Category Archives: Becoming a Writer

And Now For The Hard Part

Posted on by
Reply
Now that I’ve finished my new book, The Queen of Kansas, of course I’m relieved and pleased to have gotten this far.  The problem is I’m in what for me is the toughest phase of the whole enterprise.  That is, waiting for a small group of family and friends to finish reading the draft and providing me their feedback.

Lewis Carroll

For the past couple of years, The Queen has been restricted to my head and in my DropBox. While that’s OK, it definitely wasn’t the point of working this hard. Obviously, writing is a form of communication but unless you find mumbling to yourself enormously satisfying, an important aspect of written communication involves other folks reading it.

To help my pre-publication readers know what kind of feedback would be most helpful, I developed a set of questions including:

  • Is the book a “good read?”
  • Are the characters interesting/compelling enough to want to spend time with them?
  • Does the story pull you along?
  • Is the narrator’s voice credible?
  • Do you care what happens to the characters?
  • Are the settings sufficiently realistic/detailed that you can visualize them?
  • Did you get bogged down?  Bored?  Confused?  If so, where?

While I wait for feedback, my imagination freely and happily ranges over a landscape dotted with negative comments.  Of course I know that doesn’t make much sense, so to distract myself I’m working on the outline of a new book.  Does that help keep my negativity in check?

Probably not.

The Pleasure of Reading (Part II)

Posted on by
Reply

OK, so we’ve licked the honey off the page to guarantee a sweet association with reading.  But now, at 11 or 12 or 13, you’re way past needing artificial sweeteners and by now have discovered that the real sweetness is in the act of reading itself.

The Black Stallion (all of them!);
The Black Tanker and other books by Howard Pease;
Treasure Island;
Hardy Boys (all of them!);
David Starr, Space Ranger and other books by Isaac Asamov

And so many other wonderful books that drew me in and transported me to other worlds.  Mostly I read to myself, by myself.  But there were times, especially with my older, girl cousin, when we would read “together.”  We’d lie on the floor and she’d read her book and I’d read mine.  I don’t remember that we talked much about what we were reading, but there was something quite magical in being in the same place at the same time and just reading.Black Tanker

Do you have memories of reading with a friend or relative and when that was enough?

Writing the Literary Memoir

Posted on by
Reply

For a couple of years, Luisa attended summer writing workshops at Cannon Beach, Oregon. One of the workshop presenters was poet and author, Judith Barrington. The first book of Judith’s that I read was Lifesaving: A Memoir. This powerful story of a young woman coming to terms with the accidental death of her parents was published in 2000.

memoir writing tipsWhen, several years later, I was ready to write my own memoir with a focus on how my daughter’s life and early death affected me and my family, I returned to Barrington. I reread Lifesaving and also read her wonderful volume: Writing The Memoir: From Truth to Art, which highlights the memoir writing process. This is an essential volume for anyone serious about becoming a memoirist. The chapter titles give you an idea of what’s inside:

  • Getting started
  • Finding form
  • Telling the truth
  • Using fictional techniques
  • Expanding your language skills
  • Developing sensory detail
  • Writing about living people
  • Placing your story in a larger context
  • Getting feedback on your work
  • Steering clear of common pitfalls
  • Legal issues pertaining to memoir
  • Guidelines for critique in writers’ groups

I returned many times to both volumes during the four years it took to write my memoir.

Thank you, Judith!

Are you thinking of writing a memoir? Have you read Judith Barrington?

Why Writers Don’t Write (Part 2)

Posted on by
Reply

Of course I can’t blame Comcast that I find it a challenge to buckle down and write. If it wasn’t Comcast, it would be the leak under my kitchen sink, or the incessant barking of my dogs, or any number of things that rudely insert themselves into my life and shatter what begins as a smooth, unbroken sheet of time into a myriad of shards, never to be reassembled.

When I was 21, my Dad’s brother’s wife, my aunt, hired me to paint her kitchen.
Aunt C. was an established, visual artist. Her media were oil and printmaking. She and my uncle were the most unconventional people I knew. They lived close to the beach in LA and their home was overgrown with semi-tropical plants. They listened to jazz and their furniture was handmade in Mexico. They had one child, a daughter, M, three-years my senior. I liked hanging out with M. She recommended books I almost always enjoyed and she offered previews of my future; first in high school, then in college.

Dad and L and C had been housemates during their student years at UC Berkeley. C wasn’t Jewish; in fact her father wrote and published Christian Bible stories. She also refused to wear brassieres or girdles. Mother felt responsible to occasionally remind me of Aunt C’s peculiar religious and wardrobe choices; neither of which held much significance for me but undoubtedly contributed to the smog-like atmospherics when our families got together.

I was happy when Aunt C asked me to paint her kitchen. I liked her and needed the money. I’d just finished my junior year at Berkeley and, partly due to C’s influence, had changed my major from psychology to anthropology; one of the several academic fields in which C had considerable knowledge. The colors she chose for her kitchen were straight from the villages of central Mexico! Clear, strong, and vibrant. I’d never imagined colors like this inside a house. My family’s domestic palate consisted of “off-white” and “sunshine yellow.”
Aunt C. wrote the names of the colors I was to use on the walls and cabinets. Given the number of colors, we estimated that it would take me about a week to complete the project. She would be in her studio (behind the house) and if I had questions or needed anything I should, and this is the point, wait until she came out for lunch. We would have 30 minutes before she returned to her studio. When I was ready to leave for the day, I should. Leave! No “goodbyes.” Just leave. If I came early enough to catch her at breakfast, fine. Otherwise, I was to be about my work without disturbing her. No questions. No phone calls. No visitors.

At our lunches, we talked about my studies. My latest girlfriend. My family. When I finished the job, she told me she was happy with the work I’d done. I was, too. Amazed, in fact, when I saw how it all came to life. On that last day, I did a few touch-ups, we ate lunch, she paid me and I left.

Mom told me she thought Aunt C was selfish to lock herself away and forbid interruptions. Even my cousin, M, had to wait until C came out before she could announce that she was home from school. I suppose Aunt C was selfish. But she’d learned that the only way she could be a productive artist was to guard her time. Treasure it.

Fifty years later, I’m still struggling with what Aunt C taught me; still seeking the balance between my need for solitude and my need for connection and engagement.
When I get it sorted out, I’ll let you know!

Why Writers Don’t Write (Part 1)

Posted on by
Reply

My day lay ahead with nothing on my agenda except to write.  I hadn’t had a day like this in weeks and I was energized to imagine how much I’d accomplish.  Of course there was that service appointment with the Comcast technician who would arrive before noon and determine why the closed captioning on our TV wasn’t working.  No problem there.  He wouldn’t need me for anything except to open the front door and let him see that I’m over 18.

When the tech didn’t arrive by 11:45, I stopped work and called Comcast.  “Precious,” the woman who took my call, quickly disabused me of my assumption that I had an appointment.  This, despite what “Ronald,” the Comcast technician with whom I had spent over an hour the day before in an on-line chat had told me about needing be sure that somebody over the age of 18 would be home between 8:00 AM and 12 noon when he finally determined that he couldn’t diagnose the problem, had told me.   What was scheduled, “Precious” assured me, was a “call” from a technician, between the hours of 8:00 AM and 12 noon, who would tell me how to diagnose and fix the problem myself.

“I haven’t gotten that, either,” I whined.  It was noon.
“We’re talking, aren’t we?” countered “Precious.”
“But I called you!”
“What difference does that make?”

I swallowed my anger and conceded her point.  We needed closed captioning.

After an hour of pressing button-after-button on the remote, turning the cable box off and on, and continuously reassuring “Precious” that nothing had changed, she announced that my only hope was to disconnect the cable box and drive it to the Comcast Store in Santa Rosa where I could swap it for a new one.

A “new one!”

The prospect of any new piece of electronic gadgetry (even something as mundane as a cable box)  hit me like an infusion of dopamine and quickly squelched any residual notions of getting back to work on writing my piece about 19th century Russians.  I shut down the laptop and asked Luisa if she wanted to go for a ride.  I then proceed to prepare to sever the existing cable box from the jumble of wires that somehow deliver sound and pictures.  I disconnected the box from the wall-mounted TV, from the Comcast modem, from the Apple TV, from the Blue Ray player, from the Sony receiver and from the sound bar.  I photographed the back of my “old” cable box and labeled every one of the hydra-like tangle of wires. We were off to Comcast!   (to be continued)