Tag: writing

Best of Butterfly Mind

June 7th, 2013

Today is the anniversary of my first post, One Last Move, on June 7, 2012 on Butterfly Mind. In that first post, and in many subsequent ones, I wrote about trying to find my way as an at-home mom when our children both went off to elementary school, leaving me alone in quiet, not for minutes but for hours, for the first time in 9 years. I didn’t know if I should pursue a new career, and if so, what would I do? Who would I be? A young friend in Blacksburg commented on one such searching post:

“For your main line of work, I would follow whatever you naturally gravitate toward when you feel the need to be productive.”

How very wise he was. Thank you Phil. You were right. I gravitate towards words when I want to be productive, and I did not see that at the time. When I thumb through old diaries, I realize I’ve gravitated towards writing all along. Every couple of years I express in those private pages my desire to be a writer. A desire that seemed so impractical and unattainable, I never gave it credence. Until this blog. Now, I’m building a writing practice, laying a foundation so that when the kids grow up and move away, I can move forward into a writing career. If that’s still what I want to do ten years from now.

To celebrate my first anniversary, I thought I’d serve up the year’s most popular posts. For those of you who have been around since the beginning, thank you. I am grateful for your support. For those of you who are new here, welcome. Perhaps this run-down will give you an idea of where to start and what to expect on Butterfly Mind. Thanks to all of you for your readership, and enjoy.

Top humor post: Lost Balls

Top memoir post: A Small Thing My Dad Never Knew

Top writing post: Why creative writing matters: new findings on the brain’s reaction to language

Top graph(s): Snow Day Fatigue

Top photo essay: When nature is allowed to be nature

Top book review: Wild: A Book Review in Four Words

and

Top parenting (and most popular overall) post: Dear Diary,
Are you a pantser?

May 23rd, 2013

I heard a term yesterday for the type of writer I am: a pantser. This week I have been trying unsuccessfully to revise a growing pile of manuscripts. My critique partner, critique group, and husband have been kind enough to read drafts and give feedback, and now it’s up to me rewrite. Which I don’t want to do. Revising is excruciating compared to putting words on the page in the first place. And I think that may be because I’m a pantser.

“The term for writers who write by the seat of their pants, that don’t outline from the get-go, they’re called ‘pantsers,’ right?” – James Monohan, The Narrative Breakdown Revision Techniques 1 podcast

Outliners, as the name suggests, outline their work before they begin. This gives them the benefit of structuring their work, of knowing what they want to say, when they want to say it, and ultimately, what their point will be when they sit down to write their piece. They have a dress maker’s form dialed to all the right measurements, they have their design drawn, their fabrics selected. They know the color scheme, and they know their colors work together. They have an entire outfit in their mind’s eye before they begin to sew, and all they then have to do is dress their form.

Pantsers, on the other hand, just start writing. As James Monohan and Cheryl Klein laugh about in their excellent podcast, pantsers don’t know where they’re going or where they’re going to end up. Pantsers run on the white heat, the excitement, the thrill of discovery. As a designer, a pantser would wander around a fabric store, her heart fluttering with each new suede, or silk, and she would buy every fabric she likes the texture of, or the color. She doesn’t think about whether the fabrics will actually work together. She knows she might want to make a skirt and top, but hey, it could be a dress too. When she gets back to her studio, she dumps her haul on the table and designs by feel, each placement of fabric a new discovery.

Mononhan and Klein discuss the benefits and downfalls for both types of writers in their podcast – by following a rigid plan, outliners may may miss out on the thrill of discovery that pantsers so frequently enjoy, and by writing without a plan, pantsers may end up with a mess of sentences that are great on their own, but don’t harmonize as a coordinated ensemble.

That latter – a mess of words that don’t work towards a unified goal – brings me to my ultimate point, which is that, as a pantser, I often don’t have an ultimate point. Each critique returns with, “This is great, but I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. You’ve got a lot of directions you can go, but what is your goal with this? What do you want the reader to walk away with?” And I realize that I have lots of goals, and like most writers, I don’t want to part with any of them. I don’t want to put that skirt back just because I don’t have anything to go with it. The designer doesn’t want to ditch the suede even though it doesn’t work with the silk in her garment.

One of my New Years resolutions this year was to update my wardrobe so that my closet is filled with timeless pieces, so that I can better coordinate my clothes and feel less like a raggedy college kid and more like a polished woman. I have come a long way with that goal, and consequently, I feel confident and put together when I walk out the door. I want my writing to feel that way, too. Though I hate to cut this paragraph, or that sentence, doing so will make the piece more confident and put together if I edit towards a coordinated ensemble. And then, if I am still attached, like I am to a favorite blouse, I can pair the cut words with new thoughts to craft another design.

Luckily, Monohan and Klein gave some great advice on how to revise towards a polished, put together piece, even if you’re a pantser. I found two strategies that will help get me started:

1. If you are not an outliner, write by the seat of your pants to get your first draft. Once your ideas are on the page, go back and write an outline to help you better organize the construction of the finished piece. The outline will help you with the flow, find gaps that need to be filled, and see superfluous paragraphs that can be saved for another piece.

2. If you feel like you’ve got a lot of great ideas going on, but are struggling with cutting, or figuring out what your most important takeaway is, or what your point is, write a letter to a friend describing your piece – what sparked it to begin with, what your goals were in exploring the ideas, what your story is about, what you love about it, which parts you know aren’t working, and what you want the reader to walk away with. You don’t have to send the letter, but the act of writing it will help you figure out your goals and how to accomplish them.

Unfortunately, even though I am a step closer to starting my revisions (I listened to the podcast, right?), I am avoiding them by writing this instead. So I ask you, dear readers and writers, are you an outliner or a pantser? How do you think your writing style affects your feelings about rewriting, and how do you approach revisions? This is new territory for me as I transition from blogging (where, I admit, I publish first drafts) to submitting work for publication (where revision is critical). Give me a pep talk. Give me advice. And please feel free to link to articles that have helped you out. Thanks!

In The Narrative Breakdown, Cheryl Klein, James Monohan, and other guest co-hosts discuss storytelling tips and techniques of interest to any writer, student, or fan of quality creative writing, screenwriting, playwriting, fan fiction, English literature, etc.
Completing work: the submission process.

May 7th, 2013

Work never sent out is never finished. Hidden from the world it remains safely (and sadly) on the writer’s shelf. – Priscilla Long

I wrote recently that I altered my writing practice one morning – I sat by a window and penned thoughts on paper rather than staring into a pixelated screen and clacking keys on a keyboard – and the shift electrified me. It shuffled my synapses and portended a heightened level of productivity.

Since that day, I shifted my focus to not just producing more and more new work, but to doing something with all the words I’ve already written. I bought a copy of the 2013 Writer’s Market and devoured the first 180 pages in one sitting. I learned about query and cover letters, how to format a manuscript, how to negotiate contracts, track submissions, build an author platform, use LinkedIn. Then I scanned 400 pages of submission guidelines for consumer magazines, trade journals, and writing contests, highlighted titles that my work might fit, and marked pages with paper clips.

I browsed our library’s periodicals and checked out back issues of magazines to familiarize myself with the work they print. I ordered introductory issues to The Sun and Creative Nonfiction, journals our library doesn’t carry. I studied content on online journals like Brevity, who publishes brief, concise literary nonfiction (less than 750 words) and is happy to work with budding authors.

Then? I began the work of submitting. And have reaped the heightened level of productivity my pen and ink session activated. In the past two weeks I have submitted five manuscripts to online and print magazines, two to my critique group, and one to a blog I follow. And I’ve got four more queued up.

Meanwhile, I check email obsessively, wondering about a manuscript I sent out nearly 6 weeks ago. Waiting for the note that says, “We’d like to publish your work.” To my surprise, the first email I received was not about that 6-week old submission. It was about a piece I sent barely a week ago.

And it was a rejection. I received my first rejection this morning. I felt strangely calm about it as I entered today’s date in the “date returned” column of my submission spreadsheet. Maybe because I’ve known all along that this is part of the process. Writers probably write as much about rejection as they do about writer’s block, and before I began my submission process, I read a particularly entertaining piece by Alexis Paige on The Rumpus – Rejection Sucks and Then You Die: How to Take a Dear Sad Sack Letter (and Shove it). Paige, and every writer I’ve ever read, talked to, shared a critique room with, has prepared me for this first of what will be many rejections.

So though my heart flutters with every new email I receive, now dreading the next “So sorry,” rather than anticipating the “Congratulations” I originally hoped for, I will keep submitting. Today, I will buy envelopes so that I can mail a manuscript to a publication that does not accept submissions online or by email. I will continue through my queue.

I will complete my work.
Why creative writing matters: new findings on the brain’s reaction to language

May 3rd, 2013

Sticks and stones may break your bones, and words may too, it turns out. At least as far as your mind is concerned. I won’t write a grisly description of a bone breaking – I did enough of that with tooth drilling yesterday – but according to cognitive research explored on NPR yesterday, if you read vivid language describing the action of say, a femur splintering, your mind doesn’t just see the words and paint a visual picture, your brain simulates the experience. If the writing is good, you might hear the femur crack, see a shard slice through skin, sense a shiver in your own femur. Feel your stomach turn.

This research has powerful implications for writers. It gives us insight into how descriptive writing works, and why it is effective.

Until the 1990s, linguists believed that language was processed by a discrete region of the brain, a language “module” that humans evolved uniquely, since no other species shows an aptitude for language like mankind does. But in the 1990s, scientists who wanted to find this module in the brain found something else entirely when they used functional MRIs to observe the brain’s response to words. They found that when a human hears language, a discrete region of the brain does not respond. The entire brain responds. As Benjamin Bergen and Jon Hamilton described in the NPR piece,

If someone read a sentence like, “the shortstop threw the ball to first base,” parts of the brain dedicated to vision and movement would light up.

“The way that you understand an action is by recreating in your vision system what it would look like… and recreating in your motor system what it would be like to be that shortstop, to have the ball in your hand and release it,” Bergen says.

Your vision system and your motor system react to language. In other words, as Bergen explains, “When you encounter words describing a particular action, your brain simulates the experience.”

This is the key element that got me excited as a writer and a reader – that language creates a virtual reality. They didn’t go into it on the show, but presumably when your mind interprets words, it doesn’t just form images and motor reactions, but good writing may also trigger physiological responses, such as the release of adrenaline or endorphins. Like when Shirley Jackson terrifies me, makes my heart race, and triggers the fight (keep reading) or flight (hide the book behind others on the shelf) response with The Haunting of Hill House. Or when Natalie Goldberg does the opposite – relaxes my muscles, lowers my blood pressure, and cloaks me in calm – with her gentle language in Long Quiet Highway.

So what does this mean for creative writers? These findings are the essence of the author’s adage, “Show don’t tell.” They explain why showing works and telling doesn’t. When we tell a story in the form of “this happened, and then this happened,” we’re not giving the reader much to work with.

Alice went to the window and got mad when she saw Tom had showed up.

What experience can the brain simulate from that? Not much. “Went” and “got mad” don’t trigger specific images that give the mind traction for launching a virtual reality. But if we use strong verbs, if we show Alice’s stride, if we describe her anger with a facial expression:

Alice strode to the window and scowled when the chauffeur opened the car door and Tom stepped out.

The reader’s brain has specific images to work with, like “strode” and “scowled,” that conjure not just visual cues, but emotional cues as well. The reader will likely experience a more vivid simulation with the second sentence. Maybe there will even be a reaction – a little fluttering in her heart as her mind braces for a confrontation.

From a big picture standpoint, these findings are thrilling to me because they show why literature moves us, why we crave it, why we are driven to create and consume it. Language is not just for communicating, as bees communicate the location of flowers through the waggle dance. Human language is also for evoking feeling, for connecting us through common crises, for teaching us how others have lived. For suggesting significance beneath the surface of it all.

As the NPR piece explored, the brain can make sense of something that doesn’t exist – a flying pig, in their example – by extrapolating and inferring meaning through language cues. With literature, and creative writing, we are able to simulate experiences the reader has never had, or trigger ones that she has. If we write well, we are able to create a virtual reality that links a 21st century executive with the struggles of a 19th century slave, or a modern 7 year old with a pioneer prairie girl, or a gregarious extrovert with the inner workings of an introvert.

If we use language well, we make it possible to understand each other. We transmit an awareness. If the reader’s mind feels that femur splintering, she will have compassion.

If we write well, we share the human experience. If we write well, we gift the gift of empathy.

Imagine A Flying Pig: How Words Take Shape in the Brain by Jon Hamilton, May 2, 2013 On National Public Radio’s Morning Edition
Stitching Sentences

April 24th, 2013

Instead of staring into a cold glow of pixelated light this morning, I kept the computer shuttered away in its desk and sat by the window, where blackness transitioned to grey, and grey blushed warm and pink as dawn approached. I turned on a lamp, pulled Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones from the shelf, and folded my legs underneath me on the couch to write, pen in hand, ink on paper, in a marbled composition book.

I went to bed last night not knowing what I’d write about today, and I woke up in the same state of emptyheadedness. I didn’t know much, but I did know that staring at the same computer screen I stare at every morning at 6am wasn’t going to inspire me. I needed to change things up, to disrupt my routine. To jibe.

While I waited for my coffee, I flipped the pages of Goldberg’s book till I found an exercise that looked easy. Page 87. Lots of empty space with two lists of words. One list nouns. One list verbs. Sweet! I like lists.

The exercise, entitled “The Action of a Sentence,” instructs you to fold a piece of paper in half. I did this in my composition book. On the left side, write a list of ten nouns. I wrote:

dogwood
ink
martini
candelabra
shoot
goggles
sapphire
butterfly
Dutch oven
fingernail clipping

On the right, write a list of ten verbs. Goldberg actually instructs you to “Think of an occupation; for example a carpenter, a doctor, a flight attendant,” and then write verbs that accompany that occupation. I missed that part though (remember, no coffee yet?) and just wrote some verbs:

jostle
drape
billow
slice
sizzle
nick
stitch
thrust
peel
jibe

Then? Put your nouns and verbs together in sentences, and voilà! You are writing.

A stiff wind peeled fresh dogwood petals from their branches.

With velvet ink, she stitched sentences onto paper.

The cold martini billowed warmth into her belly.

The candelabra draped the room in light, and in shadows.

Chartreuse shoots sliced the black earth, stretched toward the light, and unfurled triumphant cotyledons.

A butterfly jibed, frantic to find shelter as the storm gathered strength.

She thrust the Dutch oven into the coals, angry that he had swindled her. Furious that she had misjudged.

Sunlight sizzled on a sapphire sea.

Her goggles were jostled in the maelstrom of elbows and feet, already leaking two minutes into the open water swim.

Staring out the window, he nicked his knee, tap, tap, tapping it with a sharp, dried fingernail clipping.

This 72 inch geographic relocation, from sitting at the computer to sitting by the window, and the changes that resulted from it – natural light and an incandescent lamp; a paperback (not electronic) writing book, opened to page 87, tented on the couch; my hand moving across paper; lists of nouns and verbs, and the physical action of stitching them together to sew sentences – has electrified me. Has shuffled my synapses.

I feel a high level of productivity coming on.

Goldberg sees writing as a practice that helps writers comprehend the value of their lives. The advice in her book, provided in short, easy-to-read chapters with titles that reflect the author’s witty approach (“Writing Is Not a McDonald’s Hamburger,” “Man Eats Car,” “Be an Animal”), will inspire anyone who writes—or who longs to. (from Natalie Goldberg’s website)
Sometimes, pretty is enough

April 22nd, 2013

From the podium, I looked out into an audience of about 60 people. Their eyes focused on me, and from their facial expressions – a smile in the second row, fascination in the fourth – I saw that they were absorbed. Nobody sipped coffee, or coughed. Nobody shifted position. I continued reading.

“The air was heavy, thick with heat and mud. We skirted exposed oyster beds in the shallow water, moving slowly enough that we could hear the oysters snap and pop.”

My mouth was dry, but I was reading better than all of my practice sessions, and I didn’t want to throw my momentum by taking a sip of water. All weekend I tried to suppress my nerves as we cheered our son’s team at a soccer tournament in Charlotte. I did not succeed in hiding my stress from my husband, though, and he asked what was wrong.

“I’m just nervous about my reading on Sunday.” I attempted a smile.

“I wondered,” he said. “You seemed really nonchalant about the whole thing.”

And I was nonchalant. At first. Talking in front of a crowd doesn’t bother me. I used to give informational meetings several times a week in front of total strangers when I worked for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. But as the Valley Voices reading approached, and I practiced my piece over and over and over again, finding another fault with each and every read-through, I realized that reading your own work, for which you’ve mined every word, for which you’ve excavated your soul, is a very different thing than giving a sales pitch for your employer. Sharing your own work on a blog already makes you feel vulnerable, even though you get to be secreted away in the privacy of your home when others read it. So to stand in front of a crowd and expose your creation out loud? It makes you feel squishy and naked, with every flabby flaw exposed.

My husband asked, “Why are you so nervous now, when you weren’t before?”

“Because I heard the other writers read at rehearsal, and they were really good.” I studied the cobalt blues in the hotel hallway carpet. “I don’t have any confidence in mine.” I didn’t say it, but I thought, maybe mine was was the only nonfiction submission they received. Maybe that’s how it slipped in.

“You’re just sick of looking at it, and you’re nervous about reading. Don’t beat yourself up.” He hugged me. “It was selected, Andrea. The judges liked it. That’s why you’re there.”

My mouth was parched. Only two pages to go. I felt a little faint. I looked up again and saw the same rapt attention. I had passed the place where I thought the piece sagged, and the audience was still with me. Their silence was electric. I could feel that I was reading well. Thank God. It didn’t suck.

When I finished, I croaked out a small “Thank you,” then sat in my chair, quaking, relieved that I was done. I was able to enjoy the other writers’ work, and was grateful for the beauty in their poetry, and the laughter they surprised out of me with their humor.

After the reading, I was speaking with one of the judges, thanking her for reading all of our work, when a woman tapped my shoulder and told me, “I loved your piece. I was right there with you. I could smell those marshes, and I’ve never been there.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much for telling me that.” I beamed at her.

Later, one of the organizers of the event gave me a big smile and told me I had read well.

“Thank you, Jane! My God, I was so nervous. I couldn’t believe it even made it in.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t have a point! It’s just pretty. No tension, no drama, no climax.” None of the elements of a successful story.

She looked surprised. “It doesn’t have to have all of that. I was with you on that boat, I was engaged the entire time. I could hear the motor, I could smell the marsh. I experienced that boat ride with you. We all did.”

On the way home, I mulled the problems I had seen in my piece. I painted a picture, yes, but is setting enough without a story? Is “pretty” enough without a punch at the end? I chewed on Jane’s words, “It doesn’t have to have all that.”

And then, I thought about visual art. I pictured nudes reclining, and a still life of golden pears, and how the beauty in well-rendered scenes moves me. I thought about Van Gogh’s oil painting of a café terrace at night. Its rich blues and vibrant yellows, the halos of the stars, the luminescence of light from the cafe spilling onto the dark cobbled street. There is an inherent tension between the welcoming café glow and the inky darkness of night, a drama in the contrasts, if you really want to analyze it. But mostly, I just find the painting pretty. There is a beauty in it that doesn’t need a story. A beauty in it – the contrasts of light and dark, of blue and yellow, a couple walking toward the cafe, a triangle of green fir on the edge of the painting – that is a story.

It occurred to me then that with all the ugliness in the world around us, sometimes, pretty is enough.

The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night, c.1888 by Vincent van Gogh