In most of the manuscripts I’ve seen in writers workshops, the characters… sort of… ummm… float kinda sorta in space? When they do appear more concretely, their bodies, gestures, physical interactions with other bodies and things tend to be generic, e.g., the tall black man stood; the short blonde woman was sitting; the Asian man nodded. She looked. He shrugged.
It gets kind cardboard-cutout-y.
Oh, and these characters also do a lot of taking sips of drinks.
Well, OK, sometimes a character’s black or Asian or blonde or whatever, and he or she or zhe’s gotta stand and/or nod and/or shrug and/or take a sip. But it isn’t gain-of-function research to grab a floccule more oomph from the Vividness Department. Take just a moment to dig around there in your imagination—and this could, literally, cost you less than 20 seconds in some instances— and then, with your thoughtfully selected detail (or two or three), you can guide your reader to see your characters and the scene with more specificity, that is to say, more vividly.
(But what about clutter? You might hasten to ask. I do the whack-a-mole on clutter here. )
How to come up with vivid detail? One of the best ways to get click-your-fingers fast with vivid detail is to read as a writer. Reading as writer is not the same as reading passively, for entertainment. Nor is it reading to bag some trophy-worthy-theme as for your PhD thesis on race, class, gender & intersectionality, but rather, simply, when you spot something you—you the fellow literary artist— think an author does especially well, take note. I would suggest that you check it or circle it or underline it (or all three) with your pencil and, should you feel so moved, copy it out in your notebook. Then, perhaps take another moment to try some permutation exercises.
Recently I was reading Bernard DeVoto’s The Western Paradox when this struck me:
“We headed toward Flagstaff from Bakersfield. In August the lower end of the San Joaquin Valley is wrapped in a brown heat-haze which I have never fully understood, for assuredly there is no water vapor in it. A reek of crude oil goes with it; the sky is a steel-white; one does not rest a forearm on the car door.“ —Bernard DeVoto, The Western Paradox (p. 195)
Rest a forearm on the car door—Bingo! Dear writerly reader, is this not by a league more vivid in your mind than, say, “it was a really hot day”? We’re no longer kinda sorta floating around; we are in a body— a body with a forearm that avoids resting on the car door!
As I went on to read Willa Cather’s novels My Ántonia and O Pioneers! I kept an eye out for how she handles bodies— not only in how she makes the characters more vivid and/or grounds them in the scene, but has them relate physically to each other. (And I would wager that any author whose work you especially admire and enjoy reading is doing this splendidly well— else you wouldn’t be bothering to read them and so admiringly. So I would suggest that you go to your own bookshelf of books you have already read and loved, and reread one or two with an eye to how these authors handle detail relating to the body.)
Cather never disappoints.
“As Ántonia turned over the pictures the young Cuzaks stood behind her chair, looking over her shoulder with interested faces. Nina and Jan, after trying to see round the taller ones, quietly brought a chair, climbed up on it, ansd stood close together, looking. The little boy forgot his shyness and grinned delightedly when familiar faces came into view. In the group about Ántonia I was conscious of a kind of physical harmony. They leaned this way and that, and were not afraid to touch each other. ..” —Willa Cather, My Ántonia
“Three three pretty young Swedish girls who did Alexandra’s housework were cutting pies, refilling coffee cups, placing platters of bread and meat and potatoes upon the red tablecloth, and continually getting in each other’s way between the table and the stove.” —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
“Frank went into the house and threw himself on the sofa, his face to the wall, his clenched fist on his hip. Marie, having seen her guests off, came in and put her hand coaxingly on his shoulder.” —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
She put her hand on his arm. “I needed you terribly when it happened, Carl. I cried for you at night” …. Carl pressed her hand in silence. —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
“Emil rubbed his knees thoughtfully” —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
And from some random other reading:
“But it is true that a lot of work gets done over two-hour ceremonial luncheons, and more than once, after such an occasion, I wobbled out like a stunned ox, vowing to change jobs before I acquired gout and a faintly British accent.” — Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys
By the side of this fortress-door hung a heavy iron bell-pull, ending in a mermaid. When first Mrs. Lucas had that installed, it was a bell-pull in the sense that an extremely athletic man could, if he used both hands and planted both feet firmly, cause it to move, so that a huge bronze bell swung in the servants’ passage and eventually gave tongue (if the athlete continued pulling) with vibrations so sonorous that the whitewash from the ceiling fell down in flakes.” —E.F. Benson, Queen Lucia
*
A WEE WRITING EXERCISE
As one character is speaking, what else can another character do besides, say, “rub his knees thoughtfully”? Oh, plenty! Here goes:
Joe slowly rubbed his elbow.
Elmira dabbed a finger under eye, as if to remove a fleck of mascara that wasn’t there.
Patsy slipped both hands, palms out, into her back pockets.
Lou took up his cup of tea and then, with a nearly inaudible sigh, leaned sideways into the pillows.
A wee exercise: To this list, add 5 more examples of your own and use the names Puddleton, Jamilla and Fred (because I say so). Absolut Verboten: nodding, sitting, standing, looking, shrugging and sipping.
This month’s workshop post is the transcript of a talk I gave for the Writer’s Center Seminar “Publish Now!” on June 23, 2012. Looking back after nearly a decade, I would say the advice is solid, however I was then more admiring of and optimistic about multimedia ebooks. Suffice to say I am considering a Vandercook.
So you’ve written your first book. Now what to do with it? It might appear that you’re about to enter the labyrinth, but no worries, we’re going to take three easy steps, and then a bird’s eye view at what is less a labyrinth than a conveyor belt. Finally, for those looking for commercial publication, we’ll look at three key areas to consider working on immediately, if not already.
THREE EASY STEPS
1. IDENTIFY YOUR INTENTIONS
Why did you write this book? How do you envision your book reaching its reader? (Airport bookstore? Amazon.com download? Limited edition or print-on-demand? Multimedia iBook or Vook? Gifted by you personally? Sold to your clients at workshops and seminars?) What do you want this book to do for you personally and professionally? How far are you willing to go, and how much time and money can you spend, to make your ideal publishing experience happen?
Many writers, agents and editors will happily give you iron-clad prescriptions but the appropriate level of investment of your time, money (and angst) depends on your intentions.
Some authors have no intention of doing anything more for their book. For example, my dad completed his final draft of Captured: The Forgotten Men of Guam, about the prisoners taken by the Japanese in World War II, just as he was in the final stages of terminal cancer, so the right thing for him was to let it go. He turned it over to his colleague, historian Linda Goetz Holmes, and let her edit and shepherd it to publication (it will be out in fall 2012 from Naval Institute Press). Like many people towards the end of their lives, having written his book, it did not make sense for him to invest in further effort. I can think of several books in this category— and not necessarily by people facing immanent death (!): a perfectly healthy grandmother leaving a memoir or children’s book or family history for her family; a survivor of a war or some long-ago event, leaving testimony; and, on a happier note, there are also cookbooks intended for only family, friends and maybe neighbors.
Some writers, well, they just wanna have fun. Like me with the piano: I’m OK with banging out “Chopsticks” and “Greensleeves” once in a while. I don’t have to be Vladimir Horowitz.
Some more grittily determined types want to check “write book” off their to-do list, along with, say, “plant a tree” and “climb the pyramids of Egypt,” and once they’ve typed “THE END,” they’re ready to slap a cover around the pages, whatever whichway, and move on to the next item.
A writer might be facing a deadline. How about a book written in order to influence an local election? One wouldn’t want to publish a book about the Mayan prophecies of 2012 in 2013!
A writer who aims to publish a thriller available in airport bookstores, however, had better be prepared to do what is necessary—possibly months or years of work— to find an agent who can place it with an appropriate commercial publisher. He or she had also better be prepared to do a marathon’s worth of promotional legwork. (When you hear stories from self-publishing companies about some self-published novel that made it to best-sellerdom, that, believe me, is the nano-tip of the iceberg of books you have never, and will never, ever, not even in Oz, hear about.)
Similarly, a writer who aims for a place in the literary pantheon with Edgar Allen Poe, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Eudora Welty, and so on, had also better be prepared to do a toe-curling amount of revision. Readers, even the most cultivated ones, rarely guess at how many times a quality literary novel or memoir has been revised. The reason is simple: when the writer goes out on tour to flog their book, they have zero incentive to confess how much work went into it, no more indeed than the leading ballerina dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy would halt, mid-twirl, to shout to the balcony, “AYYY, my bloody feet!!”
Some writers’ goals are business and professional success, so they don’t necessarily see their book as an end in itself, but as something that supports that—a calling card, as it were, for more prestige, more clients, and, perhaps, speaking opportunities. Some examples of this would be feng shui consultant Carol Olmstead’s Feng Shui for Real Life and David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Dr Daniel G. Amen’s popular series of books on improving brain health come to mind, and my own (long ago) finance books which, verily, did wonders for my career as an economist in Mexico. Whether self-published or commercially published, these books, to achieve such goals, need to be exquisitely well-edited.
Alas, many self-published writers, in taking on the job of professional publishers without realizing the full nature and scope of the process, make big mistakes here… more about that in a moment.
Then there are the academics aiming to share their research and, usually, also gain stature in their field and, in particular, tenure. They will most likely find a university press the answer to their needs, and so their manuscript’s path through the steps we’ll see below may be a little different. Mainly, they probably won’t be using an agent. (Why? Because the advances against royalties for such books are too small to make them worth an agent’s time.)
Many authors will find their intentions for their book in more than one of these categories— and, no doubt, there are categories I haven’t thought to mention. It’s certainly possible to change your intentions once you change or, as often happens, you find out how dagnabbit tough it can be to publish. Then again, for some people it’s easy to publish a best-selling book, or, say, place their PhD thesis with Harvard University Press on their first submission. (Some people do win the lottery, too. And as far as I know, J.K. Rowling is a real person.)
2. WHILE ACTIVELY SEEKING OUT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PUBLISHING PROCESS, CULTIVATE YOUR SELF-AWARENESS.
There are no formulas in this “business.” You need to figure out what’s right for you, so you need to find your balance between humility and arrogance, overpessimism and overoptimism, fear and naiveté. What works for one writer and her manuscript may be wildly inappropriate for another. So stay curious, but trust your intuition.
Guys, that means, educate yourself but in the end, go with your gut.
One part of educating yourself is to read widely and, in your genre, deeply. Let’s say you want to publish a literary novel. Well, then, you’d better be reading a lot of literary novels.
Compare the work that wins, say, the Pulitzer Prize, to a random selection of self-published novels, and though I am sure 10 people would have 10 different opinions about the novels that won over the past decade, in general, I am confident we could find a consensus, with perhaps one or maybe two exceptions, that the prize-winning novels have a very different quality than the others. Look and learn.
But again, there are no formulas. The publishing world is not run by all-knowing gods in the sky, but human beings. Last I checked, human beings are capable of doing and saying some really stupid stuff. And like monkeys in funny hats, many will dance to someone else’s idea of music. So yes, it has happened that great books go unpublished and crap gets on the bookshelves. Godawful injustices and aesthetic barbarities plague the world every minute. I don’t know about you, but unless I am able and willing to do something, I try not to dwell on them.
3. KNOW YE THAT EVERYONE, INCLUDING WIDELY-PUBLISHED WRITERS BUT ALWAYS AND ESPECIALLY NEW WRITERS, MASSIVELY, AS IN MOUNT EVEREST MASSIVELY, UNDERESTIMATES THE AMOUNT OF EDITING THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO GET THE BOOK TO A QUALITY COMMERCIALLY PUBLISHED LEVEL.
Now for the conveyor belt which, depending on your intention and circumstances, moves (maybe slowly, maybe surely) your manuscript through some or all of these various types of readers and editors. This is a stylized list, based on my own experience having had several books published by diverse houses, from corporate behemoth Random House Mondadori to university and small presses, and my own itsy bitsy tailor-made Dancing Chiva.
FRIENDS AND/OR FAMILY MEMBERS In most cases, even if avid readers of above-average intelligence, they wouldn’t know how to critique their way out of a paper sack. Eliciting an honest reaction more often than not results in a lot of hurt feelings on both sides. I no longer ask for “feedback,” or “unvarnished opinions,” but rather, very specifically, for an “x” in the margin or a circle around the text itself to indicate where, if they didn’t know me, they would have quit reading. Usually this alerts me to a specific problem that can be directly addressed. Manuscript improved, drama averted.
(But your loved one insists on reading it? But think: does it make sense to show your poetic literary historical novel to someone whose diet of reading is almost completely of formula thrillers purchased along with the lettuce at the grocery store? Or for that matter, why give your romance novel to someone who hasn’t read anything but newspapers and organic chemistry journal articles in the past three decades?)
COLLEAGUES AND/OR EXPERTS ON THE SUBJECT Invaluable. But park your ego outside. Be sure to thank them in the acknowledgements and give them an inscribed copy of the book. (Don’t hesitate to ask for a blurb if you think you’ll get one. It’s never too early to start!)
WRITING WORKSHOP Possibly useful. I strongly believe in the value of writing workshops— indeed, over the years I attended many myself, and I teach them— but in my experience the main value is not so much in any critiques you receive, but in learning how to critique others (and thus, eventually, your own manuscripts). It is rare to find a workshop that will critique book-length manuscripts, however. But not impossible. But don’t bang your head against the wall if you can’t find one. Many superb writers never set pencil in a workshop.
Check the Writer’s Center catalog when it comes out each season. For those with a completed draft, in the DC area, Richard Peabody has led a popular novel workshop for some years.
WRITERS GROUPS These are as varied as wildflowers in a meadow. Like wildflowers, most are beautiful, but some are poisonous. Ayyy, they are composed of human beings! Start one yourself if you dare. (Don’t know any other writers? Go meet some! Join writers groups and associations, from the Writer’s Center to the Women’s National Book Association— they accept men, by the way— to say, the Maryland Writers’ Asociation. Take workshops. Attend seminars and conferences.)
As with workshops, however, it is no easy feat to find a writers group that can handle critiques of book-length manuscripts. In my experience, writers groups are most beneficial for working on poetry, short fiction, and short essays.
WRITING TEACHER / PUBLISHED WRITER YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW (LIVE NEXT DOOR TO, ETC) Outside of the workshop, are you offering to pay the going rate for a freelance editor? It starts at about USD $35 an hour and goes up, way up, from there. If not, you are asking too hefty a favor, I fear. (Would you ask the dentist who lives next door to give your kids braces for free? Or the hairdresser to cut your hair for free?)
[Update: someone in the seminar asked, “What if my next door neighbor is a professional copyeditor?” I answered, “Ask her what she charges. Since you know her, if you don’t want to pay cash, you might offer to, say, babysit her kids for a month.”]
FREELANCE EDITOR One of the best ways to find a freelance editor is by recommendation from a fellow writer. You can also find freelance editors at sites such as the Editorial Freelancer Association.
As you will find, editors vary widely in terms of experience, typical clients (technical, literary, genre, etc), waiting lists (or not), and the way they work. Some offer consultation, review, developmental editing, “feedback,” line editing, etc. Some charge by the page, some by the word, others by the hour or by the project. Some want a check, others use PayPal.
Explore their websites, which should their policies clearly and offer a work history, samples, testimonials, and more.
Before proceeding, get a Letter of Agreement (LOA) which clearly states what you can expect / limits to services and payment. If you don’t like their LOA, try to negotiate or find another editor.
LITERARY AGENT If you aim to publish with a commercial publisher who distributes to brick-and-mortar bookstores, you will probably need an agent in order to get past the Himalaya-sized “slush piles” (that is, unsolicited manuscripts). Some agents will refer clients to freelance editors. Some agents will actually edit. Some agents are wise and experienced and should be heeded; others, well, I’m not sure they should be allowed to operate a motorized vehicle, never mind put a red pencil to anyone’s manuscript. Remember, anyone, including your plumber, your lawyer, or your pet groomer, can put out their shingle as a literary agent. Check their credentials and track record before blindly accepting any editorial advice from an agent.
My own agent, Kit Ward, was an editor at Little, Brown, a prestigious press, for many years. She also has an impressive track record as an agent. That said, she didn’t read my novel in manuscript; I sold it myself, then brought her in to negotiate the contract.
On a previous book, my former New York agent, who, although famous, shall remain unnamed, made numerous editorial suggestions. Other than obliging me to cut the clutter— which was invaluable, and for which I remain very grateful— I found it difficult to believe she read it with genuine care because so many of her comments left me shaking my head in wonder, the wonder being, which manuscript did she read? (Um, agents have a Himalaya-sized slush piles, too.)
ACQUISITIONS EDITOR This editor is the one you submit your manuscript to and he says, “no thanks,” or, “revise and submit again,” or, “yes, here’s the contract”. Depending on how many hats he wears in the publishing house, he may or may not be the one who edits your mansucript.
PRODUCTION EDITOR, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, MANAGING EDITOR, ETC. In a large house these may be different individuals, but in smaller houses they are one and the same. Some publishers use freelancers for different types of editing. It all depends. For example, when I published my anthology, Mexico: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, the acquiring editor was the publisher and owner, Dave Peattie of Whereabouts Press, but a freelance literary translator, a very good one, did the line editing.
Like surgery, or for that matter, home renovation, some operations are minor and some require saws, chisels and heavy sedation. Generally speaking— and this is why agents often do some editing for their clients— acquiring editors prefer to buy manuscripts that come in as close to ready-for-publication as possible. The reason is simple: editing takes the time of salaried (or freelance) professionals, which isn’t cheap, and the more editing that needs to be done, the greater the risk that the author will not deliver the work in an acceptable time frame or condition.
COPYEDITOR When you go the route of agent to acquiring editor to editor, nearing the end of the conveyor belt, when (ideally) both you and your editor have made the manuscript as as squeaky-clean as it can be, you will encounter the eagle-eyed nitpicker known as the copyeditor.
Copyeditors catch things like, on page 86 you use “catsup” while on page 119 you say, “ketchup”; do you want to go with “Palacio Nacional” or “National Palace”? Mr Wilson or Dr Wilson? (It’s Mr Wilson throghout but Dr in footnote 3 on page 49). Should it be “carte-de-visite” or “carte de visite”? Should the “E” in Champs-Elysee have an accent? (Doesn’t matter, but you need to be consistent.) They often catch commas inside, when (following U.S. style), they should be placed outside quotation marks.They make up what is called a stylesheet, which you can refer to whenever you have a doubt. In sum, copyediting adds value to your book by improving its quality. It is one of the many things a publisher does to earn their bigger cut of a book’s income (leaving you the little slice of “royalties”).
When you opt to self-publish, if your aim is to produce a book on par with commercially published works (as for example, if you want the book to serve as your business’s calling card or to establish your expertise), you need to hire a copyeditor.
Unfortunately, few people have encountered a copyeditor or even know what exactly what it is they do (and no, it’s not copywriting), and so when ambitious first-time authors who opt to self-publish learn that copyediting might cost, say, $5 a page or $35 an hour and upwards, they skip this step— to their detriment.
All of my several books have been copyedited, and in each and every instance, after having been revised many times, and read by many readers and editors, I have been genuinely astonished at all the copyedits— almost every single page has something marked. A few corrections I disagreed with, but I have always had the chance to discuss and negotiate to my and my editor’s mutual satisfaction. That said, the overwhelming majority of copyedits have been excellent and indeed, many have saved me from what could have been an embarassment. And I think most writers who have been well-published can say the same.
There is so much to say about the underappreciated yet vital profession of copyediting that, if you’re serious about publishing something of quality, I urge you to buy a copy of this slender but superb book:
PROOFREADER The proofreader catches those spelling and punctuation mistakes which the copyeditor missed (it happens), as well as any formatting problems and inconsistencies. Many people use the terms copyeditor and proofreader interchangably; I’ve seen the definitions of copyeditor and proofreaders overlap, blend, contradict— oh well!
It’s important to make sure you can review the work of the proofreader before it goes to press because sometimes they make mistakes. I had something in my collection of short stories (meticulously edited, by the way) “corrected” by a proofreader that was a misunderstaning on his part. It was a minor technical term but anyone who knows about it knows my book has it wrong. Not my fault! Grrr.
THE CORRESPONDENTS OF THE AFTERMATH The day will come when the box with your books arrives. And you will take out the first, smelling-of-fresh-ink copy and you will open it… and you will find a typo. That’s right, no matter how times and how many highly paid editors read it through from beginning to end, red pencil-in-hand, that typo will stare you in the face, obvious as a zit on the end of your nose and horrible in its immortality.
This is only one of the myriad reasons I recommend checking out all the handy tips for toughening up your mind and spirit which sports psychologists offer in a whole library’s worth of books, the best of which, in my opinion, is Kenneth Baum’s The Mental Edge.
You will obsess about this typo— and the others. Yes, there will be others. Some might even (gulp) appear on the cover. How about in the title itself? I know perfectly decent, dilgent, and intelligent people to whom this has happened.
The worst typo might appear, like a cockroach in the duxelle of the Beef Wellington, in a sentence wherein you pretend to assert your expertise. And you knew perfectly well what you were talking about. Really! This has happened to me. It is so awful that I cannot bear to continue to speak of it.
Many readers will tell you about your typos. Some may catch them with undisguised glee! The most gleeful among them are those who yearn to write a book (oh, they have a great idea) but they never will precisely because they are, undercover of “being too busy” so terrified of being criticized. Once you figure that out, it’s not so bad.
A surprising number of people will write to you, listing, ever so helpfully, page by page, all your many mistakes. Some really are mistakes, although finding out about them, which is good if you are to reprint your book at some point, doesn’t exactly make your day. And some are not mistakes; your correspondent doesn’t know what the barking buffalo he’s talking about. I’ve had people write to tell me I was wrong about the rental price of per day for palapas on a remote beach because it had since gone up (um, hello, it’s a travel memoir?) and that a German song in my novel does not exist (um, it’s fiction?)
Nobody is perfect. Not them. Not me. Sigh. Not you, either.
THREE KEY AREAS TO CONSIDER WORKING ON IMMEDIATELY, IF NOT ALREADY
I. MARKETING & PUBLICITY
In the past, marketing and publicity were (supposedly but not really, which is another story) the publisher’s responsability. A few months after the contract is signed, but still some months before its “pub date,” the book will be placed on another conveyor belt, as it were, going out to reviewers, book fairs, distributors, etc., while the publisher’s sales reps and marketing staff work hard (one hopes) to interest bookstores, libraries, reviewers, bloggers, and press.
To quote marketing guru and best-selling author Seth Godin, “The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.”
Some books, especially nonfiction works, but also collections of poetry, short fiction, or literary essays, can benefit from having had individual pieces in magazines prior to publication. In fact, when evaluating such manuscripts, editors almost always ask to see “acknowledgements,” that is, a list of magazines in which the works (or excerpts) have previously appeared. The more and more prestigious, the better. In other words, if you can say you’ve had a story in the Paris Review or Zyzzyva, or an article in the Washington Post, that signals that you’re serious— you’ve made the effort to get your work out there and some editor thought enough of it to publish it. Your piece may also be eligible for some award— and taking the trouble to enter appropriate contests could result in some helpful recognition. It is almost always a simple matter to include the work in your book, but do check your contract and always, always, include the acknowledgement.
In my own case, only two of my short stories in Sky Over El Nido appeared elsewhere (Paris Review and Southwest Review), while several of the chapters in my travel memoir, Miraculous Air, appeared in magazines, among them, North American Review, Southwest Review, and Massachusetts Review, and two won Lowell Thomas awards. Novels are difficult to excerpt, but I did publish the first chapter of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire in Potomac Review. It does happen.
I confess I’ve been much less interested in placing shorter pieces in magazines and newspapers now that I have a blog. For the past few years, while working on new books, I’ve also become enchanted with podcasting.
The downside of all this blogging and podcasting vis-a-vis publishing in magazines and newspapers: less income, fewer readers, and no copyediting (unless you shell out for it).
The upside: I am in complete creative control of the content as well as whether and when it gets “published.” Plus, I don’t have to deal with so many editors.
Editors are a blessing, yes, but a mixed one. Sometimes I don’t want feedback, I just want to say what I want to say. Dang the tomatoes!
III. DESIGN AND MULTIMEDIA
What is a book? We are now beginning to see inexpensively produced yet very beautiful and rich multimedia e-books. For example, in 2012, Apple made available the iBook Author app free to anyone with the latest operating system. It’s a breathtakingly well-designed and easy to use software that allows you to drag and drop in video, images, slideshows, widgets, and more. With such tools, this is a time of tremendous creative opportunity for writers, while readers, especially younger ones, will demand increasingly rich and complex reading experiences.
In my opinion, the writer needs to be able to handle images, video, audio and graphic design to a level that may not be expert— we are, after all, writers, not cinematographers or graphic designers— but is nonetheless congruent with the style and quality of one’s writing.
One of the gnarliest challenges in writing nonfiction is that oftentimes, no matter how thoroughly we do our reading and research, we just do not have the factual information to make an important scene come alive on the page. On the other hand, by its attention to specific sensory detail, fiction has the power to incite a “vivid dream”in the reader’s mind. But, by definition, aren’t we supposed to avoid fiction when we write nonfiction?
I write what’s called “creative nonfiction” or “literary journalism” — and this does not give me license to mislead my reader. What the adjectives ” creative” or “literary” mean is that I make use of various lyrical techniques in writing nonfiction. One of these is conjecture.
My writing assistants demonstrate conjecture. ULI: What if we could jump through the glass? WASHI: Squirrelburger!!
Conjecture is a powerful way to upfront, above-board, nada de funny-business, blend the magic of fiction into your nonfiction and so limber it up, stretch it out, let it breathe… and thus help your readers more clearly see a situation, a personality, animal, thing, a feeling, an interaction, or whatever else it might be that needs more depth, a star-gleam of vividness.
Foolishly, certain historians, la de da, just make things up, or, to say the same thing, without a shred of credible evidence, assert as fact what they would like to believe and/or what makes for the best story. And when these historians are found out, so much the worse for their reputations. And I say “foolishly” because those so-called “historians” could have honestly achieved the same effect for the reader, should that have been called for (sometimes it’s not), by instead offering their conjecture.
Academic historians tend to steer wide-clear of conjecture. That said, one of my favorite history podcasters, Liz Covart, host of Ben Franklin’s World, always ends an interview with an invitation to conjecture. And I am sure that you, dear writerly reader, can also offer some fine examples of exceptions.
On the other hand, many writers of creative nonfiction / literary journalism / popular history frequently make use of conjecture.
Think of it this way: We generally do not pick up an academic journal unless we are obliged to, while creative nonfiction is oftentimes the just the thing for the beach bag– and not necessarily because it is less intellectually nutritious.
Yeah, I go for intellectually nutritious beach reading.
In the following brief examples taken from works of creative nonfiction / literary journalism note how the author clearly signals to the reader that he or she is not asserting a fact, but offering conjecture.
Then Jesup got lucky. Abraham agreed to meet with him. He arrived at Jesup’s Fort Dade headquarters on January 31. The two men probably sat down in a rude, whitewashed office. An oil lamp would have provided flickering light. Jesup would have had on his dress uniform–lots of braid, and maybe some dangling medals. Abraham, in contrast, would undoubtedly have worn ragged deerskin, the sartorial legacy of fighting and hiding in the swamps. ––Jeff Guinn, Our Land Before We Die: The Proud Story of the Seminole Negro
Guinn’s clear signals to the reader that this is conjecture: “probably” “would have” “maybe” “would”
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This had been a Columbian mammoth, the tracks circular, decayed, and toeless. There would be no scientific report on the find. We’d never be able to find these again or explain where they were, compass bearings too vague on this expanse, no GPS to drop a way-point. I walked alongside the tracks, and the mammoth rose up from the ground, its body filled in by my mind’s eye. It didn’t seem to notice me, it was focused ahead, tusks swaying back and forth as it traveled. It had hair, with rough brownish or gray skin visible underneath, but it was not woolly like its northern cousins… ––Craig Childs, Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America
Childs’ clear signal to the reader that this is conjecture: “filled in by my mind’s eye”
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In my dream I was walking a rural road in Aquitaine, high above a river, when my attention was drawn to something in the roadside woods–mound, barrow, some small heap of disturbed earth. On investigating this I found a partly distinterred Neanderthal skeleton, one humerus and a femur faintly daubed with red. Quite improbable, my waking mind told me… — Frederick Turner, In the Land of the Temple Caves
Turner’s clear signals to the reader that this is conjecture / fiction: “In my dream” “Quite improbable, my waking mind told me”
Still, the old beauty sat on before her glass of wine, nursing it as she may have been nursing her memories. She was old enough, I judged, to have seen it all, as we say: the Great Depression when ordinary Parisians slept out on the portico of the Bourse; the fall of France and the Occupation; Algeria and de Gaulle’s triumphant return to power; the vandalizing of the city by Pompidou; the new age of the terrorist… She didn’t seem to be at all captive to some senescent trance but instead attuned to something not evident, listening maybe like the Venus figure of Laussel. — Frederick Turner, In the Land of the Temple Caves
Clear signals to the reader that this is conjecture: “as she may have been” “I judged” “maybe” #
And at some immeasurably remote time beyond human caring the whole uneasy region might sink again beneath the sea and begin the cycle all over again by the slow deposition of new marls, shales, limestones, sandstones, deltaic conglomerates, perhaps with a fossil poet pressed and silicified between the leaves of a rock —Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundreth Meridian (p.169)
Clear signals to the reader that this is conjecture: “might” “perhaps”
He might see, as many conservationists believe they see, a considerable empire-building tendency within the Bureau of Reclamation, an engineer’s vision of the West instead of a humanitarians, a will to build dams without die regard to all the conflicting interests involved. He might fear any bureau that showed less concern with the usefulness of a project than with its effect on the political strength of the bureau. He might join the Sierra Club and other conservation groups in deploring some proposed and “feasible” dams such as that in Echo Park blow the mouth of the Yampa, and he might agree that considerations such as recreation, wildlife protection, preservation for the future of untouched wilderness, might sometimes outweigh possible irrigation and power benefits. He would probably be with those who are already beginning to plead for conservation of reservoir sites themselves, for reservoirs silt up and do not last forever, and men had better look a long way ahead when they begin tampering with natural forces. –Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (p. 361)
Clear signals to the reader that this is conjecture: “as I imagine” “could have” “perhaps” “He might” “He would probably”
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Alas, I do not have my copy on hand to pluck out some choice quotes, but Nancy Marie Brown’s The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman is the most masterful example I have yet found of an historian using conjecture, and to brilliant effect. In this page-turner of a book Brown spins out the thousand-year old story of Gudrid the Viking who sailed from Iceland to Greenland, and to North America and, in her old age, made a pilgrimage to Rome. There is so much of value in The Far Traveler, both for learning about its subject (Icelanders; medieval life at the pioneer-edge of European settlement) and about the craft of writing itself. I would suggest that you buy a paperback copy, and read The Far Traveler with your writer’s eye, scribbling in your notes. (If you can get a fine first edition hardcover with the dustcover, keep it fine–out of the sun– and hang onto it!)
Here, I supposed now, Maximilian must have imagined that he would return to his glittering dinner parties, and simpler, bachelors’ evenings of billiards, smoking, cards. He would write his memoirs of Mexico. Travel: why not an expedition to the Congo? Or Rajastan? And I had read somewhere that Maximilian had told someone (was it Blasio?) that one day he should like to fly balloons. This parterre would be the perfect place for a launch:
Late August 1867. A summer’s day, sparkling, sun-kissed sea. He is well again, he has put on weight. His entourage in tow, he strides across the gravel and steps into the basket of a billowing, parrot-green montgolfier emblazoned, of course, with “MIM.” And it lifts, up and yonder over the shining white tower of Miramar. From the basket sandbags splash to the sea — and it rises ever higher, ropes trailing.
A picnic in the clouds: chilled champagne, tiny toasts spread with foie gras.
“What’s so funny?” A. said.
I sighed, and put down my coffee cup. “It ended a little differently.”
My clear signals to the reader that this is conjecture: I supposed now, Maximilian must have imagined I sighed…. “It ended a little differently.” [as explained previously, Maximilian was executed by firing squad]
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So, where in your nonfiction manuscript does it make sense to use conjecture? You’re the artist! But I would whisper my little suggestion to you that it might be a place where, though you have little or nothing to go on, you would underscore the importance of a person (or some aspect of his personality or manner), animal, object, incident, or scene, and so invite the reader to slow down and pay special attention.
It can be, after all, a delightful thing to offer your conjecture.
“Future Neighborhood” Describe your neighborhood as you would expect it to appear 10 years from now.
“Take the Day Off” If you were to take today off, what would you do? What would your brother or sister do? Your boss? Your neighbor? Smokey the Bear?
“Who Went to McDonald’s?” This exercise is courtesy of novelist Leslie Pietrzyk. Who is the most unlikely person— living or dead, famous or non— you can think of to be in a fast food restaurant? Okay— that person just walked into McDonald’s (or choose your own fave). Why are they there and what happens?
This blog posts on Mondays. As of 2019 the second Monday of the month is devoted to myworkshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. You can find my workshop schedule and many more resources for writers on my workshop page.
We have a ways to go still, but the end of the corona virus shut-down is on the horizon! In that out-and-about spirit, here is a post with some of my favorite writing exercises for making good use of your time in airports, train stations, and more.
Five 2 Word Exercises for Practicing Seeing as a Literary Artist in the Airport (or the Mall or the Train Station or the University Campus or the Car Wash, etc.)
Originally posted on Madam Mayo blog, October 10, 2016
Wherever there be a parade of people, there’s an opportunity for a writerly exercise. This is a quick and easy one, or rather, five. The idea is to look– using your artist’s eye, really look at individuals and come up with two words (or 3 or 4 or 7) to describe them.
Yep, it is that easy.
It helps to write the words down, but just saying them silently to yourself is fine, too. The point is to train your brain to pay attention to detail and generate original descriptions. This helps your writing reach beyond stereotypes (e.g., she was a short Asian woman or, he was a tall black man, or she was a blonde— and other such staples of workshop manuscripts) and so offer your reader something more original, more memorable, and definitively more vivid. “The vivid dream,” that’s what it’s all about.
So, there you are in the airport and, as some random person walks by:
1. Come up with one word to describe the shape of this person’s hair; a second word (or two) for the color of his or her shoes, naming a food item of that same color. For example:
knife-like; chocolate pudding
Now I have the raw material to string together a brief but extra-vivid description, for example:
She wore a knife-like bob and slippers the color of chocolate pudding
Again, find one word for the shape of the hair, and one word for the color of the shoes, referring to a food item.
curve; pork sausages
His head was a curve of curls and he wore pinkish clogs, a pink that made me think of pork sausages
sumptuous; cinnamon candy
She had a sumptuous Afro and sandals the red of cinnamon candy
stubbly; skinned trout
He had stubbly hair and tennis shoes the beige-white of skinned trout.
(Is “stubbly” a shape? Oh well! Don’t tell anybody.)
By the way, it doesn’t matter if the words you come up with are any good or even apt; the point is to practice coming up with them. (Why the color of a food item for the color of the shoes? Welllll, why not? Make it the color of some sand or rock, whydoncha.)
2. Is this person carrying anything? If so, describe it with one adjective plus one noun, e.g.:
fat purse
She carried a fat purse
lumpy briefcase
He leaned slightly to the left from the weight of a lumpy briefcase
crumpled bag
She clutched a crumpled bag
Dixie cup
On his palm he balanced a Dixie cup
3. Gait and gaze
loping; fixed to the ground
He had a loping gait, eyes fixed to the ground
shuffling; bright
She had a shuffling gait but bright eyes
brisk; dreamy
Her walk was brisk, her gaze dreamy.
tiptoe; squinting
She seemed to tiptoe, she was squinting at the monitor
4. Age range
older than 10, younger than 14
perhaps older than 20
I would believe 112
obviously in her seventies, never mind the taut smile
5. Jewelry?Tattoos?
a gold watch; a silver skull ring
feather earrings; a toe ring
eyebrow stud; hoop earrings
a wedding band on the wrong finger; an elephant hair bracelet
a tattoo of a bracelet
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When you sit down to write you certainly do not need to use all this detail; again, the point is to generate it in the first place.
So with the benefit of this wild mélange, here’s what I came up with for a fictional character:
She wore a knife-like bob and slippers the color of chocolate pudding. She carried a fat purse. Her walk was brisk, her gaze dreamy. Perhaps she was older than twenty. She had a wedding band on the wrong finger and an elephant hair bracelet.
Hmmm, maybe that’s the opening for a story. Or something.
By the way, if you’re stuck standing around in an airport, or some such place / situation, these little exercises, silly as they may seem, are better for your writing game than ye olde pulling out the smartphone. The former trains your brain to do what a writer naturally does. Scrolling and clicking gives you the shallows, and so makes writing increasingly difficult.
Like many writers I nurture an oft-adjusted list of possible future writing projects (PFWP). I’ve been at this game for more years than I want to confess, so trust me when I say it’s surprisingly easy to get a sizzling-hot-slam-a-roni of an idea and then… have completely forgotten all about it anywhere from five minutes to five weeks later. But there they all are, captured in ink on my PFPW! (I keep mine in my Filofax. Other writers might prefer to keep theirs in a file on their computer or, perhaps, in a special notebook.)
Right now, February 2020, my PFWP list has four nonfiction books, three novels, a batch of stories, a couple of poems, a couple of translation projects, and an essay of creative nonfiction. Two of these possible future writing projects have been sitting on the list for over a decade. Oh, and just yesterday, I came up with a solidly good idea, if I do say so myself, for a scholarly paper about a cavalry officer’s adventures in the Guadalupe Mountains.
Will I ever get to them all? That is not the question.
My PFWP list is not so much a “to do” list as it is my very own rich and appealing menu. Whenever the time comes that I am ready to commit to a new writing project, I’m never left sitting there, spinning my wheels, wondering, ohmygosh, what can I write now? I simply whip out the PFWP and see which of those many projects feels right for me for a next-action.
All of them are appealing enough to me that were any one the only option I would gladly do it– or else I don’t add it to the list.
Meanwhile, one thing that helps keeps me going with my current writing project– the memoir of Far West Texas— is my NTDN list, that is, my list of the things Not To Do Now. These are things I feel pressured by others to do; or tempted against my better judgement to do; or expect / want to do at some point, but not now– “now” being the horizon for my current writing project.
TOP 5 ON MY NTDN LIST
(1) Download Whatsapp Nope, I have never downloaded Whatsapp. Bless you, my many friends and relatives who have asked me for my Whatsapp, because I love you! I do want to be in touch, I do want to see your photos! But it’s either my book gets written + I answer email or I do Whatsapp + I answer email. I have only 24 hours in the day. May I be blunt? Would you really wish for me to not write my book?
(2) Get a TV I gave away my TV an eon ago. I had a Netflix subscription once, but it so long ago I have forgotten when it was that I canceled it. Bless you all who can spend hours watching TV! But I don’t, I can’t, and that’s that!
(3) Participate on Social Media FaceBook deactivated in 2015. LinkedIn minimal. Instagram zip. Twitter I’ve been on since the get-go, but for a long while now I only tweet the link to the once-a-month Q & A on this blog, and on very rare occasion something similar, as a courtesy to that writer and anyone else mentioned on my blog. I consider Twitter so toxic that when I log on I use a timer to keep the whole interaction under 3 minutes. Why so toxic? Let me count the ways… but that would be another blog post. Twitter is just evil.
(4) Pilates class I recently gave up my weekly pilates, a wonderful class. I do think physical activity is important, but right now I don’t want to have to take time to get in my car and drive somewhere else and on a rigid schedule (um, the class doesn’t wait for me…). I’d prefer to take classes with a real person, but again, there are only 24 hours in the day, and to make time for writing I have to let some things go. I do take walks everyday, and weather permitting, I bike, and I also do yoga every day, both on my own, and with online yoga classes which, by their nature, commence, pause, and conclude in my own home at my own convenience.
(5) Teach a writing workshop This is terribly tempting because I love teaching writing workshops. I am always charmed, challenged, and inspired by my students! And I believe my own writing is much better for having taught various workshops over so many years. But right now I need the time and creative energy for my book. Therefore, barring a possible mini-conference workshop next fall, I am not teaching again until (maybe) later this year. In the meantime, I console myself with writing a once-a-month workshop post for this blog.
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My NTDN list is actually far longer, and it includes everything on my PFWP list, by definition. But you get the idea.
Of course, each writer’s PFWP and NTDN lists are going to be as unique as his or her fingerprints. My point is not that the items on my lists would be good for you or anyone else, but simply that, in my experience, too few writers trouble to make these lists in the first place—and then wonder why they feel at a loss about what to write, and then even when they do know what they want to write, they often find themselves spending their time and mental energies in ways that do not support their writing.
If you haven’t already made your PFWP list, simply muse: What writing projects sing (or whisper) to you as possibilities? Be sure to keep a notebook and pen with you at all times. Your best ideas just might come to you when you’re out and about. Or taking a shower. Or folding laundry.
And as for a NTDN list, what are some activities that might tempt you, or be warmly or even hotly encouraged by the people around you, but that, on reflection, you would consider a fatal drag on your time and mental energies for accomplishing your current writing project(s)? Or what are some things that you would be delighted to do, just not now?
This past spring I attended theAssociated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) annual conference and bookfair, where I read from Meteor, my book of poetry, as part of the Gival Press 20th anniversary celebration. AWP is not for the FOMO-ly challenged. In the crowd of 15,000+ conference-goers I missed many events and many friends, among them the poet, playwright and translator Zack Rogow. And it didn’t seem at all right to have missed Rogow for, the last time I was at AWP, it was to participate on his panel with Mark Doty and Charles Johnson, “Homesteading on the Digital Frontier: Writers’ Blogs,” one of the crunchiest conference panels ever. (You can read the transcript of my talk about blogs here.)
Should you try to attend AWP next spring 2020 in San Antonio? Of course only you know what’s right for you. But I can say this much: AWP can be overwhelming, an experience akin to a fun house ride and three times through the TSA line at the airport with liquids… while someone drones the William Carlos Williams white chickens poem… AWP can also prove Deader than Deadsville, if what you’re after is, say, an agent for your ready-for-Netflix thriller. The commercial publishing scene it ain’t.
On the bright side, however, Zack Rogow attends AWP. He is one of the most talented and generous poets and translators I know. Watch this brief documentary about his life and work and I think you’ll understand why I say this:
Rogow is also a teacher of creative writing, and for several years now he’s been blogging steadily with his “Advice for Writers.” It’s a terrific resource. I hope he’ll turn it into a book–the moment he does I’ll add it to the list of recommended books for my workshop.
Herewith a degustation of Rogow’s extra-crunchy posts:
My writing assistant presents the lap desk. He likes the lap desk. It means we all sit together on the sofa.
As far as the need for equipment goes, writing is not like casting bronze sculpture. All you need is a pencil and paper–any scrap will do. The formidable challenge most writers face is managing their attentional focus, that is to say, their ability to actually sit down and, ahem, actually write.
Sheer willpower isn’t the only thing needed, however. Habits, even tiny habits, can help enormously. Here’s where some writerly material tools can be useful… perhaps. I say “perhaps” because what works for one writer may not necessarily work for another.
What do I mean by “writerly material tools”? Well, you could have a special pencil and make a ritual of sharpening your special pencil– so there you have a pencil, and you have a pencil sharpener. Not a budget buster. If you don’t know what to do with your money, why, you could go gung-ho for such writerly material tools as a gold-plated typewriter with your name engraved in curlicues or, say, some rococo-rama iteration of George Bernard Shaw’s rotating writing shed.
What works for me? Sometimes I write with a pencil and paper but generally I am at my desk with my laptop or, perchance, my typewriter. But for a spell each and every morning I also use a lap desk, which enables me to turn my office sofa– a big sloppy boat of a sofa with two pugs inevitably snoring through their post-breakfast siestas– into another workspace.
A lap desk has its limits, obviously: It holds the laptop, or a pencil and paper, that’s it. But for certain writing endeavors, it enables me to remove myself to a different working space, as needed, and so clear my mind, the better to focus on the task at-hand.
If you want to try using a lap desk you don’t necessarily need to buy one. A cookie pan balanced over a pillow would work just as well.
Where in your house is there a comfortable spot to sit where you don’t normally? Maybe that could be the place you take your lap desk every morning, or every evening, instead of, say, scrolling through the news or social media feeds on the smartphone, or plunking yourself in front that bigger screen.
What for? Well, do you feel stuck with your novel? Or memoir? Might you try flexing your creative mojo with 10 minutes of writing exercises? Or 15 minutes of journaling?
Some writers claim that it helps to do their financial paperwork in a different place than their creative work– so you could try doing one at your lap desk, the other at your regular desk, or kitchen table, or library carrel– or wherever it is for you.
There are of course infinite ways to slice & dice & spice one’s writing time and routines. Again, what works for one writer may or may not for another.
My point is, my experience has been that it helps to corral a convenient alternative writing place for a specific time and specific writerly purpose, and a lap desk, bingo, turns any number of places into possibilities, from the bed to the sofa to the floor to the balcony, the garden….
The study of English Literature has its pleasures and virtues, and much to do with learning the craft of creative writing; nonetheless, these are not one and the same endeavor. You can earn a PhD in race, class, gender, fill-in-the-blank in the novel, yet still not have the wherewithal to actually write one. That said, a novelist who has never read anything by Shakespeare or, say, Jane Austen, and learned to appreciate why such works are so celebrated, is working at a calamitous disadvantage.
Analogy: an art historian specializing in baroque cabinets is not the cabinet-maker who crafts them. While the art historian focuses on fact and figures and on what the baroque cabinet represents in all its broader context; the latter actually makes one. The former might yammer on for a book or two about the Hanseatic League or the Counter Reformation or the rise of the urban bourgeoisie, and so and and so forth; the latter, she’ll worry about the specifics of the grain of the wood; the type of joint; the choice of tool; a carved rose or a daisy for the keyhole?
Further analogy: any furniture maker who would manufacture a baroque-style cabinet would undoubtedly benefit from some familiarity with the finer examples that have survived.
DEFINITIONS
As a writer, I don’t noodle much about literary definitions of the sort a highschool English teacher would lay on a multiple choice exam, e.g., whether thus-and-such is a simile or a personificaction, metaphor, or allusion. I just think of “imagery” as my palette of “metaphor stuff.” I, the artist, can ignore it. Or I can make tiny dabs of this; squirts of that; wild oceanic splashes! In other words, as I write a novel or a story or a poem or an essay, I use imagery– I apply “metaphor stuff”–when and as I judge it apt.
(Of course, if we aim to find readers, then comes revision and editing, and further revision… More about that big bramble of a subject anon.)
For using imagery, there is no formula. Some marvelous writers relish using loads of it, others, equally marvelous, apply it sparingly.
In general, it serves to slow down, focus and brighten an idea, a character, act, place, thing– whatever it is you want the reader to more sharply “see.”
Yeah, but what about clutter?
In my experience, most people who come to a writing workshop for the first time do not have the easily fixable problem of cluttering up their writing with “metaphor stuff”; rather, for lack of it their writing is dull. And when they do use metaphor stuff, alas, it’s more often than not cliché– that is, somebody else’s metaphor stuff, warmed over 279 times. (More about cliché here.)
How to come up with your own original “metaphor stuff”?
1. Practice. The more often you practice, the easier it gets. Like riding a bike, it doesn’t require some otherwordly talent; most people find it challenging at first and then, quickly, something they can “just do.” For a trove of exercises, have a look at my workshop page’s “Giant Golden Buddha” & 364 More Five Minute Writing Exercises.
2. Learn to notice it as you read. You already have an immense treasure of metaphor stuff at-hand, right there in the books you have already read and loved. Go pluck one off your bookshelf, open it at random and chances are, you’ll find metaphor stuff aplenty. As you reread– and as you read any new book– keep your eyes sharp for the way the author uses it. (See my post on Reading as a Writer.) How well do they use it? If you love the book, chances are, the author uses it very well indeed.
For those feeling a little creaky with the creativity mojo, I’ve posted previously about emulation or permutation exercises. Basically, you jot down another writer’s line or two– anything you especially admire– and then vary the nouns and/or verbs, adjectives and/or adverbs (or however you want to do it). In short, in these exercises the idea is not to plagarize another writer; rather, you emulate; by means of play, you create your own lines.
Yes, sometimes, like a big fat cheesy enchilada, too much metaphor stuff in a manuscript can be too too… uhhff, pass the Alkaseltzer.
But again, there is no formula. Switching back to the furniture analogy, I mean, “metaphor stuff,” not everyone wants all the swirls and twirls and dainty dimpled cherubs and roses and whatnotty-whatnots of baroque furniture. But some people think baroque is the Dickens’ chickens.
For your reference, and the satisfaction of all English teachers, herewith some definitions:
ALLUSION An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicity; in indirect or passing reference.
“Where’s the Plantation?” John Wesley asked. “Gone With the Wind,” said the Grandmother. “Ha ha.” —Flannery O’Connor “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
ANALOGY A comparison between two things, typically on the basis of their structure and for the purpose of explanation or clarification; a correspondence or partial similarity.
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it’s not open. —Frank Zappa
Minds are like ovens— if you leave them open all the time, everything comes out half-baked. —John Michael Greer
METAPHOR A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable; alternatvely, a thing representive or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract.
She had heard any number of women talk of pregnancy as a slow ordeal to be endured, but now from month to month she felt only a peaceful ripening. —Richard Yates, “A Natural Girl”
PERSONIFICATION The attribution of a personal nature or personal characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form. (Throw animal forms in there, too, whydoncha.)
He watched the clouds: dark swift horses surging up the sky —Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
SIMILE A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid.
…a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage —Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
When I teach this workshop I ask my students to each take a turn reading an example aloud. I would suggest that you do the same: Slow down, waaaaay down. Take a long, cool moment to read these examples aloud carefully, crisply, as if you were at the podium before a rapt audience.
We drove on, the morning
growing in the sky to our left.
—Rupert Isaacson, The Healing Land: The Bushmen and the Kalahari Desert
I wandered the village of rounded earthen houses, golden and white, decorated with stark geometric designs. They had a peculiar organic quality, as if they had bubbled up from the earth and dried there. Flattened dung cakes stuck on walls to dry looked like giant polka dots. —Naomi Shihab Nye, “Camel Like Only Camel,” in Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places
Inquisitiveness flutters this way and that, like a bird in a glass house. —Aldous Huxley, “The Traveller’s-Eye View”
Given the single fossil bone, one fancifully builds up the whole diplodocus. —Aldous Huxley, “The Traveller’s-Eye View”
A Hollywood millionaire is a strong, silent man, clean-shaven, with a face, either like a hatchet or an uncooked muffin. These, on the contrary, had tremendous beards, talked a great deal, were over-dressed and wore white gloves. They looked like a little party of Bluebeards. —Aldous Huxley, “The Traveller’s-Eye View”
Most of the above examples are from a handout I’ve used over the years in my “Techniques of Fiction” and “Literary Travel Writing” workshops at the San Miguel Writers Conference and the Writer’s Center. In case you’ve already seen those, herewith, from recent reading, some fresh examples:
But his smile stung me like a nettle. So I barked, “Have you been to the post?” —Arthur Japin, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi
My playing is no more like hers, than a lamp is like sunshine. —Jane Austen, Emma
I have come out to lie on the rocks where I have the black edge of the north island in front of me, Galway Bay, too blue almost to look at, on my right, the Atlantic on my left, a perpendicular cliff under my ankles, and over me innumerable gulls that chase each other in a white cirrus of wings. —J.M. Synge, The Aran Islands
Again, a curagh with two light people in it floats on the water like a nutshell —J.M. Synge, The Aran Islands
He stuck with the tried and true—adding figures in his head. You could hear his lips whispering quick-quick-quick, like nuts rolling down a hill, and before you knew it he had the balance. —Yenta Mash, “The Irony of Fate,” in On the Landing (translated from the Yiddish by Ellen Cassedy)
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WALLACE STEGNER’S BEYOND THE HUNDREDTH MERIDIAN
In the past couple of weeks, apropos of my book in-progress on Far West Texas (trying to get my mind around the history of the American West in general and Reclamation in particular) I’ve had the rich pleasure of reading Wallace Stegner’sBeyond the Hundredth Meridan: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West. Stegner is a master of many things, including “the metaphor stuff.”
Some examples:
It is easy to skirt the region, hard to cross it, for from Bear Lake at its northern border to the Vermillion Cliffs along the south, Utah has a spine like a Stegasuarus. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 161
Powell saw the boat hang for a breath at the head of the rapid and then sweep into it. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 63
Suppose he and his family endured the sun and glare on their treeless prairie, and were not demolished by the cyclones that swept across the plains like great scythes. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 220
The inflexible fact of aridity lay like a fence along the 100th meridian. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 229
Characteristically, he took on more than he could finish. He was a Thor, always getting caught in an attempt to drink the ocean dry or uproot the Midgard serpent. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 279
His handling of the Commission was like a skilled muleskinner’s handling of a twenty-mule team. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 289
Three hundred and sixty degrees of horizon ringed them, the sky fitted the earth like a bell jar. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 297
The great men of Zion are on the map in Brigham City and Heber City and Knightsville, and beween and among these are scattered those dense but hollow names, smooth outside with use, packed with associations like internal crystals, that come from the Bible or the Book of Mormon—names that are like Lehi and Manti and Hebron, Nephi and Moroni and Moab. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 192
But here before him was the opportunity of his life, the massive and complex problem of planning for the West whose parts meshed in an intricate system. And here was he with twenty years of experience and knowledge, every bit of which could be applied to the problem as an engine’s power is applied to the axles. The action of Congress, stumilated by Stewart and Teller, had shifted him into gear, and he was not now going to be content with making a humming noise or moving pistons meaninglessly up and down. He was going to turn wheels. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 305
It was the West itself that beat him, the Big Bill Stewarts and Gideon Moodys, the land and cattle and water barons, the plain homesteaders, the locally patriotic, the ambitious, the venal, the acquisitive, the myth-bound West which insisted on running into the future like a streetcar on a gravel road. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 338
He was not merely an explorer, an opener, and an observer, he was a prophet. And yet by the law of motion (and hence of history) which he himself accepted, his motion as a particle in the jar and collision of American life was bound to be spiral. His reforms have taken effect, his plans have been adopted, but partially, belatedly, sidelong, as a yielding resultant of two nearly equal stresses. —Stegner, BTHM, p. 350
>> Find more workshop posts in the archive here; and many more resources at my workshop page on www.cmmayo.com here.
You could leave it hanging in the tree in the backyard… not what I am recommending, however. Photo courtesy of MorgueFile.
SMOMBIE: It’s a word that popped up in Germany only in 2015. It’s hard to imagine now, but a decade ago, a scene, typical today, of smombies shuffling along city streets would have been but a cliché in a sci fi novel. But here we are.
When we lack the words to precisely describe something, it becomes difficult to recognize it, never mind debate and discuss it. Albeit some decades ago, the Digital Revolution burst upon us all, a series of tsunamis of such dizzying celerity that our vocabulary is still catching up. Only a few years ago a much-needed term was coined by Jake Knapp: “Distraction Free iPhone.” I came across the term when I read Knapp’s recent update on his experience here.
DISTRACTION FREE SMARTPHONE = DFS = defis
I’ll switch that last word from “iPhone” to “smartphone” to make it Distraction Free Smartphone, DFS for short. I did not think of my smartphone as distraction free until now, but for the past several years, that’s precisely what I have been moving towards, a DFS. Hmm, that sounds a mite snappier!
And I hereby tweak DFS to “defis,” which, I note, is the plural of “defi” which means “challenge” or “defiance.” Indeed, using a distraction-free smartphone is an act of defiance towards smombiedom.
BEYOND PRO OR CON
The magic is, this new word, DFS, or defis, nudges us beyond the rigid ping-pong of pro or anti-smartphone; forward-looking or old fogey. As I wrote in a recent post:
“The reigning paradigm is the same one we’ve had since forever: if it’s digital and new it must be better; those who resist are old fogeys. It’s a crude paradigm, a cultural fiction. And it has lasted so long a time in part because those who resisted either were old fogeys and/or for the most part could not articulate their objections beyond a vaguely whiney, ‘I don’t like it.’
“As an early adopter of digital technologies for decades now (wordprocessing in 1987, email in 1996, website 1998, blog 2006, podcast and Youtube channel 2009, bought a first generation iPad, Twitter 2008, and first generation Kindle, self-pubbed Kindles in 2010, etc.), I have more than earned the cred to say, no, my little grasshoppers, no, if it is digital and it is new it might, actually, maybe, in many instances, be very bad for you.
“In other words, adopting a given digital technology does not necessarily equate with ‘onwards and upwards’; neither does rejecting a given digital technology necessarily equate with backwardness. I so often hear that ‘there is no choice.’ There is in fact a splendiferous array of choices, and each with a cascade of consequences. But we have to have our eyes, ears, and minds open enough to perceive these, and the courage to act accordingly.”
Of course, when it comes to using digital technologies, different people have different needs, different talents, goals, obligations, opportunities, and vulnerabilities. A responsible mother with young children will probably want to use Whatsapp with the babysitter; a real estate agent who wants to stay in business needs to be available to clients, whether by phone, email or text– and so on. Some people slip into the vortex of addiction to social media or gaming far more easily than others…
My aim here is not to judge other people (although I’ll admit to some eye-rolling at smombies slapping themselves into streetlamps), but to examine the nature of digital technology and my own use of it. I am not a mother with young children, nor a real estate agent. Games bore me, always have. I am a writer of books. I blog about digital technology because first, it’s my way of grokking it; and second, I trust that what I’ve learned may be of interest to my readers– for I know that many of you are also writers.
We writers are hardly alone in the need for uninterrupted chunks of time. Brain surgeons, composers, painters, historians, statisticians, sculptors, software engineers… many people, in a wide variety of professions and vocations need, to quote Cal Newport, “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task,” that is to say, engage in what he terms “deep work.”
“Literary travel writing is about first perceiving in wider and sharper focus than normal; then, in the act of composition, shaping and exploring these perceptions so that, as with fiction, it may evoke in a reader’s mind emotions, thoughts, and pictures. It’s not meant to be practical, to serve up, say, the top ten deals on rental cars, or a low-down on the newest ‘hot spas.’ Literary travel writing, at its best, provides the reader the sense of actually traveling with the writer, so that she smells the tortillas heating on the comal, tastes the almond-laced hot chocolate, sees the lights in the distant houses brightening yellow in the twilight, and, after the put-put of a motorcycle, that sudden swirl of dust over the road.”
Writers have always battled distractions, but with the ubiquity of smartphones, and increasingly sophisticated app designs and algorithms to lure us and trap us into “the machine zone,” we’re at a new level of the game– or the war, as Steven Pressfield would have it.
Whatever might or might not be an optimal use of digital technology for you, I know this:
A book that can claim a thoughtful person’s time and attention is not going to be written by someone who is pinged by & poking at their smartphone all the live-long day.
“OUT IN THE WORLD”
Some writers have outright rejected smartphones– but so few, in fact, that only two come to mind: John Michael Greer, a prolific blogger and author whose stance on modern conveniences is, as he titled a collection of essays on his vision of the post-industrial future, Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush; and journalist Sebastian Junger. As Junger said on the Joe Rogan podcast:
“when I’m out, I want to be out in the world. If you’re looking at your phone, you’re not in the world… I just look around at this– and I’m an anthropologist, and I’m interested in human behavior– and I look at the behavior, like literally, the physical behavior of people with smartphones and… it looks anti-social and unhappy and anxious, and I don’t want to look like that, and I don’t want to feel like how I think those people feel.”
While I say a quadruple “AMEN” to Junger’s comment, I decided to keep my smartphone because I value having the emergency information-access and communication backups enough to pay for the smartphone for that alone; plus, I much prefer using the smartphone’s camera and dictation app to having to carry separate appliances, and I use these often in my work.
For me, the question was never whether or not a smartphone is useful. For me, obviously it is. The question is rather:
How can I maximize the benefits of this sleekly convenient multi-tool / communications device, while blocking its djinn-like demands, and so with sharpest powers of observation and consciously directed concentration, stay awake in this world?
I had answered this question by turning my smartphone into a distraction free smartphone, as I realized when I read Jake Knapp’s post.
Knapp’s version of “distraction free” turned out to be different than mine– he deleted his smartphone’s Mail and browser apps, which I kept. And when I Googled around a bit to find other writers who had tried to convert their smartphone to distraction free– and they were astonishingly few– I found that each had a different version of distraction free. Some recommended using grayscale, which I did not find helpful– but you might. Again, no surprise, what works for one writer may not work for another.
And that got me noodling… over the year-end holidays, instead of going to the movies, I stayed home and made my App Evaluation Flowchart for a Custom Distraction Free Smartphone, which you will find at the end of this post.
THIS WRITER’S DISTRACTION FREE SMARTPHONE (DFS or “defis”)
In early 2019, here’s where I stand, comfortable at last, with my smartphone. My defis, as it were. In order of importance, I use my smartphone as / for a:
Camera (for stills and video)
Audioplayer (various apps for audio books, podcasts, and music, which I usually listen to when flying or driving, never when walking or on public transport)
Emergency Mail
Recorder (dictation app for interviews)
Google translator
Emergency telephone
Emergency Google Maps
Emergency Safari
Calculator
Flashlight
In essence, I use my smartphone only when I decide it will serve me for a specific purpose, e.g., to take a photo, make a call, record an interview. Otherwise, it stays in the charging station at home or zipped into its felt bag in my backpack, wifi off, roaming off. I do not allow it to beep, rill, cheep, chirp, ding, ping or vibrate.
Other than the above-mentioned apps, I have deleted all apps (except the ones Apple will not allow me to delete; those I corralled into a folder I labeled “NOPE.” Do not ask me what they are, I do not remember.)
No social media apps, no Whatsapp, no news, no games.
All– all– notifications are off.
About the smartphone as a phone: I make a call from the smartphone maybe two or three times a month. I never check voicemail. Ever. I don’t know how to check voicemail and don’t tell me its easy because I don’t want to know how.
If you leap to conclude that I’m living the life of a Luddite you’d be wrong. I do make and receive plenty of phone calls– except for emergencies, on a landline. I Skype. I spend hours galore on email– but at my desk, on a laptop. On the laptop I also manage my website and blog. I podcast, too, editing the audio with GarageBand (listen in anytime here). And I film and edit short videos for my YouTube and Vimeo channels.
When I first got an iPhone nearly a decade ago, oh, did I fiddle with apps, apps for this and apps for that and apps that would confect a fairy’s hat! I was becharmed by apps! Ingenious things, apps are.
I was on FB, too, until 2015.
But I am a writer of books, and this smartphone rabbit-hole-orama, it wasn’t working for me.
THE TWO MAIN PULLS
For me, the two main pulls to pick up the smartphone have been:
(1) to see any messages from people and/or about matters I care about; (2) to have something convenient to read / look at when I’m away from my desk and feel bored.
Once I had this clear, I could formulate a more effective strategy than vaguely “finding a healthy balance” or blanging down the anvil of will power.
Over the past several years, trying to figure this out, backsliding, and trying again (and again) to figure this out, what I have found actually works is to remove or minimize temptations to even look at, never mind pick up, the smartphone when it is not in my fully conscious and decided interest to do so; and crucially, I have replaced those “pulls” to look at the smartphone with what are, for me, either superior or at least realistically acceptable alternatives.
B.J. FOGG
B.J. Fogg of Stanford University’s Behavior Design Lab has been an influence in my thinking about the smartphone. His basic equation for inducing a behavior is Motivation + Ability + Prompt (all three simultaneous), or B = MAP.
You can read more about Fogg’s behavior model here.
He’s all very sunny and even uses puppets when talking about his behavior model and how it can help people improve their lives, and I for one sincerely appreciate this. But I suspect that people with darker designs (oh I dunno, like those starry eyed newbies with VC in Silicon Valley who would launch a platform / app that, with maximum speed and efficiency, sucks the life-hours, money, and data out of you) also look to professor Fogg as a guru.
What I’m saying is, more likely than not, you are being very, very cannily manipulated by any one of a number of apps to pick up and remain focused on your smartphone despite what you know perfectly well are your better interests.
And understanding the way in is to understand the way out.
THIS WRITER’S STRATEGIES
I don’t pretend that my strategies will work for other writers. This section is not meant to be a series of recommendations but an example: what works for me, a working writer. (If you want to go direct to the App Evaluation Flowchart for a Custom Distraction Free Smartphone, just scroll on down to the bottom of this post.)
(1) Focus digital communications on email, and always at the desk, on the laptop
This is, to-the-moon-and-back, the most powerful strategy for me. (Read about my game-changing 10-point email protocol here.) I take email very seriously. However, with rare, emergency-level exceptions, I check email only on my laptop, only after 3 PM, and I batch it. I thereby establish the boundaries I need to be able to do my work, and I can truthfully say, “I welcome email,” and “the best way to reach me is by email.” And if not perfect, I am ever better about responding to email in a timely manner– since I have relatively fewer distractions!
Many people have told me that they would prefer to communicate with me on FB or Whatsapp, but… too bad! I am a writer who writes books, which means that I need to funnel communication into specific times, not allowing interruptions to leech my attention willynilly throughout the day. If someone cannot summon the empathy to appreciate that, well, like I said. (Anyway, I love you guys.)
This strategy allows me to keep the smartphone silent and in the closet (its charging station) or zipped in its bag inside my backpack. In B.J. Fogg’s terminology, I have hereby eliminated the motivation, the ability, and the prompts to pick up the smartphone. So I don’t.
(2) When out and about, if there’s a chance of having to wait a spell, carry a paperback
Recent Reading: J.M. Synge’s The Aran Islands Ye, verily, of the time before Instagram and TripAdvisor (A classic of travel writing and the Irish Renaissance, and a reading cure for “the shallows”) weighing in at about the same as a potato
This is the second most powerful strategy for me, and simple and old-fashioned as it is, it took what seems to me now an embarrassingly long time to figure it out.
I’ve always been an avid reader of books and magazines, but when I got an iPhone, suddenly, in spare moments, such as waiting at the dentist, in line at the grocery store, waiting for a friend in a coffee shop, I found myself pecking at it. I was reading, but… it was, in fact, more often skimming, watching, and surfing.
As Nicholas Carr explains in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, reading a book and clicking & scrolling on a smartphone (from, say, website to website, to Twitter to FB to Whatsapp to YouTube to Instagram feeds x, then y, then z), do two very different things to one’s brain. The latter literally retrains your brain, resulting in what Carr calls “the shallows,” and once you’re in the shallows, tasks requiring sustained cognitive focus– such as writing a book– become ants-in-the-pants-nigh-impossible.
Don’t tell me I could use a Kindle app to read ebooks on my smartphone; I don’t and I won’t because, again, my goal is to remove as many siren calls to the smartphone as possible, relying on acceptable or superior alternatives. For me, a paperback provides a superior reading experience to an ebook; and if it’s not too heavy, I don’t mind tucking a real book in my bag.
But, by the way, I do read Kindles on occasion, using the Kindle app on my iPad, as a last resort only, when a paper copy is unavailable. I also use my iPad for reading news (which I inevitably regret), a select few favorite blogs, and for listening to audiobooks and podcasts in the kitchen. (If not in its charging station, or with me as I am doing something like say, folding laundry, my iPad remains parked on the kitchen counter.)
In B.J. Fogg’s terminology, with this strategy, I have reduced the motivation to pick up the smartphone. Also in his terminology, I build a tiny habit: when tempted to take out the smartphone to surf, take out the paperback. (You can watch Fogg’s TEDx talk on tiny habits here.)
(3) For a calendar, “to do” lists, and selected contacts, use a Filofax
This strategy is an old one for me, tried and true. As Getting Things Done guru David Allen says, “low-tech is oftentimes better because it is in your face.” The Filofax is a century-old British system designed for engineers that is so efficient it still has legions of devotees, among them myself, for over 30 years now. My lovely and ridiculously sturdy cherry-red leather Filofax normally stays next to my laptop on my desk; I can, but I rarely carry it with me.
As for contacts, I keep the addresses and telephone numbers I need at-hand in the Filofax and the rest in a separate system, but not on the smartphone because, again, I aim to focus my communications on email, and always on the laptop. (My smartphone does have emergency contacts.)
In B.J. Foggese: For my to dos and calendar, I have no motivation nor prompts to pick up the smartphone.
(4) For an alarm clock use an alarm clock (and for a watch use a watch)
Back in the days of my starry-eyed wonderfest with apps, I downloaded three different alarm clock apps. The cornucopia of “alarms,” from harps to waterfalls to drums to roosters yodeling, that was fun. But I deleted them all and instead use a little plastic alarm clock powered by two AA batteries. It weighs almost nothing, cost less than ten bucks, and works just fine– so I can keep the volume on the smartphone on mute. Don’t tell me I could adjust the volume on the alarm clock app because I don’t want to touch the smartphone if I don’t have to, and certainly not as the last thing at night and first thing in the morning. And I don’t want the smartphone parked anywhere near where I sleep.
This strategy might sound silly. How is the alarm clock app different than say, the calculator or the flashlight or the camera or diction app? The answer is, by definition an alarm clock distracts, it prompts me to pick it up to turn it off– and that is precisely what I do not want my distraction free smartphone to do.
This is not trivial.
In B.J. Foggese: another motivation, ability, and prompt to pick up the smartphone eliminated.
(5) Use paper maps
You read that right. People laugh at me. I laugh back! Sometimes I use a store-bought map but more often, before I go out, I’ve Googled on my laptop and printed out or sketched the directions. I do make use of Google Maps on the laptop and on my smartphone in emergencies– this is one of the reasons for which I keep a smartphone. But by relying primarily on paper, rather than GPS via the smartphone in realtime, I have removed yet another reason to pick up and start poking at the smartphone.
An added benefit, crucial for me as a travel writer, is that my sense of space, direction, and the lay of any given landscape have remained sharper.
(If you love the planet and believe everything paper should be digital, I would invite you to Google a bit to learn about the energy realities of server farms and what precisely goes into smartphone batteries.)
(6) Always carry a pen and small a notebook
Another opportunity to not pick up the smartphone.
(7) Make it a habit to keep the smartphone zipped inside its bag
I don’t make a habit of holding my smartphone in my hand, carrying it in a back pocket, or setting it down on the desk or table next to me. Unless it’s an emergency, or I have an excellent, fully conscious reason to take it out and use it, the smartphone stays dead quiet and out of sight in its bag inside the bag.
In B.J. Foggese, I thereby reduce my motivation, ability, and prompts to touch it.
IN CONCLUSION
My smartphone is now simply (albeit miraculously!!) a lightweight selected multi-tool (camera / recorder / audio player / caculator / flashlight) and emergency information-access and communications device which I carry when I go out of the house, unless it is to walk the dogs. (I never take it when I walk the dogs because when I walk the dogs, I walk the dogs.)
My smartphone does have Mail, Safari, and Googlemaps buttons, but because I rely on my laptop for email and other Internet access, and paper for out-and-about navigation, I no longer feel that pesky tug to pick up and peck at the smartphone– but I do have these apps available to me should I need them. And sometimes I do need them.
Ditto the telephone.
Again, and of course, what works for me may not necessarily work for you. But may this new term, Distraction Free Smartphone, or as I would suggest, DFS, or defis, serve you in thinking through your own concerns and strategies for your own smartphone and your own writing.
DFS MODE
I’ll add one more term: “DFS mode.” A smartphone need not be distraction free almost all the time, as mine is. Let’s say one needs to be available on Whatsapp, voicemail, email or to use some other app for family or work that may ping, ring or ding-ding you at random intervals, and so be it; then, for the time alloted for writing (or other deep work), one’s smartphone could be put into DFS mode. As I hope I have made abundantly clear, this would not necessarily be the same as “airplane mode.”
P.S. Cal Newport’sDigital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World will be out next month. From what I’ve read of his other books and blog, this promises to be a pathbreaking book. If nothing else, the term “digital minimalism” adds depth and nuance to our thinking about digital technology and our use of it.
As of this year the second Monday of the month is dedicated to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.
Poetic alliteration is one of the many techniques
you can use to make your writing more vivid and powerful. The definiton of
alliteration: “The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning
of adjacent or closely connected words.”
From (of all things) a movie review by Desson
Howe in the Washington Post:
“There he is, in all his glory, Brad Pitt, that beautiful, chiseled chunk of celebrity manhood. You want him? Go see Fight Club. You want action, muscle, and atmosphere? You want boys bashing boys in bloody, living color? Fight Club is your flick, dude.”
To start with, we have “chiseled chunk”
— ch and then ch
In the fourth sentence we have “action,
muscle, and atmosphere”– ah and ah
Then “boys bashing boys in bloody, living
color”– b, b, b, and b
Then “Fight Club is your flick, dude”
— f and f
The point: the sound of the words–
alliteration– reinforces the meaning.
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More examples:
“…hold on with a bull-dog grip and chew and choke as much as possible” — Letter, President Lincoln to General Grant
“When somebody threatens me, he says, I usually tell them to pack a picnic and stand in line.” — Mikey Weinstein quoted in Marching As to War by Alan Cooperman
“A competitor once described [mining engineer Frank Holmes] as ‘a man of considerable personal charm, with a bluff, breezy, blustering, buccaneering way about him’ “ — Daniel Yergin, The Prize
“Small heart had Harriet for visiting” — Jane Austen, Emma
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As I cannot repeat often enough, as a writer, your best teachers are the books you have already read and truly loved– the books that made you want to write your own. (These books or may not get the Seal of Approval from your English professor– but never mind. Some academics may be artists, and some artists academics, but in general they are creatures as different from one another as a coyote and a horse.)
To repeat: As a writer, your best teachers are the books you have already read and truly loved. Pull one of those beloved books off your bookshelf, have a read-through, see where and how the author uses alliteration. Or not?
Once you recognize a technique you can often spot it in, say, a newspaper article, a biography, or an advertisement. More about reading as a writer here.
