Journalism

One Writer’s mid-week Writing Secrets 4: Read

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

             OK.  So I am off Twain for a while and I have moved on to Dickens with some great heaping teaspoons of Madeleine L’Engle.  At the beginning of the summer I was determined that this summer I was going to do reading-lite (great taste, less filling), and so it was all Eric Flint (& co.) and Harry Turtledove. 

            Then I promptly devoured Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World – a text with which my naturally argumentative mind could find very little fault.  (So much for reading-lite). 

            Then before Twain, I began to peruse C. S. Lewis, wondering when Dawntreader, the third movie might come out, and I hit on rereading some Charles Williams.  Williams (if you don’t know) was the one that Lewis and Tolkien and Sayers and the other inklings (generally) believed was the best writer among them… and good luck finding his works!

            So, what are you reading???

 

Writing Tip 4:

If you want to write, and especially if you want to write well, read.  Some have said that this is the single most important thing a writer can do.  I would not go that far, but near enough, and I would add that the library is fine but it is better if you buy the books the same way you hope people will buy yours!  (For God’s sake, don’t steal them off the internet).  So, read, and read the stuff that you know darn well is the good stuff too if you want to write good stuff.  We are what we eat after all.

One Writer’s Writing Secrets 3: Something to Say

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I am still enjoying Mark Twain.  Love him or hate him, the man could write, and more importantly, in the American tradition, he could tell a good story:  Tom Sawyer at home and abroad with the Tramp and the Innocents (roughing it or otherwise on the equator), Life on the Mississippi, The Prince and the Pauper, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and the great Connecticut Yankee which I believe he named just to see how many times he could find Connecticut misspelled in the reviews.

            Motive for writing in the first place is as difficult as trying to pin down a motive for murder (a close kin in some cases).  I think, though, Twain was on to something with the notice he gave at the beginning of Huckleberry Finn:

NOTICE

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

Per G. G., Chief of Ordnance.

            Writers want to say something – at least most have something to say.  Some do write mainstream drivel in a sort of stream of consciousness (Zzzz); but I believe most want their views about life, liberty and the pursuit to be heard.  (Unlike the Blues Brothers, they may not be on a mission from God, but still…  And whether or not what is said is worth listening to is another debate).  But whenever a writer focuses in on what they are trying to say instead of on the story, the writing is lost, abandon ship!

            Mark Twain was first of all a storyteller.  All the great writers were.  Even a socially conscious writer like Dickens first told a good story. 

 

Writing Tip 3:

I cannot speak for the plot because that might be a handy thing for a story to have; but as for motive and moral, I recommend not thinking about them at all.  Yes, I believe every piece of writing should have something to say, but while in the writing process, I recommend just focusing on telling a good story, and I believe the motive/moral will shine through without help, thank you very much, and maybe some other things not intended will shine through as well, things which may turn out to be pretty good!  (I hadn’t thought of that).  We can call it stream of unconsciousness writing.

One Writer’s Writing Secrets 2: Finding your Voice

M G Kizzia 2 Comments

            I just finished rereading Huckleberry Finn, so if I break out in a twang, please bear with me.  (I ain’t agwyne do’t if I can hep it).  Dialect is a bear, and not recommended – unless it is who you are, and you know the dialect like the proverbial back of your hand (and your spelling is consistent).

            Allow me to share a bit of family folklore that floated down to me from my writer brother in Alaska.  It concerns a person named Tom (not Sawyer, but of the same type as I hear tell), though how true the story is, I cannot say.

            Tom went to the University of Michigan for one semester where he had a Freshman English professor who said something like this:

            “Tom.  You have a wonderful voice when you speak.  It is lively and very different from the dry papers you have been turning in.  You know, I believe you have the potential to be a good writer, but you have to stop trying to write the way you think it is supposed to be written.  Instead, I want you to try writing in a way that is most natural to you.  That is the secret to good writing.  Try writing the way you talk and it will be much better.”

            Now, Tom decided that was good advice; but if his best writing was simply writing the way he talked, and since he already knew how to talk, he also decided there was no more to be learned from that institution; so he dropped out and wandered his way up to Alaska where he took a job hosting a national radio show for NPR and writing just the way he talked, and though I don’t want to give everything away, the end of the story is if you ever go traveling across this country, I am sure he will “leave a light on for ya.”

Writing Tip 2: 

For most of us our talk can get pretty sloppy and might not be a good guide, but on principle, don’t worry about the way good writing is supposed to be writ!  Write the way that is most natural and comfortable for you.  That is your voice, and it will invariably be much better than imitating someone else.

One Writer’s mid-week Writing Secrets 1: Tell a Story.

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Sorry, I don’t have a link but I would recommend reading the Wall Street Journal, Saturday/Sunday, August 29-30, page W3 in the culture section.  The article is by Lev Grossman, and it is titled:  Storytelling.  Good Books Don’t Have to Be Hard.  And it is subtitled:  A novelist on the pleasure of reading stories that don’t bore… My response is:  Amen.  Whether you are writing fiction or embarked on some journalistic enterprise (or writing journalistic-fiction which is all too common these days) it helps to have a story! 

Grossman blames our view of what constitutes “great writing” (literature) on the modernists in the 1920s who objected to the Victorian novels that tied everything up in a nice, neat ending.  Faced with all of the changes that came with modern life, these authors said, (recognized) that life did not work out in nice and neat ways, and so they produced such works as “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “The Age of Innocence,” “Ulysses,” “A Passage to India,” “The Sun Also Rises,” “A Farewell to Arms,” “The Sound and the Fury,” and so on.  These all may be great books in their way, but the truth is (and Grossman says it well) they are too hard on the reader.  As he points out, “imagine what it felt like the first time somebody opened up “The Waste Land” and saw that it came with footnotes.” 

To be sure, all of these great works by great writers have produced in us a sense that quality writing must be like theirs:  “Mainstream” or “Literary;” yet, like the impressionist painters that revolutionized the art world, they have had their day.  The day of the “Mainstream” or “Literary” novel (so-called) is over.  To put it more succinctly:  modern literature had its time and place, but we are now living in a post modern age.

Thank goodness story is making a comeback.  Clearly, story is what readers want.    As Grossman points out, “Sales of young adult books (where the unblushing embrace of storytelling is allowed) are up 30.7% so far this year (through June)… while adult hardcovers are down 17.8%.  Nam Lee’s “The Boat,” one of the best reviewed books of fiction in 2008 has sold 16,000 copies in hardcover and trade paperback according to Nielsen Bookscan… (while) the author of the “Twilight” series, Stephanie Meyer, sold eight million.”

My point would be that it pays to have a story to tell.  Readers want this.  Writers – Serious Writers are discovering this.  Agents and Publishers are a little slower, but I believe they will follow the money.  My hope is that someday maybe even the reviewers will catch up.

You remember story:  Beginning, middle and End.  Yes, I said end.  True, these days we might not wrap everything up in a neat Victorian ribbon.  (The lessons of the modernists were valid to some extent).  In our day, Scrooge might have a relapse.  (We would call that a sequel).  But still, a story ought to have some resolution, some conclusion; it needs to reach a point where one can honestly type:  THE END.  It should no longer be acceptable to end a story, “because my fingers got tired of typing so I went to bed.”

“But what of Great Literature and true Stream of Consciousness writing, and etc.?”  As Jessica would say, with a snap of her gum, a click of her tongue and a roll of her eyes, “That is so last century!”

 

Writing Tip 1: 

Tell a story.  Tell a good story.  Grab the reader.  Take them through whatever twists or turns exist, and when you are done, let them go.  This can still be great literature, and I believe it will be how the future sees literature.  You can say all you want to say about life, liberty and the pursuit in a story.  You can make great points, Dickens did, but first of all make it a good read, because if it is good enough, along with lasting beyond the lifetime of a blog, someone just might pay you for it.

— Michael