Mary Ellen Lives

That pesky “like,” “as” comparison.

Some people absolutely hate them. I’m reluctant to use similes mostly because I read so many that I’ve read them before. You know the ones I mean: like a stealthy black cat, or slithered down the hall like a snail.  And that’s how similes get a bad name.

Reading Ashley Warlick’s novel The Arrangement makes me reconsider the simile. Referring to Los Angeles as “a city like a nervous widow.” One sentence that tells me: “Sleep rolled him like a thief.” The beauty and clarity of her similes is stunning. They stand out not only for their originality but for their scarcity. Overuse similes, even wonderful ones, and the reader is apt to read right over them. Or worse yet, get sick of them.

I think that was my problem. Too many of the books I read throw similes around like confetti. (ouch) An abundance of similes doesn’t prove a writer’s talent or intelligence. Perhaps it reveals the opposite. Granted bad similes can be humorous; in fact, there are whole web sites devoted to them. Check out http://www.eddiesnipes.com/2013/01/bad-metaphors-and-worse-similes/ if you want a giggle. One of my favorites: “When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.”

But I digress. Reading Ms. Warlick makes me want to be a better writer of similes. Not just to use them, but to use them well. That, to me, is good writing.

Priorities are tough.

They constantly battle with each other. Jobs, family, friends, hobbies, they all want a share of our time. The garden needs weeding, the bathroom needs cleaning, the dog needs to be walked, your best friend or brother is calling, you have an hour to get to work and don’t get off until 9. When the heck are you supposed to find time to write?

This was the issue I faced recently. A firm believer in the BIC, or Butt In Chair, philosophy of writing, I used to sit at my computer for an hour or so most every day, turning out stories to send off, blogs to put up, rewrites of my novel. Then I was hired as a library assistant (my dream job) and my husband retired, which meant he was home all day every day. Suddenly I had no time to write. We had upended our whole life sixteen years ago, even relocating, in order to allow me to write full time. Not writing seemed to be discounting those years and that move. I felt guilty and dissatisfied.

It took a long time for me to accept my limitations and realize I couldn’t be the writer I wanted to be under the circumstances. I had to rethink my priorities and make some tough choices. Though I love my job, I took a cut in hours. Though I love my family and friends, I have to let the phone ring, forgo that lunch date. My garden is full of weeds. We won’t even discuss the bathroom. To some co-workers, friends, and family I’m being selfish, or lazy, or simply in avoidance. It’s not easy to explain, but I feel better having made my choice and set writing back atop my priorities.

All I know is that my butt is where it should be.

Online Quizzes

What does your haircut say about your love life? Can your shoe size predict your future? Who were you in a past life – pick a celebrity photo and see! We’ve all succumbed at one time or another. In fact, I’ve been delving into them a lot recently. I’m not talking about the tests favored by Facebook and other social media sites. I’m referring to online grammar quizzes.

Did I hear a groan? Stay with me.

I just finished a wonderful book on punctuation — Making a Point: The Persnickety Story of English Punctuation By David Crystal. Professor Crystal’s book is humorous and filled with fascinating trivia. (Did you know bullet points were actually called dingbats?) Yet, while being entertained by David Crystal’s very British sense of humor, I became aware of how much I didn’t know that I thought I knew. I flew to the web to discover the extent of my failings.

Online quizzes have not only helped me identify weaknesses in my grammar database, they have made me more aware of these hazards while writing. They are particularly useful for those enamored with certain flirtatious punctuation marks. (Semi-colon lovers, you know who you are!) Quizzes demonstrate how and when these characters are to be used. You may “desire” to insert them as your heart dictates but test yourself before becoming overly involved. They are a fickle bunch.

Most quizzes don’t take long, usually a few minutes, and are available for all levels of expertise. I like to think of my participation in online quizzes as class time. My own little ‘Not-Quite Masters of Fine Arts’ program.

So when you see a personality quiz on your chosen social site let it remind you that there are quizzes out there that can hone your craft, not just waste your time. You can ‘share’ what you learn all you want through your writing.

Carry on.

BARBIE’S LAST CHRISTMAS

The year Mother burned up my Christmas presents, Mary Brewer’s father called the fire department. Wrapping paper stuffed into the fireplace had caught in the chimney cap shooting bluish-orange flames into the evening sky. Within minutes the firemen’s ladder truck skid to a stop on the snow banked street. By then the fire had died. Only tissue thin ashes wafted into the night like dusky moth wings. My dad stomped through the front door. The scent of cold and wood smoke perfuming his robe. Snow from the soles of his yellow bedroom slippers traced his steps, melting in patches on the Oriental rug.

“Damn nosey neighbors.” He threw an official looking scrap of paper on the coffee table. It landed beside his eggnog. “Fifty bucks.”

That’s when I noticed the three new Barbie outfits I’d gotten for Christmas were missing. I tore through boxes desperate to find the satiny-blue ball gown complete with matching heels, tennis shorts and sweater combo that included a miniature racquet, and the red velvet coat with real fake fur on the collar.  I crawled under the baby grand in case I had kicked them under the piano in my rush to look out the front windows. Not finding the anywhere I asked my mother, “Where are Barbie’s new clothes? They were right here under the tree.”

Mother stood in front of the fireplace, arms crossed. “Now, aren’t you sorry for smart-mouthing me in front of your grandma?”

Confused, I looked to my father. He was paying no attention to either of us. Citation in one hand eggnog in the other, he muttered. “Damn Brewer.”

A strip of seared blue fabric floated behind the scorched fire screen caught in a spiral of rising heat. “I heard what you said when I told you to eat your peas,” Mother said. “‘Stupid’— is that what you think I am?”

I had directed that insult at the peas, but an explanation would only make things worse. My chin quaked. Tears gathered in my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

She put her hands on her hips, just below the cinched belt of her red and green print dress. “Does saying you’re sorry for a thing make the doing of it all right?”

A bleating sob escaped my throat. “No.”

“And the next time Grandma is here, how will you treat your mother?”

“With respect.” The words came out mushy.

“Okay then.” My mother came to me, arms extended, and drew me into a hug. I kept my back straight, arms at my sides.

“Go take the rest of your presents upstairs,” she told me. “Tomorrow we’ll go to the store and you can replace what you made me burn.”

I gathered my gifts dispirited, careful not to leave any behind.

The next day I picked out Barbie clothes different from the ones set aflame. The sight of the plastic wrapped ball gown, tennis shorts, and velvety coat smothered me with shame and a smoldering anger. I threw Barbie’s new outfits on the floor of the closet in my room — out of sight. Christmas was over.

I met my husband through an erstwhile friend.

We had been friends for less than a year prior and she faded from my life about a year afterwards. He stayed in my life, she didn’t. At the time I was simply enjoying the friendship, hanging out at her cozy Colorado cabin on the Frying Pan River. It wasn’t until much later that I realized she had been a transitional character in the story of my life propelling my life plot from one stage to another.

Novels require transitional characters in the same way life does. The main character needs both compulsion and propulsion to send him or her through the plot. But, as with my friend, the transitional characters can’t be obvious. I just finished Christina Baker Kline’s wonderful novel Orphan Train. The book itself is about fate and almost every person outside the two main characters is transitional, exiting the novel when they have satisfied their purpose. But, like my friendship, you don’t realize it until much later when the main protagonists see it for themselves.

The trick is to pull this off. I read another book that had an obvious transitional character. He moved the plot, gave rational to the action, and disappeared from the novel entirely when no longer needed. It bothered me that it was so blatant. I felt cheated and manipulated at the same time: cheated because the character was a cardboard figure with no dimension, manipulated because I readily accepted his presence and expected him to be important only to realize he was a prop.

In life we can’t always see fate at work. As writers we are fate at work. The challenge is to arrange our paper worlds with grace and subtlety.

I don’t know that I ever thanked my former friend for bringing me and my sweetheart together. None of us knew at the time what a big influence she would be.

Recently,

a writer friend of mine mentioned she avoided writing in first person for fear of over-using the pronoun “I.” Another writing buddy doesn’t like to write anything that is sad or uncomfortable. One gets hung up on perfect grammar and finds it difficult to write at all, so concerned about correctness that she stifles her own imagination.

These are all examples of writers afraid of leaving their comfort zone. They set their imaginative thermostat at 68 or 72 and never deviate. All of the friends I mentioned are wonderful writers, but each limits themselves with their own fears of venturing too far from home. This is where writing prompts can help. I am subscribed to one of the free daily writing prompt websites available, but  admit to skipping some. They seem too silly, or uninteresting, or too far-fetched. However, after thinking about the conversations I’ve had I am determined to try them all from now on. If I don’t go beyond what I am accustomed to, I won’t ever grow.

Fear is a big monster that hides under every writer’s bed. We all need to run him off by turning the light on. Or the thermostat up! Sweat the sucker out or freeze him—it’s your choice. The important thing is to get out of that safe zone and venture into the wilderness. Don’t worry. You can always come back. It will be nice and warm when you do.

SOME OF YOU
may have noticed the Steinbeck quote to the right of this blog. Those who know me may think it is a reference to the book manuscript I’m still rewriting, always rewriting. In fact, I have several pieces that I return to over and over. They never seem to be finished.

This month I participated in a seminar at the Hub City Writer’s Workshop. Writer-in-Residence Akwaeke Emezi did a wonderful job talking to us about revision. She confessed that she was mortified when rereading her early work. Fiction workshop leader Marlin Barton remarked that he never read his published novels or short stories. He would want to rewrite them all! These writers had gone far beyond were they were. They are much better writers now than then.

That’s what the Steinbeck quote means to me. As a writer I am always learning my craft, always developing voice, always practicing the art. As I learn I become a better writer; as I become a better writer, I become more aware of how much I have to learn. It’s a never ending circle, like a wedding ring. Another quote that stuck in my head when I was a teen is from the Agony and the Ecstasy: “Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.” A little melodramatic maybe but it is from Irving Stone, after all. And it makes the same point for me as Steinbeck. No matter how much natural talent you may have, dedication to craft is required. Forever.

Participating in writer’s conferences, finding the right critique group, reading writing blogs and books on writing all contribute to my continuing education and invigorate me as a writer. And so, happily, I will never be finished.

Though, hopefully, someday my manuscript will be.
Write on!

A while back

I read a book that had the annoying habit of veering off on tangents, topics that were out of place. It seemed to me the author was putting in their own favorite foods or an opinion the author felt strongly about. But it didn’t fit the character espousing these views and it interrupted the flow. It took away from the story and is, unfortunately, what I remember most about the book.

I didn’t know until recently that this bug-a-boo has a name: Author intrusion. A more fitting name could not be had. That’s exactly what I felt reading dialog about a certain grocery store. Dialog that even told me its location. Reading an author’s opinion or preferences in the middle of a novel makes me scratch my head in wonder. Didn’t the author see how misplaced this is? Didn’t the editor?

I’m not sure what impulse compels us humans to dispense our unsolicited opinions but it happens all the time. Haven’t you been in conversations where someone is always telling you what they think even though you haven’t asked? Annoying, isn’t it? It’s even more of an irritant in a novel. It puts someone else in the room, namely the author. I pick up a book to read the story, not to be lectured on which political stance I should take. This unwanted advice is, indeed, intrusive.

But not all author intrusion is bad. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles inserts himself to marvel at his male protagonist. He puts himself in the same train and ruminates on what this character is doing and what may come next. It’s wonderful stuff! In this case author intrusion is a literary device used consciously by the writer. As a literary device the writer steps out from behind the curtain to speak directly to the reader. The intrusion helps the story along, it doesn’t detract.

So, like everything else in life, the difference is in intent. If you want me to ride the train with you and your character invite me along in the pages of the book. But if you want to tell me about your favorite grocery store call me, don’t put that information in your character’s mouth.

Point of View (POV)

Are you scared yet? A lot of writers, dare I say most writers, break out in a rash when they hear the term. In my critique group we are constantly struggling with POV. The first hurdle is which POV you need to use. I say need rather than want because I firmly believe the material, not the writer, dictates the POV. But that’s for another day. In fact, any POV you use will present its own challenges.

Many writers believe that first person is the easiest to write in. I beg to differ. Staying in one character’s head is harder than it seems. How to get the reader the back-story? The physical description? It’s common to see the main character’s back story in another character’s mouth. “I remember when you were born on that April day in 1975. Your mother was blind and your father a drunk and you left home at sixteen to roam the streets of New York.” A whole paragraph of that is not only boring but unnatural.

As for physical description there is the overused mirror technique. “I gazed in the bathroom mirror at the heavy black eyeliner around my light blue eyes and tucked a strand of bleached blond hair behind my ear, glistening with three studs.” I have attended numerous workshops and conferences and have been told umpteen times not to use the mirror technique for first person POV descriptions. But come on—who hasn’t resorted to it?

Then there is omniscient or God’s POV. It solves some problems but creates others. God is all knowing, all seeing, and much better at organizing that information than mere mortal writers. How do you decide what to tell and what to leave out when presenting the past, present, and future of each character in your story? I wrote a whole novel in third person only to rewrite it in first. It needed more intimacy than the God view allowed. Or so it seemed. I am currently reading Edward P. Jones’ novel The Known World and am astonished at his use of the third person. His story is intimate and dramatic without being overloaded with information. He surprises me with details of what the character will experience in the future, without distracting me from the present plot. I am learning a lot from this book on POV while enjoying it. Critique groups help to pointing out where POV diverges; reading a writer who uses POV masterly shows you how it should, and can, be done. It is inspirational.

As for second person—you don’t want to get me started.

flow chart from https://booksbytrista.wordpress.com/category/point-of-view/