Standing Strong

Prov. 24:10 "If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small."

Standing Strong 

Without even being aware of what tension would rise I thought a writing course would be a good soothing exercise. I thought wrong. I love writing for my blog as much as I can and it feels therapeutic. I’ve been moving along at a nice pace as healing is taking place. Feeling good about myself I wanted a distraction via a fiction-writing course from all the illness talk. I realized I don’t know how to separate my fact from fiction.

The writing course claims that you should have a completed fictional SHORT STORY by the end of six lessons. I’ve taken this course many times over the years so I knew what to expect, expect the unexpected I thought heading into the course. What I didn’t expect was a classroom of five to seven people working on their novels in progress. Writers are awesome people, as diverse as a bag of Skittles even more diverse when they’re mixed with a bag of M&M’s! 

I decided to center my SHORT STORY on Faith and Hope, characters of a fictional tale but too close to my nonfiction story for my taste. I realized I didn’t like writing fiction at all. I do have an entire novel sitting in my files untouched for years, still nestled in the first draft stages. I also have a couple of short stories in my files that I won’t take the time to send them through the rigors of being picked apart by critique. I did learn a lot this round of taking this course. Everything I taught at one time being a mentor was dismantled, I watched my work being shredded not guided in any way. I wound up rewriting my short story for a final revision and it lost all the poetic substance of the entire tale. To me, my story became do-do on a shoe.

Tension, that only I knew was taking place, began about the third week. I wanted to drop the course but I also really wanted to complete the beloved class where I originally met so many of my current dear friends thirteen years ago. I continued on being the trooper that I am until I finally completed the sixth lesson of my short story.

I wondered why I set myself up for this adversity but it’s not much unlike when I post something on facebook to get a reaction when it’s the reaction I don’t like, I tend to tense up completely. Why do I bother? That is exactly what I felt like by lesson six, why did I bother? Let me give you a bit of advice, when taking a trip down memory lane don’t expect the same sensation you felt originally. The memory is in the past for a reason, it is over and done with and cannot be recreated in any way, shape or form. Lesson learned.

I was taught that if you’re going to say something negative about someone’s work, reinforce it with something positive. I didn’t feel much of anything positive coming through my screen. The feeling may have just been my tension build-up and I, not wanting to continue, reflected the negativity I saw. In other words, it was more than likely just my irritated mind arousing the tension.

What did I learn from this session of the writing course? Anything goes. You can work on your novel in progress and you’ll receive pats on the back for defying what the true intention of the SHORT STORY course is about. You’ll be rewarded for going against the grain. You’ll be held accountable for not understanding proper punctuation and you might even feel shamed into taking a punctuation course so your writing can get better. Your words will be pulled apart like shredded cheese and tossed on the floor for you to pick up the pieces and put back together.

So basically my writing sucks. THIS is why I’m sticking to my blog writing! Fiction is not for me at this juncture in my life. Nonfiction writing whether misspelled or punctuated wrong on my blog is MY journal style writing that releases my tension and saves me days and weeks of unnecessary pressure. I thought I was ready for open criticism but I think I still have a way to go.

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." 

~ Albert Einstein

Yesterday to release a ton of tension I went shopping. As anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a person who splurges on things. These past ten months my main purchases were vitamins, organic vegetables, three pairs of pants from the Goodwill and that’s about it. I’ve never acquired a taste for spending money. I wouldn’t say I’m a miser, I just like to purchase necessities over extravagances.

My mother sent me a Christmas gift back in October and she told me to buy myself something nice. You also know that my mother has no idea I’m fighting this illness. My first thought was to use the money in my fight of this disease but yesterday I woke, putting on my twenty-five-year-old winter shoes, I realized I never splurge and buy myself anything. With hubby off of work, I asked him if he wanted to go shopping and off we went. I bought two pairs of winter shoes/boots and eight nonfiction books all for sixty bucks! I’m a frugal shopper. Yay, me!

Shopping, reading nonfiction, and coloring in my adult-aged coloring books I received last Christmas released much of my tension. I am now once again on a recovering path. I think I’ll just stick to my journal style writing for a while. Just so you know, I’ve had diaries all of my life and not once did I concern myself with restructuring, grammar etiquette or revisions. I wrote to release tension and that is what I’m going to continue on my blog. Thanks for any and all understanding.

Prov. 19: 25 "Smite a scorner, and the simple will beware: and reprove one that hath understanding, and he will understand knowledge."

Story to Tell...

Prov.10:20 The tongue of the just is as choice silver: the heart of the wicked is little worth.

As a leader in the world and the writing community, I see something that knits us all together. We all have a story to tell. Even if it was not a dream of ours, or maybe it was and we just got lost along the way (see yesterdays post) we all need to be aware that we have a story to tell and how you write, effectively drawing out emotions in the reader, will either spell success or fail in your journey.

As our story unfolds, heartstrings will be tugged and like a rubber band, it will snap something in the reader. Either a tear will exit the eye and make a beeline for the chin, or maybe a crinkle will appear on the mouth and form a smile. Maybe a fevered pitch will drive a stake right in the heart of your reader, and anger will bubble up to the surface and a scream will bolt out of the mouth. Whatever emotion that is elicited, it will have to come from bringing it home for the reader.

I have met quite a few people that have said, “I’m a writer,” and I know many who are ‘published writers’, I know many who write, but again, it isn’t the story you tell or the perfect sentence structure, it is the emotions that are tied to the story. I don’t care if it is a sci-fi thriller, a Western, or Romance, (I think we all relate to them in some way) or a supernatural thriller, we have to tell the story with the reader in mind. We need to reach them, or we have no story.

Allowing your best friend to say, Good story! Loved it! Really does not tell us how we’ve done in pulling on the heart and making them feel as if they were in a Narnia-like closet, lost among your very words. We need them to express how their heart pined for the star-crossed lovers, we need them to say “I cried when I read about Mary’s death.” Why did they cry? Because you reached into their heart, and touched a cosmic emotion that wriggled the tear ducts and left them feeling pangs of pain.

Is that what we want? Pain? Not necessarily, but we do want to get an emotional reaction. If we just TELL a story, we are not going to get any reaction except maybe, “Well that was nice.” When we take it to the level of a writer, we are going to show them the same story, only they will say, “Wow! That was great! Touched me all over!”  Can you see the difference?

I know a lot of people who read my poetry, who really don’t even like poetry, say things like, “I got it! It touched me! You moved me.” That is what I like to hear.  I wrote my dad a birthday poem (as always) and my mother said, “It was beautiful. I could really feel the emotions in it.” I know I know, it was my mother, but I said, “Did dad cry?” She said, “I don’t know about him, but I sure did!”

YES! I scored! I got a tear out of the reading of my poem. I went back, read what I wrote, and even *I* welled up at the reading of it! Daggone it! Not me. I’m not supposed to cry! But as a writer, even sometimes WE need to cry too at the good writing of our souls. Every one of us has a story to tell!

A Story is Born...

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! 

~Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!
***

Did you ever wonder how a story is born? The foreplay, the inception, the follow through, and then the BIRTH of a short story or novel, or maybe even an article?

A lot of times it is through idle gossip or a man walking with flowers and as your mind wonders where he is going, who the flowers are for; you are now having the foreplay of a story being born.

I remember when I first began this journey of writing, one of the things I learned or was taught about how to find a story idea, I was told to stop/look/ and listen. Stop to take in my surroundings, observe the people, this is where our characters are being formed. The man in a suit on a 100 degree day, with a mutton chop mustache, and a cane by his side. That stands out in a observant day, and you now have a character to build a story with.

Listen: You’re in a cafe, minding your own business when you over hear two elegant older women talking. You take a quick glance and you automatically get the feeling that you are going to pair one of them with old mutton chops. Your mind is reeling now. They start talking about Barb, the hair dresser having an affair! Oh my, you are now in on the good stuff.

Well Barb is having an affair with this dashing fellow, (who sounds an awful lot like old mutton chops.) You begin to take notes on a napkin because this story starter is just too good to pass up!

As commotion begins in another booth with a bunch of teenagers. You over hear the one declaring, “She was my girlfriend first!” Then the a gun is pulled out and the teen tells the other to leave. The two ladies behind you gasp so loud, you record on the napkin OMG!
An officer who happens to be seated at the counter, out of uniform, stands, pulls out his pistol...

Do you see how one thing leads to another in the making of a story? This is how simple it is for us writers. Not all of us mind you have this innate ability to make point A meet point B! Some of us get stuck in the dungeon with writers block and we can’t see old Harry mutton chops with Esmeralda the town snot. But it’s there! A story is waiting to be born!

In the corners of your imagination; in the stench of the dank and dark dungeon, awaits a story, just wanting to be unraveled. And you, the writer, are going to be the one to unravel it, thread by thread, until you blanket the reader with...satisfaction!

Now get writing and remember, there is a story in each and every one of you just waiting to be told!

***

The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person. 

~Frank Barron, Think, November-December 1962

Just words or WORDS?

Job 4:4 Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.
***

Words words words. Sure you’re building a story, you being the architect of the masterpiece, but are you building your story on just words or WORDS?

There is a difference you know. I can write a poem and by the time I’ve revised it, many of the unimportant words have bit the dust and my poem comes out stronger in my minds eye. This is what we need to do to our stories.

Sure we hate cutting out words, but we need to make sure the reader is getting every juicy morsel of our work and not just words spilled on the paper like yesterdays coffee stain. Our words are our tools in making the reader flip through paragraph after paragraph. They need to see each blooming chapter as being filled with new possibilities for your character(s).

If you’re writing a novel, those first words in a paragraph are so important to keeping your reader reading. We usually call it the hook. The first paragraph, you say, not the first page? Nope, it is that very first paragraph that has to pack so much punch that the reader will be willing to move onto the second, third and fourth paragraph.

I have read books where I’ve gotten through the entire first power-packed chapter only to find that the second chapter had less fizzle than sizzle and I wound up never reading the entire story. Is this what you want for your reader? I didn’t think so. You didn’t sit at the keyboard hours on end typing fifty thousand words only to find you’ve written nothing with substance, just a bunch of words slung onto the page, thrown together like a heap of wind driven leaves.

In revision, you need to cut out those unnecessary words, fill the sentence with flavor, scan each chapter as if you were panning for gold, and make each and every paragraph leap out at you. Make your story what you think every reader wants in their arsenal of literature.

Do you have a heap pile? That’s the pile of books that have gone un-read, sit on your shelf looking out at you like the long lost teddy-bear of years gone by, wishing you would pick it up and hold it endearingly.

I don’t have a heap pile. ha ha I only buy or read books that I know are going to get me to the end and fulfill the commitment that the writer began in the first place and that is to make my reading journey a pleasant experience.

Don’t waste you or the readers time on ‘just words’, make every one count so in the end, we the writer and reader are fulfilled in the journey!

Job 8: 10 Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart?

The Building of a Story

Matt: 7:26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
***

At my Writers Village University hangout we are often in discussions of what it takes to build a story. Bob Hembree, the mastermind of WVU is an intelligent man who has brilliant articles on the matter of sentence structure, metaphors, and the philosophy behind the building of a story, word by word.

I’m a poet and as such I love metaphors. I love the idea of a hidden meaning somewhere in the makings of a story. Like a poem, a story needs to have a grander picture than what the reader is actually reading at face value.

Recently I read Animal Farm by George Orwell and while unimpressed with his style of writing, I was floored by the hidden meaning of a tale that is now listed as a classic. Like many classics, the meaning of the story transcends time and space.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is another story I read that held deep meaning in every page. I gather, from my interpretation, that man is a beast with struggles on many levels. In Animal Farm, men are pigs; in LOTF, man is a barbaric beast. So you see, this is just my take on the books while others would walk away with a philosophical explanation and may give deep levels of understanding. But we all walk away with something different.

What I’m getting at here is that stories can’t just be written to TELL the reader a story, there has to be intricate levels to your story to make it worthy of any publisher. They have to see that deeper hidden meaning, whether subtle or an in-your-face kind of meaning.

So how do we build a story? We take it brick by brick; layer upon layer, and give the novel shape. You can write twenty thousand words or eighty thousand words, if they have no shape, no structure, your tale will fall flat and on blind eyes, not one glance.

Here I go with the house metaphor again. You see a plot of ground (blank page) and you want to build on it (write a novel.) You are not going to just start building the walls, floor and roof are you? You’re going to check that the foundation (the meat of your story) is sound. This is where the outline becomes your best tool. The outline gives you a visual of how the story begins, all its ups and downs, riddled with conflicts, and a possible ending to your tale. Without an outline, you’re writing without a foundation.

You need to be the architect of your story. You shouldn’t write a tale, then decide, “Hey, I should have checked the foundation first.” You’ll find that after ten revisions, your story still isn’t grabbing the reader after the first chapter. What did you do wrong? You more than likely built your novel on sand and now will have to work extra harder in finding the solid ground it has to stand on in order to be published.

Lyrics: On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand; All other ground is sinking sand.

The Making of a Story

Matt: 25:15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.
***

Here’s the Long and Short of it:

You may want an outline if this is a novel, this will be the foundation of your story, a framework on which you are going to build a solid, cohesive tale. Without it, your story could crumble down around you midway through your first draft. Outlining first may make the difference between a powerful story with depth or a mediocre tale. Which will boil down to an accepted submission or a rejection.

An outline will force us to think through our story piece by piece. It shows us quickly and precisely: (1) the depth of our principal character's problem; (2) if our story sufficiently resolves that problem; and (3) whether our plot logically takes the character from his problem to the eventual resolution.

So start by jotting down the kind of conflict that concerns your main character. With this information in front of you, you're ready to begin your outline.

Using an outline to discover the character's innermost conflict can lead you to a very rich story. A shallow story about a loser who throws away his gifted life after one mishap may leave the reader with an empty experience.

Let's look at the outline:

Plot example:
a) josie finds God (spiritual guidance)
b) josie needs attention (inner struggle)
c) josie uses drugs and alcohol (the dark force)

Theme: Man against himself (or woman) in other words, the conflict
Problem: The affects of drug use
Resolution: Leaning on God to help
Conclusion: healing through diverse measures

Outlines don’t need be lengthy epistles, nor should they take long to complete. If you can't seem to finish your outline, this may be a sign that all is not well with your story idea. If you're stuck, ask yourself: does your character have a compelling enough problems around which to build a story? Does your resolution solve your character's problem? Do your plot developments logically take the character from his problem to his resolution? If not, can you come up with a series of events that do?

I hope I’m not confusing you with the term OUTLINE. The outline is like a short story (500-1500 words) basically giving us all kinds of tidbits into one crammed piece of work. This is your story in a nutshell.

You may choose to write a short story instead, using all of the elements identified here:

1. An opening conflict
2. Complication 1
3. Complication 2
4. Complication 3 (optional)
5. Complication 4 (optional)
6. Crisis
7. Falling action (optional) -this is where the crisis tries and resolves itself.
8. Resolution - this is where the crisis DOES get resolved.

Think outside the box and start being the creator of a masterpiece. Build your story like a pair of marble steps, then let the rain wash over your words and slide down and conclude your completed story!

Most of all, Write Right!

Rom. 1:10 Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.