Monthly Archives: July 2012

So Many (Writing) Books, So Little Time (to Write)

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This began as a blog about writing books I love, inspired by Jane Friedman’s recent post of her five favorite writing prompts books. I started pulling my favorites from my bookshelves and the pile by my desk got higher and higher. Treacherously so. I realized a blog about all the writing books I love and use regularly would be, well, a book about writing books.

I started winnowing.

I noticed in the stack were seven books by the same publisher: Graywolf Press; four of these from The Art of Series, edited by Charles Baxter. I decided to limit this post to these books. I’ve been reading and rereading them for years and when I do, I feel as though I’m studying with the masters.

My first of the series, though not the first released, was The Art of Description, World into Word by Mark Doty. I adore his work and who better to write about the art of description but a poet who does just that—makes art from descriptions. This is how he begins:

It sounds like a simple thing, to say what you see. But try to find words for the shades of a mottled sassafras leaf, or the reflectivity of a bay on an August morning, or the very beginnings of desire stirring in the gaze of someone looking right into your eyes.

Next I ordered The Art of Subtext, Beyond Plot, by Charles Baxter. I do love subtext. My copy of this book is littered with sticky notes and page tags, marking passages that illustrate how great writers have used subtext to evoke what lies beneath  the words on the page. Baxter has me believing I can do it, too.


“Compressing time is what all fiction does…” Joan Silber tell us in The Art of Time in Fiction, As Long as It Takes. But what to compress and what to summarize? And how to travel between the “then” and “now” of the story? And what about slow motion in narrative? Examples abound on these pages.

My current read in the series is The Art of Time in Memoir, Then, Again by Sven Birkerts. I don’t write memoir (yet) but many in my classes and workshops do and that tricky question of when to use the voice of the “then” narrator and when to use the voice of the reflective narrator almost always comes up. Birkerts’ examples illustrate this and so much more.

These books in The Art of Series serve as my morning meditation books; I read them as I drink my coffee, sticky-noting them, copying passages in my commonplace journal or on scraps of paper to quote to my students, and, I hope, lodge somewhere in my mind to surface as I write.

Two books in series I’m looking forward to: The Art of the Ending by Amy Bloom and The Art of the Voice by ZZ Packer. Graywolf also publishes several in the series devoted to poetry.

What are your current favorite writing books? Do you read them once and put them away, or do you study them again and again?

First the Picture, Then the Words

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The characters in my novel take a road trip from Kansas City to San Francisco. We (the characters and I) were all doing fine cruising through the wheat fields of Kansas heading toward Denver. I’ve driven that part of the country a few times so when my characters looked out the window, I could describe the landscape—the wheat fields in early spring, the far horizon, the silver silos that rose into delft blue skies. But once we left Denver and got through the Rocky Mountains past Steamboat Springs, I was in deep writer trouble.

I might as well have taken us to Czechoslovakia. (That country still existed in 1958, when my novel is set.) I had no idea what the world outside our station wagon looked like. So I opened my browser to Google maps and found my way onto Highway 40 in northern Colorado. In the “photos” view I clicked randomly on the pop up pictures that lined the yellow stripe of highway into Utah. Now I could describe the rise of the buttes out of dun colored earth, the weathered gray of old barns, the flight of a single hawk into a dome of sky that had no beginning or end.

But it was the particular photograph of a herd of wild horses running into the wind that gave me an image I could use to express the emotional landscape of my characters on their journey. I downloaded that photograph, printed a copy and stuck it on my bulletin board above my writing desk.

The photo of the wild horses wasn’t the first nor the only time I’ve used images to enhance or inspire my writing. A postcard I picked up at a café in Cannon Beach, Oregon featured the photograph of a guy in a band who became the model for one of my characters (the very handsome, very sexy love interest. Oh, those cheekbones!). A moody picture of a single microphone captured in a pool of light communicated a shade in the palette of emotions I needed for my protagonist—a young girl who yearns to be a singer. A collage I created with images culled from magazines was an “open sesame” into the woman who owned the fishing camp where part of the story takes place.

(This is a faux book jacket I created for inspiration)

Images such as these speak to some intuitive understanding we have about our story or our characters. They allow us to explore characters or setting or offer insight into conflict or relationships. Sometimes they just do that “picture’s worth a thousand words” thing like my Google map photos .

I’m looking forward to the “Creating with Pictures and Words” retreat Jill Hall and I are leading this Saturday at her ranch in San Diego’s backcountry. Who knows what I’ll discover flipping through magazines looking for images that call out from the page. Who knows what will be revealed through the follow-up writing exercises. I love the surprises, don’t you?

Do you use images to enhance your writing or to delve deeper into your story or characters?

Stuck?

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I’ve read that a blogger should have a list of 30 or so blogs already written before she begins a blog. This is so that she won’t be faced with what I find myself troubled with today: what to blog about. The homework assignment in my “Blog Triage” self-study class tells me to:

1. choose a topic you’re ready to blog about.

2. from the list provided, choose three different people.

3. write the post three times, each with a different reader in mind.

4. post the entry the most closely expresses your voice on your blog before continuing to the next lesson.

There follows a list of six people for me to choose among.

Photo by Paul Harrop

Problem is, I’m still stuck at #1: Choose a topic you’re ready to blog about.

I don’t have a topic at hand that I am ready to blog about.

This makes me think of how as writers we sometimes get stuck because we don’t know what we want to write about. Or rather, we have so many things we want to write about we get paralyzed by infinite choice. That’s where I find myself today: Stuck.

So, that part of my brain that wants to help out when I’m stuck, that soothing, we can make this better, part suggests I go to the kitchen for another handful of M&Ms. Or maybe, it offers, go ahead and take a shower now instead of after you’ve finished your blog assignment. Won’t it be easier to come back to then? “You know you always get some of your best ideas in the shower.” Plus, my mind goes reminds me,  I haven’t had lunch yet. And  there’s the yoga class I wanted to get to later this afternoon. “You can write the blog after you come back from yoga,” that voice tells me, the tone so convincing.

This is my mind on “spin.” This is how time set aside for writing can go by without any actual writing happening. This can go on for hours and sometimes does.

But wait, look. I’ve written a blog post about what happens when writers get stuck before the blank page or the blank screen. Once again, it proves to me that if I start with a simple word prompt, in this case “stuck,”and  do a focused, timed writing to the prompt, I’ll find myself writing. It reminds me, once again, that if I get the ink flowing or the fingers flying on the keyboard, the blank page will soon be filled with words. Not all of them good words, mind you, and not all of them keepers, but words on the page. This is the measure of a writer writing .

Now, I think I’ll brainstorm a list of 20 topics I want to blog about. I’ll do it at the kitchen table while I eat lunch.

How do you get your words on the page?

PS. Here’s a list of 33 ways to get unstuck from A Writer’s Book of Days. How to Get Unstuck