Facing the Past: IWSG for July

Greetings IWSG folks and nut-tree enthusiasts!

Last week I had the pleasure of being “found” by two old friends.  Previously, I would have bridled at being discovered.  (I’m an insecure fugitive at heart.) I am not one to attend high-school reunions and have left my past behind me in many ways.  Several moves out of state and changes in perspective have left many of my old relationships –well, without basis for continuation and despite my penchant for writing, I’m really quite a lousy pen-pal.  At any rate, this reunion with my two friends has been delightful, our social-web has reconnected, and now life continues… on Facebook, of course. 

When we move, we always leave behind friends and acquaintances.  One “friend” I left behind in my move from California to Wisconsin was my chiropractor, Phyllis.  Phyllis came late in life to her practice, becoming a chiropractor at the age of sixty.  She was a wise, funky, left-coast soul, and a bit of a psychic.  While she worked out my kinks and knots, she would subtly mention these things about me and my life, things that only I would know, and I became acutely aware that my inner being was inextricably tied to my outer state.  I always left Phyllis’ office feeling fresh and perfectly aligned.

I thought a lot about Phyllis after my move to Wisconsin, and remembered well her serious look and parting comment at our last meeting.  “Keep in touch! You hear?”  But I didn’t.  I wanted to write to her and say “Thank you,” and “You made an impact on my life," but I didn’t do it for the longest time.

It took a year for me to write.  A long rambling missive in my fifth-grader’s loopy handwriting and then I proceeded to let it rest on my desk for weeks, until it got moved to my perpetual stack of paper-dross, and then finally, months later, feeling that all the news in my letter was old and my confidences silly, I did what I often do to letters I write:  I tore it up. 

 

Shortly afterwards, a friend called to tell me Phyllis had died of cancer.  I had not even known she was ill and now I had missed my chance.   I still honor her life and death every Dias de los Muertos, though I do regret not sending that letter, though the memory of her smiling face always assures me not to worry.  We connect in other ways now.

 I thought of Phyllis when  my two friends contacted my mother, looking for me.  And with Phyllis in mind, I opened myself up to reconnect with my past.  After all—if someone wants to find me, who am I to object?  It’s not like people are lining up around the block to talk to me! Frankly, it’s nice to be wanted.

So lovely IWSG bloggers and dearest readers, I am curious to hear about your own experiences.   Has social media allowed your past to catch up to you?  Have you felt wanted or just plain stalked?  Has your online presence rewoven loose threads or opened an old can of worms? Are you secure enough to face your past?

Do tell!
~Just Jill

P.S.  That picture was taken of me by my long-lost friend David.  The things you do on a long winter's night in South Dakota!

P.S.S.  It was the eighties.

 

Link for IWSG here!

Support for Insecure Writers Everwhere!

Greetings Insecure Minions!

Today, I will not be posting any apprehensive, self-loathing type ramblings about my writing for two major reasons:  1.) My last blog, entitled “What if I just suck?” pretty much said it all, and 2.) I just feel too damn good about things to complain about it anymore.

 

 

I figure I hit the height of my insecure arc about a week ago.  It came around, bogged me down, turned me into a mooning whiney-ass and so I, in my cathartic-artist way wrote about it.  And you, my loverly blog-mates—well,  you just pulled me right out of it.  Thank you.  You have all become the best friends and neighbors I don’t know.   So, today I shall provide the double-D support in “Insecure Writers’ Support Group”.  Prepare to be showered in goodness, warm-fuzzies and rose-colored yummies because you deserve it!

 

 

“Start early and work hard. A writer’s apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he’s almost ready to begin. That takes a while.”
-David Eddings

 

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. –George Orwell

 

Ummmm.  Okay.  Maybe that’s not where I wanted to go.  No warm fuzzies on the motivation-meter here.  I am actually considering never writing again.  How ‘bout this one?

There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.  Ernest Hemingway

Okay.  Thanks Ernie.  Now please go back and sit down at your desk and try not to bleed over all over the floor.  Someone has to clean that up. 

Wow.  These writers are a optimistic bunch aren't they?  I think I need a drink.  But wait--here's another one!

The quality which makes man want to write and read is essentially a desire for self-exposure and masochism.  Like one of those guys who has a compulsion to take his thing out and show it on the street. James Jones

 

Oh.  So is that why I like to write?  Well, thank you Mr. Jones for that little bit of information.  And I mean-- that very little bit.  There must be something here to lift everyone's spirits!  Some cheer to rally the anxious and quiet the self-doubting.

 

Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks its Don Quixote. Stanislaw Jerzy Lee

 

Crap.  I don't even know what that means!

I give up.

People--Listen up!  Get up from your silly box and go outside into the summer day waiting outside your window.  Watch a baseball game.  Go for a walk where there is no path and let your weary eyes rest on slim-lines of branches heavy with vibrant green.  Get your hands in the dirt.  One cannot possibly be downtrodden or gloomy with dirt under your fingernails and the smell of freshly-turned loam in your nostrils.  Plant something.  Weed.  Water.  Watch as Nature in her infinite beauty slowly draws up from the earth a variety of wonders we could in winter's grip only dare to dream about.

Then go write about it.

 

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Thomas Mann

~Just Jill

P.S. Just completed my first book review for Kate Brauning's "The Bookshelf".  The review is for "Will Sparrow's Road" by Karen Cushman.  Link here.

 

Back to IWSG here!

Debbie Downer and the Dreaded Don'ts

Greetings to all my Insecure Brethran and Sisterns (?) out there.  Today's offering comes from a very Vitamin D-deprived-seasonally- depressed writer who has yet another super-sized order of snow looming in her forecast—again!  Sorry for the sass-fest but I feel the need to whine and who but you could better commiserate with my self-doubts and insecurities in a matter such as this?

As of late I have been reading much of what NOT to write.  Some of my favorite bloggers have been partisan to the sharing  of this information, and I mean no disrespect, for you have offered it fairly and with many well-placed caveats, but honestly, I’m far too fragile for such fodder.  I get a sick head-ache from contemplating the all too familiar pedestrian nature of my own writing, so apparently filled with these foibles and faux pas, it makes me want to chew a few Bufferin, find the nearest divan and faint dead-away. 

You know what I’m talking about.  The dreaded LIST.  “The top ten things never to put in your fiction” kinda parasitical lists that stalk the writing world looking to bloodsuck the creative juices out of every unconfident, neophyte writer out there. 

 

For the sake of this post I too shall have to indulge in further propagation of these evil weeds, which take root in my tender subconscious, make honest writers seize up, hedge in their tracks and ponder their own eloquence and flow. The List seems to grow exponentially, as negative things are wont to do, and includes, but is not limited to several of the commandments listed below:  (The snarky comments in parenthesis are mine.)

*Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.  (Keep ‘em guessing is my motto!)

*Don't go into great detail describing places and things. (Sense of place is like—so last year!)

*Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue and never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" as in “ He said gravely.”   (Now we’ve NEVER seen this done, right?)

*Never use “ing” verbs or “ly” adverbs.  (Effing Hell.  Total rewrite.)

*Keep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.  (Bummer!!!!!)

Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". This rule doesn't require an explanation.  (Yet suddenly, I want one.)

Show don’t tell. (Everybody’s favorite!)

Be specific; not vague.  (How vague is THAT?)

Avoid using: Really, you, feel, think, as, a lot, sort of, kind of, like, just and used to.  (There goes my word count.)

 See now?  I’ve gone and given myself an eye twitch.   I find this list is also affecting my reading, as I have been programmed and directed to turn over all infractions to the literary police, and they are everywhere!  (The infractions--not the police.)

This type of creative coercion was made popular by author Elmore Leonard in his book "Ten Rules of Writing" (above) and is still regarded by many as the bar for excellence  though this is the man who also brought you this:

So, in the spirit of “growing as an artist” and “developing my craft” I thought, “Let’s give it a shot, shall we?  Give it the old college try?”  So I took a sample of my latest WIP and subjected it to the austere standards of  The List:  I removed  the superfluous verbiage, those irascible exclamation marks, and all the redundant, excessive, unnecessary words that so clutters my elementary prose and I was truly amazed by the results!  This is what I was left with:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

Well I’ll be damned.  It worked.
~Just Jill

Get you the heck back to the IWSG list!

"Two Tense for Words" or "Tense and Tensibility" (I can't decide.)

 

                                                                                

 Greetings to Insecure Writers everywhere!  Thanks for taking  time to stop by the nut-tree.

As of late I have been pondering the use of present tense—specifically in fiction, and would value greatly hearing your opinions and expertise on this matter.

I admit I have (ahem) some trouble with reading a novel written in present tense. 
There.  I’ve said it.
If any of you lovely, dedicated writers have been slaving away for years on a fiction book written in present tense—my apologies for being so pedestrian and please don’t start over on my account. It’s me--not you.  I know I should be more open to different styles, and focus more on the writing--but I just can’t handle reading a whole novel in present tense!  It stresses me out!  I always feel like I am hanging by my britches, apprehensively suspended, hovering mid-sentence.  I can’t live like that! 

I began examining my "intense" feelings regarding this subject, pondering present tense’s merits, and trying to figure out why it usually gives me the twitchy-eye.  And surprisingly, on closer examination, I find I do actually enjoy some aspects of present tense--in small doses.  It’s just that when expertly done—one hardly notices.

 

 Louise Erdrich’s “Love Medicine” made quite an impact on me as a young reader and writer, with her chapter by chapter switcheroo on tenses.  (She does it with such grace and aplomb.) It works well for poetry too, and for discussing literature, or writing an essay.  I also  like it when a Midwesterner tells his story in present tense, as in, “So I say to the guy…”.   This week I  read a most delicious, brilliant short story by blogger and writer Jessika Fleck called “Stolen”, written in—you guessed it, present tense.  “Stolen” is the perfect example of how present-tense can be used to create a sense of immediacy and anticipation in a story.  I also recalled something from those hazy college years about present tense and like, stream of consciousness writing, Dude.

Then the idea struck me.

I went and rewrote two dream sequences in my current MG novel (which is written in third-person past) and put them in the present tense.  The results were... interesting. I felt it made for a stronger sense of dream-like awareness.   I may even keep it that way.  I often eat my words and quite enjoy the taste of them when the realization benefits me in some manner.  (Then I don’t feel like such a hypocrite.)

Do you enjoy one tense over the other, or does the whole thing just make you tense up?  (You knew that was coming, right?) Do you have a favorite book told in the present, or do you rest easy in the past? Please let us know your feelings on the matter.  Nothing says lovin’ like somethin' in the comments section.

~Just Jill

P.S.  If you would like to read more about this techno-weanie-gearhead subject, here are two articles I found interesting.  The first, entitled “Unearthing the Bones” is from Michael Nye, the managing editor of the Missouri review, and second is an article from Salon, called "The fierce fight over the present tense" by Laura Miller.