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Candles, Cake, and Links

Birthday Cake
Today I turn one year older.
But luckily, as my daughter told me, I don’t look any bigger.

Not for a lack of trying, mind you. I spent last night at a wedding reception filling my belly with desserts and this morning nibbling on a cinnamon bun baked for royalty. “Looking bigger” is only a matter of time.

After the sugar highs, I’m laying low, soaking up some beautiful weather, cashing in a gift certificate on new clothes, and getting ready to jump back into my day job tomorrow. My birthday is always bittersweet, as it marks the end of my summer and the beginning of a new school year.

So, while I kick up my feet and demand more cake, here are some links I’d like to pass your way.

  1. 10 Things to do with an Old Sweater (from Savvy Housekeeping.com). I know it’s still August and plenty hot these days, but when Fall does round the corner, here are some great ideas for how to deal with those sweaters that don’t fit anymore. You know, the ones that got all stretched out last winter? Or put in the dryer with that load of kids’ clothes? There’s nothing like slipping on a sweater to find the arms two inches too short.
  2. Return to Writing in Six Steps (from hownottowrite.com). Did your summer fly by like mine? And, there on my desk sits that novel in progress, still…in progress. Waiting and whispering, Rewrite. Rewrite. oooOOOOoo0! So, get to it.
  3. Writerhead Wednesday: Featuring Tracy Seeley. A great Writerhead interview on Kristin Bair O’Keefe’s blog with Tracy Seeley. Tracy has a new memoir out, My Ruby Slippers, that sounds amazing. And, in her interview she mentions one trick that keeps her writing: not checking email before she gets out of bed. Not that I do that….

And, PS. Don’t forget this Wednesday Jenna Blum stops by for an interview about her bestselling novel, The Stormchasers.

Happy Day, folks!

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Between Panster and Plotter: Finding a Middle Ground

look downstairs into stairwell whirlWhen it comes to writing, I’m a “pantster,” as they say; I spit out drafts of a story in one forward motion, without looking back.

That’s the kind of writer I started out as, anyway.

The first essay I wrote (and submitted…poor editors) was a cathartic experience, in which I hardly glanced back even to edit. And, the novel I’m working on right now poured onto my computer screen during a frenzied dash to win a NaNoWriMo banner in 2009. Or, was it 2008? It’s a little murky now, sort of like that first draft.

But lately, I’ve been reading James Scott Bell’s book on plot and structure, and I’m discovering a middle ground between writing a first draft with one eye open and pre-planning a story scene by scene. Bell’s book gives writers a look at the basics of plot and story structure, using a set of principles he calls “the LOCK system.: Lead, Objective, Confrontation, and Knockout.

“That novel,” as I affectionately call it, still needs a lot of work, so I picked up this book with the aim of applying it to my draft — to see what I was missing, figure out what might be holding me back. What I’m discovering is that, even though I haven’t finished Bell’s book, understanding the LOCK system is changing the way I see this WIP (in a good way) and giving me new insight on how I approach all of my fiction.

Seeing how my novel incorporates the four LOCK principles, I’m more confident that the plot can work. More interesting, though, is the new perspective I have on an upcoming short story deadline. I was invited to join a group of writers and contribute a 10,000 word story to an anthology, and now there’s more than a self-imposed deadline looming on my calendar. This short story will stretch my skills as a writer, I’m sure, and I love a challenge (she says, knees shaking). If this were pre-Bell days, I would sit down with a main character and a first line and go with them, face my fears and see what happens. This time, though, I’m brainstorming more before I write, thinking through the lead and his objective, considering confrontations and a possible Knockout ending.

Whether or not pre-planning will change the outcome of the story, I don’t know. And, I’m not giving up on writing by the seat of my pants completely. There’s something about this simple planning, though, that gives me a teeny bit of confidence as I approach this story. And, maybe…just maybe…all the “thinking time” (as Roz Morris calls it in her excellent book, Nail Your Novel) will mean less time at my computer.

Since finding time to sit and write at my laptop seems almost impossible these days, I’ll take the “writing” however it comes.

Has your approach to crafting your stories changed lately?

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Keep It Light: Stories that Surprise You

On a quiet morning last summer, I ran my fingers along the row of books on a shelf in our living room. I stopped at one heavy-weight: The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 2nd edition. The table of contents listed over fourteen hundred pages worth of stories by must-read authors: James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor.

With pages as thin as a hymnal, the words inside demanded reverent attention, just the same.

So, I was surprised to find “A Giant Step for Mankind,” by Woody Allen, first on the docket. Not that Allen isn’t a great writer, but I hadn’t considered placing him in the same circles with Hemingway or O’Connor.  I also hadn’t considered just how much I would learn from the story, about character description and the effect of a skillful narrative.

Sounds serious, right?

But, Allen’s story is about three scientists who almost discover the secret behind the Heimlich Maneuver. I laughed out loud the first time I read it, with its high register language describing the research done around “dinner-table choking.” I’m still laughing. At passages like these:

This one, describing a character —

Met my two colleagues today for the first time and found them both enchanting, although Wolfsheim is not at all as I had imagined. . . His beard is of a medium length but seems to grow with the irrational abandon of crabgrass. Add to this thick, bushy brows and beady eyes the size of microbes, which dart about suspiciously behind spectacles the thickness of bulletproof glass. And then there are the twitches. The man has accumulated a repertoire of facial tics and blinks that demand nothing less than a complete musical score by Stravinsky.

And this —

Today was a productive one for Shulamith and me. Working around the clock, we induced strangulation in a mouse. This was accomplished by coaxing the rodent to ingest healthy portions of Gouda cheese and then making it laugh. Predictably, the food went down the wrong pipe, and choking occurred. Grasping the mouse firmly by the tail, I snapped it like a small whip, and the morsel of cheese came loose. Shulamith and I made voluminous notes on the experiment. If we can transfer the tail-snap procedure to humans, we may have something. Too early to tell.

Taking these quotes out of context doesn’t give the story the spotlight it deserves. Bound alongside “The Metamorphosis” and “Hills Like White Elephants,” “A Giant Step for Mankind” reminds me that writing should vacillate between serious and fun. Because, as a reader, I want a good belly laugh as much as I want a story that brings me to tears; it’s a bonus if the story does both.

Have you read “A Giant Step for Mankind?” What’s hiding between the covers of a book on your shelf?


* This post has been edited from its original version, published in September 2009