Hack your way out of writer’s block with tips like freewrite a while, take a walk, change your cloths, talk to a monkey, or vacuum your lungs.
Category Archives: Writing
The Day the Silent Planet Stood Still
Back in college, I took an interterm course that appeared to be an easy grade. It simply required the students to read a certain number of books chosen from a list of famous novels, and to participate in one discussion on each of them.
I found it more difficult than I expected, mainly because it required me to read rather faster than I generally do (though I’m a fairly fast reader), and because some of the books I chose (like The Brothers Karamazov) were pretty long.
But I recall in particular one book I read that summer. It was Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street. I remember it in part because I found it unusually repellent. It’s a book (in case you haven’t read it, which a lot of people haven’t nowadays, and I’m OK with that) by an intellectual who had the misfortune to grow up in a small Minnesota town (Sauk Centre), and who just had to write this book in order to tell the world how soul-destroying life in such a town was (though why we should be interested in the opinion of an author whose soul has been destroyed is not explained). The book itself centers on a young woman from Minneapolis who marries a man from the town of “Gopher Prairie,” and how she struggles to maintain her intellectual and artistic life in its barren environment. I learned after I’d read the book that it’s supposed to be humorous, and I’m glad someone told me, because I’d have never guessed it.
The one thing I recall most clearly about Main Street was a realization I came to while reading it. I couldn’t understand why this book was supposed to be so important, until I realized that it was a pioneering work. Up until then, American literature had generally celebrated the small town as the source of American strength, goodness and wisdom. Lewis was the first writer to convince Americans that small towns were places where they actually didn’t want to live, spiritual swamps inhabited almost exclusively by rubes, yokels and bigots. It’s hard to get the original impact of Main Street today, because Lewis’ revolutionary manifesto has become our popular prejudice. Continue reading The Day the Silent Planet Stood Still
You Write ‘Palettes’, I Write ‘Palates’
From the frozen desks of Saint Paul, Minnesota, comes the call for proofreaders. (via Frank Wilson, who points out that he doesn’t give “a tinker’s dam what the rest of the world thinks of my country.” But, Frank–but, Frank–if the world doesn’t respect us, we may not get the party invitations we need and they may not pass us notes at the U.N. sleepovers.)
Exposition lesson, Part 2
Last night I set up a scene from an imaginary novel, in which a police detective says too much to his superior officer (a guy he doesn’t get along with). The imaginary author (who would appear to be me. I’m not sure how that works) is trying to give us some background on the tragic roots of our hero’s (his name is Slade) obsession with an unsolved child murder. But the method he chooses—having Slade unburden his heart to a guy he doesn’t even like (and certainly doesn’t trust), rings false for any reader with a minimal amount of human experience.
So how could the author convey this information to the reader more naturally? Continue reading Exposition lesson, Part 2
Exposition lesson, Part 1
I filled up my car today for less than twenty bucks. (It should be noted that my car has a pretty small gas tank.) What a good feeling that was! That’s a genuine economic stimulus payment. I can’t help thinking that people all over this country are enjoying the feeling of extra weight left in their wallets, and are getting ready to do some spending they’ve been putting off.
I’m probably wrong, but it feels that way to me.
I’m reading another Dean Koontz novel (I’ve pretty much read all his books now). It’s one of his re-issued early works and, typically, shows numerous marks of artistic immaturity. Particularly notable are the lame jokes (his jokes tend to be a little lame even nowadays, but he’s made great progress).
But what really caught my attention was his problem with exposition, a problem I’ve discussed before in reference to other early efforts. I’m not going to excerpt any of his scenes here, but I’ll compose a Koontz-like chunk of dialogue. Continue reading Exposition lesson, Part 1
Snippet
Tonight, a snippet from a scene I’ve had in my mind for a long time. It’s basically my memory of a conversation I listened to while working in a shipping and mailing room, years ago. Someday I may work it into a book, if I find a place where it will be of some use.
“People think I don’t know nothin’, but I know a few things,” said Ray as he used the slide to cut a length of corrugated cardboard from a roll at the left of his workbench. He quickly cut the length into short sections, then piled them on top of one another to fill space at the top of the box he was packing. His motions were sure and practiced, though his hands trembled a little.
“They didn’t believe you?” asked Bill, a thinner, younger man. Bill was working at the bench behind Ray, unfolding a fresh carton as he reached for the sealing tape.
“They said it was nothin’. They wouldn’t listen to me. These young snots, they think I’m all old war stories, don’t know what’s goin’ on around me. So what if I like to have a few drinks now and then, fall down sometimes? It don’t mean I’m ignorant.”
“That’s sure enough,” said Bill.
“The apartment was right next to mine. I noticed it before anybody else, but pretty soon everybody could smell it. I went to the manager and told him. He said, no, you’re wrong. He said the guy’d gone on vacation, left some garbage in there.”
“Huh,” said Bill.
Their workbenches were gray. The box conveyer to the left of the benches was gray, too. So were the steel supply shelves, and some genius from the Facilities Office had recently brought in painters to give the walls two tones of fresh gray.
“I told him, I said, ‘I was in the war. I’ve smelled dead bodies before. You listen to me. There’s a dead body in there.’”
Focused and Obsessed
There’s truth in these posts. Apply salt as you will.
(via The Art of Manliness)
Question Free?
Perhaps questions marks are falling out of favor. Quotation marks too.
What the market will bear
Just to cheer you up amidst everything you’re hearing about financial collapse and hard times a-comin’, here’s my favorite Great Depression joke:
A guy is standing on a street corner, selling apples. The sign on his cart says, “Apples— $5,000 apiece.”
A passerby stops and looks at the sign. “That seems like a lot of money to ask for an apple,” he says.
“Yeah, it is,” says the vendor. “But all I have to do is sell one.”
For some reason I always think of novel writing when I tell that joke. Because we deal in a commodity that’s worth zero, until we find somebody willing to pay for it. Then suddenly we have a valuable asset.
Rejecting Rejection
This is the centenary of the birth of novelist John Creasey, who received “743 rejections slips along the way – before his first crime thriller was accepted in 1932,” writes Margaret Murphey. “Creasey wrote 620 novels under more than 20 pseudonyms, selling 80 million books worldwide and writing across many genres, but he is best known for his crime fiction.”
I wonder how many of those rejections were styled as “Um, we don’t publish this sort of thing. Did you even read our publication before submitting?”