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FIREWORKS

November 8, 2008 by John

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Here is the first page of a short story by  Richard Ford.  It makes use of a mirror right away.  By the way, the one suggestion I have for hooking an editor is to use a mirror within the first several sentences.  Before you write, let’s look at this piece together.

 

What do you think the mirror is going to be?  Remember my formula for figuring out theme?  Well the title is the author’s signpost to tell you this is the mirror to watch for.  In the opening of this piece very little actually happens.  The central character is out of work and his wife calls him up every day from the bar where she works to cheer him up.  On this particular day there’s an old lover of hers at this bar, and this leads to a split in their relationship.  Now here’s the first page of the story FIREWORKS:

 

 

                        Eddie Starling sat at the kitchen table at noon reading the newspaper.  Outside in the street some neighborhood kids were shooting firecrackers.  The Fourth of July was a day away, and every few minutes there was a lot of noisy popping followed by a hiss then a huge boom loud enough to bring down an airplane.  It was giving him the jitters, and he wished some parent would go out and haul the kids inside.

                        Starling had been out of work six months–one

              entire selling season and part of the next.  He had sold real estate, and he had never been off work any length o time in his life.  Though he had begun to wonder, after a certain period of time not working, if you couldn’t simply forget how to work, forget the particulars, lose the reasons for it.  And once that happened, he worried, it could become possible never to hold another job as long as you lived.  To become a statistic: the chronically unemployed.  The thought worried him.

                        Outside in the street he heard what sounded like

              kids’ noises again.  They were up to something suspicious, and he stood up to look out, just when the phone rang.

                        “What’s new on the home front?” Lois’s voice said.  Lois had gone back to work tending bar near the airport and always tried to call up in good spirits.

                        “Status quo.  Hot.”  Starling walked to the window, holding the receiver, and peered out.  In the middle of the street some kids he’d never seen before were getting ready to blow up a tin can using an enormous firecracker. “Some kids are outside blowing up something.”

                        “Anything good in the paper?”

                        “Nothing promising.”

                        “Well,” Lois said.  “Just be patient, hon.  I know  it’s hot.  Listen, Eddie, do you remember those priests who were always setting fire to themselves on TV?  Exactly when where they?  We were trying to remember here.  Was it ‘68 or ‘72?  Nobody could remember to save their life?”

                        “Sixty-eight was Kennedy,” Starling said.  “They

              weren’t just setting themselves on fire for TV, though.  They were in Asia.”

                        “Okay.  But when was Vietnam exactly?”

              The kids lit the firecracker under the can and went running away down the street, laughing.  For a moment Starling stared directly at the can, but just then a young woman came out of the house across the street.  As she stepped into her yard the can went boom, and the woman leaped back and put her hands into her hair.

                        “Christ, what was that!” Lois said.  “A bomb?”

                         “It was those kids,” Starling said…

 

I said nothing happens.  That isn’t quite true.  Nothing happens to Eddie Starling and Lois, but there is an escalation in the fireworks which provides a mirror foreshadowing what will happen in their relationship.  The equation between “outside” and “inside” is set up in the first two sentences:          

 

Eddie Starling sat at the kitchen table at noon reading the newspaper. Outside in the street some neighborhood kids were shooting firecrackers.

 

It is sustained simply and naturally. 

 

            Starling walked to the window, holding the receiver, and

            peered out.” 

 

 

This is our excuse as a reader to peer out. The mirror starts with some little popping fireworks, to “a huge boom loud enough to bring down an airplane,” to Buddhist priests setting fire to themselves, to the Kennedy’s assignation , to the war in Vietnam…”  There is an explosive tension here even before we are introduced to the real conflict between the two characters.  That’s how a mirror works.

           

Now, when I tell you go back over the scene you wrote as part of the storyboard.  Does something in that scene, or in the others from the storyboard, suggest a mirror.  It should be simple and natural.  The various rooms in a house where the different scenes take place, preparation for a wedding, different stops along a trip (any physical journey is easily symbolic for an emotional or spiritual journey or change), even an stages of a disease can parallel stages of a relationship.  And, the symbolism is up to you, provided you make it very clear to the reader, what is standing for what.  Traditionally black has stood for evil, but in Moby Dick, Melville, does just the opposite–anything white is to be feared.  Moby Dick, by the way is a wonderful example of an author’s starting out with a piece of good writing, then finding a mirror through the writing that transports a travel-adventure novel into great literature.  There’s not a great piece of literature that doesn’t have a great mirror, without exception; though there are pieces of writing with great mirrors that aren’t great literature. 

           

Give it a try.  Find a mirror or interject one in the scene you have written.  Then start a subsequent scene with that mirror.  Elaborate on it.  If it is a location, go there to capture the mood.  Make it work for this point in your story idea, but in the back of your mind also be considering the role it will play at the end of the piece (much as the description of your leaving a location took on added significance in the first exercise we did).

And, be particularly open to any titles the mirror might suggest.

 

We’re getting into longer blocks of writing time.  Don ‘t hesitate or prepare any more or less then you did when we were doing the ten minute writings.  Finding a mirror and adding a few sentences to your scene should take about twenty minutes.  Writing a second scene, about one hour.  Stop reading and begin writing now.

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YOUR SUN ALSO RISES

October 23, 2008 by John

Mirrors are everywhere.

Mirrors are everywhere.

MR. HEMINGWAY

Here’s another example. I recently read the biography of Charles Scribner, son of the founder of the publishing house, Scribner & Sons. Charles Scribner was a very formal person who practically lived in a three-piece suit. He always referred to Earnest Hemingway, as “Mr Hemingway,” because thirty years earlier the famous author had been his father’s client. Hemingway, on the other hand, visited Scribners’ mahogany lined, Manhattan offices in full hunting regalia, complete with fishing rod and shot gun. Can’t you just picture him barging in the door.

“Charlie, Charlie, where the hell are ya?”

“Well, Mr Hemingway, what a distinct pleasure. Can I…a,a,a…perhaps put your hunting piece over in the corner here where it will be a, a, a…safe?”

“Charlie, have I got a book idea for you.”

“Oh, oh, wonderful, Mr. Hemingway. Come, come right into my office.”

Scribner is thinking, please God make it a love story, no more of these hunting safaris. We need a best seller, another Farewell to Arms.

“Well, Mr Hemingway, is there perhaps, a love interest in this new novel?”

“What? No, no. Let me tell you about it. See there’s this old guy…and he’s going out to get this fish, ya know, (Scribner starts to slump),…alone in a rowboat.”

“Alone in a rowboat,” mummers Scribner and mutters to himself, “what about dialogue?”

“He starts rowing, see, rowing for days and days and days.”

Well that is the premise of The Old Man and The Sea. Santiago rows for fifty pages out, then rows back for sixty pages. Imagine if you were the writer, how would you make this interesting, and interesting to an audience who doesn’t care much about fishing?

Well Hemingway does it…masterfully. He uses a mirror. This isn’t just a fish, it’s a fish of mythic greatness, the Moby Dick of fish, the Holy Grail. To catch such a prize the man must rise to that greatness himself. Whenever Hemingway describes the qualities of the fish, by this parallel comparison, he is describing the virtues Santiago must attain to capture the fish. When he talks about the fish, he is talking about the fisherman. When he gets the fish on his line they are literally joined together.

Santiago catches the fish and ties him to the boat to bring the fish back to shore. But, they’re five days out to sea, and as he rows back the sharks start attacking the fish’s magnificent carcass. Now the parallel still holds, so the destruction Hemingway describes applies likewise to the man. We see the story of a man working for the great achievement of his life, attaining it, and then experience his decline. It is no less the story of what it means to be a human, than Oedipus Rex. Presenting this story by indirection makes it rich to read, and Hemingway encourages us–by having one thing stand for another–to make the tale stand for things that have important meaning for us in our own lives.

I remember as a student sitting in the back of my high school English class as Father Ryann would say things like,”The great benefit of literature is that it teaches us important things about our lives.” I’d think to myself: You’ve got to be kidding–guys dancing around on a stage in tights doing Shakespeare has nothing to do with my life. Now, I think what he meant is that literature shows a correspondence between things that at first don’t seem to be related. We can understand one thing better in terms of the other. Principle #5: MIRROR: Mirroring adds richness and encourages interpretive application. We create a touchstone that tests a wider range of real experiences and feelings for our audience. Stretch limits.

FIND YOUR MIRROR

The next step in your written exercise is to introduce an appropriate mirror into the scene you have written, and then write a subsequent scene that elaborates on that mirror. One element of the mirror should be more concrete than another. For example, D.H Lawrence used woods and weather to stand for the sexual, the mines and manufacturing were a way of conveying the alienation and dehumanizing aspects of civilization. Placing a couple out in the woods and describing a storm, becomes a mirror for sexual ecstasy. It would be a mistake to have something like a woman’s relationship with a man be mirrored by the woman’s relationship to her daughter–both are abstruse. Another consideration is that a simple mirror, may be much easier to sustain through a long piece, than something that is highly original. A mirror provides continuity, and at the conclusion of a piece, if you tell what happens to the mirror, your audience by inference knows what has happened to subject it stands for.

In our earlier example by the nineteen year old girl (Part 1) of the man in a bar whose marriage has come apart, food is a mirror. He hadn’t eaten in days; thinking back it is the picnic his wife fixed when they were in love that he remembers. Money is a mirror for value, the seasons for the seasons of our life. We make these associations every day, in real life, not just in literature. Why do you think people fight over having the corner office or a certain size desk? Finding mirrors in writing is a bit more self conscious, that’s all. The way we decorate our homes, the clothes we wear–these are all mirrors of something inside. Picking out a dress for a funeral that isn’t too lively or too drab, fits finding the right emotion for an ex-husband who has died.

In my Puerto Rican story I would work in the political controversy about statehood. Have it being discussed on television in the background of a scene, or with protesters outside of the employment office, in a newspaper headline, or on a billboard the characters see. At first it may be a strain to work a mirror into your piece. Once you do, you will wonder how you could ever write something without one. One seminar participant, who is a CPA, wrote about compounding tax regulations using the mirror of Desert Shield’s escalating into Desert Storm.

A mirror should be simple and natural: the particular rooms in a house where the different scenes take place, preparation for a wedding, different stops along a trip (any physical journey is easily symbolic for an emotional or spiritual journey), even the stages of a disease can parallel stages of a deteriorating relationship. And, the nature of the symbolism is up to you, provided you make it very clear to the reader, what is representing what. Traditionally black has stood for evil, but in Moby Dick Melville does just the opposite–anything white is to be feared. Moby Dick is also a wonderful example of an author’s starting out with a piece of good writing, then finding a mirror through the writing that transports a travel-adventure novel into great literature. There’s not a great piece of literature that doesn’t have a great mirror, without exception; though there are pieces of writing with great mirrors that aren’t great literature.

You may find in working with a mirror that a much better one develops to take its place or that something that is intellectually very clever, becomes strained in its application. Remember this is a technique to make storytelling more interesting, not more difficult. Like story ideas and scenes, mirrors are everywhere in real life. It’s not a matter of being inventive, it’s a matter of opening you eyes to what is already there.

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HOW TO MIRROR STORY ELEMENTS

October 8, 2008 by John

CONFRONTING FEARS

     We are drawn to writing to find truth we are sometimes afraid of uncovering.  That’s why so much writing is weak.  If we confront our fears we will discover, not only is the known less to be feared than the unknown, but that besides being a tool of discovery,      writing is a means of release.   For example, someone in a seminar last week asked me why I was attracted to the story of the midwestern couple expecting a child in Puerto Rico.  She added, “You’re picking a setting, Puerto Rico, you don’t know anything about; and I’ve always been told to write about what I know.”  Well, the model for the woman in the story was appealing to me.  She had a Botticelli like innocence, yet was dependent on a guy who was likeable, but careless.  I have to admit though, that the story became intriguing for me only when I located it in Puerto Rico.  I saw it as a way of understanding (by comparison) the plight of foreigners unjustly facing hardship and prejudice here.  A good answer? 

     Later that night the truth emerged.  I, myself, was married overseas, and our first child was born in Germany.  Ultimately my marriage failed, and this story is a way for me to re-experience it from a new perspective twenty years later.  Do you hear what I’m saying?  For the two years that I’ve been talking about this piece I didn’t realize what the real subject was.  “Write about something you know?”  My God, this is all I know!  A therapist attending a another seminar told me, “In our profession we don’t treat the patient directly, we always deal with the metaphor the patient uses to understand his or her situation.”  This is the basis of Principle #6, because it also is what the reader is looking for in your writing. 

     That doesn’t mean the result must be fiction or fiction based on actual experience.   I can become intrigued researching the economic or political history of Puerto Rico (or more likely the cooking of that country) and one of these will be the topic of my article or book.  But I guarantee the outlook I take on this subject somehow satisfies an inner personal need.

     This book is nonfiction.  Through anecdotes, I’ve given you my reaction to various “discoveries” about writing, using anecdotes so you might experience those reactions vicariously, yourself.  I’ve used examples, and forced you into some role playing to “dramatize” the subject.  I’ve progressed form writer, to subject, to audience  (a change in perspective) in order to get you “involved”.  The six principles are a “framing” device.  After considering how to get your work published, we’ll look at “mirroring” and “discharge.”  Fifteen years in advertising and marketing have taught me that whether you’re producing a brochure to convince someone to select your accounting firm or videotaping a documentary on mastitis prevention in dairy herds, to get an audience to accept what you are saying you must visualize it for that audience in such a way as to make it as real as their actual experience which you are about to displace.  These six principles do this.  But what makes one so-called “reality” more preferable than another is that it better meets needs which we discover only through the process working with that subject. 

                                                                             

LIGHT AND SHADOW

 

     Watch for something very specific in the three paragraphs of the next example.  They’re about a woman torn between conflicting emotions.  Halfway through the writer introduces a motif of light and darkness that carry the conflict. It reminds me of some German expressionist films of the thirties, in which you don’t need to understand the dialogue, the drama is portrayed through characters moving in or out of shadow.  See how light and darkness in a  concrete way embody feelings which are real, but less tangible.

 

    The baby cried and she picked it up.  Lisa cradled her daughter in her arms and swayed gently back and forth, speaking in a sing-song voice of “everything’s going to be all right.”  In a minute, the crying stopped.  The child slept in her mother’s arms.  Lisa became aware of a small spot of peace lodged somewhere under her rib cage, pulsating to the quick even breathing of her daughter.  It was something she never felt before Adrianna’s birth.  At least not that she could remember.  But there it was.  The baby breathed in and out, and the rhythm worked its way deeper into Lisa’s heart. 

   A tug at her memory, like the gentle tug of Adrianna at her breast, began to pull an unfamiliar sensation to the surface.  She was safe.  She was cradled warm in her own mother’s arms, rocking.  It only lasted for a moment before the more familiar arms of fear threw themselves around her again.  Lisa shivered and tightened her grasp upon her own sleeping daughter.  “No one’s going to hurt you, ever,” she whispered.

   The light was fading.  Lisa reached over and turned on the lamp beside her, then clicked it off again.  It was too much.  She could see that right away, glancing back an forth between her sketch pad and Adrianna, who lay asleep on a quilt on the floor.  The light had been so perfect–when was it? A half an hour ago?  She looked at her watch and was surprised to see it was almost seven.  She’d been sketching for over an hour, and she hadn’t even meant to start. 

   Lisa was standing by the window clenching her fists when Tom’s car pulled into the driveway.  The headlights lit up the garage door as it rolled upward.  Then the car drove in and the door moved down again in darkness.  She stood, as if rooted to the rug.  And then Tom was standing behind her, gently encircling her shoulders with his arms.  She felt herself relax against him, involuntarily, before pulling herself around to toss out the words she’d been holding close for more than an hour. “Where the hell have you been?”

 

We have explored how to tell a story directly (by having two major characters together in a scene), and also how to tell it in an indirect way (through the reactions of secondary characters).  Mirroring is yet another option, a way of advancing the story by association.  It involves finding something in the setting that symbolizes and develops elements of the conflict.  I’m avoiding the use of words like “symbol” and “extended metaphor” because we need to think of mirroring as a practical technique, not a cipher to hidden meaning.  Here is an example:

     This is from the movie, To Catch A Thief.  Cary Grant is a former cat-burglar of expensive jewelry.  Grace Kelley is Grace Kelley, with low cut evening gowns and strings of diamonds across her heaving bosom.  They have a love-hate relationship through most of the film which is the charm of the movie.  That is up until a particular scene.  In that scene the two are standing on opposite sides of a room.  Cary Grant with his eyebrow arched.  Grace Kelley’s beauty seeming to actually glow.  The camera goes between the two and out on the balcony.  It’s Monaco and as we look  over the beautiful Mediterranean cost, ptuiiiii, ptuiiiii–a few fireworks are being set off.  The camera pulls back inside the room, between Cary Grant and Grace Kelley.  They are no longer twelve feet apart, they’re six feet apart…and there’s a different look in their eyes.  The camera pauses for a moment then moves back out between them, onto the balcony again.  Now it’s, KAPOWWWWWW, KAPOWWWWWWWW–major firework clusters light up the sky.  The camera retreats back inside and the two are in each others’ arms. 

     What Hitchcock has done is to let the fireworks mirror a passion igniting between them.  This is pleasing for us because it would have been unconvincing to directly show the characters going through such a drastic change, and this technique allows us to use our imagination.  Here is the ultimate audience involvement: the director, or writer, giving an audience the chance to be an artist.  There’s also a third advantage.  A mirror brings the outside world into a piece, prevents a work from being “stage bound,” prevents its isolation from weather, news, the routines of daily living so woven into the fabric of human experience.  And a mirror is fun.  It’s saying one thing can stand for another, don’t take things only in their literal sense–that’s too limiting.

 

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LIKE MELTING ICE

September 7, 2008 by John

            Ezra Pound had some interesting things to say about poetry.  One I’d like to direct to everyone who writes it and to people who are mystified by it as well.  He said, “Poetry should at least be as good as prose.”  If it doesn’t make sense, who cares how artistic it is?  This statement takes poetry, which is often pretentious or too precious, off of its pedestal, and down to the level of real people who have a real need of it in their lives, a need mistakenly filled by advertising. 

 

            In a long essay on politics Robert Frost said, “It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can.  The figure a poem makes.  It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.  The figure is the same as for love.  No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place.  It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life–not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.  It has denouement.  It has an outcome that though unforseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood–and indeed from the very mood.  It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last.  It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad–the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.  No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.  No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.  For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I knew.”  

 

            Frost goes on to describe taking things out of their original context and placing them in a new order with not even a ligature clinging to it of the old place where it originated.  Then listen to what he says.  “Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.  A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being.  Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it.  Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance.  It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.”  

 

            Often I’ll skim articles in writer’s magazines with formulas for first sentences.  I think we have to assume your readers are more intelligent than that.  Whenever I read a vital piece of writing, I feel the truth of what Frost said, that the outcome though unforseen is intrinsic in the first image of the original mood.  I’m also reminded of an observation by Rod Jellema, a friend of mine who was the head of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Maryland.  He said you can take the first draft of any poem and improve it 80% by lopping off the first and last stanzas.  His reasoning was that with the first stanza we are struggling to get the creative juices flowing; by the end of the poem we are so enamored with what we are doing that we don’t want to stop–and we don’t.  We hit the reader over the head with the point we have already satisfactorily made.  Of course, in the case of this poem by William Stafford, if he took away the first and last stanzas he wouldn’t have been left with much.  But, what do we agonize over most when writing a piece?  The first sentence, the first paragraph, the first scene.  Jump in, don’t worry about it; assume you’ll throw this part out when you revise, anyway. 

 

            Just as prose uses sequences of scenes, so modern poetry employs sequences of images–often with extreme alterations of perspective, time, and sequence.  Here’s a little exercise you can  do with a group friends or with your children.  It’s called a foldover poem.  One person writes an image on a piece of paper in two lines then folds the paper back so the next person can only read the last line.  That suggests an image which the second person writes, in two lines below the ones he or she was given.  The second person now folds the paper so only the last line is shown and passes it to a third party or back to the originator to continue on.  At the end of the page, read it aloud.  Then let each use some or all of the images for a second rewrite.  It’s a great exercise because it follows the creative process.  Here’s an example.  The first person wrote:

 

            She runs through the marble lobby

            to grasp her mother’s arm

 

The paper was then folded so only the “to grasp her mother’s arm” part showed.  The next person added this couplet:

 

            The older woman holds her shoulders back

            and keeps moving, head held high

 

A third, with a inclination to rhyme, adds:

 

            No one likes a loser, she sighs

            Why am I here, where can I hide?

 

This continues:

 

            She looks at a clock on the hotel wall

            in shadows, cast by the last light of day 

And so on.  Not poetry perhaps but fun to do in a car on a trip.  As is storyboarding with your children when they come up with their own ideas.  And these games reinforce natural abilities we all have, but are in danger of losing if we don’t use them.  

         

            Images are pictures we experience through our senses, not intellectual labels or concepts. Here’s a tip to make visuals memorable based on the results of an experiment.  Person A seated in a room is asked to glance around and then, without taking his eyes off his paper, list as many descriptive details as he can.  Person B is asked to walk around the room once, then list descriptive details on her paper.  The walking person averages 80% more than her sedentary partner.  So to create a more vivid scene have your characters (and readers) move through the setting rather than observe it from a static position.

 

            The following is a poem I wrote that grew out of a fold-over exercise.  One image still leads to the other.    Notice how I conclude by simply going back to the original setting.

 

            Old Man In The Airport

 

            The nurse gliding his wheel chair smells of laurel.

            She bathed him early this morning, his eyes

            are still clenched like knots in darkness.

            As a boy he cleaned horse stalls before sunrise,

            bent under the fence hauling two pails of feed.

            The bay nudged the back of his neck.  The dapple

            chewed with a nod, like an old man.  Now he too

            longs to fling back and gallop into the morning.

            The nurse smiles.

                       

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FORM AND FUNCTION

August 23, 2008 by John

POETRY VS. ADVERTISING

            I quoted William Stafford’s philosophy of writing in Chapter 7.  Here’s one of his finished poems, plus the first draft of this poem with some changes he has hand written on it.  We have his theory of writing, a work in process, and the final result–a good opportunity to see Principle #4 at work.

                        

                           ASK ME

 

                   by William Stafford

 

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made.  Ask me whether

what I have done is my life.  Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt–ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

 

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait.  We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

 

 

 (1st draft of same poem)                      

                        ASK ME

                 by William Stafford

 

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made.  Ask me whether

what I have done is my life.  Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt–ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

 

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait.  We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

 

 

            What is he saying?  He could be saying, there’s more to our lives than people see on the surface.  Or, life is like a river.  People complain they don’t like poetry because it’s too hard to figure out its meaning, or that it can mean anything you want it to.  I think what they resent is that it isn’t as accessible as prose.  That may be true in some cases.  But, let’s go back to basics: What are the scenes?  Who are the characters? 

  

             Scene 1, Stafford is on the bank in winter, looking out over the frozen river.  Scene 2 seems to be the same place and time, but he is joined by someone.  Who is the “You?”  We know it is someone special, because he cares about this person, and in Scene 1 he has said most people don’t mean anything to him–even those who have loved him strongly.  It could be a wife or a daughter, but the only person we are sure is looking at this river of ice with him is…you, the reader.  My question–”What is he saying?–is  a trick question.  I’m asking what’s the poem’s theme.  Stafford more than anyone rebels at this idea.  Isn’t he telling us not to reduce his life to an obituary or a resume or a theme?  There’s too much to life to do this.  At best he can compare it to something else that seems simple–the frozen river–but in reality is complex.  The river needs no justification, neither do I, neither do you. 

  

            I said that science is a language to describe the observable world.  Poetry describes things we can’t know, by comparing them to those we can observe.  We don’t know what it is to die, but we in some way understand it by comparing it to sleep.  “But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.”  Or, in Stafford’s poem, old age is the winter of one’s life.  A fitting time to be musing life’s worth. 

 

             Art is different from advertising.  Poetry encourages us to find multiple levels of correlation in its metaphors; the images of advertising want to be unequivocal–a sports car equals sexual prowess; a brand of beer means popularity with peers; a particular watch, the symbol for success.  Poetry wants the audience to think, to perceive, to feel, to expand.  Advertising wants to limit our options, numb our ability to discern,…get us to buy.

  

FIRST DRAFT TO FINAL PIECE

            Notice the changes Stafford has written on the first draft and the difference between these and the finished poem.  Look for things an eight or nine year old would spot.  He changes “the mistakes” to “mistakes I have made.”  “The thoughts” to “my thoughts.”  “Efforts” becomes “hate or love.”  He adds, “I will listen to what you say.”  The last lines state, “If the river says anything, whatever it says is my answer.”  He rewrites this to: “What the river says, that is what I say.”  He seems to be making the words more definite.  When he says “mistakes I have made” and “my thoughts,” “he’s also taking ownership.  Is there anything else that you notice in the way it looks?

  

            The final poem is broken into two stanzas.  Stafford writes early in the morning.  I can picture him looking out his kitchen window at this frozen river just as the day starts to get light.  I’m not a morning person, and my thoughts anytime before 9AM are black.  That’s what I’m picking up on when he says:

   

            Others have come in their slow way into

            my thought, and some have tried to help

            or to hurt–ask me what difference

            their strongest love or hate has made.

            To me these are strong, bitter words.   He’s saying, “Ask me if I give a damn about anything or anybody.”  If I had written this I’d stop a minute, and think do I really mean that.  No, I do care about what someone thinks.  There’s a turning point in the poem.  If the first part is “ask me,”  the second is “I will listen.”  And to mark that, he adds a line; but more important, he separates one part from the other.  A theme is emerging, and Stafford is using form to accentuate the duality that is a part of that theme.  See the process at work?  He is reacting to the river; in that reaction he discovers someone important to himself; and now he’s fashioning the structure of the piece so it is even clearer to himself and to his reader. 

  

            Just as through the writing he comes to take ownership of his thoughts and his mistakes, so he is taking possession of his theme and framing it to best advantage.  That’s what writing, what poetry is all about.  Poetry, even free verse, has a device that prose doesn’t have.  Compare the last words of each line of the first draft to those of the final draft (by the way, three other drafts came in between). A major alteration the poet has made is in the line breaks.  Here is the poem again with comment.

  

                                    Some time when the river is ice ask me

 

 Here I would like to stop as I read the poem because it is the end of the line, but there’s no period so I am forced to go around the corner

  

                                    …Mistakes I have made.

  

Now I have my period, but can’t come to a complete stop because it’s not the end of the line. 

  

                                    …Ask me whether

                                    what I have done is my life. Others

                                    have  come in their slow way into

                                    my thought, and some have tried to help

                                    or to hurt–ask me what difference

                                    their strongest love or hate has made.

  

The lines pull me along, meandering as if following the turning course of a river.  Until we are at the turning point of the poem, then look what happens. 

  

                                    I will listen to what you say.

 

The line begins a sentence and ends with a period.  He is using the line almost like punctuation.  There’s only one other place where that happens.  The last line.  Listen…

  

                                    I will listen to what you say. 

                                    You and I can turn and look

                                    at the silent river and wait

  

We are on that meandering river again. 

 

  

                                    …We know

                                    the current is there, hidden; and there

                                    are comings and goings from miles away

                                    that hold the stillness exactly before us.

                                    What the river says,

  

Boom.

  

                                    that is what I say.

 

 Boom, boom!  Form following function.

 

            Truman Capote claimed to have written Breakfast at Tiffany’s in ten days, except for the last page, which took two months.  More specifically it was the punctuation of the last page that took two months.  He stated that punctuation is the shared rhythm between writer and reader.  He wanted that rhythm to end just right.  In a practical way that’s what Stafford is doing here.

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PRINCIPLE #4

August 10, 2008 by John

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY

 

Here’s how Principle #4 works.  Suppose you’re drawn to John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  You want to write a book about him, but the problem with this, and with any subject, is that it’s so broad it would take many lifetimes to write everything that could be said about him.  You are forced to be selective, but you have many choices.  Imagine these options as segments of a horizontal line.  You could write about the rise of Joseph Kennedy before Jack was born.  You could concentrate on the period through JFK’s graduation from Harvard.  There’s Kennedy, the naval hero.  The reckless, young Senator Kennedy.  The Presidential campaign. The first thousand days in office.  His assassination.  The Great Society.  Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy.  Ted Kennedy is good for several books; and now there’s a whole new generation–John Kennedy Jr–making the gossip columns.  Inevitably there is one aspect of this spectrum you are drawn to more than to others.  That will be your topic.  But realize each segment has a meaning for you, and you are choosing the one that is most significant to your own personal needs. 

           

JFK’s upbringing might represent how environment shapes one’s destiny.  His naval service, your need to find heros.  The assassination, how dreams fall apart.  You’re not conscious of the theme as you pick the topic; the reverse is true.  As you write, the theme emerges, and when it does you can use it to include or exclude events from all segments of the subject that enforce that theme.  It’s like doing a large pencil drawing.  You like the drawing well enough to get it framed.  At the frame shop as you pick out a mat you think: Parts of this drawing are better than others.  I’ll get a smaller mat than I need and move it around on the drawing so it frames the strongest elements and, if possible, excludes dead areas around the edges.  We can do the same thing with our writing.  Use a theme to frame the strong points and to exclude irrelevant ones.  There’s still infinite choice within a segment, and you need to ask yourself: Of the many possibilities , which scenes are most readily accessible for my reader to experience the story?  Use this as an additional selection criterion.

           

College freshmen say, “I understand plot, character, setting; but how do you arrive at the theme of a piece?”  I’ve devised this little formula to help.  Take the beginning of the work, the ending, any central symbol, and the title.  Put them into one sentence and you have the theme.  It works, because the beginning presents the conflict, the ending solves or comments on that conflict, a central symbol is a mirror of what the author thinks is significant, and the title is a last effort to point the reader in the right direction.  But, once you have this statement of theme what do you have?  A generalized conclusion, such as on the left side of the diagram. If Tolstoy, Bronte, James thought they could accomplish what they needed to in a sentence, why would they write thousands of pages instead.  Theme is a tool for the writer. 

 

PERFECTLY FRANK

           

Let’s try this principle out.  I was forced to watch a TV mini-series a couple years ago on Frank Sinatra.  I can just imagine someone in Hollywood coming up with this idea.  “Well use appropriate songs of his to underscore the different episodes, see.  Maybe we can even get an album out of this.”  Then some studio devil’s advocate counters, “Yeah, but he’s still alive and he’s trouble.”  To which the first person replies, “We’ll get his daughter to produce it, she’ll know how to handle her old man.”  Imagine you’re the writer, how would you present this subject?  The way it was done to start with young Sinatra growing up in Hoboken with a rather overriding mother.  Next he’s married to Nancy Sinatra, but his recording career is pulling him away from family life.  He then falls in love with Ava Gardner and gets into the movies.  There’s even a short scene or two of his brief marriage to Mia Farrell.  Where’s this going?  What kind of ending could you come up with.  Granted this biography is following the chronology of Sinatra’s life, but it seems to me the writer consciously or unconsciously has organized it around the women in his life.   Recognizing this, to get an ending consistent with this theme you would ask, besides his mother, his wife, his mistress, his other wives, what other women are there?         The actual series just trailed off.  But, I think the answer is, of course his daughters.  For one reason or another, his daughter, the producer, didn’t use this.  Perhaps she wanted to perpetuate the image that he’s still a romantic figure, or perhaps he wasn’t much of a father (the real subject, for her, which she prefers to keep hidden?). But, once a pattern starts to emerge it is a good idea to use it as an instrument for what to include or exclude. 

           

Often biography or non-fiction at first seem overpowering to the writer. The secret is to think of the book in terms of the reader.  Pick scenes that readers can experience, then pack other information into these scenes as secondary material (or simply drop the extra material, a reader can only absorb so much).  After you have done this see if a pattern isn’t emerging from these scenes, do a second cut of those scenes that don’t conform to this pattern.  I guarantee the task be more doable and the result be much more readable.


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SEARCH FOR MEANING

August 3, 2008 by John

 A GLORIOUS FEAST

 

In workshops, after participants write a scene from their  storyboards, I collect the papers and read them.  I apply a reality check.  You can do it for yourself with your own scenes.  Does the writing “show”–create experience you, as a reader, feel as if it is happening to you; or does the writing “tell” about what happened–you feel you are hearing it second hand.  It’s the difference between going to a movie or sports event, yourself, and listening to someone tell about one he or she attended.  Imagine a diagram on this page.  At the bottom left of the diagram are a bunch of dots that represent  experiences a person has in life.  The way our mind and language work is to generalize from these particular experiences.  Instead of carrying around the details our senses have felt, we now have converted these to conclusions based on those experiences; “Men are insensitive.” “Life is hard.” “It’s good to exercise.”  Not only do we want to reduce what happens to us to these generalities, but we also find this a convenient way to communicate these ideas to others.  So Person A communicates his or her conclusions to Person B.  Person B can either (1) accept what is said as true, (2) reject it as false, or (3) alter its meaning to something with which he or she can agree. An example of (3) is someone saying, “Life is hard.” That conclusion may be based on the fact that part of the world population doesn’t have enough food to get through the day.  Person B may agree, “Life is hard,” but by that understand, “I have to go out in the snow to get my morning newspaper.” 

  

Whether or not  Person B accepts, rejects, or alters what Person A communicates depends on how well these generalities fit Person B’s own set of life experiences.  If they match, Person B accepts them, if not Person B rejects or alters the meaning of these conclusions.  The trouble is, what do we tend to write about?  We search our experiences for things we feel are unique or on which we have some new perspective.  If they are unique, there won’t be corresponding experiences for our audiences, and they’ll be rejected or misunderstood…unless we can communicate those experiences themselves trusting our audience to draw the same kind of conclusions we have.  Besides increasing our chance of acceptance, this way of writing gives the reader an active role, which is flattering.  The writer and the reader are partners, collaborating. 

           

There’s a wonderful bonus.  Experience can be transmitted, not only to a reader we know, but also to people in other parts of the world, to grandchildren who have not yet been born, and to us by others who lived before we were born.  We can share experience with someone from thousands of years ago.  Whose play is Oedipus Rex, anyway?  Sophocles, the playwright could say, “That’s my play, I wrote it.”  The actors (especially before the days of the printing press) could claim, “No, it’s our play–we are the ones who put it on before an audience.”  The audiences could say, “This is our legend, you’ve just written it out or spoken the lines.”  And Freud twenty centuries later realizes, “This is an archetype of human relationships that belongs to all people no matter in what period of time they lived.” 

           

We all use many languages.  There is the language of science that describes what we know, and the language of poetry that deals with things we can’t entirely know–at least directly.  By its nature language gives pattern and order to chaos.  It’s graspable…and communicable; we share in it together with others, living and dead.  The great thing about literature is that our participation in it does not diminish another’s participation.  If I own a house, it means you don’t own that house.  But the same isn’t true of a story, play, or poem.  We can all take whatever we need from it.  In fact it may mean more to me as a reader in particular circumstances than it did to the person who just happened to write it. 

           

The Roman, Seneca, wrote, “Whatever has been well said by anyone is mine.”  The line between writing and actively reading a piece is thin.  We happened to learn to speak before we learned to read, to read before we learned to write, and consequently we feel more comfortable speaking than reading, more comfortable reading than writing.  But, that’s only a matter of practice.  Literature is a glorious feast, whose participants transcend the limits of place and time.  Whether we prepare the banquet, enjoy some or all of its dishes,  or do both, how can we turn our back on an invitation to be a part of it?

           

But, look back at what I’ve just said.  Just because you are presenting experiences rather than conclusions doesn’t mean you can’t influence those conclusions your readers make by what you include, what you exclude, and the order in which you present them (as we have seen with Newspaper Wars).  This is Principle #4.

 

Principle #4: FRAME.  A work’s opening and conclusion directly affect meaning.  Theme is determined by parameters a writer sets on the chain of reactions; it stems from the specific needs that compel us to write.  Exploit these needs.  Confront your fears. 

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MENTORS & MOTIVATION

July 13, 2008 by John

 

THE SHORT LIST

           

At seminars people ask for a bibliography for further reading, and I’ll give you a short one now.  There aren’t any writing books on the list for three reasons.  First, few have the scope and depth of the material you are listening to now.  Most address one or two needs well so you have to find the ones that address your concerns.

 

Secondly, why go to secondary sources, when the primary ones are so much better.  Once you know the six essential tools, read good writers for the best examples of how to execute them.  And third, go to life for your answers.  Don’t rely too much on how other writers present their material, no matter how good they are.  Find your own sources in reality and your own voice in re-creating them.

           

There are two essential, must-have, reference books:

 

The Chicago Manual of Style by the University of Chicago Press and

Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition).  These identify the standards of form and meaning for publishing today.

In addition I highly recommend six excellent works.  Each speaks particularly well to one of the six principles of the Lehman Method if you want a masterful example of each.

           

For Principle #1 there is A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. This is one of our great American plays.  Read it, even if you have seen various television productions and watch how the characters build in reaction to the simple events of the play–the promise of money, a pregnancy, the purchase of a house, a failed dream, standing up for yourself.

           

Raymond Carver spins characters like no other writer.  I read some writers, like John Cheever, and am paralyzed in awe by what they do.  Carver makes writing seem so accessible.  As I read Cathedral, a collection of his short stories, I can hardly wait to try to do the same thing he does in my work.  He plays up opposites in his characters as they spill out their lives in a scene or two.  His pieces are the essence of Principle #2.

           

For Principle #3 study Breathing Lessons.  I understand my life better through reading Anne Tyler than I do by living it.  As I follow Maggie in reliving her courtship at the funeral of a friend’s husband, then shooting forward to the events of her son’s disasters marriage as she tries to reconcile the separated couple, everything seems to come full circle in the course of one day.  The order in which events are presented to us, Principle #3,  builds layer upon layer of human richness.

           

For Principle #4 there’s My Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, a world in microcosm that is pleasing to the palate as well as to the eye.  Notice what he includes and what he excludes of daily life and how this satisfies a romantic need for both the author and for ourselves.  Boss by Mike Royko brings Richard J Daley and his Chicago to us carefully showing the power of such a man without turning him into a myth that can be simply admired or detested.  Both are shaped by theme that emerges from the material–Principle #4.

           

Ragtime by E.L Doctorow is an intricate example of Principle #5.  Not only do historic events mirror psychological changes in the characters but one of these characters–the little boy who is a stand in for Doctorow, himself–is fascinated by transformations and duplications of images (through such things as with photography and phonograph recordings).

           

Finally, Principle #6, a book that does all these things well is Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club.  As readers we are actively involved in coming to terms with the stories of three generations of women, and ultimately with ourselves.   This is a moving tour-de-force, that is better with each reading.  Like the poetic imagery of the oriental language The Joy Luck Club is a tapestry that draws us in and changes our perspective on the world when we depart.  It is a powerful example of Principle #6 for both men and women.

           

As writers we couldn’t have better teachers than these seven books.

 

WHATEVER WORKS

           

And now, eight no-brainers that just might make the difference between your feeling like writing or not feeling like writing.

           

1.  Question Assumptions.  You may believe you can’t write on demand or that you need quiet, time, a good computer or a place to write.  Perhaps you do.  Perhaps you don’t.  But wouldn’t it be a shame to not write because you were under a mistaken assumption that one of these was true, and it isn’t.  After fifteen years of commercial writing I have never seen an advertising piece be better because more time was allotted or great ideas restricted to the time when we are perfectly poised at a computer, well rested, all other responsibilities comfortably under control.  Which would you rather be: the harried housewife with two young children under foot or a retired man with the whole day free to write.  The second is more scary, there’s no excuses when you don’t write.  The first doesn’t have any excuses either.  Agatha Christie said, “The best time for planning a book is when you’re doing the dishes.”

           

2.  Dictate/Transcribe.  The first draft of this presentation was dictated.  I was visiting my mother in a nursing home twice a month and was having a hard time staying awake driving between Madison and Chicago.  I was bored with the radio and had listened to all the books on tape from the library.  One Sunday I thought I would dictate an outline to a portable tape recorder and found myself three hours later still chattering away into the microphone.  After a half dozen of these sessions I found a woman in the yellow pages who would transcribe the recordings on to computer disks.  There’s a difference between the spoken word and the written word that meant rewriting every sentence, but what a difference sitting down to a completed first draft compared to sitting down to a blank screen.

           

Driving jogging and biking are great activities to free the right side of your brain.  The left side is occupied sufficiently to allow the creative imagination to soar, unbridled.  It even worked for writing ads.  If I was stuck on a headline or tag line, I’d jump in the car and drive around town for ten minutes.  I always came back with a solution.

           

3. Change Locations.  That’s also a nice segue to this point.  I discovered one of the things I did not like about writing was being prisoner to a desk  writing about life, when the rest of the world was out enjoying it.  Though limited by my computer for writing, I take hard-copy to a near-by bookstore cafe, order coffee and cheese cake and start editing.  In the summer I go to the University of Wisconsin terrace overlooking Lake Mendota with poetry notebook or copy to be edited and enjoy the sun and a couple steins of beer.  It’s amazing how much I look forward to writing.