Parting Words

Sharon Wildwind

I've thought a lot in the past few weeks about how to condense seven years of Daughters' blogs. Was there one thing I learned from all of you? I think this is it.

It has been such a privilege to share thoughts on writing with you. All the best to each one of you. I hope we run into each other in some other writing space.

If you'd like a .jpg image to use as a screensaver or print or something, go here to download the image.

A great big hug to all of you,

Sharon

Keep the Channel Open

Transition spaces and times fascinate me. They are a little of this, a little of that, and there is always a crucial pivot point where life might go one way or the other.

Here we are on transition day. Bye-bye, 2013. Hi there, 2014. I see you peeking around the door. Come on in, I’ve got the tea on. Here’s my wish for all of us as writers in the coming year.

Last quote of 2013

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

~ Martha Graham (1894 – 1991), American modern dancer and choreographer

Happy New Year from Poe's Daughters

The Day Before

Sharon Wildwind

Today, none of us, including me, are interested in writing tips. I hope this day is full of friends, laughter, anticipation, and peace. I hope there are great smells coming from your kitchen. I'm making cornbread dressing and pecan cookies.

Find moments for yourself. Drink tea. Relax. See you on the flip side.

Hugs all around,
Sharon

Exit Rituals

Sharon Wildwind

We could start with A (aloe vera hand cream) and work to Z (Zentangle). No doubt, for each letter, there would be a writers’ rituals someone uses to cross into the zone, to make our transitions from not writing to writing. I’m a little uncertain about X, but perhaps some writer, somewhere, plays her xylophone before starting.

On the comfort/solace scale these rituals range from mildly comforting to approaching obsessive-compulsive. It took me a long time to believe that I could write a scene’s first draft any way other than in a black-cover HJ Permanent Sketch Book, using a Schaefer fountain pen with black ink.

What about the other end of the process, going from writing to not writing?

Does this sound familiar?

Standing at my computer, I keyboard furiously, gulp last swallows of cold tea, and calculate how many minutes late I can be for the next thing on my schedule. I type the final period, hit Save, grab my car keys and purse, and run out the door on my way to a meeting, grocery shopping, or chauffeuring a family member. Poof, instant transformation from writer to non writer. 

We're not doing ourselves or our writing a favor by ignoring exit rituals. Even Superman takes time to duck into a phone booth and change clothes before reappearing as Clark Kent.

What would happen if we allowed five to ten minutes at the end of writing to gradually bring ourselves back, starting by sitting or standing in silence with our eyes closed, breathing slowly in and out?

What else could we do in five to ten minutes?

A few stretches? A yoga pose or two? A couple of tai-chi movements? Even just tensing and relaxing all of our muscles from feet to head would be a benefit, especially if combined the physical activity with gratitude for what we’ve had the privilege of enjoying: the time, energy, and resources to write.

I imagine folding my writing, as if it were a clean piece of laundry, smoothing out wrinkles, and then putting it away in a mental cupboard or drawer, where I know it will remain undisturbed until I come back to it.

Perhaps a final tidying? Put our pens and pencils in their holder. Wipe dust and finger marks from our computer screen and mouse. Wash our tea cup.

Instead of filling our head with our upcoming meeting agenda, our grocery list, or did we remember to pay the phone bill, wouldn’t it be a lot nicer, a lot more respectful of our writing gift to end this exit transition by skipping ahead, previewing if we will, the next time we will return to write. All we need to end our transition is a simple promise to ourselves.

I’ll be back.

-------

Quote for the week

Don’t expect to simply put your hands on the tools and be in the creative zone. Have a sacred space in your studio. Start each work session with a few minutes of meditation. Dance, exercise, physically flow into the work.

~ Flora Bowley, Artist, Author, Educator

Coherent Stories and Overlapping Identities

Sharon Wildwind

Time is a funny thing.

For most of history being an eye-witness meant something. To be one the chosen few present when a major event happened indelibly marked a life. People said with reverence, “My great-great-grandmother was on Kill Devil Hills when the Wright brothers flew. She shook both Orville’s and Wilbur’s hands.” “My grandfather was a typesetter for the Saturday Evening Post. He set the Rosie the Riveter cover.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time I met John Glenn?” Yes, dad, about fifty times.

[Just for clarification, my family claims none of those things. I’d be proud if they could, but there are families who do have events like that as part of their heritages.]

I don’t know if you had this in grammar school, but we read out loud. Even if we’d finished the story, even if we knew that Puff safely returned home, or the family bought a bushel of apples on their Sunday drive, we had to sit through the entire story again, page-by-page. There was no such thing as fast forward, record-now-play-later, or — perhaps thankfully — instant replays. It may have been boring, but at least we heard a coherent narrative.

Pick any disaster in the last decade. How many times have we seen it? In how many formats have we seen it? How many times have we seen it as a straight narrative that made sense versus chopped sound bytes and video clips?

What happens to our ability to develop understanding of and empathy for the plight of typhoon victims in the Philippines when we see their story interspersed with commercials, or unrelated material as we channel surf or answer e-mail in between those sound bytes and video clips? What happens is that our ability to write and hear coherent stories disappears.

We’ve moved from future shock that Alvin Toffler wrote about in the 1970s, to present shock written about by Douglas Rushkoff and others. In future shock, too many changes happen in too short a time. In present shock, everything is happening at the same time, forcing us to live in many identities at the same time.

At the end of World War II, it took, on average, three weeks for soldiers, sailors, and marines to reach the United States from either the European and Pacific battlefields. Often it took additional weeks or months before they were released from the military and allowed to go  home.

I’ve read accounts of how men and women, on their own, without anyone ordering them to do it, gathered in groups and set out the rules for what they would and wouldn’t talk about when they got home. They had time to sort our their military identity and decide how to reform their civilian identity. Not that individuals didn’t have problems reintegrating, but they were at least awarded the chance for a coherent narrative.

Fast forward to Viet Nam. A soldier could be in the jungle on a Thursday, and out of the military, sitting in his parents’ living room, on Monday. A lot of harmful overlap between military and civilian identities contributed to later problems.

Fast forward to drones over battlefields, with operators sitting in Nevada. The transition time from battle to home life is the time it takes to get up out of a battle chair and drive home. The transition time back the next day is from the front door to the battle chair. Rushkoff has a word for this, too. Digiphrenia: a confused mental state from having too many identities running at the same time in parallel.

I have to admit that my writer’s radar immediately latched on to digiphrenia. What a wonderful situation for a character. Instant tension. Instant disorientation. Yeah, I can do a lot with this.

On further reflection, is it possible that, as writers, we need to pay attention to both narrative collapse and digiphrenia in our own work? In all likelyhood, I’d do better as a writer if I reduced or eliminated outside distractions while I’m writing. Do I need to plot and answer e-mails at the same time? Or write dialog while I look for Christmas presents on-line? Likely not.

On the other hand, do I need to separate my real-life identities and character, particularly when I’m writing those darker scenes? You bet I do.

I’ve written before about having taken the hand-made pledge. There are a lot of versions out there, and you can search for handmade pledge if you want to see some examples.

I propose a Coherent Story/Single Identity Pledge

I pledge to involve myself, without distractions, in taking time to write a coherent storyline. When I’m involved in writing, the electronic world and other distractions can wait. I pledge to build on- and off-ramps that separate my real life from my writing, so that I won’t have too many identities running at the same time in parallel.

Quote for the week

Narrative Collapse is what happens when we no longer have time in which to tell a story.

~ Douglas Rushkoff, American writer, columnist, and graphic novelist

The B Word

Sharon Wildwind

A lot of writers, including me, would be so happy if we didn’t have to deal with the B word.

Business.

Since Calgary is in the middle of another B word today — blizzard — all my writing and nesting genes have activated. Long ago, in a land far, far away, before I turned pro at writing, the most ideal day in the world was a snowy winter day, when I didn’t have to go to work and could write all day.

Ah, for the good old days.

At one end of the love/hate business scale are people like jewelry and textile designer, Megan Auman. Her mother was an artist; her father ran a small business. As a child she played business, and had a real one by age ten, selling confetti to other fourth graders. She literally grew up learning business models.

At the hate end of that scale is the unvarnished truth that not everyone can run a successful business. If a person can’t find a sales approach that fits her personality, and can’t afford to hire someone to do the business for her, might she ask herself if business is really for her?

In the great, grey, mucky middle are those of us who, most days, can tolerate running a business, but we don’t like it, or don’t think we do it well, or both.

Here are three things ideas for writers that might make business more enjoyable and profitable.

Know what our products costs

It’s easy to track supplies (ink cartridges, blank CDs, paper, etc.) and services (conventions, shipping, web design, etc.) of being a writer. It’s harder to track the most precious commodity of all — time.

How long does it take to turn out a finished project? A short story started in July and finished it in October took four months, right? Except … How many days in those four months did we actually work on it? How many hours? How do we count the time spent plotting while washing dishes or waiting at stoplights?

How many words — written, deleted, edited, and revised — went into our final word count? I didn’t formally participate in NatNovWriMo last month, but I tracked how many words I wrote following my usual writing schedule. To make the count a little cleaner, I decided to start and finish one short story in November. There would be other things I worked on, but that story was my main writing activity.

Because my writing program has a Target feature that I can reset, part of the word count was super-easy to track. My total word count for the month was 32,933 words. Of that I racked up 30,131 words on the short story, whose finished length was 11,400 words. In other words I wrote about 2.6 words for every word that ended up in the story.

What’s impossible to track is all those words I proof-read — often several times — found them acceptable and left them alone.

Why does this matter? Because one of the foundations of good business planning is to know what workload we’re capable of handling. Chances are there is a gap between what we think we can do — Sure, I can knock out this novel in six months — and what we’re capable of doing. We need to know how big that gap is.

Put our money where our business is

Occasionally, we need to pay people to teach us about business. At the very least, we need to have a library card, and raid the library frequently for helpful books. Surprisingly enough, the best books are about things other than business.

In the past year, I’ve gotten more helpful business advice from books about the art and science of making things, labyrinths, sacred geometry, acting, unleashing creativity, meditation, facing and conquering fear, wabi-sabi, and elements of Japanese design than I did from books related to business plans, marketing, and social media.

We are inundated by free advice from family, friends, peers, agents, editors, gurus, and people who want to sell us something even if it doesn’t meet out needs. We are also in a tiny, oh-so-specialized business. Almost without fail, when I spy a book titled something like, Basic Business for Small Businesses — a made-up title, but similar to what’s out there — the small in small business refers to 50-, 20-, or 10-person businesses. Wow, if I had nine other people working for me, life would be a whole different ballgame.

Writers need to learn the business side of writing from other successful writers, and that means plunking down those dollars to go to conventions or seminars, or sign-up for on-line business classes taught by successful writers, whom we admire and respect.

Develop our business vision — we’re talking brand here — and find customers who buy into that vision.

I’ll let Megan Auman explain that, because there’s no way I could do any better.

We’re not looking for customers who want to buy our product; we’re looking for people who need our world vision.

~Megan Auman; designer, educator, entrepreneur

Talk about a whole different ballgame. That makes business not about dollars and cents, but about, almost incidentally, collecting those dollars and cents by reaching out to people. It makes it about connections, about hope, about fun, about making life better all around, on both sides of the word processor. That kind of business I'd enjoy a lot.

The Murder Mystery Arc

Sharon Wildwind

Murder mysteries are about the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community, the battle between good and evil, and the triumph of justice. While, in general, murder mysteries follow the traditional dramatic arc, with the protagonist’s fortunes rising, climaxing, and resolving, there are a few more twists and turns in a mystery arc.

A = a body is discovered. The book’s events are set in motion.

B = suspects, clues, and red herrings are investigated. The protagonist makes a tentative and often impersonal commitment, as in she’s a police officer. It’s her job to investigate; or, for the amateur, her best friend is in trouble, so naturally she’ll help out. Note that during this stage the protagonist’s ups and downs are shallower than they will be later.

C = a second body is found. The protagonist has failed to prevent this subsequent crime.

D = the protagonist makes a second, more personal commitment to see that justice is done. At this point her personal fortune becomes tied to the greater group good, and she makes a promise, at least to herself and perhaps to others, that she will carry through to the end no matter what the cost.

E = the clues and red herrings become more significant, with a greater impact on both the personal and public stakes.

F = the protagonist confronts a personal threat in bringing the killer to justice.

G = resolution. The protagonist doesn’t return to the original starting point — except perhaps in farces, see below. She has been irrevocably changed by the search for justice.

The above arc deals with the murder resolution. There are also one or more personal arcs that deal with the private fortunes of individual characters.  Personal arcs include romance and relationships, danger to family members, danger to the personal community, personal fortunes, and living conditions (house, salary, possessions, etc.).

The personal community is a small part of the larger community. It includes those people with whom the protagonist had day-to-day contact: friends, co-workers, and maybe a special interest that the protagonist has, such as rescuing abandoned dogs or running a store. It is terribly important to the protagonist, but isn’t important to the larger public community in the same way. For example, a police abuse scandal might enrage public opinion, but the police officer involved is concerned about how the scandal affects her partner, who is one of the people accused.

The personal stakes are played out in contrast to or in synchronization with the public stakes of righting of wrong and the triumph of justice. Mysteries from North America and England usually ground themselves in the need for justice to triumph. Mysteries by writers from other parts of the world may have a different view of justice or may reflect a society where justice is not possible or is not common.

Here are four ways that this interplay of public and private stakes can play out.

	Public Stakes	Public Stakes
Private Stakes	Both the public stakes and the private stakes rise in synchronization. Justice is done and everyone lives happily—or relatively happily—until the next book in the series. Usually found in traditional (cozy) mysteries, but also quite common in many mysteries.	The public stakes and the private stakes operate in contrast. Justice is done, but the private stakes fall. The characters sacrifice personal happiness for the good of the community. When well done, can lead to an award-winning book.
Private Stakes	The private stakes rise, but justice is not done. Very rare in North American mysteries because it leaves the reader dissatisfied that the world is not put right. Not so rare in the rest of the world, particularly in countries that have a recent history of civil wars, dictatorships, or civil rights issues.	Both the public stakes and the private stakes fall. Justice is incomplete or is not achieved and there is a personal loss. Characteristic of mean streets, noir, and the suspended tragedies written in the past 15 to 20 years. Suspended tragedies often involve serial killers who escape, only to return in subsequent stories.

Mysteries are written on a continuum from very funny ones, which are in many cases farces or pastiches of the genre, to extremely dark stories, which leave the reader in doubt of their sanity or the sanity of the world.

The comments below related to lighter fare, also apply in farces. The difference between a farce and light fare is that, in farces, not much changes in the protagonist’s life as a result of their encounter with murder and justice. The personal loss often has a comic touch, such as Great Aunt Matilda’s portrait, which the protagonist hates, being destroyed when the she hits the killer over the head with it.

There was supposed to be a chart here comparing across the mystery spectrum for characters; discovery of the body; police and forensic details; suspects and interviews; the significant threat — where the personal and public arcs often intersect; the number of bodies; confrontation, revelation, and resolution in different types of mysteries. But with that amount of information, it didn't fit in the width allotted for the blog. To see and/or print a .pdf of the table, click here.

Quote for the week

The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.

~ Ian Rankin. OBE, DL, Scottish crime writer, best known for his Inspector Rebus novels.

Just in case you find English honorifics confusing,

OBE is Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, given to Ranking in 2002 for services to literature.

DL is a military commission, a person chosen by the local Lord-Lieutenant, to assist them with their duties, as required. Deputy Lieutenants tend to be people who either have served the local community, or have a history of service in other fields.

Literary Ambiguity

Sharon Wildwind

Hard winter has set in: snow and blowing snow carefully orchestrated to arrive on Saturday and/or Sunday for the past four weekends. Minus thirteen, with wind chills down to minus twenty-one. Events cancelled because the streets and roads were to slippery to be safe. It takes Calgarians a little while to sink into winter. Three weeks from now almost nothing will be cancelled unless the temperature drops to 40 below.

The view from our bedroom window this morning.

The result of all this was a wonderful, unexpected week to snuggle. Shortly after supper most nights, we retired to the bedroom with candles for atmosphere and books for enjoyment, climbed under the duvet, and read.

What was especially satisfying is that we were reading a book chocked full of ambiguity. We kept handing the book back and forth, asking, “Is this what’s really happening?” “Can we trust what she’s telling us?” “What if she’s misread this entire situation and it’s much worse than she thinks?”

Real ambiguity is a good thing. It keeps the reader interested and guessing. It's also darn hard to do well.

Being an author, as soon as we finished and I knew what was real and what wasn’t, I had to take the book apart to see what made it tick.

Because I’d read the book cover, I knew it was set in a paranormal universe in which magic existed (maybe). Note the ambiguity from the very beginning. Does magic really exist in this world or does the narrator only think it exists?

The narrator is a teen-age girl beset not only by hormones, but by (supposedly) ghastly goings on in her family. Does her boyfriend really love her, or has she cast a spell on him so he appears to love her? Is her mother really trying to kill her? Is her mother even alive because we’ve never seen her? We’ve only had the narrator telling us what it would be like if we did see her.

Up to about a third of the way through the book, I happily went along believing that what the point-of-view character said was absolute truth. Then I said, wait a minute, there is not a single character who confirms a thing she says.

Then came the fun part, asking if the narrator was bending the narrative to what she wanted me to believe? That’s when it helped to have a partner. We passed the book between us, asking, “Do you think this part is true? If it’s not true, what do you really think is going on?”

We hit a sense of foreboding at exactly the same place. Two nice characters seemed to be heading swiftly for a “happy every after” ending. It was too easy, too pat. Something had to happen. (Cue impending doom music).

At the end, we looked at each other, laughed, and said, “I never expected that to happen.”

I wish I could write well enough to

• Have a compelling narrator, but not necessarily an honest one.
• Make sure other characters fail to see what the narrator sees, or that they interpret it differently.
• Hold stuff back.
• Create a sense of impending doom.
• Have a boffo, unexpected ending.

Maybe one day. Stay warm, everyone.

Quote for the week

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

~ Ursula K. LeGuin, American novelist, poet, and essayist, The Left Hand of Darkness

What Makes a Mystery?

Sharon Wildwind

Books about mystery writing focus, in large part, on the same things found in other how-to writing books. Strong characters. High sakes. Dynamite first lines. Immediate hooks. Impeccable writing. Tension on every page. Story arcs. Knowing the writing and publishing business.

So what makes a mystery unique?

The great Y split: is it a thriller or a mystery?

A mystery asks who committed the crime? The reader’s task is to discover clues, filter out false leads, and solve the puzzle. Thinking wins the day. The reader should always know less than the characters; that is, each character knows where his/her guilt lies. The reader doesn’t, until secrets are revealed. Clues turn the plot. Most mysteries contain at least one murder.

A thriller asks how much with the villain get away with before being brought to justice? In many books, the villain’s identity is already known. A thriller may contain murder(s), but the reader’s task is to root for the protagonist to overcome persistent, life-threatening odds. Emotional reaction wins the day. The reader should always know more than the characters; that is, the reader knows how close the world is to catastrophe, but the protagonist comes to this realization in the course of the book. Betrayals turn the plot.

Above all, both mystery and thriller are marketing words. The terms tell agents and publishers where to place the book; tell booksellers and librarians where to shelve them.

No matter what the author thinks he/she is writing, it’s the publisher who decides in which category to place a book.

Sandra Parshall will have more to say about suspense tomorrow.

Defining Characteristics of Mysteries and Thrillers

The fight between good and evil

Mysteries and thrillers are about the fight between good and evil. A hook is what grabs the reader in the first three pages, preferably on the first page. It should focus on the emotional complexity of the task at hand.

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

~ Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

The emotional complexity of The Big Sleep is the conflict between appearances and money. Some characters are going to do things to keep up appearances; others are going to commit crimes strictly for money.

Match strong motives and strong oppositions. Characters are in a fight, literally to the death. Some characters will die a physical death; some will die an emotional death, or their values will die.

Expect the protagonist to pay a price at every opportunity. At first, the price is small: coffee spilled on a new dress or being embarrassed by being late for a meeting. The closer the protagonist gets to the resolution, the larger and more personal the price paid.

All detectives should have a turning point where solving the mystery becomes a personal quest. This is true even for professionals, such as cops, lawyers, forensics specialists, and so on.

This turning-point loss is usually the second most serious in the story, and involves a physical loss, such as destruction of property, death of a valued individual, being fired, having their reputation besmirched, being locked up for a crime they didn’t commit, etc.

The largest loss is the shattering of a long-held belief, and that comes during or after the story’s climax.

No character is all good or all bad

What does the protagonist fear? Consider not only how to make that fear a reality, but make it worse. (We are so mean to our characters.) Isolate the protagonist at every opportunity. Make a beeline for the worst possible situation.

Make another beeline for character flaws. What makes the protagonist flawed and vulnerable? How can those flaws and vulnerabilities be exploited?

All villains are human. Give them human traits, foibles, and redeeming qualities along with their villainy. The more ambiguous a villain on the good/bad spectrum, the more time the reader spends thinking about them.

Life makes sense to the villain. There are good reasons he/she must act in the way they are acting, even if this includes torture, kidnapping, murder, and other bad things.

Play fair

In a mystery — as opposed to a thriller — three to five serious suspects are a good number to start with. Develop strong secrets, breaking points, motives, means, and opportunities for each suspect, not just the real villain. In other words everyone is guilty of something, but not necessarily the murder(s).

Allow characters to lie, even the protagonist.

Play fair with the reader. Don’t hold back critical information. If the murderer needs to be a crack shot, put something in his/her background that relates to being a crack shot. Hide the tree in the forest. If the book is set at a shooting club, everyone has the potential for being a crack shot.

Humor is another good way to hide important information. Slip in an important fact in the middle of a funny exchange and the reader is likely to give it less weight than it deserves.

Treat violence with respect

Violence is a form of dialog. It should advance the plot and set characters in opposition to one another, not only physically, but in their values on how they view violence and the proper use of violence.

Violence has repercussions, both immediate and long-term.

In real life, the average bar fight lasts 20 to 30 seconds.

At the very least, in the immediate aftermath, broken glass has to be swept away; bloody shirts changed; maybe a visit to the Emergency Room, or someone being booked at the police station. Living with having killed or severely injured someone lasts for years.

Violence changes place, mood, and atmosphere. Consider how the place where violence occurred was been wounded by that violence. Why is that place now different? Is it going to recover or will it forever be changed? If it’s going to recover, who will help it do so? If it won’t recover, what scar or stigmata will it carry forever?

She could, but did she?

Sharon Wildwind

What’s wrong with this paragraph?

When Marta had almost reached the ridge crest, she could see the trading post in the small valley. The adobe building appeared to shimmer in late morning heat. Maybe it was Tuesday morning. A brown-and-white pinto pony should have been tied to the wooden railing; its deep woven baskets might have been filled with turquoise, russet, and squash-blossom yellow wool rovings that her friend Sarasota had likely spent the last week dying and combing. Maybe Sarasota was sick; maybe she had been trying new dye combination and lost track of what day it was, too. No, when Sarasota said she would be some place, she was likely to be there. Marta almost felt uneasy as she started down the dry, rocky path to the store.

What’s wrong? Marta, and the author, have a bad case of the wishy-washes. Here’s a list of wishy-washy words: almost, appeared, could, likely, maybe, might, should, and would.

The first reason that a writer uses wishy-washy words is that she mistakes a progression in time for a potential in action. Confusing enough for you? It is for me.

“When Marta had almost reached the ridge crest, she could see the trading post in the small valley.” What the author intends to convey is that Marta is going up a hill. Until she’s almost at the top (the progression in time), she can’t see over the ridge.

This sentence can also mean that when Marta had almost reached the ridge crest, it was physically possible for her to see the trading post (the potential in action). She could have seen it, but did she? She might have been temporarily blinded by tears or dust. The trading post might stir up bad memories and she avoided looking at it.

The second reason that a writer uses a wishy-washy word is to attempt to convey that the character is experiencing a sense of confusion. She hasn’t made up her mind. She’s thinking of options. She doesn’t know what the heck is really going on.

The problem is that wishy-washy words leave the reader not-quite-sure what is really going on as well.

There is, however, one place that these words can work. That’s an occasional use in dialog to illustrate something about the person who is speaking, something like

“I should, I suppose, but---”

“But you don’t want to take the time away from your manicures and yoga lessons to waste half an hour on your sister.”

In a perfect world, we’d eliminate wishy-washy words even in our first drafts, but goodness knows we—and first drafts—aren’t perfect. At some point in rewrites, it’s a good idea to find and eliminate all of those conditional words. If you write on a computer, the machine can do the work of finding them for you. If you write or proof-read from hard copy, colored markers work well.

Here’s a rewrite of the opening, with one “should” left in, just to show you can get away with it occasionally.

Marta pushed hard to climb the last, steepest part of the path. At the ridge crest, she saw the trading post in the small valley. The adobe building shimmered in late morning heat. A brown-and-white pinto pony should have been tied to the wooden railing; its deep woven baskets filled with turquoise, russet, and squash-blossom yellow wool rovings that her friend Sarasota had spent the last week dying and combing.

Was it Tuesday morning? Marta counted the number of meals she’d eaten since Mass on Sunday. Yes, it was Tuesday.

She hoped Sarasota wasn’t sick. What if she had been trying new dye combinations and lost track of what day it was, too? No, when Sarasota committed to delivering wool every Tuesday, she delivered it every Tuesday.

Marta’s feet slipped as she started down the dry, rocky path to the store. The first thing was to find out of the trader had heard from Sarasota. If he hadn’t, she had to . . . she haden't decided yet what she had to do, but whatever it was would involve John Silver Buckle. Seeing John again was the one thing she dreaded.

Quote for the week
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
~ H. L. Mencken, (1880 – 1956), American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, culture critic, and English scholar

Here's my honest disclosure: this blog was originally written for Author Exchange in 2009. I still like it and didn't think I could say it any clearer if I rewrote it, so I am reposting it, as it. I hope everyone is okay with that.

The Balance Game

Sharon Wildwind

Last week I wrote about ways to reduce, reuse and recycle ideas. Click here if you want to read that blog.

Writing isn’t just an ideas game. The history of writing is also the history of technology. Tools make certain results possible. When the typewriter came along, it upped the amount of writing that could be turned out.

Tools also set limits. When a tool is no longer made, or we’ve lost the knowledge of how to use it, possibilities disappear. When a new tool appears, possibilities increase. Therein lies a problem.

It takes a long time to learn the limits of a new tool. In the short story To Bring in the Steel by science fiction writer Donald Kingsbury, a character has a bad experience taking up pottery as a hobby. She’s stopped from giving it up by another character who tells her that she won’t know if she’s any good at pottery until she’s spent 1,000 hours getting to know the limits of both clay and the potter’s wheel. There’s a phrase in our house, “This is part of Kingsbury’s 1,000 hours.”

I once worked on a hospital unit where two women job-shared the evening unit clerk position. At shift’s end, there was frequently some clerical down time.

Typing e-mail and looking up lab results was the extent of their computer skills. One of the women used her down time to practice typing. At least that was more work-related than playing tetras or solitaire. The other woman started by exploring the word processing program’s Help feature. She moved on to learning what each drop-down menu button did. Can you guess which one got promoted within six months?

Essential writing tools are simple: a mark-maker, usually ink, pen, typewriter, or computer/printer with word processing software. A markable surface: paper or a computer screen. A way to check spelling and grammar. Everything else is gravy. It’s the gravy where we often get bogged down, especially if that gravy involves electronics, software, and the Internet. Social media is interesting. It’s a tool/method hybrid where we often have to learn both components at the same time.

Remember Home Improvements, the television program about guys and tools? Tim Taylor’s take on tools was bigger, faster, nosier, and  more powerful. Al Borland had a different idea. I like Al’s approach.

Know why I need a tool, and what the tool I’m buying does.

Compare similar tools from different manufacturers.

Buy the best tool I can afford.

Limit the number of tools on hand.

Use each tool in as many ways as possible. (Safely, of course)

Take care of tools. 

An old tool, in good repair, that’s still doing what I need may be preferable to a new tool.

A tool of any age, in bad repair or one that has stopped doing what I need, is a bad idea. It’s time to move on.

Be as green as possible when disposing of tools. Old electronic gizmos are especially toxic in landfills.

Method is voice. It is the filtering of ideas through the body and tools, across time and space. An idea never remains pure. Tools, space, and time distort the idea. Other ideas come along. A tool doesn’t work exactly as we thought it would. Our body surprises it in what it refuses to do.  All writing is layers, and by the time we lay the last layer down, chances are the first layer, the original idea, has all but disappeared.

Hands-on is the only way to develop good methods. Pen, ink, and paper were pretty easy to figure out. Computers, software and the Internet not so much. Hands up, all of us who use a writing program. My hand is up. Now, hands up all of us who understand at least 90% of the features on that program? 75%? 50%? 25%?

I figure I come in at about 35% on the programs I use. Even at that low level, I still manage to write books and plays. Imagine what I could do if, like that forward-thinking unit clerk, I’d devoted time to learning more features, one-by-one. I'd be strengthening not only my writing, but my method and voice as well.

Quote for the week

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

~Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), American author, poet, philosopher, naturalist, tax resister, historian, and transcendentalist