A Few Words

Consolidation

2009-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

I am in need of simplifying my life, so I'm consolidating my blogs and will offer the same kind of stuff found here, along with bits on life, on my regular blog www.survivorscribe.wordpress.com.

I just can't keep three blogs, so I'm merging two. The other blog at www.tecumsehherald.com is related to my job as a newspaper reporter, so I'm keeping that one as well.

Cristina (Crissy)

Learning from hearing others

2009-04-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

One of my absolute favorite pastimes is to go hear poets and writers read, so I'm extremely happy to find that I can bring the readings to my home through Youtube. I share this one of Grace Paley, because she's one of my absolute favorites. I did have a chance to hear her in person before she passed away. She'd come to a certain nearby Big 10 university to speak, and I just had to go hear her. I was even able to chat with her for a moment, and I'll never forget how friendly she was.

I think writers can learn a lot from listening to other writers read their work. I also find it inspiring, so I think we should be clicking on these videos.

Dreaded Dialogue

2009-04-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

One of the things that baffle young writers is how to make dialogue sound real, not stilted or boring. I've struggled with that as well. I still do, but in my own writing practice I was fortunate enough to be asked to be part of a fiction-to-film project. I took a scene from my novel and wrote a script.

The thing about script writing is that everything written has to be seen or heard. There is no interior monologue. I couldn't write what my characters were thinking. I had to only express it in gestures and dialogue, things that could be scene on a stage or a movie screen.

I don't know if I've been accepted to participate in the program, but the mere act of writing that way made me rethink the conversation my characters were having in the seen and make it that much stronger.

So, give it a try. Turn a scene from your fiction into a movie script and see how it fleshes the characters' own words out.

Happy write:)

Just Do It!

2009-04-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

A recent post at one of my online writers' groups asked how we fiction writers actually get a story on paper. I answered and so I thought I'd share my answer here.

How do I do it? I've learned, through a lot of work, that you just have to let yourself go. As the Nike ad says, "Just do it!" I know that's horribly cliche, but that's also very simple.

I don't know the plot going into the story. I often just have a line or a character in a setting, so really it is about giving myself license to discover what this character and his or her scenario is all about. The things I keep in mind as I'm going are:

1. The first draft is a draft. It's not going to be the final product and it will change. I just focus on getting a full narrative out, even if it sounds rough and it most often does.

2. I allow myself room to discover. I give the characters room to sort of develop as they will and then, for me, the plot comes out of that.

3. Finally, I just show up at the page every day regardless of what gets written. Sometimes it's a line. Sometimes it's several pages. I just write it out until it is done, not in one sitting, but in several or more hour-long sittings. An hour is about as long as I can focus on a single project.

I remember seeing House of Sand and Fog author, Andre Dubus, III, on the Oprah Winfrey Show way back when Oprah was doing those wonderful book club shows. At the end of the show, Andre talked about how after his father's death, he found and read his father's writing journals. His father was well-known author Andre Dubus. Andre (the junior) noted how after each passage, not matter how long the passage was--a line, a word, or pages long--that Andre Dubus (the senior) always wrote "Thank You." Andre (the junior) said he was profoundly moved by the fact that his father was truly thankful for whatever amount of writing he did. I found it so moving and continue to think about it to this day, some eight or ten years later, as I put my words out there.

In essence, we just have to show up at the page and be thankful.

A Perfect Day

2009-04-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

Some days are so perfect I can't help keep reliving them in my mind. The day began with poet Robert Fanning reading from his new collection American Prophet. Wait it started much earlier than that. It started with coffee and hot chocolate with my daughter at the Ugly Mug Cafe in Ypsilanti, my new favorite cafe, which is nice and close to home. Just last week, I spent a couple hours there on Saturday morning working on a short story at a table sitting against a wall lined with books while I sipped on the best coffee I've ever had. What more inspiring place can there be to get some writing done? But this isn't about last week. It's about yesterday.

Yesterday, at the Ugly Mug, my daughter and I ate bagels and talked about life and about our plans to attend the Writers Reading at Sweetwaters special reading featuring Robert Fanning at the Ann Arbor Public Library later in the evening. We talked about how my daughter might get the opportunity to sing a song she wrote during the open mic portion of the evening following Robert's reading and about how I would most certainly read a poem as well. She was nervous. While I've read many times before, she's never read anything she's written in front of anyone.

We spent a couple hours at the cafe, went and picked some things up at the store and went home to gather out things for the reading. When we arrived at the library we were welcomed by Chris and Esther, the wonderful women who run the Writers Reading at Sweetwaters series, the most welcoming and warm reading around. They welcomed us warmly as they always do and were eager to sign both of us up to read.

If we'd only gone to hear Robert Fanning read, it would have been a spactacular enough evening. His new collection follows the journeys of a modern day prophet as he tries to pass his message to any who will listen. What Fanning can unearth as his prophet scans the aisles of a super store for a megaphone or seeks a moment with a king at an Ypsilanti Elvisfest transcends the ordinary to become something subtle and beautiful all at once. He pulls us into the familiar and leads us beyond. I'm eager to spend a quiet evening on my deck with the entire collection, and I'm definitely adding the poem "The Prophet at Elvisfest" to my list of favorites or as I call them "talismen" poems.

Following Robert's wonderful read, we had our chance to read our own pieces. Chris Lord made a lot of the fact that my daughter was going to sing, which was so sweet. I read, then she sang. She was a hit. Robert even signed his book to my daughter, telling her she has the voice of an angel. She left the reading on cloud nine. More importantly, she was given a huge nudge toward an appreciation for language and writing. She came home and has been writing more songs since our wonderful evening ended. I can't imaging a better way to kick-start poetry month than to see a spark lit under my own kid.

Yay!!

2009-04-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

I don't have any advice to give today, but I did just learn that a poem of mine called "Keeping Up Appearances" came in second in the graduate division of the Kentuckiana Metroversity Writing Contest!

I've been invited to read the poem in Kentucky in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping I can go, but we'll see. It's a long way for one afternoon.

Not much else to report.

How to Begin

2009-04-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm asked how I begin a poem or a story. It's as Annie Dillard says in her book The Writing Life (a book I highly recommend) that one line drops from the sky, and then like sculptors we chisel around it. I've referenced this little passage from her book many times, because that is how it happens for me. Often when I'm driving, I'll be struck by an image or a phrase and either I scramble for paper and a pen at red lights or I repeat it to myself all the way home so as not to forget it.

Early on in my career, I stressed over when those moments would come. I felt that the moments when inspiration struck were few and far between. That's because I hadn't trained myself to be aware of those brief passing flashes of inspiration, and more importantly I didn't know how to follow through with them.

Following through with this bits of inspiration takes persistence, not even a whole chunk of time, but persistence. The most recent project I've been working on has been a short story. I flashed on the first line "I wore a spit up stain on my blouse, the day my boss called me into his office." Now, that's not an entire story. It doesn't even hint at what the entire story will be about. I had no idea what would come of it, but I committed to the line and committed to giving myself a couple hours on Saturday and Sunday morning (crediting fiction writer Katrina Kittle for that piece of wonderful advice) and after a few weeks I had a completed draft of a short story.

If that makes it sound too easy, well it is remarkably that easy. There's no magic formula. Remember, too, that a completed draft is not a completed story. It's a draft. There will be many revisions, which takes more chunks of time. It doesn't have to be an entire day, though. It can be 15 minute or half hour increments. I know from where I speak. I work full time, have two children, two cats and a dog. In short, I'm a busy gal, but I make time to write and revise.

My assignment then is for you to listen for those lines, perhaps write 10 or more down. Choose the one that you feel drawn to and commit to it. Give yourself the okay to write it in increments. You don't have to write the entire story in one sitting. Also, give yourself the okay to write whatever comes without editing too much. Remember, the editing will come with the revisions. Now, follow through with it!

It's National Poetry Month, So Read Some Poetry

2009-04-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

It's April, which means I'm reading a lot of poetry, because it's National Poetry Month. I think that this month should remind us that we should not only be composing poetry, but as poets we should be reading lots of poetry. I'll admit that I've pushed that aside for other pursuits lately; knitting, writing and fiction, yelling at my children. Well, the last one not so much.

Reading poetry, however, does offer brief moments of silence in an otherwise chaotic life. It's also important to note what others do with language and to get out of our own heads for a bit. As a fiction writer, I read poetry to see what language pared down to it's most elemental of parts can do. Sure, we fiction writers need plot and character and story arc and all that, but some of my favorite fiction writers are equally strong poets and I can tell it's their practice of poetry that helps them describe the landscapes they create in just the most unique ways.

I'm thinking of writers like Laura Kasischke and Margaret Atwood. Right now, I'm reading a stack of poetry books that I will be reviewing at my other blog at www.tecumsehherald.com. It's a project to promote the poetry shelved at the Tecumseh District Library. My first selection is Luck Is Luck: Poems by Lucia Perillo. I've only just begun to read it, but already I'm noting her use of humor, something I'm hoping to explore when I pick up the pen again to write a poem.

As a writer, I've always heard that the best way to learn to write is to read, read, read. I'll be another in yet a long line of writers to echo that and that includes reading poetry, especially if you are poet!