Pico Iyer

Went downtown L.A. to a series called ALOUD. It's people shouting at each other. (Joke). It's a reading/conversation series. Last night was Pico Iyer chatting somebody from the L.A. TIMES.

Pico Iyer has long been a fave of mine. His recent article in the L.A. TIMES was in defense of long sentences! (Sorry, Elanora) It was a beauty, too. He's a very graceful writer. And -- here's the point -- long-winded and knows it. He writes, he says, regularly and has few boundaries.

His recent book is about Graham Greene and it's probably a couple of hundred pages long. BUT he wrote 3000 pages. Then he edited. Not must taking out, but shuffling early pages into later ones and chronological sections out of time. He just wanted to see what would happen as he handled/fondled/caressed the rough drafts.

I particularly liked the out-of-time suggestion since I cling to time-lines. If that resonates with any of you, join me in the new time-dance where the last might be first or even in the middle

P.S. February's poem is up on the RK site: http://ronkoertge.com/rons-books/

A writer?

Did my taxes yesterday and picked "writer" for one of my job descriptions, which reminded me of the John Scalzi blog post I'd read over the weekend. Since that post is lacking tight lines. I'll try to apply them to mine. (Welcome, Eleanora!)

Tight Lines

Hello, everybody! Although I’ve been writing for fifty years, I’m still nervous as I contribute for the first time to The Storyteller’s Inkpot. However, to paraphrase our MFAC theme of “Immerse Yourself,” here I go, immersing.
I’ve been on the Hamline faculty since January 2009 after speaking first as a guest writer in January of 2008. At that time I urged the audience to have “tight lines.”
In fishing language “tight lines” means to keep your fishing line taut, so that it is straight -- not limp, no excess line floating about -- in the water. This allows the fisherperson to be more sensitive to the fish’s nibble or jerk at the succulent bait on the hook and thus be more apt to catch it.
In the same way, a writer should have “tight lines,” so that each word is taut, exact, and succinct, yet offers the reader the most alluring bait -- titillating scenes, appealing characters, strong plot, evocative sense of place, and tantalizing sensory details -- to hook the reader’s interest, pull him/her into the heart of the manuscript, and land em, still mesmerized, at the end.
Tight lines!
Eleanora E. Tate, February 1, 2012

Taking Sensible Advice

Ron’s post about the screenwriter is a great case study of someone who knows how to take feedback.

I got a lot of practice processing feedback when I worked in public relations and museums. I found plenty of press releases in my inbox that were covered in red marks. I presented text blurbs of 50 words or less at meetings where ten people would then edit-by-committee. I handled phone calls like the following:

Person who hasn’t read the text, but wants to give a contract to a friend: “Why don’t we hire a professional writer for this?

Me: “We did, and it’s me.”

After a while, a writer gets a sense for which edits you just do—and there are plenty of those. You might implement them because they clearly make a piece of writing better and you’re learning something for next time. Or you might do them because they are a bugaboo of whoever gave the edits. Really, who wants to waste time arguing about “however” vs. “nevertheless”?

Some edits you don’t implement exactly as is recommended, but you do something else instead. Whoever is reading the piece may notice that something isn’t working, and they may suggest a “fix.” Writers should accept this information for what it is—another person’s best thinking of the moment. It’s the writer’s job to get deep enough into the piece to know how to best solve the problem, but we can give credit where it’s due to the editor for flagging the issue.

There are times when another agenda at work, but that’s the rarest case, and it’s pretty easy to tell.

Learning how to take feedback is like anything else. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. If we really open ourselves up to feedback, then we’ll be able to recognize and appreciate sensible advice when it comes--and our writing will be better for it.

Winter Workshop Wrap-up

So here you see our hail and farewell photo of the writers in the workshop I co-led with Marsha Qualey at the Hamline 2012 Winter Residency. Over six days we responded to nine fiction WIP's with designer homework on the final day to send the writers out into the blizzard with revision juices flowing. Marsha and I called it our fiction intensive, each taking our occasional turn at the board to plot out scenes and chapters. Participants were all so sensitive and precise in their feedback that I believe all the writers were grateful for the careful readings. I was honored to share these stories and listen to the excellent feedback that went beyond each day's stories.

That's what we all yearn for, isn't it? A careful reading of our work that focuses on the text on the page, but also examines it in the broader scope of literature. Story structure and POV were most often discussed. We had excellent talks throughout the residency on POV in all its complexities and this deepened our responses too.

Write on through the winter. It's been a pleasure to blog this past semester and I hope to be back. Claire

Tough Love

There was a piece in the "L.A. Times" recently about a guy (screenwriter) who finally got a niche at Sundance. His was a classic story -- somebody who loved movies, worked minimum wage jobs to finance his dream, made short films, got some nibbles but no bites, financed one last project with his wife's credit card, and suddenly a door opened. A movie about what he went through would be corny beyond belief (cue the violins) but it's not a movie. It happened and good for him.

What I liked about the story is this: the guy constantly changed and revised. He'd get some sensible advice from some studio wonk and he'd take it. He talked to other writers at his favorite coffee shop and listened to what they said. He didn't peddle the same script over and over. It was protean, a true work-in-progress. And it evolved into something he could actually sell. It's likely the final version barely resembled the first one.

When I do workshops, people come in with tattered manuscripts, something they've been toting around for years. When I see that, my little heart just sinks, because I know they don't want to take advice. They want their baby praised and photographed. And they want sympathy for the hard times they've had. Tough love is too tough for them.

But here it is -- Don't be that person. Don't keep picking at the scab on some precious wound. It'll just leave a scar.

Beginning the new year

With the arrival of Marsha Qualey on the blogging scene here at the Inkpot I will take my leave. I've enjoyed these occasional conversations and hope to pop back in once in a while to comment. But this is the first week of the Chinese New Year, and it feels like a new year in this part of the fairly-near east. So I am going to do some ritual cleaning, pitching, and tossing--not go so far as Henry Thoreau's suggestion that we annually burn all our belongings, maybe not even tossing, just shuffling things along to some new, more appreciative owner. I have an urge to clean my closets and my slate, to see what is left to live and work with.

And then to start to work.

What I will not throw out is Mem Fox's advice that there are three ways to become a better writer:

1. write

2. write

3. write.

I hope we all write the best words and stories of our lifetimes (so far) in this new year.

Back in the Saddle

After a semester of silence I'm happy to return to the Inkpot. Thanks to all who posted and commented while my head was in the sand.

I’m always looking for new writing exercises to do and to encourage students to try. The perfect exercise is one which not only helps me ferret out useful information about any character appearing in my story but also nudges me back into the writing itself. In other words, it must be effective but not too seductive as a distraction. A tricky balance.

I tried a new one this past weekend and I want to encourage all of you to give it a try if it seems the thing to do. It’s not my own invention, though perhaps the altered purpose is. I’m sure many of you check in frequently at McSweeney’s Internet tendency. One of my favorite features is the “Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond” column. Well, this past weekend I had two of my characters write such letters, one to a snippy librarian she encountered and the other to a social worker at a youth shelter. Good stuff—in my estimation—presented itself as a result. I’m going to add the exercise to my list.

And even if it doesn’t work for you, read some of the letters. Most will make you smile.

Join the 46 Percent!

Have you articulated your writing goals for this year? And written down a plan for how to achieve them? And (gasp) told anyone?

Some people aren’t fans of New Year’s resolutions. A study by the University of Scranton shows why: By July, only 46 percent of people are sustaining the formal resolutions they made in January. However, the same study also showed that of people who have ethereal goals—but don’t make formal resolutions—only 4 percent are successful by July.

Another study, from the University of Chicago, showed that people with the best self-control plan ahead as a technique for reducing temptation to stray from the path. Both studies are reported in a recent article in the New York Times. It seems that setting specific goals, tracking your progress, and “publicizing” your goals by sharing them with someone else are common keys to success.

I’ll go first: My goal is to have a rough draft of my current work-in-progress, a mg novel, by April. I’m starting with about 80 pages that I wrote while in the Hamline program and will now be putting aside. I’ll take it from the top with an outline that reflects what those first 80 pages taught me about the characters and the story.

How about you? Let’s be part of the 46 percent!

Life After Graduation

Here's the thing -- keep writing. And for gods' sake keep revising. Here's a quote by Adrian Blevins (poet). The "him" is Rodney Jones, another poet and a guy she studied with:

"I remember telling him in an overconfident voice no doubt that I was rewriting my poems over and over again. Sometimes thirty times, I said. Have you ever done that? He took a deep breath and said in that accent of his that makes even hard lessons sound sweet, “I don’t stop before sixty.”

Someone is going to say to me, "Gee, I can't look at every page sixty times," and I'd say, "Why not?" Sometimes revising is changing a single word. "Loathsome" for "despicable." "Preposterous" for "fantastic." Manuscripts are like babies -- they need to be handled, fussed over, and played with.

I know a novel-in-verse (or any novel) is daunting. It's long and unruly. But page-by-page not so much.

Don't let many days go by without visiting your work. You don't have to look your best. The manuscript doesn't care. But drop by even if you can only stay a little while.