Room To Write

February 21, 2010

<–got this photo at an antique store just outside Johnson Vermont last month. On the back it says “Uncle Fred’s brother Alvin. Hazel’s father.”

Today had one of the longest (and most productive) days of writing since I got back from Vermont.

Also, kind of nice to go with the hubby and write.

We went to down to The Ink Spot, the writing group/organization (San Diego Writers, Ink) that I work for and we both teach for downtown. Every other Sunday they have what they call, Room To Write, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for members and provide a quiet space and tables and chairs and lots of light to write. If you live in San Diego you should really think about joining SDWInk!

After nearly four hours of working on a new scene in the book, I looked through my journal, the one I kept while in VT at the VSC.

Read through the notes I took when Amy Bloom, the visiting writer, gave her craft talk. Bloom is, in my humble opinion, a queen of the first line.

Here are some of the things I wrote down:

Make the characters come alive from the inside.

Create a dream the reader enters; the errors in syntax, form, character, etc., can destroy that dream.

The best novel strives to be like the best poem.

Character: see the world as he sees it.

And, if you spend the time to give them a name, they should also have a soul.

How does it feel inhabiting that world as that character?

They should sound like themselves, not like variations of YOU.

If you can’t imagine what it is a character does or says, don’t write about it.

A reader should encounter and create their own relationship with a character.

Always keep in mind:

Illuminating the character
Advancing the story
Giving a beautiful sentence

Don’t walk us through every moment—crossing the room, grabbing the door knob, etc.

Sometimes start with the very bare bones of a scene and then go back.

When you write, your loved ones, your audience, your parents are DEAD.

You make this good because it matters to YOU.

Read it aloud without inflection so you can hear every bad thing you’ve done.

Move a reader—like an actor—into and out of every scene.

Make your readers believe things really happened, even if it didn’t.

I’m really drawn back to the line: They should sound like themselves, not like variations of YOU.

So much of my writing has been autobiographical, even if loosely based on me or my life. And so I’m trying very hard to make this book, these characters, sound unlike anything else I’ve ever written. But I’m also wanting to move forward and not get hung up on lines and images in this first draft; so, gulp, I’m going to try to do a little bit of both. Work on language, but not get trapped and stopped up by the language—yet—so that I can press on and get through.