This too shall pass.

Dear readers and writers,

I have been feeling a bit panicked about taking up teaching writing at SDSU along with my three MFA courses there and the first year seminar I'm teaching at my home institution.  So, after working on some of my course materials,  I opened a pdf of Writing Your Way Home by Fiona Robyn, hoping to find a little peace and happiness.  Here's the first thing that struck my eye: "Writing is an immediate mirror: it reports back to you. You can't fool anyone, especially yourself. Here you are the doer and the done, the worldly person and the monk. It's an opportunity to unite the inner and the outer, both being the same anyway, only in illusion two. A great challenge, a great practice.” ~Natalie Goldberg"

I took a workshop with Natalie Goldberg in Sedona, AZ two years ago, and it slowed down my "monkey mind" so I could connect with important deeper ideas.  So, as I read on, I looked for more ways Fiona might use Goldberg's ideas.  And, soon enough, I found this: "Acknowledging that we don't always know who we are (or what we're capable of) reminds us of our ultimate transience. Everything is impermanent, including our own selves. The writer and Zen practitioner Natalie Goldberg says this 

very well: “To have an intimate connection with the world …[is]… to know about its passing.” 

Ah, yes.  At times of great joy, accept and soak it in because it won't stay with you forever.  At times of great stress, know too that it's not going to stay.  Someday, you may wish you had so much to think about.  But whatever you have, the moment is precious.  This too shall pass.

That's another memory.  My daughter has that phrase tattooed on her foot where she can look down and see it, but it isn't all that obvious to people she passes each day. When I heard from her why she had it, it made me want to cry, but it's a very Zen idea, I think.  Give up the bad, give up the good, but don't give up the moment without seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, hearing its essence.  If you pass this way again, it will not be the same.  The molecules won't be the same, the people won't be the same, the animals won't be the same, you won't be the same. This "now" is all we have.

cheers,

Laura

Photo credit: Monarch butterfly in May, Wikipedia Commons with thanks.

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.