How was your fiction writing/reading week?
The last week, for me, has been busy! I imagine some of you know the feeling. Fall is starting to pick up its pace. Wow. My creative writing and reading has fallen by the wayside and I didn't meet my 30 minute of each per day goal. But I'll try, try again! I did read part of Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. Check out a description of the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Chains-The-Seeds-America-Trilogy/dp/1416905863
It's great so far---its historical fiction for young adults. For those who read historical fiction or young adult or both--you may like it. The narrator is a slave girl, the period is right before the Revolutionary War, the setting is colonial New York. I did make a note of the dialogue on one line--- it's very pretty. A character uses a simile that is just beautiful. I'm not sure if people talk that nicely! If you listen closely, people talk in clips, with half-formed thoughts all the time. Maybe in my writing, what will work for me is that I'll try to keep the pretty words for everything outside of the dialogue. Anderson is a very gifted writer and knows the period well. I'm excited to continue reading her work.
Creative writing has been zilch this past week. I have thought about the theme of war a bit (which is a theme in my novel) given the tragic and absolutely horrifying events concerning ISIS and James Foley and also the fighting in Gaza. It's so upsetting. I read about the response of the bishop that spoke at Foley's memorial in Rochester, NY. He quoted St. Francis saying that we must not seek vengeance but that we must try to live into (or something to that effect) the words, "Make me an instrument of your peace..."
I'm really turning this over in my mind a lot and want this theme to be addressed in my Marjorie novel. It really upsets me the violence in our world. I do think art has a place for addressing what upsets us and challenging our responses.
So it's ok that I didn't do the creative writing I keep on keeping on with the goal to creative write. I'll try to squeeze in some time today--maybe fifteen minutes. I can handle that! (Haha-I think.) I start a class this Wednesday evening on world civ. I'm so excited. The books came and the content looks fascinating. I have so much to learn! Yay! I might be able to weave in some facts in my Marjorie novel.
I ordered the book (used) Word Painting by Rebecca McClanahan for good advice about descriptive writing---that's something that I've challenged myself to get better at. It will be neat to see what advice she gives.
Fiction readers and writers---hope your week is going well!
Monday, August 25, 2014
Saturday, August 16, 2014
August 17, 2014 Check-in (A Day Early)
I hope you're doing well.
Fiction reading/creative writing is going well. I went to my book group last night. We read Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kiteridge. Have you read it? We sat out on one of the group member's back decks as the summer sun went down...I didn't budget enough time to read the entire book but managed to read some of the chapters. I wasn't totally prepared for the group, but it didn't matter...there was enough for everyone to talk about...and the important thing was we were together.
We looked out on two mountains and ate chocolate cake (with hints of cinnamon and allspice), cherries, and ice cream. We drank coffee. We laughed and shared our plans for the fall. The table was thoughtfully set with beautiful place mats and napkins. We talked about aging and relationships. We talked about the nature of reality and hope and finding a place in a community.
Olive, in the book, is a flawed character. She's abrasive, sometimes vindictive, and critical. She is harsh to her very kind husband and tough on her son. And yet, and this is a pivotal yet, there are moments in the book were Olive also unknowingly helps others---lonely widower Jack, her former student, and the anorexic girl come to mind. We talked, too, about how God accomplishes his work (healing, for example) in the most flawed characters---the apostle Paul, Moses (who I thought was just a stutterer but the group reminded me also murdered an Egyptian), Peter, Noah, Jonah, David...
This gathering was inspired by a piece of fiction. That's pretty neat in my book. I remember taking a literary theory class in school and how we spoke about the purpose of art...and one purpose is to act as a catharsis--- it is a vehicle for helping us heal and work through things in own lives or work through universal themes that each of us experiences--- loneliness, aging, death, identity and loss of identity.
I would also like to think that art acts as a social lubricant---it helps bind people together. It helps draw people together as if they were all huddled and gathering warmth around the same fire---and the artwork is that fire. This carries hints of romanticism---but I don't mean for this to be a sweet notion...
Today, I had writers critique group. I submitted my fifth chapter for the Marjorie novel. I got some really helpful critiques. Things that I didn't catch in my own writing, like my disregard for point of view in the latter part of chapter 5, were pointed out to me. My very smart critique partner also pointed out that radios (which I have a boy listening to in the chapter) weren't really popular in 1907 (when my story is set). I would not have known. What an anachronism. Oopsie daisy. I might as well have put an ipad in the scene. I have to go now to research what exactly boys did in 1907 for recreation---marbles, baseball, lacrosse? Goodness knows...
The chapter uses "astronomy" imagery. It's a novel in free verse, heavy in imagery...I'm working with the idea that each person is tied to something from nature---Marjorie scenes use astronomical imagery, scenes about Henrik (a Civil War vet) use river imagery, her father's scenes use rock imagery...
My smart critique partner suggested that I tie the astronomy imagery with Marjorie's educational ambitions---one of the conflicts for Marjorie is that she needs to decide whether or not to go to college. So perhaps she could be interested in pursuing astronomy in college....This would add a layer to the imagery...the imagery would serve a purpose...I think of my Marjorie as a dreamer (and thus associated with things celestial) but I never thought of her as interested in astronomy...This was a really great suggestion.
I offered some critique too and I'm really excited for my smart writer friend's novel. It's really neat to see her process over the last year and a while. I really like her main character, but I can't tell you more about it...you'll have to wait until it's published and get a copy!
Fiction reading/creative writing is going well. I went to my book group last night. We read Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kiteridge. Have you read it? We sat out on one of the group member's back decks as the summer sun went down...I didn't budget enough time to read the entire book but managed to read some of the chapters. I wasn't totally prepared for the group, but it didn't matter...there was enough for everyone to talk about...and the important thing was we were together.
We looked out on two mountains and ate chocolate cake (with hints of cinnamon and allspice), cherries, and ice cream. We drank coffee. We laughed and shared our plans for the fall. The table was thoughtfully set with beautiful place mats and napkins. We talked about aging and relationships. We talked about the nature of reality and hope and finding a place in a community.
Olive, in the book, is a flawed character. She's abrasive, sometimes vindictive, and critical. She is harsh to her very kind husband and tough on her son. And yet, and this is a pivotal yet, there are moments in the book were Olive also unknowingly helps others---lonely widower Jack, her former student, and the anorexic girl come to mind. We talked, too, about how God accomplishes his work (healing, for example) in the most flawed characters---the apostle Paul, Moses (who I thought was just a stutterer but the group reminded me also murdered an Egyptian), Peter, Noah, Jonah, David...
This gathering was inspired by a piece of fiction. That's pretty neat in my book. I remember taking a literary theory class in school and how we spoke about the purpose of art...and one purpose is to act as a catharsis--- it is a vehicle for helping us heal and work through things in own lives or work through universal themes that each of us experiences--- loneliness, aging, death, identity and loss of identity.
I would also like to think that art acts as a social lubricant---it helps bind people together. It helps draw people together as if they were all huddled and gathering warmth around the same fire---and the artwork is that fire. This carries hints of romanticism---but I don't mean for this to be a sweet notion...
Today, I had writers critique group. I submitted my fifth chapter for the Marjorie novel. I got some really helpful critiques. Things that I didn't catch in my own writing, like my disregard for point of view in the latter part of chapter 5, were pointed out to me. My very smart critique partner also pointed out that radios (which I have a boy listening to in the chapter) weren't really popular in 1907 (when my story is set). I would not have known. What an anachronism. Oopsie daisy. I might as well have put an ipad in the scene. I have to go now to research what exactly boys did in 1907 for recreation---marbles, baseball, lacrosse? Goodness knows...
The chapter uses "astronomy" imagery. It's a novel in free verse, heavy in imagery...I'm working with the idea that each person is tied to something from nature---Marjorie scenes use astronomical imagery, scenes about Henrik (a Civil War vet) use river imagery, her father's scenes use rock imagery...
My smart critique partner suggested that I tie the astronomy imagery with Marjorie's educational ambitions---one of the conflicts for Marjorie is that she needs to decide whether or not to go to college. So perhaps she could be interested in pursuing astronomy in college....This would add a layer to the imagery...the imagery would serve a purpose...I think of my Marjorie as a dreamer (and thus associated with things celestial) but I never thought of her as interested in astronomy...This was a really great suggestion.
I offered some critique too and I'm really excited for my smart writer friend's novel. It's really neat to see her process over the last year and a while. I really like her main character, but I can't tell you more about it...you'll have to wait until it's published and get a copy!
Sunday, August 10, 2014
August 10, 2014 Update
How was your creative week?
I've been reading Olive Kiteridge the last few days for my book group. It's a theology book group, so I need to find a theological angle to the novel. It takes place in Crosby, Maine, and the thirteen chapters center on Olive Kiteridge, a wife, mother, and seventh-grade math teacher. I've read in several reviews that she is a "flawed character," and so, what I'd like to do is challenge the group to compare her to the flawed characters they know about in the Bible and how God uses them. How does God work through flawed, abrasive Olive in her interactions with others? This is a truth I find over and over and over again...God's love does not work through perfect people. God's love works through you and me in our very humanity.....
I did a write-in this afternoon at a local coffee shop with another writer. I worked on the fifth chapter of my novel. It is very challenging. It is hard work. In theory, writing sounds easy. It's easy to say you're a writer. It's hard to write. When you try to paint scenes with words, you realize just what craft and mastery is involved. If I can not stare at the chasm between where I want to be in my writing and where I am now, and instead focus on the joy of the journey of mastering something that I feel intrinsically motivated to pursue...Why would I write if it wasn't for an intrinsic pull to create, to explain the world around me, to focus on the details of living, and not let life slip by without observing it and writing it down...Writing helps me to know what I think and what I want to teach myself more of or find out more about. When I stumble over the words, or the content in the novel, and go, well, how would you really describe a course catalog and a radio program from 1907...it leads to new worlds for me...new things I didn't know the moment before...
The fifth chapter is about Marjorie at school. Her teacher, a poet, is introducing the students in this relatively poor rural farming community in 1907 to the University of Wisconsin catalog. They are twelfth graders who haven't thought much about higher education. A boy asks why the girls in the class are getting the catalogs. My hope in this chapter is to bring up the theme of women's higher education, and really highlight what a recent development in US history, and what a turning point that period was for women's rights. And ask the essential question---why educate women? As the boy says in this chapter, "They were just going to get married and have babies. Why do they need to know about political systems? or differential equations? or ..."They have no place in the public sphere..."
And I want to research the debates that were going on in that period...to add some meat to this chapter... Why, when women had been historically relegated to motherhood and the domestic sphere prior to this period...why was there a turn of tides in 1907 through the advent of the 19th amendment? What was going on in US society that lay the groundwork for this? x
Anyways, these are the themes I'm exploring in this chapter...it's still a work in progress...I'm fascinated by this topic...just trying to translate it from exposition to creative fiction is an absolute challenge.
One word at a time...
I've been reading Olive Kiteridge the last few days for my book group. It's a theology book group, so I need to find a theological angle to the novel. It takes place in Crosby, Maine, and the thirteen chapters center on Olive Kiteridge, a wife, mother, and seventh-grade math teacher. I've read in several reviews that she is a "flawed character," and so, what I'd like to do is challenge the group to compare her to the flawed characters they know about in the Bible and how God uses them. How does God work through flawed, abrasive Olive in her interactions with others? This is a truth I find over and over and over again...God's love does not work through perfect people. God's love works through you and me in our very humanity.....
I did a write-in this afternoon at a local coffee shop with another writer. I worked on the fifth chapter of my novel. It is very challenging. It is hard work. In theory, writing sounds easy. It's easy to say you're a writer. It's hard to write. When you try to paint scenes with words, you realize just what craft and mastery is involved. If I can not stare at the chasm between where I want to be in my writing and where I am now, and instead focus on the joy of the journey of mastering something that I feel intrinsically motivated to pursue...Why would I write if it wasn't for an intrinsic pull to create, to explain the world around me, to focus on the details of living, and not let life slip by without observing it and writing it down...Writing helps me to know what I think and what I want to teach myself more of or find out more about. When I stumble over the words, or the content in the novel, and go, well, how would you really describe a course catalog and a radio program from 1907...it leads to new worlds for me...new things I didn't know the moment before...
The fifth chapter is about Marjorie at school. Her teacher, a poet, is introducing the students in this relatively poor rural farming community in 1907 to the University of Wisconsin catalog. They are twelfth graders who haven't thought much about higher education. A boy asks why the girls in the class are getting the catalogs. My hope in this chapter is to bring up the theme of women's higher education, and really highlight what a recent development in US history, and what a turning point that period was for women's rights. And ask the essential question---why educate women? As the boy says in this chapter, "They were just going to get married and have babies. Why do they need to know about political systems? or differential equations? or ..."They have no place in the public sphere..."
And I want to research the debates that were going on in that period...to add some meat to this chapter... Why, when women had been historically relegated to motherhood and the domestic sphere prior to this period...why was there a turn of tides in 1907 through the advent of the 19th amendment? What was going on in US society that lay the groundwork for this? x
Anyways, these are the themes I'm exploring in this chapter...it's still a work in progress...I'm fascinated by this topic...just trying to translate it from exposition to creative fiction is an absolute challenge.
One word at a time...
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
August 6, 2014 Update
The last few days have been spent traveling back from Maine to Virginia by way of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. As I drove this journey of 15 odd hours (spread across several days) and I as I drove it alone in my strikingly blue car, a few questions ran through my mind, provoked by what I was seeing outside my window.
Example: Why is it called the Mason-Dixon line?
Example 2: Why is it called Maryland? Which Mary? It must have been some Catholic Mary-- Bloody Mary? The Mary from William and Mary? She was a Protestant, though.
I've had very little time to read or fiction write the last few days, but did keep my creative brain plugged in by listening to The Iliad by Homer on CD while on my similarly epic journey. (Which is not a correct allusion, because The Iliad is about war, and not a journey, which I came to find out. That would be The Odyssey. I want to reference The Iliad in my novel, in scenes with a character who is a veteran of the Civil War.
From The Iliad I learned, simply:
-War is perennial, and very brutal and sad. It was happening a thousand years ago in desperately gory detail. It will likely continue to happen.
-Women rarely appeared in this book and when they did Homer spent a great deal of time describing their 'ambrosia' scent and the like.
-Poseidon had sea blue hair. Who knew? I thought that was a pretty big revelation when all said and done.
From The Iliad I asked:
-Why do people go to war? Don't we teach children that violence isn't the answer to their problems? (Or perhaps some don't.) It is confusing. This is a question I'm going to try to address in my novel.
This all goes to say that literature and yes, even road trips....can get us thinking...and that is why travel and the arts are just so important.
I hope your reading and writing week has gone well.
Example: Why is it called the Mason-Dixon line?
Example 2: Why is it called Maryland? Which Mary? It must have been some Catholic Mary-- Bloody Mary? The Mary from William and Mary? She was a Protestant, though.
I've had very little time to read or fiction write the last few days, but did keep my creative brain plugged in by listening to The Iliad by Homer on CD while on my similarly epic journey. (Which is not a correct allusion, because The Iliad is about war, and not a journey, which I came to find out. That would be The Odyssey. I want to reference The Iliad in my novel, in scenes with a character who is a veteran of the Civil War.
From The Iliad I learned, simply:
-War is perennial, and very brutal and sad. It was happening a thousand years ago in desperately gory detail. It will likely continue to happen.
-Women rarely appeared in this book and when they did Homer spent a great deal of time describing their 'ambrosia' scent and the like.
-Poseidon had sea blue hair. Who knew? I thought that was a pretty big revelation when all said and done.
From The Iliad I asked:
-Why do people go to war? Don't we teach children that violence isn't the answer to their problems? (Or perhaps some don't.) It is confusing. This is a question I'm going to try to address in my novel.
This all goes to say that literature and yes, even road trips....can get us thinking...and that is why travel and the arts are just so important.
I hope your reading and writing week has gone well.
Monday, August 4, 2014
August 3, 2014 Check-In (One day late)
This is gonna be quick. I'm on my way back home after a week of vacation in Maine. I've been reading a lot. I started New York by Edward Rutherfurd. It's fabulous and historical fiction. I wrote a bit yesterday and the day before--30 minutes one day and 24 the other. Still life writing, as I call it. Just put myself somewhere (once in a deli, once on the docks at the harbor) and wrote about what caught my eye.
Cultural outings continue, which are wonderful sources of inspiration. I went to the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine, and was wowed by an exhibit on the Shaker religion. I do want to read more about the communities in New York and Maine. If you know a good book, let me know. Today, on my ride home, I'll be visiting a dear friend outside of Hartford, Connecticut, for the night, and plan on visiting the Mark Twain House and Museum beforehand. I believe this was his childhood home, but I'll learn more.
I went blueberry picking yesterday, and thought of a great idea for a children's picture book that incorporates fruit, history, and humor. I might try my hand at sketching out that story this week.
How was your writing/reading week?
How was your writing/reading week?
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