Proust Quote

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

- Marcel Proust

Kingsolver quote

"What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.”

— Barbara Kingsolver

Novels by Kingsolver:

"The Bean Trees", was published in 1988, her first novel and told the story of a young woman who leaves Kentucky for Arizona, adopting an abandoned child along the way; she wrote it at night while pregnant with her first child and struggling with insomnia.

"Animal Dreams" published in 1990, was followed by "Pigs in Heaven", the sequel to "The Bean Trees", in 1993.

"The Poisonwood Bible", published in 1998, is one of her best known works; it chronicles the lives of the wife and daughters of an Evangelical minister on a Christian mission in Africa. I highly recommend this one. It's long but worth it.

Her next novel, published in 2000, was "Prodigal Summer", set in southern Appalachia, and her most recent work, entitled "The Lacuna", was published in 2009.

Kingsolver is a master of character development and her settings are memorable.

Show and Tell---Chekhov

In the Dublin writing class, I'm providing exercises for practice in showing, not telling. I found this quote by Anton Chekhov:

"Don't tell me the moon is shining: show me the glint of light on broken glass."

Nix Adverbs

Although my WOW flash contest entry made it to the final 100 out of 300 submissions, it did not win. I received the critique I had ordered from them. A couple comma errors were indicated and an adverb. I thought I could leave one little adverb in a story of 710 words...big mistake.

In the critique, the editor said, “Fantastic job of not overloading this piece with adverbs.” Yet, she marked sadly as an error, which contributed to lowering my score.

If you are tempted to leave a couple of adverbs, or even one, in a contest entry or any submission for publication, remember my little sadly and ruthlessly delete. (Adverb alert!)

That and Which

Here is a review of when to use which and when to use that:

That is used without a comma when the clause that follows is essential information. For example: The book that he wrote was burned by the angry group.

Which is used, with a comma, when the following clause is incidental (filler) information. For example: The book, which was bound in leather, stayed on the shelf unread.

Key words are essential and incidental when you determine the uses of that and which.

Adair Lara Advice

Award-winning author and writing coach Adair Lara talks about writing essays and memoirs in her book, Strip and Go Naked. One suggestion is that since the turning point is the goal, it should come at the end. If essayists begin with the turning point and work back they will realize the revelation and they’ll instinctively know where to start.

She states, "There are two kinds of writing: pieces that don’t work and pieces that don’t work yet. Let a piece marinate and come back to it." Lara says it like it is with, "If people can’t get over their dislike of revision, they aren’t writers."

A strong statement, but a correct one in my opinion. After five drafts of my novel, Hada's Fog, I'd like to ask Lara, when does revision stop? I have a feeling it never does.

Between the Lines

My writing students and I have discussed back story blocks many times, yet those paragraphs of info dumps creep into many a good read and we either skip them or put the story down for later. Often, the later never comes. The story had a good plot, interesting characters, sensory setting, hooks and tension, but remains unread, too long on a shelf, and eventually ends up in the library's donation box.

The writer's job when editing, is to get out of the writer's head and look at what's written from the reader's viewpoint. Look at those blocks. Was all that telling necessary? Will those paragraphs move the story or stop it? Take them out. Cut and paste them into a note file. Sprinkle some of the lines in the story as you go along or to remember them might be all that's needed.

If the writer knows the details, the reader will be able to read between the lines.