Posted on

Remington Roundup: #AmReading (& more #reading)

1960's photo of woman at Remington typewriter

This month I’ve rounded up links to books and an article for your reading pleasure, whether you’re looking to write more or simply settle in with a good story.

The Books

A while back, I interviewed Julia Stoops about her debut novel, Parts Per Million (Forest Avenue Press). At the same time, I wrote a review of her book. As in all things writing, publication can move slowly, whether you’re crafting your first novel, searching for a home for an essay, or submitting reviews.

I’m grateful to the editors at Necessary Fiction for posting my review of Stoops’ book, in part because it’s nice to get your work out there but also because, while this book was published back in April 2018, the story remains relevant today.

  1. Take a look at the review on Necessary Fiction.
  2. Go back to the Q&A with Julia Stoops here.
  3. Browse over to Omnimundi.org for more on the book’s artwork and artist Gabriel Liston.

“…every novel carries significance for readers in either speaking to our past understanding or forcing us to consider our current state of mind.”

A more recent discovery in books is Beth Kephart‘s new work, Strike the Empty: Notes for Readers, Writers, and Teachers of Memoir. I’m barely into this one, but already I can tell I’ll be marking it up, tabbing pages, and referring back to it time and again. Kephart writes on the importance of story, on “refuge in true stories,” shares essays by authors of your favorite memoirs and calls to action for those of us doing our best to bring our own true stories to light.

“Establish agency, generate urgency, prize vulnerability, remain raw. Know the question. Don’t force the answer. . . . strike the empty–that meaningless phrase, that excessive detail, that tired trope, that obvious epiphany, that unmurdered little darling.“

Read more about Kephart’s book on her website or purchase your own copy from your favorite bookstore.

The Article

Speaking of writing memoir and writing tight, I also re-read an essay by Barbara Hurd that I never tire of, “The Mind in Winter.”

“I keep my hat pulled low and my imagination on alert for what I’ll likely never hear again nor ever forget: mewing in mid-winter, deep in the den before there was any sign of life on the surface, any hint of thaw or—back on topic now—any start of a next sentence or line of a poem.  What would it take, in other words, to dwell for a while in winter’s stillness and trust that down there, below the sometimes blank surfaces of our stymied minds, an idea or story could be stirring?”

Feeling stuck in any way? Go to Hurd’s essay, bookmark it. Winter, she says, can be “refuge, snow as insulation, silence as opportunity.”

What are you reading these days?

Posted on

Stories at the Table, Beginnings and Endings, and a Prompt

I love how, in continued practice, techniques naturally unfold and lessons slide into place. 

Stories

Last Saturday at our monthly creative writing class, a few core writers and I sat around the table and read our stories based on the previous month’s prompt, After the storm. We followed along the lines of Barbara Hurd’s essay, “Wordwrack: Openings,” which begins with a beautiful first line:

A nor’easter smacked into Cape Ann last night, and this morning the wrack’s dark line lies tangled and heaped.

Like Hurd, we told our own stories of storms and the debris left behind, markers – some physical, some emotional –  that became signs of relief as much as evidence of our fears.

The amazing part in listening to these stories this month was witnessing how the writing in this group has morphed from a very natural, everyday style of storytelling to a strong use of technique. A few writers made the decision not to begin their stories in a traditional way, with a mini-prologue of sorts, but to open with the moment that carried the most heat, weaving in backstory when necessary. Their stories read like true flash nonfiction: “discrete, sharply focused…[revealing] the secrets of human nature contained therein” (as Dinty Moore says in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction).

And, the way these writer told their stories segued perfectly into this month’s topic: beginnings and endings. 

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.                                          ~ Graham Greene

Because the pieces we write in this group are so short and only a glimpse into our experiences, beginnings and endings are both critical in holding our readers attention or in conveying our message.

Beginnings

“[T]o begin is to commit, to stay, to hold.” ~Jenny Boully

Embryonic moments from an experience – like In the beginning or When I was born – don’t always mark the perfect opening for a story; a great beginning is when a certain energy strikes the page, when the reader tightens her grip on the book or the listener narrows his focus on what he is hearing. 

Endings

“An ending tumbles toward you over and over again; an ending will not stay flat, will not stay put; an ending troubles and taunts; an ending is sleep lost. . . . [An ending] is an emptiness that tugs you to read the ending once more, to read the beginning again.” ~ Jenny Boully

Likewise, endings do not always bring us to a nice, clean close. As in real life, endings can come without warning or they can leave us deep in thought for days, even months afterward. They might even push us to return to the beginning, to search for clues or to simply recover the emotion lost or gained in the experience. 

A wonderful example of all this is Vicky Mlyneic’s essay on BREVITY, “This I Am Allowed.” Read it, see where she begins; consider what she leaves out and where she stops. Then, turn to your own story. The place you begin and end can make all the difference. 

The Prompt

And then it happened.

* Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com

Posted on

The Importance of Details in Writing & Next Month’s Prompt

Last weekend, as I sat around the table and listened to stories written by my friends at the Retirement Center, we discussed the the power of details. Almost everyone wrote on last month’s prompt, “I look like _____,” and we marveled at how each person approached the exercise differently.

One person wrote about life with his identical twin. Another person told of his wife, how she often made him look good and never took the credit. One man wrote on himself, starting his essay with a punch, “I look like something the cat dragged in.” Then, he took the reader on an introspective journey from that image of what he sees on the outside to what he remembers on the inside: children and grandchildren, success and happiness and, despite one day’s sad musings, memories of a long life gone well.

Though all the essays differed, we witnessed one thing in common, how certain details in images can add texture and richness to a story.

Details reveal more than the setting.

Every month these folks bring tiny memoir pieces to the table, flash nonfiction, so this month I shared with them an essay by Brenda Miller in the ROSE METAL PRESS FIELD GUIDE TO WRITING FLASH NONFICTION. In “Friendship, Intuition, and Trust: On the Importance of Detail,” Miller talks, about the importance of images and detail when crafting a story in such a short space on paper. She writes about her experience, of how one simple image—a piece of wood in the road—led to the unfolding of her own short memoir essay:

The essay came out of me in one piece, in about 30 minutes, one image leading to the next. The first words, I’m sorry…led me along, and become the mantra for the rest of the piece, I’m sorry, I said, and I said it again, and we continued on our way through the desert, in the dark of night…. Flash images arise…I let them come, I don’t censor them, because by now the essay has taken on a life of its own. And since I know this will be a very short piece, I won’t have to inhabit this space very long—in and out, touching the wounded spot and letting it go.

Later, she says of these kinds of pieces:

Because flash nonfiction is so short, I needed to take only a slice of that time, and from this one cross-section…I could unravel the rest. [Flash nonfiction] requires the same attention to language as one would give to a poem: each line needs to carry some weight, and to gradually evolve into more meaning as it goes along.

Then, I read a few paragraphs to those writers at the table from an essay by Barbara Hurd in her book, WALKING THE WRACK LINE: ON TIDAL SHIFTS AND WHAT REMAINS:

A nor’easter smacked into Cape Ann last night, and this morning the wrack’s dark line lies tangled and heaped. Hundreds of shells have settled sideways and tilted on the beach, half in, half out, sand-dribbled, seaweed-draped, partially rinsed. On the outside, they’re a riot of spires and pinpricks, ribbed turbans and knobby cones. Ivory, copper, pinkish, twisted, scalloped, hinged.

. . . .

When I open my eyes, the ocean seems to demand too much. At another time in my life, I might have responded — raised a sail, plied my oars, at least considered the lure of infinity. If the sea, after all, has any constant call that can also sound like taunting, it goes like this: come in, come in. But this is the cold North Atlantic and I’m older and I won’t and besides, if I did, I’d be out there immersed in the lives of these cracked-open things I’d rather look at underfoot. It’s not that I’m tired of desire; I just want to make sure it’s my own.

In Barbara Hurd’s essay, certain details are missing. We don’t know when the storm started, when it stopped, how long it lasted. But with the images Hurd leaves behind, and in each description, she reveals more into her own state of being. And, that’s what makes this piece so powerful.

As Lisa Cron says in her book on writing, “the story is in the specifics.”

This month’s prompt.

After the storm.

Read more from Brenda Miller in “Friendship, Intuition, and Trust: On the Importance of Detail,” in THE ROSE METAL PRESS FIELD GUIDE TO WRITING FLASH NONFICTION and from Barbara Hurd in “Wordwrack: Openings,” in WALKING THE WRACK LINE: ON TIDAL SHIFTS AND WHAT REMAINS.

* Photo credits: kakisky and greenfinger on Morguefile.com