Notes from “Write Your Heart Out, Seattle”

These are my notes from “Write Your Heart Out, Seattle,” Nov. 17, 2012, at the Seattle Public Library. Sponsored by The Seattle Times, the Poynter Institute and the Seattle Public Library.


From Roy Peter Clark,senior scholar at the Poynter Institute:

The power of writing is in its parts. You need to slow down the process so you can see the parts, name them and make them more powerful.

Tools are not rules. “Ignore any advice that starts with ‘never’ or ‘avoid.’ ” Like the one that says, “Avoid adverbs.” Maybe in this case: She smiled happily. But not in this one: She smiled sadly.

When you are trying to illustrate something by giving examples:
One is best (actually, he didn’t say that, I did. Find your strongest example, use it and ditch the rest.)
Two divides the world.
Three is the best (he said that).
More than three and it might as well be 10 or 12 and no one will read through all of them. 

The best writing is interesting and important. 

Think about how the reader experiences the text. Where are the “Hot spots,” the places that leave an impression on the reader. There are hot spots before and after a period (or, as the British say, a “full stop”). At the end or beginning of a sentence, with Clark proving with the following sentence, that the end of the sentence is hotter than the beginning:

This was written about a whale that died and people held a funeral for it (and I apologize for not recording the name of the reporter who wrote this):

“The crowd gathered and knelt around the 12-foot creature.”

Clark changed it to:

The crowd gathered around the 12-foot creature and knelt.
Much stronger.

A hotter spot for a word your want to emphasize: At the end of a paragraph.
Even hotter? At the end of a “chapter” or section of a story.
Finding the hot spots and arranging your sentences to get the right words there is work that is done in revising when you have time to find the words you have hidden in the middle of sentences and to move them to the hot spots. 

One more demonstration he made of the importance of word order. Which of these has the most power? 
My Lord, the Queen is dead.
The Queen is dead, my Lord.
Dead is the Queen, my lord.
The Queen, My Lord, is dead.
The last one is how Shakespeare wrote it in “Macbeth,” and when you pause on the commas and end with the word "dead," the only thing you can say is 

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Note what ends up as the last word. See it live at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZnaXDRwu84

A piece of advice I truly believe in: Set your writing aside when “finished,” and come back to it. Overnight is best. A walk to the water fountain and back if you are on deadline. Try to read it as your audience will, not like it is something you wrote.

(One other trick that I have found that helps me see waywardness in my writing: Read it in a different format. If you wrote it on the computer, print it out and read the hard copy. I don’t know why that helps errors stick out, but it does.)

In journalism there’s much talk about burying the lead, putting a gem or the news down in the story. But Clark cautions about burying the ending. He suggests putting a hand over your last graf to see if you miss it. Maybe your ending was buried by that clumsy last graf.

http://www.poynter.org/author/rclark/

From Jim Lynch,author of three novels and winner of the 2006 Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award.

Advice on the writing process:
1.     Stay in touch with your writing project on a daily basis (write, think about it, etc.)
2.     If you have it in your head long enough, when it comes time, the writing will be more like recording a memory than inventing something.
3.     A first draft should be promising and uninhibited.
4.     Write when you are most alert (Early morning? Late at night? That’s for you to figure out).
5.     Read things connected to your writing.
6.     Listen to other authors at readings, etc.

Time for revision:
1.     Don’t do it when you are in a bad mood. You will look at all your work as bad and whittle away everything.
2.     Share your drafts with similar readers who are not editors.
3.     Watch out for tone-deaf editors.

Selling your work:
“Rejections are the norm for both good and bad work.”
1.     Research agents. Look in books you enjoy, see the acknowledgements authors give to their agents and write to those agents. That also gives you entry: “I saw that you handled X book and thought you might be interested in  . . .”
2.     Proof read your query letter very, very carefully. Don’t let a misspelling be the cause of rejection.
3.     Don’t boast.
4.     Send out query letters in bunches. Don’t wait to hear from one before sending out another one.

http://www.jimlynchbooks.com

From Nancy Rawles,writer and teacher. Latest book is “Miz Sparks is on Fire and This Ain’t No Drill.”

She says she is audio-focused, that she can only remember what she hears. So she writes in a way that distills things to what can be heard and said.

In dialogue, each speaker has to have a different style and rhythm.
Dialogue has to come to a point; there can be no wasted words. It should move the story and/or make a point. When people are speaking next to each other (one after the other in text), the difference between them has to be clear.

“Dialogue reveals my characters,” Rawles said. She regards dialogue as a duel. As part of her writing, she will put characters in a “duel” to see what develops – even if she doesn’t use that dialogue.

Dialogue is not how people speak but evokes how people speak. They may use slang all the time; you use enough to signal that to the reader. They may curse all the time; you use enough to signal that to the reader.

Try to get to the language of before we were reading, the language of the senses. (See more on this from Jacqui below).

Roy Peter Clark added this comment in Rawles’ segment: Dialogue is action. It is overheard in a place. Quotes are not action and they may not have a place; they are not dialogue. Their purpose is to inform, to add emphasis and/or flavor (that last sentence is me talking. Sorry.)

Rawles quoted a speech from Crowfoot, a Blackfeet tribal chief, that I thought wonderful in imagery and message. Here is what Crowfoot said from his death bed:

"A little while and I will be gone from among you.
Whither, I cannot tell. From nowhere we came;
into nowhere we go. What is life? It is the flash of a
firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the
winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs
across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

http://www.nancyrawles.com

From Ken Armstrong,Seattle Times reporter, co-author of two books and Pulitzer winner

Ken directed us to several websites where public documents are available on the Internet. These are not only essential for research but can be a rich source of story ideas.

Ken also talked about “the power of the slow reveal.” In other words, “slow down and hold back,” don’t give away all the information at the beginning of the story. Plant some questions along the way that the reader will want answered. That will keep them engaged and reading. 

Two more things from Ken: Start writing early, even before your research is finished. You will spot holes in your story, where you need to do more research. You will find out what you know and what you still need to find out.

Also, if you can, write toward an ending. Often you don’t know how your book/article/story will end. But Ken thinks the writing goes easier if you know where you want to end up.

http://www.kenarmstrong.us

From Jess Walter, author of six novels. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel

Lots of advice from him on the writing process.

First, list 10 books that you admire, that you think have made a difference in your life and re-read them. Dissect how those authors write. Do this down to the sentence level – how do they form them? Update your list often. 

“Read like a writer.”

“Write to a question” Have it hanging out there while you write.

He fills a journal every three months with observations, ideas, thoughts, etc.

Have an inviolate time to write . Even if it is only one hour a week, never miss it. He says he gets up at dawn, writes until 11 o’clock, works out and has lunch, gets a second writing wind later in the day and ends the day with dinner and two – never three – beers.

Give yourself writing assignments, Here are three he suggested:
1.     Write a 300-word short story.
2.     Imagine a person as different from you as possible and write about that person.
3.     Write about something you are embarrassed about or humiliated about and write about it from the view of another person.

And finally, “write the next book you want to read.”

http://www.jesswalter.com

From Jacqui Banaszynski, writer, editor and teacher, winner of a Pulitzer and formerly with The Seattle Times.

“It’s OK to have a Muse, but the Muse should be married to a mechanic.”

Take the story process apart and “write stories that make people tell their stories.”

The process: 
Conceive = Idea

Ask yourself some questions about your idea: Is there a narrative here? Where does this story come from and where is it going? Some events can lead to bigger ideas and movement. Could be a story in it. Some big topics can be grounded in a story or in a person in a story.

Collect = Report/research
            Make a list of the narrative elements – character, scene, emotion, tension, dialogue, revelatory evidence, description (if it does any work in your story) – and check them off as you report for them (Do I have enough to reveal this character? Check.)

            Do sensory reporting, “full body reporting.” What is the smell, touch, sight, taste and sound in the story. Don’t forget your “emotional sense.” What are you feeling as you report? Use that.

            Do cinematic reporting: Make your mind a camera. How would you describe what you are seeing? What is the sound track? What will make the best “power shots,” the closeups?

Focus = Narrow down the topic to a story, the story to something manageable.  
This step happens within all other steps.

Organize = Select from your research and outline.
            What can you use to organize your story? Are you familiar with blueprints? Sewing patterns? Music? Clocks? Calendars? Going from house to house? Math? Numbers? What works for you? What works for your story. 

            Organize in chapters or scenes.

Draft = Vomit (my word). 

Get it out there. Promising and uninhibited.

Revise = Clean up the vomit and make it writing.

http://journalism.missouri.edu/staff/jacqui-banaszynski/

Recommended reading:
‘Richard Nixon’s long journey ends”
By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A99301-1994Apr28.html
Also see “How I wrote the story” at http://www.newsu.org/angel/content/nwsu_wawapa07/stories/story_1008.html

“The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” by Isabel Wilkerson
http://isabelwilkerson.com

“On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction” by Brian Boyd
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674057111

Remember the Elyria NYT stories we looked at? Here’s the author discussing them:
http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/writing-tools/191972/live-chat-today-dan-barry-offers-writing-tips-behind-the-scenes-look-at-elyria-series/
 
Final word goes to Roy Peter Clark:
“Running a marathon is no big deal. Anyone can do it in 52 days at a half mile a day. Think of your big writing projects that way. Remember this:
“1 page/day = 1 book/year”