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The Catalyst and Writing

Every story has a catalyst, some event that induces a permanent change in the protagonist, and every writer has their catalyst. I bet each of us can name that “one thing” that kick-started us into writing. Mine was a big, fat dose of jealousy.

A woman I knew was given a wonderful opportunity that any writer, especially a Mother Writer, would have given her third arm for: unadulterated time to write. When I heard the news, a hard ball of contempt formed in my gut. It loosened when I muttered “How come she gets to!” and festered as I pouted, “That’s not fair!” Then, a wise friend turned to me and said, “Why don’t you do something about it?” Just start writing.

Oh.
I suppose.
And, so I did.

I wrote during those in between times and late at night and let that jealousy drive me until I forgot all about my obsession for uninterrupted time. I was writing, and that was all that mattered.

Today, Eric Kobb Miller reveals his catalyst in his story entitled “Flashing.” You can read it below.

Then, think about the “one thing” that urged you to take the leap and start writing (or that keeps you writing).

*****

FLASHING
By Eric Kobb Miller

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to write “the great American novel” and to be inducted into the pantheon of American writers alongside Melville, Twain, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Salinger. An invitation to the literary pantheon not forthcoming, I battled with the demons of low self-esteem. My wife, Rinnce, my dental assistant Saliva Godiva, and my dental hygienist Bidday O’Shea all suggested that I try my hand at “flashing.” I recoiled in revulsion at the thought of running stark naked through life, in very public places, flashing very private parts. They assured me that the flashing to which they referred was writing very short, short stories which could be entered in writing contests. Doing this would get me focused, disciplined, tournament tough, and hopefully published someday.

Alas, the acceptance letters never came, although the rejection slips inundated my mailbox. It disappointed me, to be sure, but the comments about my punctuation just outright enraged me. Editors constantly criticized how I used my colon, as if that were any of their concern. Moreover, they claimed that my semicolons were acting like squatters in places they didn’t belong. As for my commas, they described them as looking like insects randomly stuck between the teeth of a motorcyclist without a face shield — even going so far as to label me a “comma splicer.”

One especially unhappy editor, who thought she was Portia in The Merchant of Venice, told me that my quotation marks “droppeth not as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath, but as sleet wrapped irritatingly around the wrong words.” My penchant for not italicizing the French words I liked to sprinkle about in my text really drove some editors crazy, especially because I italicized my poems which were in English. But more than anything, the endless discussions about hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes felt like acupuncture with dull needles. To this day, I still try to crawl into the spaces which are not supposed to be surrounding my em dashes.

However, I kept tap, tap, tapping away at my keyboard to get even in my own personal and special way. Each time my middle finger, that ubiquitous devil, was to hit a key, I did it with just a tad more emphasis: a flourish which never failed to give me the faintest hint of a smile, even though it inserted more colons: semicolons; commas, and “quotation marks” in all the wrong places, as well as the wrong sized dashes — with inappropriate spaces — between the wrong words.

*****

Eric Kobb Miller

Eric Kobb Miller is a retired dentist who has laid down his drill for a quill. His stories and poems number more than several mouths full of teeth and have appeared in a score of publications.

You can read more of Eric Kobb Miller’s work on his website, Spit Toon’s Saloon, or in his book, Spit Toon’s Saloon: Rinnce and Spit Toon, Proprietors. Sad Songs and Funny Tales on Tap. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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A Chiropractor’s Dream

When someone throws out a writing prompt challenge, I generally accept.

Back in January, Susan Bearman kicked off her Annual Writing Contest on her blog, Two Kinds of People (2KoP). Susan is the master at writing about “the folly of arbitrary divisions,” as she says (case in point: this post on Fan vs. Fanatic). And, she makes it look easy. Her open prompt, “[p]ick your own favorite Two Kinds of People topic and write about it,” gave anyone interested all sorts of flexbility. But, what I learned in trying to tackle this prompt was that, well, Susan is a master.

My submission didn’t win – congrats to Deborah Carroll who did (you can read her essay here) – but it was a fun exercise. So, I’ll share: my two kinds of people.

*****

The Chiropractor’s Dream

A guy named Tim Ferriss wrote a blog post a while back describing how he can travel carrying 10 pounds or less. “The name of the game…,” he says, “is being ‘fashionably light.’” I’ve never been called “fashionable,” and, in my mind, “fashionably light” doesn’t even compute. Mr. Ferriss’ post on traveling contrasts with my own practices and solidifies my belief that people on the move fall into two separate camps: those who pack light and those who pack.

I don’t travel light — not on vacation, not when I go to work, not when I return home from the supermarket. I’ve never been a Den mother for any Boy Scout (the closest I’ve come to any Scout is paying seven dollars for two boxes of Thin Mints), but I pledge the Boy Scouts motto just the same – Be prepared – and therein lies my problem. I’m notorious for filling every pocket of a purse and occupying every inch of dead space in a bag. And, while I’m fully prepared for any and all emergencies on a given day, my inability to pack “fashionably light” sometimes leaves me looking and feeling like Igor in “Young Frankenstein” – humped over and eyes bulging.

I could blame my proclivity to over pack on being a mother. My kids are young, so I offer plenty of good reasons why I carry extra notebooks and pens, snacks, bottles of water, and one (or two) bags of tissue. But, “the kid excuse” does little to explain why my bag for work weighs almost as much as my four year old daughter. No, my days as a pack horse began long before I became a mother.

I was nine years old when I received my first invitation to a tea party. My best friend from down the block asked me over for the afternoon and suggested I bring a few of my stuffed animal friends. Like many kids, I possessed a whole slew of stuffed companions, all of them important. With a tender heart and a lot of patience, my mother helped me load each bear, bunny, and doll into several paper sacks (they wouldn’t fit into just one), and she asked if I was sure my friend meant for me to bring so many.

“Oh yes!” I said, emphatic, the word “few” being a relative term in my world even then.

We filled the back seat of her 1979 red and white Mercury with my bags of friends, and she drove from our house at the top of the hill to my friend’s house at the bottom. For all I know, she put the car in neutral and coasted down the hill, we lived that close. Then, she gave up five more minutes of her time to help me unload.

When I read a post like the one Tim Ferriss wrote, I dream of being a minimalist, of standing upright while I walk to work, of gliding through an airport with, say, a free hand to wave at a passerby. I stare longingly at small travel bags in stores like REI, and I run my hand across the face of a cute little clutch at the mall. And sometimes, like last week, I succumb to the dream. I buy a new bag with the sole purpose of downsizing, of lightening my load and correcting my posture.

But, my motto always gets the best of me.

Downsizing is a temporary fix.
Leather stretches.
And, that new bag I’m carrying is getting fatter by the day.

*****

What about you? Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just a woman thing. Remember George Costanza and his wallet?….

* The above photo comes from www.moviemarket.com. Search under “Marty Feldman.”

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Don’t just tell your story. Make it come alive.

I’ll be honest, my first attempts at writing short stories or essays turned out to be a series of rants and confessions — experiences that needed clearing before any real writing could take place. In those first few weeks of purging, I learned the difference between telling a story and writing a story. As Margaret Atwood says in her book, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing:

A lot of people do have a book in them – that is, they have had an experience that other people might want to read about. But this is not the same as “being a writer.” Or, to put it in a more sinister way: everyone can dig a hole in a cemetery, but not everyone is a grave-digger.

I wanted to be a writer, so I signed up for an online course.

I forget the exact writing assignment from our instructor that first week (something about a lie you’d been told or a person who betrayed you), but, oh, was I itching to write it. My fingers were on fire. What’s funny is that my burning assignment ended up being very little “story.” It finished out at less than one thousand words, and I managed to fill many of those sentences with the word “irritating,” or some derivation thereof. That could be an exaggeration, but I doubt it, since one of the other writers in class commented that “We get that your character is irritated.”

In other words, show us, don’t tell us. Please.

“Show don’t tell.” That phrase sounded familiar, but my newbie writer’s mind thought it vague. Being a compare and contrast kind of girl, I needed concrete examples. Show me, I whined! One of the other writers must have heard me, and she sent a quick note to the message board with a few snippets of telling vs. showing. One particular example made all the difference for me. She wrote:

Telling: Louie drank a lot.

Showing: Louie shoved last night’s collection of empty beer bottles aside and poured the morning’s pick-me-up into a glass. He considered topping it off with orange juice, but the sweet smell turned his stomach. Instead, he downed the vodka straight. “Ah, that’s a better color on the day,” he said. He said that every day. *

Show, don’t tell.

The February 2011 issue of Writer’s Digest also talks about the same issue in an article called, “25 Ways to Improve Your Writing in 30 Minutes a Day.” Jack Heffron and Sage Cohen call it Precision and Imagery, but the meaning is the same.

On precision, Jack Heffron says, “The key to successfully creating or conveying worlds for our readers is painstakingly observing those worlds, and then scribbling down the precise details that tell the story. On imagery, Sage Cohen says “A successful image can plug right into your reader’s nervous system at times when explanation falls flat.”

A well-formed image appears when the writer uses tiny, often overlooked details, from a scene. Sometimes those details emerge through other senses, sometimes they are just visual notes. Either way, a sentence or a scene comes alive in the end.

To be fair, telling in writing has its own purpose as well. In the Writer’s Digest article, Sage Cohen also says that “sometimes a simple, unembellished statement will be the most powerful choice. But you won’t know until you try.”

What’s your favorite example of showing, not telling? Or, maybe you have an example where telling is the better choice?

* Used with permission from Jennifer Savage.

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