WriteSpa – An Oasis for Writers

For many years, every morning I write down three phrases that I call my ‘daily happinesses.’ These are simple – usually appealing – images that help me peek into another, more objective, reality.

In a way, they are also writing prompts. Each one of these little phrases conjures a vignette, a mood, a story, a person. For example: “Planning for a garden of rare and wild roses.” “Penguins diving into the sea.” “The silence before applause.”

When I was in college back in the seventies, I vividly remember stumbling across this paragraph, written by Sylvia Plath in Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams:

“How I envy the novelist! I imagine her… pruning a rosebush with a large pair of shears, adjusting her spectacles, shuffling about among teacups, humming, arranging ashtrays or babies, absorbing a slant of light, a fresh edge to the weather, and piercing, with a kind of modest, beautiful x-ray vision, the psychic interiors of her neighbors – her neighbors on trains, in the dentist’s waiting room, in the corner teashop. To her, this fortunate one, what is there that isn’t relevant! Old shoes can be used, doorknobs, air letters, flannel nightgowns, cathedrals, nail varnish, jet planes, rose arbors, and budgerigars; little mannerisms – the sucking at a tooth, the tugging at a hemline – any weird or warty or fine or despicable thing. Not to mention emotions, motivations – those rumbling, thunderous shapes. Her business is Time, the way it shoots forward, shunts back, blooms, decays, and double-exposes itself. Her business is people in Time. And she, it seems to me, has all time in the world. She can take a century if she likes, a generation, a whole summer. I can take about a minute.”

For me, reading this paragraph was a revelation. Writing furiously at the time, both novels and poetry, I knew in an instant what she meant. Every single detail in life – doorknobs, the tugging at a hemline – is relevant to a novelist.

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Fun Writing Practice

Writing prompts are more than just a way to get you started. They are small awarenesses that keep you alive to the subtle qualities of writing fiction. Just as on the stage of a play, every prop is relevant to the action, characters, and dialogue, so every detail in a novel is relevant. It matters.

It also inspires.

Come up with a few of your own. Simply observe the folded sheets, or the curled up cat, or the sleet at the window, or the quirky smile of a friend, and write it down. You might be amazed at the story that surrounds an everyday image regarded in a different light.

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Daily happinesses

• fresh pineapple in the middle of winter
• Friday night
• snow crystals blowing off trees in the sun
• beauty
• a noodle shop in Hong Kong

WriteSpa – An Oasis for Writers

When I moved to England at age eleven I remember being amused by the amount of conversation people spent discussing the weather. The reason was that it hardly ever seemed to change. The weather was pretty much misty and drizzly and sometimes it might rain harder, other times it might be so damp it just felt like rain … I think in the seven years I lived there, I saw a cloudless sky perhaps twice. And yet every rain seemed different. That difference was in myself, not in the weather.

I tend to love rainy days. They instill in me a feeling of coziness, of stories, of Sussex. Firesides. Long walks through the forest, discovering wildlife, the gentle patter on leaves. Bluebells by the brook. Yellow raincoats and Wellington boots.

When you’re writing a description, you’re trying to evoke a mood around whatever it is you’re describing. Metaphors help, and so do adjectives. In this week’s writing practice, you’re going to use weather as the backdrop for the mood you’re trying to evoke.

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Fun Writing Practice

Describe a thunderstorm from the point of view of someone who is going mad (think King Lear!)

Do not describe the person, or going mad, and don’t use any personal pronouns.

Now describe the same thunderstorm from the point of view of someone who is on their way to meet their true love. Again, don’t talk about this person, or love, or include any action: just describe the thunderstorm so that it appears exciting, passionate, inspiring …

If you’d like to choose a different kind of weather, by all means do so. For instance, a blizzard can be described as terrifying or cozy depending on the mood you’re trying to evoke. Even a hot, still summer afternoon can seem sinister if done well; Raymond Chandler comes to mind.

A spring dawn can be bittersweet and nostalgic or filled with anticipation and delight, depending on whether the clouds are thickening and eclipsing the sunshine or they’re tinged with pink and gold. A breeze can be snapping or balmy. Stars can seem lonely or twinkling.

Have fun with this weather practice – you’ll find it helps in mastering a mood in your story or essay. You may also find it helps you master your own mood.

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Daily Happinesses

• getting into a warm car on a cold night

• realizing that less is more: clearing the clutter

• heavy velvet curtains

• the blueness of the sky against newly fallen snow

• sweeping away the cobwebs

WriteSpa – An Oasis for Writers

I love conclusions. I remember a friend saying that she dreaded coming to the final chapters of a novel because she couldn’t bear the story to end. I’m the opposite: I love the moment the story draws to a close; the conflict over; the exhausting seeking ended; the relationship resolved; the tears drying; the murderer found…

Even in expository or other non-fiction writing I enjoy coming to the end more than I enjoy savoring each sentence and mulling over concepts. Most of the time, I’d rather the imagery and ideas be summarized. This is partly because I’m a fast, impatient reader. I tend to grasp concepts quickly, and think I understand more than I actually do. I try to slow down by reading stories and books that intrigue me – usually history or philosophy. Still, the conclusion is where I land most happily.

I think the purpose of a good conclusion is to give every reader with a fulfilled sense of satisfaction.

A conclusion is the writer’s bridge to the reader’s own life.  If you haven’t in some way grabbed the reader by the lapels and connected with them, either through ideas, emotional content, character, or intriguing thought, then you’ve missed an opportunity. The conclusion needs to remind readers that they and you are connected, even if it’s by briefly taking them back over the story or the essay they just read.

Your conclusion can be more creative than you realize. Don’t just repeat the thesis statement or end with the classic fairy-tale line of “They lived happily ever after.” For example, after a couple of years of romantic, political, and social intrigue, the lovable Phineas Finn in Anthony Trollope’s eponymous novel is forced to return home to Ireland and his abandoned fiancée. She has no clue of the depth of passion and ambition Phineas has experienced, but the reader has, and really doesn’t know how he will tolerate the peace, poverty, and boredom of going back home to a pretty, witless young girl. But at the very end of the novel, because of the friends he made while in high places, he gets offered a fairly good job with a decent salary, and he realizes nothing can prevent his marriage any longer:
“But I have been making up my mind to wait ever so long,” said Mary.
“Then your mind must be unmade,” said Phineas.
What was the nature of the reply to Lord Cantrip the reader may imagine, and thus we will leave our hero an Inspector of the Poor Houses in the County of Cork.

Although you can’t introduce a new topic, or characters, or concepts in the conclusion, you can push your way into a broader view of an issue, or point out why the purport of your story or essay matters. Here’s the end of The Proud Tower, a history by one of the greatest writers of history of all time, Barbara Tuchman: The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty, and dark reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other’s company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, “With emotion, to the man I used to be.”

You almost don’t have to read the book to know what it was all about!

Here’s another one that takes my breath away with its incisive conclusion of one of most profound explorations of the essence of poetry and meaning: Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield: Yet all conclusions of this nature could be no more than subjective shadows of the forces themselves, of the two living realities, which can actually be known, once our intellect has brought us to the point of looking out for them; being themselves neither subjective nor objective, but as concrete and self-sustaining in every way as the Sun and the Moon – which may well be their proper names.

Did you read Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome? What a hilarious adventure down the Thames that was, that ends thus:
“Well,” said Harris, reaching his hand out for his glass, “we have had a pleasant trip, and my hearty thanks for it to old Father Thames – but I think we did well to chuck it when we did. Here’s to Three Men well out of a Boat!”
And Montmorency, standing on his hind legs before the window, peering out into the night, gave a short bark of decided concurrence with the toast.

As I said earlier, your conclusion should leave your reader feeling satisfied and glad that they read all the way to the end. So that’s the concept behind conclusions – now for the ‘how-to’. Here are some suggestions for writing an appealing conclusion:

• Refer to the introductory paragraph or to the basic theme of your story.
• End with a provocative insight or intriguing quotation.
• Inspire a course of action, a solution to an issue, or a suggestion.
• Point out possible consequences, or even end with a moral or a warning.
• Evoke vivid imagery.
• Futurize – describe how the events made a difference.

Try NOT to:

• End with the same thesis statement you started out with, without using what you built on in the essay to expand on it. Worse: don’t state your thesis for the first time in the conclusion.
• Introduce a new idea or subtopic; and do not introduce a new storyline or character in the final paragraph.
• Don’t apologize: “I’m not an expert, but…” or “Others may disagree with me, but…”
• In fact, needless to say J, avoid all unnecessary fluff like: “in conclusion” or “in summary.”
• Attempt to make up for a thin storyline or an incomplete essay by cramming in too much information at the end.
• Make emotional appeals that have not been established earlier.
• Include information that should be in the story or paper.

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Writing practice:

Write a one-paragraph conclusion to a story that you haven’t written. You’ll need to resolve the story you’ve imagined. Without reiterating the tale, or summarizing, you need to make the gist of the tale clear. If you would rather play around with non-fiction, write the conclusion to an expository essay that you have NOT written. For example, you could write a concluding paragraph for a mythical essay on “Why Using Tact is Important in Relationships.” Here’s an example of a simple conclusion:

“If Sophie had spoken gently to her cousin, they might still be friends, and Thanksgiving would not have been awkward. The importance of using tact even when speaking the truth cannot be underestimated.”

As always, try doing this exercise daily for a week – concluding a different story or essay each day. You’ll be amazed how much easier it gets as you loosen up your conclusion-writing muscles and start to enjoy the freedom of concluding a story without worrying how you got there. It can be a lot of fun.

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Daily Happinesses

• polar bears
• singing ‘Summertime’ in the middle of winter
• sunset over mountains and darkening the valley
• freshly filed and painted finger nails
• good newspaper stories

WriteSpa – An Oasis for Writers

We had a good class today – at least it was better than I expected, given that it was the first English class after the holiday break and I figured the students wouldn’t be in the groove yet. I certainly wasn’t.

I thought I’d begin with a persuasive writing exercise, since there’s nothing like a good debate to chase away winter blahs. My biggest challenge was making sure that I had a pocketful of topics the students could choose from in case they themselves gave me blank stares and said, “I can’t think of anything.” Most topics I came up with were pretty dull (the old “should students be required to wear uniforms” or “do teachers assign too much homework.” But then I had the brilliant notion of contacting teacher friend Linda Aragoni. This is some of what she wrote me:

“You basically have your entire curriculum to draw on. Your students don’t have to write on something you taught, only about something related to reading, writing, listening, speaking. I think all you need is a way to start students thinking about topics that people really discuss. You can throw in some odd topics that people are not discussing but should just to make things interesting.”

What I gleaned from her response was the wise reminder to use the students’ own energy to elicit prompts and arguments. As any martial arts teacher will tell you, the trick is to use your opponents’ energy to throw them over your shoulder. Teens love debating. They love to argue. They’re opinionated, sweet, confused, purposeful, and have a strong desire to learn, to be better at something, to impress, to be inwardly quiet, to be socially connected. I love these kids, and admire them enormously. Sometimes I think there is no harder time in their whole lives than this strange process of growing up.

I presented the persuasive writing process, and showed them a bit about how to organize the essay – and then we moved onto prompts. As students suggested topics, I wrote them on the board. Interestingly, in the beginning, the strongest voices advocated for debates on pro-choice, assisted suicide, and illegal immigrants. They began debating even before we’d broken into teams, and tempers began to flare. Fascinating.

Loved it.

Eventually, we began to get more personal. Using Linda’s guides, I suggested my favorite: “Will texting destroy civilization?” They had quite an argument around that one, and it was definitely a favorite for a while. Then, of course, definitions came into play: What do we mean by texting? What do we mean by civilization? What do we mean by destroy?

In the end the most votes were cast in favor of the simplest prompt of all: “Should students be allowed to wear pajama bottoms to school?”

I asked them to draw a line and to write ‘no’ at one end and ‘yes’ at the other. They could be somewhat in the middle if they wished. I then separated the nos and the yeses into two groups and they gathered in opposite corners of the room to come up three arguments to support their position.

When they were done, I pointed out that no one can ever win an argument by simply stating their opinion, no matter how many supporting arguments, facts, policies, values, or statistics they have to back them up. They also have to refute their opponents’ arguments. This we did next; taking turns as best we could, so that each side could hear the opposing viewpoints and supporting arguments, and refuting them with arguments of their own. I can’t say that it was a mellow class, but it sure was fun to watch these kids go at it. You’d think that wearing pajama bottoms – or not – was as vital an issue as global warming or peace in the Middle East.

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Writing Practice

Are you frustrated by something in your life – something personal? Something you wish was different, better, more interesting?

Do you find yourself having silent, made-up conversations in the car with someone you can’t seem to ‘get through’ to?

Figure out the root of that frustration – whether it’s the lack of sharing housework or an employee who always comes to work late – and distill the frustration into one sentence. Then write your argument out as though it really is the most important discussion in the world. Be logical, clear, unemotional. “The dishes need to be washed, because if they are not rats and insects will take over the house.” Be logical. Be reasonable. Be detached – do not use “I” or “me.” Then think up your opponent’s view and address it. “It’s true some people say they are too busy to wash the dishes, but eventually if the dishes aren’t clean there won’t be any to use, so the time will have to be spent in any case…” something like that.

You’ll find an amazing clearing of your head in addressing something annoying or even heart-breaking in this detached, clear way – and who knows! You might even be able to quietly and reasonably argue your way into a better relationship around the topic.

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Daily happinesses

• dipping your bare feet into an icy stream in the middle of winter

• not spending money

• climbing through the cloud forests of the Andes

• homemade  minestrone soup

• a hot bath late in the afternoon

WriteSpa – An Oasis for Writers

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a peculiar one. Some of my friends are in Florida, basking in the sunshine. Our president is on beautiful Oahu, where I love to imagine him in peaceful sunshine, with the trade winds to soothe and rejuvenate. I have friends from long ago who still gather every year at the castle they own on the west coast of Scotland. Still others are stacking wood for their wood stoves and cozying up in intimate family togetherness. Others are partying and feasting in the city.

What are you doing?

What do you wish you were doing?

It may be just too hard to write this week. This feels like an out-of-kilter time, this week just before the New Year kicks in, and before we’re back to the routine of daily life.

So instead of writing, try this instead:

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Writing Practice

Collect some magazines, catalogues, or holiday cards – ones with lots of photographs of things like country homes, city fun, architecture, food, people, vacations, gardens, sports.

Sit at a comfy spot with scissors, glue, and a great big piece of cardstock paper. Begin cutting out all those photos that appeal to you – the ones that jump out at you. Is it the blue of a Caribbean beach? Buttery suede boots striding along a city sidewalk? A chocolate cake? Whatever it is, cut it out and place it (don’t glue yet) on your backing. When you’ve cut plenty of pictures and they’re piled high in front of you, begin arranging them. Try to make a cohesive picture rather than random placement. See what emerges as you play with the images. What is interesting to me is how unique my selection and outcome is – I always imagine that everyone would select the same photographs as me, but that’s not how this exercise works. It’s actually a visualization of how you see yourself and you are creating a world that, in some form or other, heals, encourages, and inspires.

Enjoy the process – and then glue the result so you can look at it again, especially next year, at this same time.

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Seven Happinesses

• playing cards on a train

• the smell of fresh ground dark roast coffee

• guests washing dishes

• doing one’s duty

• Kate

• lying on the warm sand

• ginger lemon tea