Alumni Voices with Christine Heppermann

Somewhere I read about a study linking exercise and intelligence in mice. The researchers set up three cages. In the first cage, the décor was minimal—a food dish, a water bottle, bedding. Your basic rodent padded cell. In the second cage, the researchers added toys (A tiny jack-in-the-box? Itty-bitty Barbies?) for the mice to play with. In the third cage, they substituted a running wheel for toys. Guess which group of mice, when later tested, figured out how to navigate their way through a maze the fastest? Apparently the wheel not only shaped the mice’s quads and readied them for swimsuit season, it also stimulated their brain activity.

Last week on the Inkpot, alum Georgia Beaverson reminded us of the important yet not always acknowledged truth that to be a writer, one must write, and she reiterated Jane Yolen’s BIC—butt-in-chair—method for getting the job done. I agree that perseverance is the only way to accumulate pages, but for me, getting the butt to stay put is easy. Hey, I’m lazy, I can sit all day! Especially if you keep me supplied with lattes, crackers and cheese, and, at cocktail hour, a nice hoppy ale. I have a different “B” conundrum; I can’t keep my brain in the chair.

Remember the Philosophy 101 “brain in a vat” thought experiment? That’s my brain—technically stuck in one place yet wandering everywhere. I’ve always been “scattered,” as teachers consistently scolded on my report cards, and when a project is hard my thoughts are simultaneously sighted in Greenland, Chile, and Quatar. In other words, focus is a problem.

So when the chair proves counterproductive, I get up. Sometimes I take a walk on the rail trail near my house. Sometimes I walk only as far as the bathroom or—since I write in coffee shops—to the counter to buy a raisin bagel. I’ve found that even a brief spurt of motion can be enough to persuade any random ideas circling the airfield to come in for a landing.  

My current work-in-progress is very personal, hence my brain will do anything to avoid it. You could tie me to my chair with my laptop (and no Internet) in an empty room, and my brain would spend the hours happily counting paintbrush marks on the wall or recapping episodes of “How I Met Your Mother.” Attempts to stay in my seat until I’ve finished one page, one paragraph, one sentence too often leave me in despair. At the moment my brain is telling me that I really should keep adding on to this blog post and get back to my WIP tomorrow morning, when I’m fresh! Well, sorry, brain, and no disrespect to you, Inkpot readers, but I have to close my laptop now and get out of my chair. I have work to do.

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Christine Heppermann is a January 2010 graduate of the Hamline MFAC program. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley region. To learn more about her and her writing, please visit her website. 

Alumni Voices with Georgia Beaverson: Butt in Chair

One of the most frequent (and let’s face it, pompous) comments I received from acquaintances when my first novel came out was, “I’ve got a book in me.”

My reaction to this comment varied from puzzlement (Why would this person say that to me at my book launch?) to feeling affronted (Seriously?! You’re an engineer, not a writer.) to boredom (Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard this before.). It was an irritant in all the excitement of getting published. But ultimately, I realized that none of these would-be authors’ declarations meant anything.

Why? Because their books all remained inside them.

To be a writer, you must write. Not just in your head (although that certainly happens, at least to me), but on a page or screen. And doing that involves sitting down at regular intervals to faithfully relate the story given to you. As prolific author Jane Yolen has famously directed, that means “butt in chair.”

Writing, as students of the Hamline writing programs know, is work. It’s a skill that you must practice to improve. For many of us, that means writing on a daily basis.

Why daily? Because the more you practice, the more familiar you become with your tools: words. You learn how they best fit into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, complete novels. Occasional writing too often results in flaccid, lazy prose. Daily writing results in prose that is strong, fluid, and graceful. Instead of stuttering across a page, words become elegant and storytelling vivid.

That’s when the magic happens (and we all believe in magic, don’t we?). When you write daily, no matter how short a time, the story rises to meet you the next time you sit down, waiting for you and eager to be told. Even when you’re not physically writing, the story bubbles on the back burner of your mind, becoming a delicious stew of character, plot, and pacing. The story becomes a part of your conscious and subconscious mind, ready to pour onto the page (or screen).

Writing is work, yes. Writing is practice, of course. Writing is not something everyone does or even can do. If you are a writer, you’ve given your mind, your hope, your schedule over to telling your stories. You’ve set aside time to get to know your characters just as you set aside time for friends and family.

Do you have a book in you? Prove yourself a writer. Set aside time daily or weekly. Let your story rise to meet you. Let it become a deep part of you. And then, let your story flow onto the page and from there, into the world.

But first, butt in chair.

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Georgia Beaverson is a July 2012 graduate of the MFAC program. She lives in southern Wisconsin.

Alumni Voices: Georgia Beaverson

Less Is More

Getting feedback on your work is one thing every writer hopes for. So on the day my Hamline workshop group, led by Ron Koertge and Claire Rudolf Murphy, discussed my submission, I was eager for the feedback. And I got it—both good and bad. But it was what happened after the workshop that stuck with me. Ron handed my pages to me. They were covered with sweeping slash marks. “Just a little suggestion,” he said.

I spent lunch in my room that day, reviewing Ron’s “suggestions.” He suggested cutting two-thirds of my words. Oh. My. God. What about the pacing I’d so carefully structured? What about the cleverly constructed plot points? What about those poetic descriptions I’d labored over? What was he thinking?!

He was thinking that less is more. And he is right.

With Ron’s suggestions in mind, I recently set myself a task: to pare down one of my novels from its 79,000-word bulk to a svelte 60,000 words. It took about two months to accomplish and resulted in a tight, quicker-paced novel without sacrificing more than one or two scenes.

So what did I sacrifice? Nothing germane but many empty words—words that detracted from the story. Here are my top five takeaways from this experience:

1. Words like um, ah, oh, gee, yeah, and uh do not make for scintillating dialogue.
2. Using two adjectives to describe something when one—or even better, none—would do undermines the story.
3. Not every gesture should make it into the text.
4. Strong verbs are generally better than weak adverbs but nothing beats a simple “said” in dialogue.
5. Too much exposition makes your story sound like a badly composed set of DIY instructions.

So yes, less is more. Thanks, Ron!

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Georgia Beaverson graduated from Hamline’s Writing for Children & Young Adults MFA program in the summer of 2012. She is currently a freelance editor.