The Poetry and the Prose

Leonid Tishkov's Private Moon project

April is National Poetry Month, so let's talk about poetry. The point I want to get around to is that, if you're a writer, it's important to read poetry. But saying poetry is important is such a complete buzz kill. And it's not only important, it's demanding. Poetry requires more from you, the reader. It requires rereads and contemplation and mulling. So, it's important and demanding --ugh! Poetry is starting to sound like some horrible memo from management that you know you should have read, but you'd rather just fake it and hope you don't get fired for missing some action item in the third paragraph.

I truly believe anyone who gives poetry half a chance will be rewarded by the effort, but poetry has even more to offer writers. Matt Debenham makes an excellent case for reading poetry in his post: What Prose Writers Can Steal From Poets. He talks about the special way that poets use language (and how they often don't use adjectives and adverbs very much) to create a powerful experience. 

"[Poets] don’t have, usually, dialogue and scene to convey character. Their main tool is the image."

Poets do this to communicate to the reader across great distances or centuries or class lines or gender. They do it to find an emotional connection, to share something visceral that rings true and reaffirms our humanity. Wait, that's what we're all trying to do when we write.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

Poets may not be concerned with narrative devices such as plot and character (though you might be surprised how often those elements show up even in the shortest poems), but there's a world of things a writer can learn simply by regularly reading poetry: economy of language and density, how to manipulate metaphor and simile, and how to work in images. The line is as important as the whole and how words sound is often as important as what they mean.

My favorite way to train my ear for rhythm and style, for the sound of my writing, is to read long form poetry. My favorites include classic epics such as John Miltion's Paradise Lost and Beowulf, and other long poems such as William Wordsworth's The Prelude and Ovid's Metamorphoses, but I'm the first to admit that these require a lot of the reader.

There is another class of long poem called verse novels, that is more conducive to -- well to just reading at the end of a long day. And I believe that just reading this stuff with a modicum of attentiveness (which as a writer, that's how you read everything, right?) will train your ear, and it will begin to show in your writing without conscious effort! The other advantage of verse novels is that they are big enough in scope to be concerned with creating a world, and usually have the narrative devices we enjoy in prose such as characters and plot, even suspense. 

Writing science fiction and fantasy is about exploring the unknown, invoking the alien and making it immediate, visceral, human. Poetry, long or short can show us new and different, and often brilliant, ways to accomplish great things, and if some of it is a little challenging, well, the greatest pleasures are often those we earn. 

The Practice of Writing

Katie Walking the Labyrinth by James Jen

This started as a post about goal setting. I was going to title it Setting Doable Goals. But the more thought about it, I realized that I really have only one goal:

To write every day for the rest of my life.

Writing isn't a sprint, it isn't even a marathon, for me it's a way of life. To be both creative and productive is to be happy. I have a small constellation of lesser goals, but this one is my guiding star. This one keeps me focused on the fact that creative writing is, for me, a spiritual practice. This is important to remember when I find that I've committed to some overly-optimistic, unachievable goal that has scuttled my progress rather than encouraged it. That's when I return to my ONE goal and remember that every day that I leave a trail of words on the page, I walk away from my desk ready to be filled up again.

With that in mind, I do use short term goals as a tool to push myself to become a better writer and to keep my work organized. The latter is a challenge for me as I've adopted what I call the English Muffin Method for my writing. This consists of filling every available nook and cranny of my day with little bits of writing and/or editing; parsing big projects into a million tiny pieces. Daily, weekly and monthly goals help keep me on track.

A couple of books that exist in the real estate between writing as spiritual practice and writing for public consumption are: Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit and Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Library).

Finding the Middle Way with Goal Oriented Writing

1. Think about what you want to achieve don't just fill in the blanks according to what the world dictates. As I said in my last post, think about what success means to you personally. Spend some time on this, write it down in your journal.
2. Try simply tracking your output for a week or two before you set an arbitrary number. How many words can you write taking into account job, family, dog, a school of guppies, a flock of hens, or in my case, all of the above? You might be surprised, it might be more than you think.
3. When you're ready to set some goals be sure they are S.M.A.R.T. -- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound
4. Set low bar and high bar, and build in time off. My low bar is 250 new words each day. That's one hand-written page, two double spaced pages on the computer. I've even tapped out 250 words with my thumbs on my iPod's writing app. Almost anyone can toss off 250 words in under ten minutes. I am absolutely not allowed to feel bad about myself if I do this. It's this low bar that keeps me on track with the real goal of writing every day.
5. Rejigger if you need to. Things change. We change. Life. The advantage to seeing your creative life as a spiritual practice is that you can work out the smaller goals any number of ways to support it. If one method isn't working, try something new. Even if it is working, but you're just feeling a little bored, try something new just for a change.

Remember this is supposed to be fun. Serious fun, sure, but fun. Creativity is close kin to play, and if what you're doing is not fun - not satisfying you on a deep, emotional level - then you're doing it wrong.

Hello spring!

Doing It Their Way, Or Not

Illustration for Vasilia the Beautiful by Ivan Bilibian

There is something eternal about the way that we tell stories, the way we seek the emotional heart of an experience, the beauty of language and expression. The way we disseminate and receive those stories, on the other hand, is experiencing a sea change. Traditional publishing seems to be an ever-shrinking piece in a puzzle that now includes multiple e-publication methods and media outlets. And new creative venture revenue sources like Kickstarter are making things even more interesting. With so many choices, getting my work out into the world feels a little like venturing into a foreboding and enchanted forest.

While I scribble away, honing my craft, I’m also trying to take in the ever-shifting landscape that is the world of publishing. Lately, a couple movers and shakers on the scene have been making a big splash, and their stories have gotten me thinking. Before we go any further, the important thing to remember about me is that I don’t know jack! All I have are my opinions, but I do have plenty of those.

Hugh Howey and his breakout novel Wool have been popping up everywhere. Even The Wall Street Journal profiled him, describing how he hacked the traditional publishing model to get himself a sweet print-only book deal with Simon & Shuster. Like almost all “instant” successes, it turns out there’s years of hard work behind it. I first noticed him on Amazon for his excellent novella The Plagiarist, published in 2011. His love for spinning a great tale is apparent in everything he writes, and the hard work he’s put in mastering the craft shows in his direct and engaging prose style. Over the years, he’s amassed a large readership and leveraged that popularity into publishing success. 

Then there’s Amanda Palmer’s TED talk, which went viral and spawned lots of discussion about how one should go about making a living as an artist. 

Regardless of what you think of her, it’s hard not to admit that this isn’t an example of the perfect TED talk. She grounds a simple set of innovative ideas in a real emotional core. I don’t know much about Amanda Palmer. She strikes me as the kind of artist who is not only committed to her art, but to creating her own life as a work of art. For years she’s been putting herself out there both in performance and by connecting with people one at a time. Did she do it to become a millionaire? I can’t say, but it’s obvious she loves what she does.

I’m touched by her sincerity and convinced that she’s managed to put her finger on a truth. But what truth exactly? It took a while for me to puzzle out. There’s truth there, just not a universal truth. 

So much of the discussion around individual success stories like Howey’s and Palmer’s are framed in terms of a new business model that everyone then scrambles to replicate. As if they’ve discovered the path to success, when, in fact, they’ve discovered their path to success. There is a lot to learn from the paths they took, as long as you don’t get tripped up by looking for universal solutions from individual successes.

First, there’s the idea that a universal standard of success exists (often measured in dollars or views or followers). Not that those things aren’t great, but I think success is highly personal, and the path to it as individual as each of us. We do ourselves a disservice when we pursue an ideal of success without first examining what that really means to us. Stop and think, what is it that I want to achieve with my art and with the creative act that is my life?

From what I know of her life, Amanda Palmer has never been responsible for anyone but herself, which means that for years she could afford to commit to a lifestyle where she made very little money and traveled by couch surfing her way around the globe. Cool! I want to experience the art made by the Amanda Palmers of the world, but I also want to experience the art made by people who have mortgages to pay or children to raise or elder parents to support or any combination of the above.

Second, there is no one right way. The enchanted woods are vast, mutable and fraught with danger, but as most fairy tale characters discover, the way through isn’t exactly what they imagined when they went in. Hell, there’s never been a single path from the beginning to the end of any of my stories. More often than not, I make a turn and end up at a delightfully different destination. Once written, I can look back and see the single path that I took, but while I’m working, all I’ve got is the compass of my idea and a trail of breadcrumbs that was my outline. Like the unwritten story, I’ll enter the world of publishing armed with the accounts of the people who’ve made it through to arrive on the shining shore of their success. Their words may guide me, but, in the end, I’ll have to find my own way.

So, keep working. Getting your work out there can feel like venturing into the deep dark woods. Just remember, it won’t be the trail of breadcrumbs that will save you in the end, it will be your wits.

Or maybe a giant swan, but probably not.

Belated Grammar Love Day

Read up on semicolons here

Monday was National Grammar Day. I posted about it last year and have decided to make it an annual tradition. I continue to study grammar, and it turns out grammar is a lot more fascinating than I thought it would be back when I saw it as just some monster waiting to trip me up. It's also a moving target. Languages express our cultures and evolve with them. Check out this sampling of a few older grammar rules that have fallen out of use. Now you can indeed split that infinitive and feel free to boldly go!

A good book to wet your toes in the grammar pool is It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences: A Writer's Guide to Crafting Killer Sentences. It's practical and straightforward, and written by someone who's actually spent time editing in the real world. Because if this, she acknowledges that there can be more than one way to interpret a sentence grammatically, and many ways to fix it.

I have the Daily Writing Tips Grammar category on my RSS feed, and it's a great way to get a ten minute lesson in on a busy day.

This year, I'm also working my way through some more advanced books:

Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style

where Virginia Tufte "shows how standard sentence patterns and forms contribute to meaning and art in more than a thousand wonderful sentences from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. " 

The Art of Styling Sentences 

This workbook takes you through twenty sentence patterns, e.g. a series of balanced pairs, compound sentence with elliptical construction, object or complement before subject and verb. 

There are also chapters like: combining sentence patterns, myths about coordinators, and the twenty patterns in print (with examples drawn from published writing).

Heady stuff. 

I'm learning so much by intentionally writing sentences in a specific structure. I do this as an exercise - not while I'm working on stories. When I'm writing a story, all I can bring to bear are the lessons that I have internalized through practice. I want to have these elements DOWN, so that the story can flow unimpeded.

To some, my enthusiasm may look a little obsessive, and I'll own that. Certainly all that's required to convey a story is competency in grammar, but why shoot for competency when you can shoot for the stars? If the story is the message then the words and the GRAMMAR are the medium. The more I understand the nuances of grammar the more I can convey the story with subtlety and power. My ability to control and manipulate the elements of grammar is a big part of what makes up my writer's voice. It also gives me the ability to adapt my voice to the needs of individual stories. It's how I hone the emotions and themes of a story to a razor sharp edge.

I'll always be learning, always making mistakes. There's no such thing as a perfect story, but that's why art is all about the pursuit of perfection.

The Count is the Kingdom

Chrysina optima. Gold variant. 

Image courtesy of the Generic Guide to New Word Beetles

My story, The Count is the Kingdom is up at Electric Spec. This quarterly eZine has been publishing for six years, which is like forever on the Internet. If you want to know more about them, you can read their interview with the W1S1 people here.

I can tell you it was a real pleasure working with David Hughes the co-founder at Electric Spec, who edited this story and really helped  make it shine! If you want to know more about the inner workings of a successful online publication check out their blog, where the editors keep readers and writers apprised of what they're up to.

*     *     *

The Count is the Kingdom is the kind of story where a lot of dispirate ideas came together as I worked on it. I remember starting out with the image of a walled city that was actually a honeypot trap, collecting more and more people. To what purpose I had no idea, at least I didn't when I started writing. The first draft was actually a failed flash piece, so I started playing with some more ideas.

15th century Catalan mappamundi

I got to thinking about cartography and map making, and about how early explorers imagined the world. I had the thought that a census is a kind of topography of numbers that draws a map of a different kind inside our heads.

I can't remember what got me onto beetles, besides the fact that I'm raising a pair of tomboys and bugs are a constant topic of conversation. Ninety percent of the time a bug that wanders into our house is the subject of rescue not squashing. I spent a couple enjoyable hours researching scarabs and beetles while writing this story, especially how they figure in mythology. 

I hope you enjoy reading it, I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.

Slow Reader

Young Girl Reading a Book on the Beach by Picasso

I'm a slow reader.

Everyone in my critique group knows it, because I'm always the one still reading when everyone finally gives up on me and starts talking - and that's me trying to read fast. I do usually manage to finish the story under discussion, comment and scribble a few notes before we move on to the next one.

Reading fast is a useful skill, and I've worked on improving my speed, without, I'm afraid, much success. Compared with speedy readers, I'll never be well read. I've given up on the dream of being a prolific reader. Even without the distractions of job and family, it is unlikely that I will ever devour an epic novel in a week or a series in a month. I have never read the whole back catalog of any of my favorite authors, as much as I would like to.

Instead I content myself with reading deeply. Turns out slow reading is a thing, proven by the fact that Wikipedia has an entry for it. It's because I love reading so much that I tend to wallow around in whatever is in front of my eyeballs.

What I'm reading today.

Reading isn't a linear process for me. Some of that is just me being highly distractable, but often I'm slowed down by the crowd of thoughts and connections that my brain is making with the text as I wade through it. I double back and circle around, covering and recovering the ground I just crossed to reaffirm a tangential link to something I read somewhere else, or to just savor a beautiful phrase.

This is why I  love poetry. Slow and repeated readings reveal layers of insight and meaning as well as beauty. Subvocalizing (hearing a voice in your head while you read, which is discouraged if you want to read fast) is good, vocalizing is even better. If you want to really read a poem, read it out loud.

Patrick Kingsley at the Guardian talks about how the Internet has effected our reading habits in general and Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows in particular in his article The Art of Slow Reading. 

"The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes even epiphanies." And, perhaps even more significantly, it is only through slow reading that great literature can be cultivated in the future. As Carr writes, "the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer's work. It gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory."

Books like The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and the The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age are less about reading slowly and more concerned with the cultural impact of the electronic age and the sea of information that the wired elite swim in. There's a lot of talk about how all this fast and careless reading degrades the way we think. But, to me, these arguments often start to sound a little henny penny the sky is falling. While I may have a hard time reading fast, we can all chose to read slowly.

And the Internet is a great place to read fast. I don't linger over instruction manuals either. I'll even jog through a good popcorn novel with all the alacrity I can muster, but mostly I read slow because it's my default setting. Like the philosophy behind the The Soup Peddler's Slow and Difficult Soups: Recipes and Reveries, I want a challenge when I read, a depth of experience that cannot be achieved quickly - a rich stew. 

To read is to cross time and receive the world through the strange and archaic words, to struggle up a long hill and arrive at a new vista of understanding, to scale and plumb the topography of emotion. Most of all, I love the feeling of epiphany when reading, and you don't get epiphany skimming.

Man reading a book

The Art of Waiting

Waiting for the Mail by Grant Wright Christian (WPA mural)

Waiting is hard.

Any writer that is submitting stories is in a constant state of waiting to hear back. That's just life. Some markets are quick (Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Daily Science Fiction to name a few), but once I've collected my rejections from them, it's time to get on the slow boat and submit to the markets that take 30, 60, even 90 days -or more- to respond to that precious story I worked and slaved over.

For me, the only way to stay sane about this process is to keep stuffing stories into the machine.

One thing about writing more stories is that each story becomes a little less precious, which helps. Sure, it's the most important thing while I'm writing it (you know, love the one you're with), but then it's on to the next.
In order to keep the hopper full, I can't just focus on writing things, I have to finish them. The key here is to know when you are finished.

In the introduction to her book Two Worlds and In Between, Caitlin Kiernan describes looking back at her earlier stories and seeing a kind of snapshot of herself at a certain point in time. Saying that, in her stories,

 "I see the procession of me."

I love that! After I've taken a story though drafting, revision, critique, final changes and proofing, I have to be able to look at it and say, this is the very best story I can write today. 

One of the most important skills for anyone making any kind of art is the ability to really see what you've made. To be able to make a clear-eyed critical self-assessment of a story not only allows me to write the best story I can, it also gives me an understanding of my current skills and talents that will allow me to improve. Since I'm an optimist, I am going to assume that, with hard work, I will  be a better writer next year than I am today. 

But, I'm not going to go back to a finished story and rework it because it is what it is. My job is to write better NEW stories. Reworking old ones is chasing a kind of perfection that is not only impossible but, I believe, irrelevant. 

When I'm constantly working on something new, striving to write my best story, waiting on my submitted stories is still hard, but just the business that goes on in the background. I keep my focus on making today's story the best it can be.