Of course I don’t live in a
castle. I live in an old house on a
country road. It’s not as old as a castle and we have central heat and indoor
plumbing. I’ve always been pretty fond
of indoor plumbing and wouldn’t want to be without it. It’s
such a long walk across the back field to the woods that I don’t think I’d get
very much writing done without at least a half bath. King Arthur could use the
castle window, but my wife would be aghast if I tried that.
Real writers begin their
task by constructing an outline, often before writing the first sentence of the
story. I usually write the last sentence
first. Or begin somewhere in the middle.
Or just think about it all day. Real
writers limit their expository paragraphs, check their facts, use that Thessa
thing and a dictionary. Some proceed to
write in a straight line. But I never
check anything and don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time. No one ever corrects me. My facts are either flawless or simply
convincing. Or I don’t have any readers.
Real writers have an
editor to spruce up their prose. I read
my stuff to my wife’s dog and usually don’t get an argument from her. I thought twice before writing the last
sentence because I don’t want to be accused of animal mental cruelty. I’ve always had a feeling the damned dog
wouldn’t testify favorably on my behalf.
Murphy envies any attention I get from my wife and she follows me everywhere,
as if her assignment was to watch me like a hawk. She’s not much of an editor, however. For a Springer, she’s barely
literate.
Real writers use proper
punctuation and don’t write run-on sentences.
I don’t know anything about punctuation but I just love run-on sentences
because they’re so efficient and I don’t need to add extra pronouns or think up
synonyms to avoid repeats and I can forget all those silly rules that Sister
Clementia taught me back in fifth grade and better known writers than me don’t
seem to worry about it so why should I.
Real writers are
famous. Now, there I come closer to the
definition. For I am indeed famous, if
only a tiny bit. I take my articles down
to the copy shop and have hundreds made.
At one time I stuffed them in the mail boxes of unsuspecting residents
up and down the road. I stopped the practice after a run-in with the U.S.
Postal Service. Last week I decided to hand deliver my masterpieces by knocking
on doors. I reckoned each visit would be
an opportunity to converse with a neighbor who for reasons unknown no longer
spoke to me. Murphy mulled it over and decided to come along.
Hardly anyone answered
their door, even though sounds of life were often evident from within the
house. A few did greet me, however, including
Mrs. Grant, who opened her door naked and drunk, evidently thinking it was Halloween. She wore only a wizard's hat and carried a
tray of Halloween candy. In her
inebriated state, she pronounced a sentence or two with one long slurring sound. It reminded me of something else real writers
are known for. Typos.
"I believe you've
forgotten your Magic Robe, my Ladyship," I said with grace and aplomb.
Her eyes widened and
she glanced down. Murphy huffed a dog
laugh. Mrs. Grant raised and lowered the tray as she tried to
decide what to cover. I did not know a
person could blush from stem to stern.
She raised a foot and an orange painted toenail pushed the door closed.
I called out, ”Sorry
to have disturbed your bath, ma'm." From inside came a tittering, then an
exploding laugh. Murphy and I looked at
each other. I thought to ring the
doorbell once more, but resisted. That
damned dog follows me everywhere.
copyright by David Griffin, 2007, 2013
Writer
This article was written for the online magazine, Author’s Bazaar,
March, 2012, No. 14.
All
of us writers have no doubt heard the famous quote, “Writing is easy: All you
do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your
forehead.” Some have heard it attributed
to various authors. (Wiki says it’s by
Gene Fowler, journalist and playwright. Others ascribe a similar saying to sports
writer Red Smith.) But I’ve never had a problem with creative writing and only
occasionally with factual writing.
Sitting down at a keyboard evidently sets up a chain reaction in my
brain that leads to sentences coming out my fingers.
I
write what I’ve read. Somewhere in my
mind, banging around since I first began to read, is no doubt every phrase I
ever laid eyes on. I’m just rearranging
and repeating them as I type. A life
time of voracious reading of decent prose has helped my craft immensely.
I remember
opening a thin book as I stood in front of my grandmother and proudly declaimed,
“See Dick run,” as though I were the town crier with a hot new story. My reading ability happened quickly. Only a few months before I had asked Mom if I
was holding the hymnal upside right in Church while I pretended to read the
lyrics and sing along with the congregation. I was one motivated reader. I am one motivated writer. I want to spill it out.
It
doesn’t come out perfectly, of course.
There was a time when I hated editing my own work. It felt like I was killing my issue, I guess,
because I didn’t want to destroy what to my inner ear sounded so wonderful when
it rolled out on paper. But today I view
the process as an opportunity to crisp up my phrasing and smooth out the
delivery. I believe good writing doesn’t
call attention to itself. It goes right
down the reader’s gullet, smooth as
butter. If I watched his or her eyes
they would not dart back to re-read a phrase or arch an eyebrow to ponder a
muddy sentence. I would have scooped her
up into my word wagon as I drove by and have her there with me, hearing my writer’s
voice, understanding my context and recognizing my metaphors. There
would be a glint of expectation in her eyes as she avidly reached for the next
sentence, one after another. Such
wonderful writing doesn’t come directly out of my head any more than Premium Hi
Test comes right from the ground. The
product has to be refined.
Writing
is a craft, of course. It doesn’t take
long to get the basics down, but it is indeed a lifelong process of
learning. I can’t speak as an expert,
but I do have a few opinions on how to go about it. We all have different ways of approaching our
craft. I’ll have been thinking of a
topic but often wait for a terrific opening phrase to pop into my mind, words I
can’t wait to get on paper. It’s why I
always carry paper and a pen with me. Look
hard enough and you’ll find other authors writing on napkins in restaurants or
on their boarding passes sitting in the corner of the airport bar. (Yes, the latter could be an aluminum
salesman figuring his commissions.)
At
home, my PC is set up and organized for writing, with electronic folders
separating my projects into easily accessible categories of Complete and
Working and Stuff (thoughts, research, and trial paragraphs.) Computerized folders hold a variety of
writer’s tools and resources. I back it
all up at least once each week … immediately, if I’ve just written a story that
will make me as famous as Stephen King!
My
short stories are 500 to 2,000 words and I publish them on the Internet. Thirty
or so essays and stories are rolled into a self published book each year. I seldom have a complete story or idea in my
head when sitting down to write. I’m a
big fan of the “stream of consciousness”
method. If I waited for a story to flesh
out in my mind I’d never sit down to write it.
An early piece, “The Good Shepherd,” was in my thoughts for at least ten
years. I became so disgusted bouncing it
around in my head that I finally sat down and wrote it so I could forget about
it. I might have written the tale a
decade earlier and eliminated the time I wasted thinking about how to construct
it.
When
I feel like writing, I sit down and write.
About anything. I might open my
Working file and add a few sentences to a story in progress, get stuck or become
tired of it and switch to another piece I began a week or a few years ago. I have over a
hundred “starts” as I call them,
most having a few paragraphs, some a few sentences and others a few
pages.
When
writing, multiple resources are open on my PC, such as Wikipedia, Google and TheFreeDictionary, the latter for use as a
word checker and thesaurus. I can’t tell
you where my paperback thesaurus is in this book lined room my wife calls my
cave. Before we moved to a small modern
house, we lived in an old farmhouse and I wrote in the cellar. My PC was set up among shortwave radios in
the former fruit cellar beneath sturdy
old floor beams. I could look upward to
see the joists decorated with cob webs that were there when we moved in 35
years ago and were still intact when I left last November. They were probably a hundred years old.
Ideas
come from everywhere. I believe a writer
can write about anything. I approach all of my subjects as stories. In each piece, whether it’s fiction or
factual, I try to form a “story arc” and also put a hook in the intro. Finding an opportunity to include a twist or
two to surprise the reader in a way that brings a chuckle is another goal. With memoirs I embellish, believing the story
trumps the facts (and I freely admit it.)
I’m a storyteller, not an historian, and my reader wants to be
entertained. (So do I!) He doesn’t care
whether the homemade balloon a friend and I made when we were thirteen really rose high enough to fly me over my
home town. He just wants to soar with my
imagination over the neighborhoods and downtown buildings and land safely in a
cornfield on the other side of town.
When
I get a story down on paper and edited , it’s no more than a vision typed out
from my head. I need another person to
read it and tell me if the words mean anything to them. Before I bother my wife for her
impression, I always read the article
aloud. (Later versions of Adobe Reader will do that for you.) It’s a great way to catch mistakes and
awkward phrasing. Next, I change the font and arrange the printing
of the piece to somewhat resemble a magazine article. I often use a Caslon font and narrow columns
to simulate The New Yorker. I find that
reading the piece in that mock environment puts my brain in a highly critical
mode where my expectations easily recognize poor writing. Grammatical mistakes and muddy sentences
stand out sharply on this stage.
Posting
my stories on the Internet and self publishing via PrintOnDemand allow changes
to the copy any time. (See my PrintOnDemand
article at:
I constantly read and re-read my work and make
minor changes. To me it’s not a
chore. I feel the way a sculptor might
when he discovers a burr on the smooth surface of his work and carefully rubs
it away to make the piece even more finished..
Input
from others is essential. Probably the
most helpful feedback on my writing in recent years has come from the bloody
streets of Internet critique groups.
Don’t go there if you’re thin skinned.
I’m sure a few nascent authors have given up writing after suffering a
beating or two from some of the nastier critics who inhabit these forums. The worst offender in one group I belonged to
(the group I was proudly kicked out of, frankly) had never had even a single
story published. But as vicious as the
remarks could be, many of the group’s writing insights were right on and
I learned a lot. If you do join a tough
group, just be careful. Don’t believe
everything you’re told. Internet writing
groups can get sidetracked on one aspect of writing and will begin to
concentrate on it to the exclusion of all the good things in your prose. Some Internet writing critics would have scolded
Thomas Jefferson for his lack of a hook and a story arc in the Declaration of
Independence.
I
wish I had begun an organized program of creative writing long before I
retired. Today I’d know more about the
craft and my writing would by now be more efficient. I don’t know why I didn’t start, except time
was always in short supply and my story ideas didn’t appear to form complete
plots. How was I to know the best way to
solve a plot problem (for me, at least) is to sit down and write it out. And if it doesn’t make sense, change it. I’ve learned creativity doesn’t happen when
I’m thinking about a potential story. It
takes place while I’m writing or in the midst of solving a writing problem.
Just
because drops of blood don’t form on my forehead as I write doesn’t mean the
effort isn’t work. I spend quite a bit
of time on it. But I figure that it’s
what I’m meant to do at this stage of my life.
And if all the hours I put into writing were not enjoyable, I’d be
fishing instead. Come to think of it, I
do need to get some flies tied for spring!
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