “Columns of sunlight streamed through round holes in the high, vaulted dome.  Light mingled with the smoke from burning censers and puddled on the marble floors like liquid gold” (31)

·         “The whole city lay before us - beige flat-roofed buildings, studded with bright domes and spindly minarets....To the east, like a deep blue silk scarf, lay the river” (64).

 In the bazaar, Fletcher uses Metaphor to describe the crowd:

·         “The crowd flowed in a great, strong river to the left, with only a few trickles moving right” (81). 

Active Verbs also contribute to Fletcher’s image making:

·         “mule drivers cursing, women haggling, caged birds screeching; brass workers’ mallets pinging and clanging and bonging” (82).

           

Now if you are the sort of writer who believes that grace notes don’t just make for beautiful reading – that they serve the story on a practical level by clarifying the reader’s understanding of secondary characters and intensifying the reader’s experience, I have a challenge for you.

Leave a comment below in which you either

a.)   share a type of grace note NOT mentioned here

            OR

b.)   share an example of figurative language from your own work or a current book crush.

Won’t this be fun?

Grace Notes - the Measure of Your Skill, Part I:

 Secondary Characters

One of my all-time favorite books for teens is SHADOW SPINNER, by Susan Fletcher. This is no one-time fling – it holds a secure place on the shelves of Literary Crush, and I’ll tell you why. Fletcher is a master at using figurative language with precise effect. In the craft book, Writing for Children and Teenagers, Lee Wyndham says that figurative language, figures of speech, and word images are the “grace notes” of quality writing. In other words, he says “Your ability to compose word images is a measure of your skill.”

             

“Figures of speech sharpen the picture, spotlight a character or a scene so that it becomes more vivid and real. They make the reader feel things much more intensely, heightening his or her emotional reaction to your story. They serve another purpose by eliminating the dozens of less colorful words it takes to get the same idea across.”

-Writing for Children and Teenagers, 124 

             

According to Wyndham, figurative language involves the “ability to see similarities between one thing and another.”

Fletcher certainly knows just how to do this. The plot of SHADOW SPINNER is such a humdinger of suspense you don’t notice how much of it is due to an effective use of figurative language. Grace notes appear in many forms throughout the book, but for this post, and the one to follow, I’d like to examine how they are used for two distinct purposes relating to characters. Next time I will examine how Fletcher uses grace notes to intensify the reader’s experience as filtered through the protagonist, Marjan. But today, let’s look at secondary characters and how Fletcher utilizes specific grace notes to:

a.)   distinguish one character from another – especially important when you have a double-digit cast  

b.)   highlight important secondary characters by painting pictures the reader can “see.”

Fletcher makes use of a different figurative techinque for each of the above goals. To distinguish one character from another, Fletcher employs a subtle and progressively layered Character Tag.

Character Tag, Layer One:

·         A Quick, Brief Description (QBD) as seen through the protagonist, 13 year-old Marjan.

For example, when Marjan first arrives at the harem, she meets

1.)    a “bony, beak-nosed woman of middle years” who takes Marjan to the baths,

2.)   a “beautiful woman with pale skin and coppery hair,” standing behind the Sultana,

3.)   a girl of “six or seven years old” with a pet gazelle. 

However, because Marjan is new to the harem and considered a servant, these characters have no reason to introduce themselves by name.  A lack of a name could be confusing to the reader the next time these characters come on the scene, but Fletcher avoids this by moving us to the second layer of clarity…

Character Tag, Layer Two:

·         Descriptive Tag based on Marjan’s first impression (QBD) – a tag which becomes a substitute for the unknown proper name. For example:

1.)    the woman at the baths becomes “the beak-nosed woman”

2.)   the beautiful woman becomes “the copper-haired girl”

3.)   the little girl becomes “the gazelle girl.” 

Eventually, Marjan discovers these characters’ proper names, but instead of immediately dropping their tags, Fletcher eases us through the transition by using…

Character Tag, Layer Three:

·         Proper name + Tag = “Soraya, the copper-haired girl.”

The result of this layered approach is a reader who has so memorized each secondary character that by time a character is identified by Name-Only, the name itself is loaded with meaning. In other words, when we read the name “Soraya,” we know exactly who she is and how she looks in the environment of the story.

Now. To help the reader “see” important secondary characters in detail, Fletcher uses more lengthy descriptions – a technique I call the Verbal Portrait. 

Fletcher focuses primarily on what these characters look like and how they move, but she occasionally draws attention to other senses, such as sound and smell.

Here are some examples of the Verbal Portrait:

1.       Soraya, the copper-haired girl, is described as having a “showy walk, with a lot of hip in it.  Her ankle bracelets jingled, and her long, unbound hair swished from side to side.” 

2.      Another character, Zaynab is painted as a “crinkle-faced woman” with a “high, rich, warbling voice,” who moves like “a plump, round cat - gliding along the flat parts [of the roof], leaping across gaps, scaling rickety ladders...mincing along ledges.” 

3.      However, the most colorfully drawn secondary character is the Khatun.  Here, Fletcher paints a picture that warrants fear and revulsion.  Marjan describes the Khatun as “hugely fat:”

“She seemed to spill over the edges of the massive cushion she was sitting on. Her neck fell in folds over her pearls and I could see the shapes of billowing mounds of flesh beneath her robes. Though her face was bloated, misshapen, it held traces of lost beauty...Between pouches of soft, fleshy skin, her dark eyes gleamed.”

- Shadow Spinner

The Khatun also exudes a “rotten, sickly sweet” smell that horrifies Marjan and accompanies the woman wherever she goes.  Marjan likens the Khatun to a spider in the middle of a “vast web that spanned the whole harem. Any disturbance - anything unusual that happened - would jerk the web...And she would know it.”

Now, if you can see each of these characters out of context, just imagine how effective these portraits are within the scope of the narrative!

For next time…. grace notes that ground the reader in Marjan’s emotions and setting, and a challenge for you, my fellow writers.

See you then!