OregonAuthor.com

Tips for Writers and This Writer's Journal
 

     I add to this periodically. I revise what I've already written and posted.

    I've published essays, short fiction, and poetry in  Back Home, Bellowing Ark, Bugle, The Christian Science Monitor, The Crab Creek Review, The Doula, The Fiddlehead, Manzanita Review, Men’s Fitness, Northwest, Summit, The Sun, a Magazine of Ideas, Yoga International, The Wolf Head Quarterly, Zyzzyva, and other magazines and newspapers. I've published two books in paperback, Somewhere in an Oregon Valley and Quiet People in a Noisy World.
    I teach writing, and I edit writing. More about that when I get to it.
 

March 2, 2010

    To catch and hold readers’ interest, live an interesting life. Think interesting thoughts. Effective writing technique won’t give life to a dull subject. This means take in little television, few movies.

    “Use real life all around you and your own imagination to build the visions that power you through your life. Accept no substitutes. Television has no power you can take into your lives to guide you through living.” Page 111, Somewhere in an Oregon Valley, by Jon Remmerde.

March 5, 2010
   According to copyright law, when you write something, it is immediately copyrighted. Registering your writing with the copyright office gives you the advantage of irrevocable proof that it is yours and gives you certain legal advantages in court in case of infringement.

March 8, 2010

    To write effectively, devote attention and belief to good larger than yourself.

    When you read what I'm writing, you are involved in something that goes beyond yourself. We may not know each other, but you understand what I'm saying, and I'm working to form my writing into patterns that will be easily understood. I'm working to accommodate someone beyond myself.

    We have the desire to communicate in common. We have language in common. We have the desire to write well in common. Everything we immediately see that we have in common suggests much more that we have in common.

    As a writer trying to write effectively, to reach readers who are interested in what you write and responsive to it, seek and find common ground. If you write effectively, you touch something in readers and create a positive response. You find a positive response only when you have something in common with the reader. You will have something in common with readers if you devote your attention and your belief to good larger than yourself, if you are motivated to write by a desire to reach toward that largeness, to define it and share it with others.

March 10, 2010
    I intend to do more with the March 8 entry. Ideas form in my mind, but they're still not as clear as I want them  to be before I write them down. In the meantime, I have other ideas I want to start developing.
    Today's main idea is "Write." Don't wait for the perfect idea, sentence, paragraph. Write down what you have, even if it's just a beginning glimmer of an idea. Look at what you write down, revise if it comes to you to do so, but don't wait very long for that either. Go on with what you have. Write down the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next idea, the next line. Do that consistently, even if you aren't satisfied with what you write, because if you consistently refuse to wait for perfection before committing words to paper, you will have more and more to look back at and to revise toward perfection.

March 11, 2010
    Reach outside yourself. Find good larger than yourself and make your art an attempt to reach that good, to take it into your art, and by its existence in your art to communicate about its presence to those your art exists for. When I write a poem that describes a red-tailed hawk coasting in the sky above me, the poem will be most effective if it goes beyond describing the hawk effectively and makes the reader establish a sense of oneness with me, the poet, and the hawk in the sky above.
    Why would we call the hawk "good?" We need beauty, and the hawk is beautiful, so its presence is good. Its life is good. Its beauty is good. Beyond the beauty of the one animal, we see the beauty of flight, the beauty of life. We see that an individual life becomes a symbol of life. An individual action, the relaxed flight of one bird, becomes flight. The beauty of an individual hawk becomes beauty itself.

March 12, 2020
    In writing, nothing is obvious, so don't say "obviously." It's the writer's job to make the reader see the obviousness, not to try to take a shortcut by saying "obviously." If you tell me "It's a well-known fact," I'll disbelieve what you're trying to convince me is true, even if it's obviously a well-known fact. If something goes without saying, don't say it. Avoid cliches like the plague.
   Avoid phrases that characterize a television show or a movie. I don't watch television, so I might admire your phrase the first time I hear it or read it, but after it comes at me from several different directions, I'll realize it came not from your original thought, but from the culture around us. I will know that the speakers of that phrase lack originality and steal phrases without conscience or originality.
    On the other hand, a cliche or a worn phrase from a television show, quoted, can provide a key to character or an important key to an intentionally adopted style. It goes without saying, obviously, that if, in your writing, you become a character who watches much television, your speech will reflect it.
    People speak in cliches. Don't disrespect or disregard a person because of speech patterns. Cliches exist because they are often an effective way to say something. Any fool can fry an egg, for example, but it takes a skilled cook to deliver an egg to my breakfast plate just the way I like it , with the yoke just a little soft and the white done but not tough (as the old cliche goes). A cook who is acutely aware of the processes to achieve perfection may be different from one who achieves perfection once, by accident.

March 13, 2010
    Don't believe anything I or anyone else tells you about writing unless it works for you, for your eye as the reader, for your ear as listener to words and  the rhythms of the story, the essay, the poem, the song, for your satisfaction as the sleuther of themes and messages. When you ask for advice on your writing, listen to what people tell you to determine if you're doing what you want to do with your writing, but don't listen as intensely as you listen to the artist who created the work.
    Criticism is easy. Writing is hard.

March 15, 2010
    Be cautious about throwing any of your creations away, because, (see below, one of my poems).

                  The Alchemist Works at Midnight

Alchemy is not illegal,

though the Bible says don’t mess with magic.

I take my damnation seriously.

Cold winter nights,

I plumb the depths of reality,

charm elements until they give up their identity

and change to other elements entirely.

I cried frustration when every possible market

rejected this short story

and this essay.

I would have wagered they would publish,

but I put them into the bin

where they accumulated dust of years

passing to years.

I apply fire, boil essences.

Golden moonlight shines in my window

a willing participant in a conspiracy through all time.

I sprinkle magic powders

indiscernible from the dust of passing time,

dust of increased wisdom, dust of developing perspective,

dust of broadening experience,

until the essential being of this stillborn prose

sheds pages of irrelevancy and transmutes

to a few flowing lines of poetry,

changeling of rhythm, bright nugget from the center.

I am happy as fresh fruit punch, though not all that glitters is gold.

This poem won’t pay my mortgage nor mow my lawn

nor run necessary errands of the coming day.

History forgets unkempt lawns, foreclosed dwellings,

petty problems of individual material survival.

The gibbous moon falls toward western trees.

Quickly, before it leaves me this night,

I will weave its soft silver light

to golden lines of lasting images.

    Fourteen quail eat their breakfast in  my backyard this morning. They scratch the ground with their feet, throw dirt behind them and peck up seeds they've exposed by stirring the soil. Oregon juncos also scratch with their feet. Sometimes, it doesn't make sense to stir the soil, because abundant seeds already lie on the surface, quite available, but sometimes the birds stir the soil anyway and bury the food that lies on the surface. Maybe birds are a bit like humans. What makes sense often does not prevail over habits of operation and habits of thought.
    What's happening here, though, is more than what makes sense to feed birds most efficiently. The birds are connected to something larger than their own lives. Some of the seeds the birds buried sprouted and thrust green blades up into sunlight, striving toward preservation and spreading of that species of plant. I watch the birds and the growing grass, thrilled to observe and participate in life with other species.
    Doves don't scratch the soil with their feet. They throw soil to the side with a quick, sideways thrust of their beaks, then peck up seeds they've exposed by this movement. Flickers also use a sharp sideways thrust of their beaks to stir the soil rather than scratching with their feet.
    I don't often see flickers pecking up seeds and cracked corn where I throw the food on the hillside behind my house, but they come to eat sometimes. I confirmed in books that they eat seeds even though they are woodpeckers and find much of their food in ways I expect more of woodpeckers.
    I don't know what other birds use their  feet or their beaks to stir the soil. I watch for a while most days. I'll write it here when I learn anything more about how different birds stir the soil.

March 18
     When you write, engage the reader's senses. What did it smell like? What did it look like, sound like, feel like, taste like? I want to be in your writing with you. Grab my senses and pull me in.
     Avoid putting yourself between me and what you sense. Not "I saw the green basket float down the violent white river, and I smelled chocolate and cinnamon," because in that case, you are standing between me and the sensation. Rather, "The green basket floated down the violent white river, and the smell of chocolate and cinnamon hung heavily above the water and the rocky ground beside the river." Describe enough details to make the scene real to me. but not enough to swamp me with detail until I lose track of the point of what you're writing.

March 18, 19 20, and 22-- an essay in installments
          The Committee Meets, and I Go On Singing (Complete as of March 22.)

     After many years in recess, The Committee gets together enough members for a meeting. By the urgency of the voices, I would say it’s an emergency meeting. “Stop him before it’s too late.” seems to be the subject of their meeting.

     Many years ago, my creative writing instructor, John Gardner, explained that the discouraging voices his students had been hearing inside their heads were from The Committee that exists to limit our achievements in this world.

     He said The Committee is composed of critics and censors we remember and internalize. We carry their voices around until we learn to overcome the power of their negative comments or until we give up and let them win. If our parents were critical, their voices will be there, along with teachers who voiced negative thoughts and anyone who planted doubts about our abilities as we grew up.

     The voices say, “You can’t do that,” or “You don’t know anything about that subject,” or “Those places take much higher quality work than you are capable of,” or “You are too old to learn that. People who know how to do that have been learning all their lives,” or other discouraging comments about the creative, self-motivated work we attempt. Those of us who listen to The Committee members and believe what they say quit trying and fall by the wayside.
     I was on fire with creative energy. I used that energy to learn to write and to live a creative enough life to have something to write about. As I lived, I wrote essays, stories, poems, and books. I achieved publications, and I knew I would continue writing and trying for publications throughout my existence on this material earth.

     Years ago, I acquired a good guitar because it was offered to me at a price I couldn’t pass up. Through the years, I learned a few chords, and I wrote songs, more because I had a good guitar than because I thought of myself as musical. Songs came into my mind, and I played and sang them and wrote them down. The songs that came to me weren’t like the songs that I hear on the radio or on CDs. My songs didn’t usually have repetitive choruses or repetitive, regular music. The chord patterns I picked for my songs were often unorthodox.

     I knew my songs were different from mainstream songs because of what people who understood music told me about them, not because of my own knowledge. I didn’t have the education in music, the knowledge of music to articulate what I was doing nor to articulate how what I was doing differed from more mainstream songs. That lack of knowledge didn’t concern me. I wasn’t interested in creating songs of regular forms, but I was interested in capturing some of the songs that came to me out of the life I live. I played and sang my songs enough to secure them in my memory and sometimes just to have some music. I didn’t worry if I didn’t perform the songs well enough to put them on the radio. I didn’t plan to put them on the radio.

     I stayed busy enough trying to earn money to pay my family’s way through the world, helping raise and educate my daughters, writing, and living that I didn’t have a lot of time left over to learn to play the guitar well and sing well.

     Our daughters grew up and went into the world on their own. I left most efforts to earn money behind. I write less now. I invest more time in my music. I practice most days, and I record some of my songs when I’m ready to record. I listen to the recordings to see how my performance compares with what I thought I was performing.

     When the process of creating songs and then performing them for recording is working well, I recognize mistakes I’ve made and find ways to come closer with my performances to the songs I hear in my head, to what would be, to my ears, ideal performances of those songs.  Recording my music also makes it possible to share with friends and family who might be interested in what I’m doing with my songs but who live at some distance.

     The Committee meets sometimes now in emergency sessions. Members voice questions about why I’m doing what I’m doing. “Youre not going to earn money nor please crowds doing that, so why do it?” They say, “The lawn needs mowing and bills need to be paid. You should devote your energy to these more practical matters.”

     Not all the voices are from the committee. An acquaintance asked to hear some songs. After he heard me sing several songs, he suggested that I get rid of my guitar and stop singing. His voice blends well with voices of The Committee. He becomes a member. He flunks Mrs. Griego’s Support 101 class. Mrs. Griego taught, “It’s all right, in the interest of honesty, to say, ‘Your work doesn’t appeal to my tastes,’ but we also must say something like ‘But I admire and support your willingness to put energy into the effort to be creative, and in whatever way I can, I encourage you to go forward with your efforts.’ We never know when our personal taste is too narrow to encompass what we are judging, and we must be sure that our contributions to the creative force in the universe are always positive, always encouraging creative effort.” It took study and effort, but I eventually understood what Mrs. Griego meant and got an A in her class.

     I think the acquaintance who suggested I give up music and other members of The Committee make the mistake, common to contemporary consumers, of thinking that songs must be of professional quality, of regular and customary form, and they must be potential money earners to be worth inventing and singing.

     I enjoy the solitary practice of my songs, and I enjoy recording them. I enjoy the learning that comes to me from recording and listening to my recordings. With practice, my music becomes more pleasant to my ears. A few people enjoy my songs, and I share with them when they ask me to. That my songs don’t adhere to more standard forms probably adds to the enjoyment my music brings to my small group of fans. It certainly adds to my enjoyment. My small group of fans and I believe there are probably already enough songs existing and being created that adhere to more standard forms. There is also a need for the originality my songs bring to the world.

     Most of all, though, the life force, the power that drives the universe seems to me to be strongly in favor of creativity. Playing my guitar and singing as best I can reflects and respects creativity. So, even as they had to do years ago, when I started learning to write, members of The Committee will have to talk to each other. I’m going to practice several songs and start writing down one that’s been growing in my thoughts lately. I won’t have time nor interest enough to listen to The Committee nor to people around me who would discourage my creative activities.

     If you find my approach to music interesting, you can listen to some of my recordings or to a live performance. If you don’t find it that interesting, please shut the door as you leave. If you pass The Committee as you walk away, notice that the members’ conversation has deteriorated to desultory comments about the weather as they have gradually realized that their most earnest efforts aren’t making any difference anyway.

March 23, 2010
    You may have to decide how much of your writing you will change to satisfy someone else. An editor liked a story of mine but pointed out that it switched from present tense to past tense and back several times, something the editor thought of as a mistake, something the editor thought I must not be aware of.
     I was aware of it. It is a respected technique in writing and has been used by heavy-duty authors, like Willa Cather. I studied the story and thought the technique had to stay because it was effective. It didn't work to try to improve the editor's education. She knew what she knew. I didn't publish the story in her magazine.
    But I have accepted editor's suggestions, and often the story or essay has been improved by that acceptance. On occasion, I've wondered why I didn't see that possible change myself, because it did improve the story or essay.
    Sometimes editors have made changes without asking me, and I didn't like the changes. I've kept my mouth shut because I didn't want to get crossways with editors. I have argued with editors andor gotten mad several times, and it didn't work out. Some editors are the ultimate makers of decisions. That's okay. I need the check, and I have the original version of the essay, without the changes. I will use the original version in a collection of essays.

March 24
     I may not do well on tips for writers or on my website journal for a while. I feel increasing pressure to finish several stories I've been working on, to try to write two novels I started a long time ago toward completion, to practice my music more so I can record more songs, find myself at least temporarily satisfied with the recordings, and offer the songs for sale on the website.
     My biggest tip for writers today is, when writing demands the writer's time, when creative work applies pressure, accede, write, sing.

March 26
     Keep your senses sharp, your ears clean, your eyes peeled, your nose clear, all your senses tuned.
     Yes. That's me. A while ago.
     My mother does the work of getting my ears clean. Probably, I failed to do a good enough job of it. I don't remember.
     I knocked my front teeth out. We were playing a game, and one of my siblings was a dog pursuing me, or a wolf, something like that. I leaped to grab the clothesline crossbar and forgot there was a post to hold the crossbar up, ran into the post face first, which immediately removed my two front teeth. They grew back, somewhat buck.
     I don't remember exactly when it was, maybe sometime in the fourth grade, I took a drink at a water fountain at school, when someone (I never did know who) walked up behind me, shoved my head down and said, "Take a good drink." My teeth hit the metal spout water came out of. I was amazed to feel my teeth dissolving, the teeth that had grown back. Eventually, a dentist ground away the jaggedness, and I no longer had buck teeth but teeth that were just right.
     That's something to write about. I just did.
     I think I can turn that into an essay or maybe more than one essay. An essay about the dangers of siblings. An essay about bullying (What else is it if someone shoves my head down and walks away?)
     I've published more personal experience essays than any other kind of writing, more than two hundred essays. The possibility of writing and selling personal essays justifies what I said earlier, "Lead an interesting life."
     I think John Prine sang, "Blow up your T.V.. Throw away your paper. Go to the country. Build you a home." I'll try to research that to see if it's right. I can't do it right now. Earlier today, when I worked on our federal income taxes, I promised my guitar I'd get to it before the day went, and the day is going. I promised myself I'd get to it. ( Later, I did research the lines by John Prine and changed them so they are accurate.)
     Here's something relevant to Tips for Writers. I revised today's entry in Tips for Writers about seven times (I went back over it every time I added a paragraph or two), to make it more accurate, to eliminate irrelevancies, and to make it more interesting.
     Now for music.

March 27
     Know what every word you use means, and use it appropriately. It wasn't an "incredibly loud noise." I was there. I heard it, and I believed it. "Incredible" means "unbelievable." Describe what happened. "The gas tank exploded, and the sound drove me back against the stone wall, stunned my ears, deafened me. I couldn't hear anything for two days."
       Describe what happened well enough to convince me the sound was incredibly loud without using the word as a lame substitute for description that makes me understand the sound was incredible. Any teenager can and often does talk about an "incredibly loud sound."
     Don't tell me a scene was amazing. Describe it so well and in such detail that I am amazed even though you never use the word, "amazing," and please don't use the word, probably ever.
     It is a different situation and can be effective if a writer uses these words as quotations of part of someone's speech, to characterize the speaker. Many speakers use the words "amazing," "incredible," "awesome," even though I wish they wouldn't. We often speak in cliches when we wouldn't use those cliches in our writing. I don't think I use the words even in speech, but some of my friends might think I am stuffy, too precise, not relaxed enough in speech.
     In the same way, don't tell me someone was terribly emotional, but describe that person's actions so I see the emotion. "He yelled 'Marie,' and sweat ran down his face. He touched her with shaking hands and seemed to have trouble staying on his shaking legs. 'You're all right,' he said, and his voice shook so I could hardly understand the words. 'You're all right after all.'"
     Don't tell me, "He ran a good race," but rather, "His leg muscles bulged as if they would permanently cramp as he inched ahead, clothes soaked with sweat, face knotted in extreme concentration, arms pumping as if his action in pulling on the air might gain him another quarter-inch, half an inch lead, and the mountain itself shuddered and gave way to the force of his concentration on speed, more speed, victory again."

March 30, 2010
    I worked a large part of yesterday revising an essay and a short story.
    Defining tips for writers, as I'm attempting to do here, helps me with revision. So todays tip becomes "For effective revision, define what you're doing. What should your revision accomplish?"

March 31
    This also becomes This Writer's Journal, because then there is more to write about, in case I have readers who want something new often.
    This morning, I may not have much to say. I've been practicing songs, and I'm going swimming shortly. Some days, I don't want to spend much time working on the computer, because I have other things to do, like swim, wash dishes, mop the kitchen floor, vacuum. Laura has jobs as a substitute teacher all this week, and I try to keep everything caught up. Our standards are different. She is a better housekeeper than I am, though she does clutter our house with more furniture and other stuff than I would. I could say that men are more spare, but I know other couples who are just the opposite; the man acquires more goods for the house than the woman would choose.
    I also have a short story and an essay to write and several partly-done pieces to try to bring forward, so the journal will get less attention for a while.

April 1, 2010
    Yesterday, I received word from a Home Forum editor at the Christian Science Monitor that they want to publish my essay, "Arizona Storm," thus breaking, for me, a long dry spell at the Monitor and for acceptances of my work for publication. I haven't published anything for too long. I hope this acceptance speaks of a general change, and acceptances pour in.
    The Christian Science Monitor is published by the Christian Science Publishing Society. It's not a religious newspaper but a worldwide reporter of world news. It's committed to avoiding sensationalism in favor of calm analysis and to seeking good news. Those who know the paper give it high ratings for its thoughtful analysis of news in the world and for its consistent publication of stories about good happening in the world.
    Its recent conversion from a daily publication with also an online presence to a weekly publication with increased reliance on an online presence was not good news for personal experience essay writers, since the Home Forum's needs went from 10 or more essays per week and some poems to 2 or 3 essays per week and fewer poems. The Christian Science Monitor pays well. I will be getting $150.00 for an essay that is less than 800 words.
    I've published about 150 essays in The Christian Science Monitor over 30 years. I plan to publish more there even with their change from a daily to weekly publication. Their change is a factor in my trying to find more markets for essays, fiction, and poetry. That change was also a motivation for establishing my website, with an online store. I thought with one market reducing needs, I needed to establish another.
    Never let  the tips I give for writers get in the way of writing. Forge ahead with volumes of stuff without too much concern for quality. If the tips make sense to you, use them to help polish what you've written. Don't try very hard to come up with high quality the first time through. Producing something to work on is most important.
    I revised my essay that was just accepted at the Christian Science Monitor before I sent it. I had sent the essay before, when the Home Forum had a different editor. With a different editor, I knew the essay would get a fresh reading . I thought it was finished, but I read it again, made it more active, included more sensory experience, more of what the storm sounded like, smelled like, looked like, how it impacted my senses and my thought. I found unnecessary wording and cut it from the essay.

April 5  
   Every artist should dream big, not about how much money she or he will make, but about how close the artist will come to achieving high quality work, achieving the ability to express the dreams the artist reaches for.
   I have seen so many artists stop trying after a year or two or five. The fire in their creative furnace didn't burn hot enough to keep them going, and they abandoned their art to fit into the world better. And maybe that's okay. Lifelong pursuit of art is not for every one.The muse, God, the creative force speaks more insistently to some, and those some go forward, listen to the voice, pursue their dream.