Guest Blogger Carol Smallwood on Style

Over the past few weeks, I've featured guest posts from some of my fellow contributors to Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching, and Publishing. But none of us would have been tossed together were it not for the efforts of the book's co-editor, Carol Smallwood. So today it's her turn.


Please welcome Carol Smallwood.


            Style is impossible to see in your own writing even though you automatically detect it in the writing of others. The more you write, the more you want words to flow effortlessly. Once you no longer have to think where the letters of the keyboard are, words flow so much faster which brings make mistakes. Really a remarkable process -- that automatic pressing of keys to form words whether copying someone else’s or writing in the moment -- not unlike driving a car, turning on the television, and the hundreds of things we do without thinking every day. The flow of ideas, that is, changing ideas into words by keyboard via typing, gets easier with practice. When we're less concerned with mechanics, our style emerges.
        The word, style, is often associated with the fashion world; my dictionary gives 18 versions of style used as a noun or verb. But as far as writers, style means the way sentences are put together. Are they wordy, awkward, unclear? Do they involve poor word choices?  Too artsy, too chatty, choppy, or just plain boring?
        John Galsworthy, a Nobel laureate (1867-1933), who enjoyed a revival with the very successful television series, The Forsyte Saga, is a writer I keep rereading because of his style. He gives an excellent definition of it in a 1923 address: “Style is the power in a writer to remove all barriers between himself and his reader—the triumph of style is the creation of intimacy.” No matter if it is short stories, novels, plays, essays, letters, Galsworthy is a master.      
        The quote, Character is Fate, appears in Greek on the half title page, and is the last sentence of The Patrician. The beginning of Chapter I resembles an entrance song of a Greek tragedy: "Light, entering the vast room -- a room so high that its carved ceiling refused itself to exact scrutiny-travelled, with the wistful, cold curiosity of the dawn, over a fantastic storehouse of Time." And, as in a Greek tragedy, it is followed by dialogue. Greek myths such as the River Lethe are alluded to in the novel. Bliss Perry, in his Introduction to The Patrician, compares Lord Dennis's solution "with the finality of a Greek chorus."            
         In his preface to W.H. Hudson’s Green Mansions, Galsworthy wrote: “Style should not obtrude between a writer and his reader; it should be servant, not master. To use words so true and simple, that they oppose no obstacle to the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind, and yet by juxtaposition of word-sounds set up in the recipient continuing emotion or gratification—this is the essence of style; and Hudson’s writing has pre-eminently this double quality.” 
         Style has been compared with fingerprints: our writing style is ours alone whether we like it or not. We may try to imitate other writers, but style is so personal, readers will be able to tell the difference. We are all unique and style reflects that, adding to that special flavor and fabric of words. Each of us sees through our own eyes which in turn decides our writing style. Each of us has our own DNA that is unique. Our own finger prints.
        Our backgrounds can’t help but hone our style. My affirmation of brevity is expressed by Alexander Pope, “Words are like leaves and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found,” and most likely was further confirmed by taking quick notes as a history and English undergrad and grad. Annotations as a library science grad student topped it off. 
But my love for the concise came in handy as a columnist for newspapers like The Detroit News in the 1980’s and the anthology pieces I still write today. As an editor, my submissions guidelines for anthologies and essay collections include a preference for short pieces, which contributors say are harder to write. I pass along Gustave Flaubert’s advice: "Whenever you can shorten a sentence, do. And one always can. The best sentence? The shortest."  


Carol Smallwood's first poetry collection, Compartments: Poems on Nature, Femininity, and Other Realms (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011) won a Pushcart nomination. She also co-edited both Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (Foreword by Molly Peacock), a 2012 McFarland anthology.   

Guest Blogger Kate Hopper on Claiming the Title “Writer”

Last time I was stuck in Minneapolis airport, I spent a desultory five hours doing what one does: having no fun. Next time, I think I'll call Kate Hopper and ask to hang out with her for a few hours. We'll have a lot to talk about – writing, motherhood, teaching writing, and the intersection of all that and more. Kate is a fellow contributor to the anthology Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching, and Publishing, and this is the third in a series of guest posts from some of the book's contributors.


Please welcome Kate Hopper. 


How many years were you writing before you could say “I’m a writer” and really believe it?  


I didn’t call myself a “real writer” until after my daughter, Stella, was born in 2003, even though I had been writing for a few years and was just beginning my third year of the MFA program at the University of Minnesota. Clearly I was writing, but I still felt uncomfortable claiming the title “writer.” 


Then I developed severe preeclampsia and Stella was born two months early. She spent a month in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and the two of us spent the following long Minnesota winter months at home. I withdrew from graduate school, and spent my days walking my fragile and very fussy infant around the dining room table. 

For the first time in my life, I was desperate for words. I craved stories that revealed something other than the rosy versions of motherhood so often perpetuated in our society. I wanted to know that the exhaustion and despair I felt some days did not make me a bad mother. But I didn’t find much out there that validated the complicated emotions I was experiencing as a new mother. 

So when Stella was five months old, I left her bundled in her daddy’s arms, and went to the coffee shop near our house and pulled out paper and a pen.  The images of her—writhing on white blankets, beamed from the NICU into the television set in my hospital room—came spilling out, and after an hour, words covered the page. For the first time since she was born, I felt grounded, and the world felt a little bigger. After that, when I had a free hour, I wrote for an hour. 


I started calling myself a “writer.”


And an interesting thing happened: When I began to believe in myself as a writer, I started to carve out more time to actually write, I took myself more seriously, and I began to write more than I’d ever written before. I no longer waited for inspiration, no longer spent hours rearranging the spice cupboard instead of tapping away at the keyboard. Part of this certainly had to do with the fact that as a new mother I had very limited writing time, and I wasn’t about to squander it making sure that the cumin was next to the coriander. (Who needs coriander anyway?) 


In calling myself a writer, I also learned to see my writing as work, which helped me value the time I spent at my computer. I discuss the need to view your writing as work in my Women Writing on Family essay, “It’s Not a Hobby.” 


If you were starting a career in business administration, it wouldn’t be unusual to have one or two (or more) internships before you landed your first “real” job. These months, though often unpaid, are invaluable, helping you learn the ropes of the business world. The same goes for your writing. You need time and space—and many months—to make headway with your writing, to learn the craft of your trade. If you’re not making money from your writing yet, think of it as a long-term unpaid internship. 


Once you reframe your writing as work—whether you’re working on a paid freelance article or a short story that’s unlikely to ever make you a cent—you will be more likely to treat your writing as work. Set a schedule that’s realistic, and on those days, show up to the office or dining room table or coffee shop and log in your hours. (This may be only once a week or even once every two weeks. Don’t set yourself up for failure by planning to write every day if that’s not feasible.) 


And if you don’t already, start calling yourself a writer. (Buy an “I’m a writer” a pin and wear it proudly if that helps!)


Kate Hopper’s first book, Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers, has just been released from Viva Editions. Kate teaches writing online and at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where she lives with her family. She blogs at Motherhood and Words.


To read more on this blog from Women Writing on Family contributors, click here.

Guest Blogger Mary Rice on Finding Virtue in Women's Narratives

This is the second in a series of guest posts from writers who, like me, are contributors to Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing. You can read the first in the series here.  
Please welcome Mary Rice.

"And what do I say to my children?  Honesty has always been the bottom line between us, but did I really want them going through this with me during their final difficult years in college? On the other hand, how could I shut them out of this most important decision of my life?"  - Audre Lorde, from A Burst of Light: Essays on Living with Cancer
I admire women who, as storytellers, explore virtues in subtle, non-self-conscious ways. In the memoir excerpt above, Audre Lorde outlines the conflict in negotiating a personal plotline of living with breast cancer. As Lorde faces the decision of undergoing invasive and expensive treatment or letting nature take its course, readers begin to see the complexity of her circumstances. 

On the surface, her dilemma is whether to be honest with her children about her disease and the reality that she will die.  A deeper problem is whether treatment and fighting for her life demonstrates greater integrity than surrendering early to her mortal ailment.  For Lorde, the question of what is virtuous sustains the tension of the narrative. Whichever decision Lorde makes will carry consequences not only for herself, but for her family. Bravery is not demonstrated merely in the choice, but in the acceptance of whatever happens afterward. That acceptance, grounded in honesty, gives her narrative power. 

Let's look at the virtuous explorations of two other women authors—Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and Barbara Kingsolver -- who both negotiate questions of virtue in interesting and admirable ways that are also literary.  

"Suffice to say, I was the first member of our family to finish college and the first to marry out of my race.  As my husband and I began to raise our family, and as I sought for ways to live agreeably in Anglo-American society, my memories of Manzanar stayed far below the surface."  - Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, from Farewell to Manzanar.

Houston’s memoir of her experiences at Manzanar, an American camp of concentrated Japanese citizens during World War II, was assuredly about herself. Even so, Houston spends much of her narrative about Manzanar discussing her family she arrived with, as well as the family she came to know through friendship and trust.  She worked to harmonize family life and personal satisfaction.  Houston mentioned that she married “out of her race” as a confession to Japanese readers and as a way to assert honesty with herself.  Describing the ways in which she sought to live “agreeably in Anglo-American society” as a Japanese woman married to an Anglo man, simultaneously suggests acquiescence to a system while interrogating it. 

"I thank Virginia and Wendell Kingsolver, especially for being different in every way from the parents I created for the narrators for this tale.  I was the fortunate child of medical and public-health workers, whose compassion and curiosity led them to the Congo.  They brought me to a place of wonders, taught me to pay attention, and set me on an early path of exploring the great shifting tension between righteousness and what’s right."  - Barbara Kingsolver, Author’s note, The Poisonwood Bible.

Kingsolver reasons in her author’s note that even though her parents are not literally in the text, they make it into the book because they were the ones who took her to the Congo, taught her the observational skills necessary to be a gifted writer, and started her on a long journey of trying to figure out the balance between “the righteous and what’s right.”  Kingsolver’s statement suggests, just as Lorde’s and Houston’s did, that the virtuous action does not necessarily fit tidily in one recognizable place. The “shifting tension” Kingsolver delineates in her author’s note is precisely the mechanism by which narrators are bound together in story and authors are bound to the narratives they have designed. 

Lorde's, Houston's, and Kingsolver's writing explores the claim that truth is important to most people, but how truth interacts and entangles in life, is relative.  It is that kind of realization that I admire when I read and I hope makes it into my work when I write. 

Mary Rice writes frequently about the methodology of narrative in the context of folklore, geography, women’s studies, literacy, linguistics, and teacher education. Her work has appeared in many journals and collections. Her book Adolescent Boys’ Literate Identity was named Outstanding Publication of the Year by the Narrative SIG of the American Educational Research Association. 

Guest Blogger Jenn Brisendine on Directing Scenes of Dialogue

A perk of contributing to a collected work is making contact with the other contributing writers. One way I like to explore those new connections is to invite fellow contributors to write a guest post here, and at the same time (let's face it, for every perk, there's a payout) bring attention to the book to which we've contributed. So for the next couple of weeks, I'll periodically feature a post from another writer whose work also appears in Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, edited by Carole Smallwood (The Key Publishing House/Canada).

 Please welcome Jenn Brisendine

I love the theatre. I spent more on hours onstage and backstage in college than reading all the works assigned in my English major. When I taught high school literature and writing, I also directed school plays. One semester I designed and taught a fiction writing elective, and many student actors signed up. Teaching them how to craft natural, dramatic dialogue was exciting—we likened their story characters to actors in a play, and I encouraged them to first “direct” the sound and appearance of the scene on an imaginary stage, complete with props, actions, and cues.

When I write dialogue now—fiction or creative nonfiction—I don’t just compose the conversation; I "direct" the dialogue as a theatre director coaches a scene for emotion and meaning. The director listens for emphasis of certain words, but also suggests pauses, inflections, vocalizations, movement, and nonverbal action. Similarly, a writer can control a scene of dialogue in ways that enhance its significance and mood.

We writers have great devices at our disposal, including punctuation, pauses, and action tags. Punctuation is a tiny tool that wields great impact on dialogue:

“I’m leaving, and you are too.”  (With a comma, there’s barely a pause.)

“I’m leaving. And you are too.” (Now it’s a period, and a much stronger break.)

“I’m leaving? And you are too?”  (The meaning has changed.)

“I’m leaving! And you are too!”  (Wow! Use exclamation marks sparingly!)

“I’m leaving. And you…”  (Trailing off indicates uncertainty or distractedness.)

“I’m leaving. And you–-”     (The speaker is interrupted.)

Pacing the scene with pauses adjusts the sound of the dialogue to your reader’s ear:

“Would you sit down?” He hesitated. “I have something to tell you.”

 

With action tags, you can pace the scene, adjust the mental sound of it, and let slip a tidbit of characterization:

“Would you sit down?” He sipped the bourbon and waited for the burn to fade. “I have something to tell you.”

I often write important scenes in play format first, to focus on the characters’ words:

Barney: If you’d sit down for ten seconds, maybe I’d know what you’re talking about.

Alicia: Why should I believe a word out of you?

Barney: Because I’m your husband. Or did you forget that in New York too?

Alicia: That’s not fair.

Barney: No, you’re not fair. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to take turns? You got to do the leaving last time. This time, you stay here. I’m going.

Then I add stage directions to pace the beats of the scene, so the “actors” can emphasize or punctuate the spoken words:

Barney: (watching Alicia for several seconds from his place by the bedroom door) If you’d sit down for ten seconds, maybe I’d know what you’re talking about.

Alicia: (folds two shirts and places them in the suitcase before speaking) Why should I believe a word out of you?

Barney: Because I’m your husband. Or did you forget that in New York too?

Alicia: (stops moving, stares straight ahead) That’s not fair.

Barney: No, you’re not fair. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to take turns? You got to do the leaving last time. (opens door, stops) This time, you stay here. I’m going.

This helps me frame a mental stage performance of the scene. Finally, I can rewrite the scene in fiction format:

Barney watched Alicia yank clothes off hangers. “If you’d sit down for ten seconds, maybe I’d know what you’re talking about.”

She folded two shirts and placed them in the suitcase before speaking. “Why should I believe a word out of you?”

“Because I’m your husband. Or did you forget that in New York too?”

Alicia didn’t move. “That’s not fair.”

“No, you’re not fair. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to take turns? You got to do the leaving last time.” He yanked the door open. “This time, you stay here. I’m going.”

In my mind’s theatre, not only can I see and hear the beats of the scene, I can feel the tension between characters that is generated by the pacing. Ultimately, what we crave in dialogue is that tension; mentally directing the scene before composing it allows the writer to heighten emotion, emphasize conflict, and deepen characterization all at once.

Jenn Brisendine’s essays have appeared in many print and online venues, including Rosebud, The Pedestrian, LiteraryMama, and the anthology The Maternal Is Political (Seal Press); she is also a contributor to Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction. A former high school English teacher, she currently works as a freelance editor and writer. Jenn lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two sons, and a petite 100-pound Great Dane. At her blog, she reviews great writing guides and discusses the quest for balance in the writing life.

Women Writing on Family: Always topical here, and now - it's a book!

When your work is occasionally published in essay collections or other anthologies, a fun day is when the ARC (advanced reading copy) arrives, and you get to see, often for the first time, what other writers and topics will be in that same book, and how the issues are treated across hundreds of pages.

Yesterday the ARC arrived of the forthcoming book Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing (edited by Carol Smallwood and Suzann Holland – Key Publishing/Canada, Jan 2012). I have two contributions in it, both on the topic of writing about one's spouse in nonfiction. One is a round-up of tips and techniques used by other contemporary women nonfiction writers, and the other is an interview with writer Meredith Hall, about the absence of the spouse in her memoir, Without A Map.

Since the book arrived yesterday, I've been delighted to find within its pages, contributions from one other writer who is a good personal friend – Christin Geall; from writers I've come to communicate with online – Kate Hopper, Cassie Premo Steele, and Caroline Grant; from a writer whose memoir I loved – Catherine Gildiner; and from one whose teaching ideas I admire – Sheila Bender. Together, they've written on such diverse issues as narrative voice, non-paid writing, journaling, writing about memories, writing conferences, confidence, making time to write, and working with editors.

And there are so many other articles and essays from talented, thoughtful and resourceful women writers in the U.S. and Canada. I can tell, from the titles alone, so much of it will be worth reading -- pieces on: voice, marketing and market research, web writing pros and cons, organizing critique groups, personal essay craft, writing about childhood and about one's children, character development, research, writing about grandparents, the MFA and PhD, rattling family skeletons, writing about illness in the family, moving between fiction and memoir, seeing family members as characters, lines between history and imagination, avoiding sentimentality, and so much more. It's packed, at 320 pages.

Timing is everything, right? I worked on my two pieces for this book back in 2008, but just this week, I am concluding teaching an online creative nonfiction class, which has focused each week on a different aspect of writing about family, about our memories, about difficult personal issues. Yet, for the nonfiction writer who focuses on crafting personal narratives, writing essays based on personal experiences, and envisioning memoirs which, of necessity, includes as characters others who are important in one's life, these issues are also timeless.

You can preorder the book now here (I won't earn any commission.) I hope you'll consider getting yourself a copy, and also passing the information/link along to your writing friends.