Friday Fictioneers: Couriers in the High Peaks

Here's my 100 word response to the Friday Fictioneers photo of the week, Couriers in the High Peaks:

Into the icy wind, Gianna and I had to go.  We were almost out of food, and the snow had softened enough that we could pick our way through the scowling mountain peaks.  If we ran short of water we could melt snow, but so far it was no problem.  We bundled ourselves into our black hoodies, scoured the cave for tidbits, made sure we had the packet, started off when it was barely light.  Moving fast over the dark slopes warmed us up.  After we passed the dormant volcano, Gianna bent over a stream.  “Look, Cosima, fish!  We can eat!” she said. 

Check out Madison Woods' blog at the link above fmi.  Here is the photo we were responding to:

Small Writing vs. Big Writing

Hi readers and writers,

I need to work on a biography that is almost finished and a novel that is about 1/3 done, the latter being a requirement for my MFA program, due by next May in its entirety.  So why is it that my mind skips away to rewriting a travel essay so I can submit it to a contest, polishing up a story about a CO who worked in an insane asylum during WW II to submit to another contest, reformatting a third story to submit for a June 1 deadline?  These contests are fine, but they're just putting off what I really need to do.

Write these books.  Concentrate.  I put my tailbone to the chair and I open the computer and then, my mind plays hooky.  I am getting tired of it, but still, day after day, I don't get down to the jobs I really need to do.

Anyone out there faced this problem and found some great solutions you'd like to share?  I bet I'm not the only one who procrastinates by "pretending" to write, working on the non-urgent jobs and avoiding the important ones.  How can I point my errant brain to what I need it to work on?  My problem is, any time I get too logical, I can no longer write (or I go into science-writing-style, using passive, chronological, logical, simplified, direct, no dialog, no "i").  But this situation is very stressful.  I'd love to get some good, constructive suggestions!

cheers,
Laura

Vinegar and Salt

Hi readers and writers,

When I write my first drafts, definitely to Anne Lamott's prescribed degree of non-excellence, I often reread them and wonder, "Where's the beef?"  The thing I tend to leave out is the tension.  One of my friends from many years ago once made a dish called Slum Gullion, essentially Beef Stroganoff with burger substituted for the steak.  She forgot the vinegar and salt, and it was so bland we had decided never to use the recipe again until she reread it and realized what she had left out: the taste, the subtle items that make you want more so you can figure it out.  My first drafts can be that way.  The bones of the story are there, but the lines between them are all slack and there's nothing urgent about how things are connected.  Revision is where I actually put together the motivation, the tension, the stress and write them into the story.

Adding tension sounds like there's no way it could work.  Not true, though.  It's implied there already, but in the written part, it's not featured.  I just need to bring it out, show the dialog with subtext and conflicting desires, let the characters try to move the story towards their individual dreams.  I often cut out text that is over-the-top descriptive or contains information in excess and replace it with these elements that ratchet up the stakes for the characters.

What are your revision strategies?  Do you need to add tension, or do you concentrate on the beauty of the sentences, or do you add subplots?

cheers,
Laura
Image from Creative Commons/Wikipedia with thanks.

Sand in the Oyster

Dear readers and writers,

I've been reminded several times lately that things-out-of-place make a great theme for writing.  One reminder was in my Pomona College Magazine, where I read about Angolan students studying in Portugal when Portugal embarked on slaughter of Angolans in Angola.  You may have read Heart of Darkness by Conrad in one of your literature classes.  It was about the Portuguese occupation of the Congo, the next door neighbor of Angola.  When the dictator and his henchmen recollected the ones studying in Portugal, would they be far behind?  So the story was about a man who spent days driving batches of these students across Spain to France, where they could get papers and receive protection.  It was riveting.  I mean, I started reading it in the bathroom when I was about to go to bed and could not stop, no matter how sleepy I had thought I was.

The next reminder was my reading in preparation for our trip to the inland passage mentioned in my last posting.  As the glacial ice disappears, the ocean rises and the safety of animals that cross the glacier decreases.  The animals WERE in their place but the place has changed so much it's no longer safe.  So now, home is out of place, a scary concept for thirsty humans living in a big city in desert country; a concept that made me write a few sad poems lately.

The third reminder was my husband's shoes.  We both take off our shoes in the house, but unlike the Japanese people, we don't keep them on a rack by the door.  Each of us has a favorite spot.  But sometimes, they come off elsewhere and then when we need them, they're elusive.  It almost seems as if they're hiding on purpose.  What if they did?  So goes a funny little microfiction.

Think about the sand in the oyster when you're looking for inspiration.  Things out of their normal places make great story or poem starters.

cheers,
Laura

Glaciers and Icebergs and a Blue, Blue Sea

Dear readers and writers,

We've just decided to go up the Inland Passage of Alaska this summer, after talking about it from time to time for years.  We worry that waiting much longer will erode the glaciers too much and there may be nothing to see.   The glaciers seem to believe there is global warming; they are retreating a noticeable amount every year.

I don't know if you've seen pictures of the Inland Passage or Glacier Bay, but the azure ice rises a thousand feet above you and ice bergs split off with thunderous booms and float away.  The cold water is a deep blue, not the anemic grey-blue foamy ocean I grew up knowing from Myrtle Beach, SC or even the aqua-then-navy shading of La Jolla's beach.  It's such a deep color it's hard to photograph successfully, I've been told.  I don't know why this scenery has captured my imagination so thoroughly, but it may have something to do with the dolphin and whale games I used to play with my kids.  Anyway, this will be one for my bucket list for sure.  No doubt, it will show up in a story or poem soon.

Do you plan to go somewhere that will stimulate your imagination this summer?  I hope so!

cheers,
Laura
Photo from Wikipedia/Creative Commons with thanks.

Waiting and Hoping, Etc.

Dear readers and writers,

I've just sent off my novel, The Bad Project, for a cover-to-cover review, and I'm feeling tumultuous again.  This is the third time I've sent the text of one of my books to someone this way. I can't call what I feel anticipation or fear, it's a mixture of both.

It's the shoulder daemon, you see.  When he's in his editor phase, he tells me so clearly that I cannot write beautiful prose, that it's full of errors, that it stumbles when it should fly.  But when he is in his writer phase, he can't wait to see what the characters can do any more than I can, and he tells me how fascinating they are, and how well the things they do reveal their deeper selves.  And even how well I've written about them at times.  There's no way I can tell which phase has the upper hand on the truth.  But an outsider, a knowledgeable reader, my reviewer'll know for sure.

So, I throw salt over my shoulder, cross my eyes at the evening star, cross my fingers, eschew my husband's lucky number (13), etc and feel on edge.  It's not reasonable that the ms has even arrived and I'm already nervous.  No one can read it as fast as I'd like this to be over.  I tell myself to calm down, breathe deeply.  I rub my feet with hand cream.  I stretch.  I answer old emails that I've almost forgotten about.  Is it still the same day?  Egads.

cheers,
Laura

Image: Comedy and Tragedy masks from mosaic at Hadrian's Villa, Creative Commons with thanks.

Can blogging increase book sales? Uh, no.

Hi readers and writers,

Yesterday, I moderated a panel on "Blogging to Increase Sales" at the Biographers' International Conference, held this year at University of Southern California.  My panelists were Beverly Gray of Beverly in Movieland blog and author of Roger Corman, An Unauthorized Life; Scott Martelle, author of Detroit: A Biography; and Mark Sarvas of the famous literary blog, The Elegant Variation, and the novel Harry, Revised.  Each of the panelists agreed that blogging doesn't produce a noticeable spike in book sales.  NO, OUR TITLE IS WRONG!

What blogging does is to provide a platform, a way to connect with many potential readers interested in your subject, and a road to publication.  These are all valuable services, but not ones that directly link to sales.  Yet, the audience still was interested and eager to learn the ins and outs of blogging, how much, how often, how tantalizing, how snarky, how you-relevant, how historical, how up-to-the-minute, how well written?  We discussed all that and more.  Like the rest of the workshops at this super meeting, it was well worth attending.

I recommend the conference next year and into the future if you're interested in writing about lives or even if you will only use biographical material in passing in your writing.  A lot of the sessions were more general than just about biography.

cheers,
Laura