Writerly resolutions for 2018: dare to daydream!

(This post is a reprint. The writer is on vacation.)

image: pixabay

It’s time for entry number three in the annual list of New Year's resolutions for writers. And much as parents and teachers may have criticized us (OK, criticized me) for daydreaming, it’s more than an escape. It’s a necessary part of any creative work.

“At its simplest, daydreaming (or mind wandering, if you prefer that term), is just another information-processing system, but a highly creative one,” editor Amy Fries writes in her blog at Psychology Today. “(Einstein) famously said, ‘When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.’”

Or consider the connection Sigmund Freud drew between daydreaming and creative writing, as psychologist Maria Popova discusses at her blog Brain Pickings. “The child’s best-loved and most intense occupation is with his play or games. Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? . . . The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously. . .”

With the likes of Freud and Einstein weighing in, how can we afford to disparage daydreaming as, well, child’s play? And though it may sound crazy to give advice on how to daydream, serious dreaming requires serious effort. Not so much to dream as to make a clear space for dreaming.

I admit, working quiet time into a day isn’t easy. For starters, it means I have to stop filling my down time up with entertainment. I’m talking about turning off the IPod, TV, game system, even the internet. (But only after you finish reading this!) At least once in a while, we must take out the ear buds that insulate us from the world, ourselves, and our deeper work.

While clearing space inside our heads, let’s get a move on. Consider Einstein’s love of walking while carrying on that conversation with his thoughts. I have a gym
membership, but how can I daydream while I’m busy checking heart rates, mileage, and calories burned on the machine readouts? My dog makes me do at least some of my exercise the old fashioned way. It gives my daydreams a breath of fresh air as well.

But aren’t daydreams, by their nature, ephemeral? How is it possible to hang on to the insights of our daydreams? I found taking a notepad and pencil to boring work meetings always made me look industrious, although I was really “daydreaming” -- jotting down story ideas, descriptions, and dialogue. I’ve also survived jury duty summons with the aid of a notebook. I like soft-bound ones small enough to fit in a purse or pocket. Author/writing guru Anne Lamott writes that she carries index cards to capture insights. Use whatever works for you, even -- although I write this with some trepidation -- a mobile device.

And while we’re at it, let’s do some real dreaming, by getting enough sleep. Sleep that will leave what Stephen King calls “the boys in the basement” free to work on the stuff of your daydreams.

For more insights on the importance of daydreaming, see Fries' blog at Psychology Today, "The Power of Daydreaming".

Writerly resolutions for 2018: give us more words, please!

(This post is a reprint. The writer is on vacation.)

image: pixabay

I always thought I had a good vocabulary, acing those “It Pays to Enrich Your Word Power” quizzes in Reader’s Digest, the magazine my parents subscribed to religiously, along with The Cattleman (a journal which left me with a lifelong case of giggles whenever I hear the term “AI.”)

So why did a suggestion I found in an article from a writing magazine throw me? It was so simple -- list all the words beginning with a particular letter I could think of in five minutes.

I’d sit baffled, bewildered and befuddled until my timer dinged, unable to think of more than a handful of the most common words. I recognized words on a page. But they hadn’t yet moved into my working -- that is, writing -- vocabulary.

This isn’t my problem only. John Gardner’s iconic The Art of Fiction addressed the problem of limited vocabulary among writing students. And it’s not a shortage of long, Latinate words, but of simple English ones. Eyes opened, I became amazed at the number of short, seemingly common words that baffled members of writing groups.

I’ll give people who don’t deal with horses a pass for not knowing the meaning of “withers.” Or of “chock” if they’ve never changed a tire. But our characters might ride a horse or get caught with a flat. They need the words to deal with whatever situation they find themselves in.

Returning to the late Mr. Gardner, his suggestion for vocabulary building, as best I remember, was to write down words from a dictionary. Which I did, for about three days.

As I learned from a business volume whose writer probably couldn’t care less about vocabulary, instilling beneficial habits takes more than willpower. It takes rewards, the kind games provide. And with apologies to the ghost of Mr. Gardner, if there’s anything less rewarding than writing words from a dictionary, I hope never to find it.

My favorite word game for rewards? Crossword puzzles. I don’t recommend the New York Times puzzles, filled with in-jokes only helpful if you plan to write exclusively for denizens of Manhattan. Try the simple crosswords with answers like “dregs, ooze, cosset, kingly.” It’s okay if you prefer Scrabble or cryptograms or acrostics. The Internet has given rise to a plethora of online word games. There’s even a book based on the Reader’s Digest quizzes.

Whatever you do, just find some vocabulary builder so rewarding you can’t help sticking to it. Tell your family you’re not wasting time playing games, you’re doing serious writing work.

I can’t help mentioning a volume found at my local bookstore, Vocabulary Cartoons. You’ll laugh -- and never forget “insouciant” again. It’s also available online.

I also created my own five-minute word exercise -- all the words I can think of (without consulting a dictionary) that start with a particular letter. Take the game to another level by using only nouns. Or only verbs. Adjectives. Adverbs. The problem became stopping the flow of words, but that's not a bad problem for a writer.

However, when a writing friend suggested using the tiny parts of speech known as articles -- i.e. "an", "the," etc., I had to draw the line. Still, if anyone knows a good English language article that starts with "X" or "Z," let me know!

Writerly resolutions to light up 2018: ignite a love of reading

(This post is a reprint. The writer is on vacation.)

image: pixabay

It’s time for resolutions for writers again. And despite last year’s list, I have a completely new list of resolutions, beginning with instilling a love of reading in others. (I hope you already possess this love yourself!)

“Why didn’t you tell me you write?” a non-writing friend asked. “I’ve always wanted to write.” It was all I could do not to reply, "because you told me a long time ago that you hardly ever read.” How can a person who doesn’t read expect to write?

But we writers have a bigger reason for wanting people to read than wanting them to enter the writing fraternity. We want them, at some point, to read our stories. The ability to read doesn’t in itself, automatically make people devote a share of their limited time, not to mention their money, to reading for its own sake. If people continue to read once they’re not forced to do so in school, we as writers, parents, teachers, mentors, have to help infuse them with a love for reading.

None of which went through my mind when I volunteered to read to students in my grandsons’ elementary school. I just wanted a chance to hang with a couple of my favorite guys.

If you don’t already know from reading some of these posts, speaking in public is one of my worst fears. And I’d volunteered to speak, if not exactly in public, at least in front of twenty-something six-year-olds. What was I thinking?

Of course, I’d read to my grandsons regularly, as had their parents, since before they could even talk. I asked their advice on what they wanted to hear and practiced reading through all the books beforehand. The school librarian must have encountered some fears in previous readers, because she kindly pointed out the location of the water fountain. Good thing -- my throat felt drier than a Texas dust storm. What if I opened my mouth and no words came out?

The words came out and the kids loved them. I’m scheduled for my fifth and sixth reading sessions of the semester this week. Still, every time I see the reading schedule,
there are vacancies. Spots where some adult could show kids what it’s like to love reading.

I volunteered to read to children through the PTA. You don’t have to have a child in school to join the local PTA or similar organization. Can’t take time off from work to read to others during the day? Check with your local library for other opportunities. And, of course, to enjoy reading, you first of all have to know how to read. Consider looking for opportunities to instill the basics of literary, through volunteer work with programs such as Lift Texas.

Don’t forget to read to the children in your own family. And let them see you reading -- and loving it. The best place to foster a love of reading is at home.

(Next resolution: you can never know too many good words.)

Wordcraft – This year's resolution: read, review, repeat

The writer is on vacation. This post is a reprint first published December 29, 2015.

***

Resolutions have a way of sneaking up on us. I slid past last New Year’s Day without making any, only to realize a month later that a blog post about a friend’s books was really a book review. As much as I love to write, book reviews had always seemed reminiscent of the essays we all dreaded writing in school. Writing is fun, even when it’s hard. Essays are work. But a blog post once written—how easy is that, with maybe minor tweaking—to copy and paste to Goodreads, then to Amazon?

image: wikimedia

I tried the same thing with a few other posts from my Adventure classics series. Then the Dallas Mayor’s Summer Reading program, usually for kids, had a section this year for adults. Only we grownup readers had to submit a (gasp!) review of each book we read to qualify for the yummy prizes. After a summer of book reviews (duly posted also to Goodreads and Amazon), I figured I had the reviewing thing down. Sometimes readers even found them helpful.

And I thought: reviewing, it’s not that hard. The fact that, unlike in school, I wasn’t actually graded on it removed a lot of the pressure. And it’s a service to other writers and other readers, a way of giving back to the literary community.

It wasn’t until rather late this year that I started to wonder if there were actually any guidelines on how to write book reviews, other than the essay format we learned in school: tell people what you’re going to say, say it, then tell people what you said. With this additional caution for reviews: don’t tell them how the book ends.

Turns out, there’s quite a bit of information online about how to write a book review.

Mostly the advice turned out to be variations on the three-part method I learned in school, with some fine tuning, like this from the Writing Center at University of North Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences:

image: wikimedia 

1. Introduction (including the name of the author, title of book and main theme

2. Summary of content

3. Analysis and evaluation of the book

4. Conclusion, which is the old restatement issue

A few additional suggestions from UNC that I found helpful were: Review the book in front of you, not the book you wish the author had written. Be precise. (In other words, reviews such as one I read, that said, “it wasn’t what I expected,” aren’t precise. Or helpful to readers.) Never hesitate to challenge an assumption, but cite specific examples to back up your assertions. Finally, try to present a balanced argument about the value of the book for its audience.

The site Writing-World repeated the caution to review the actual book, not the one you wished had been written. I hope I don’t need to add that you actually need to have read the book before reviewing it? Or that you should check to be sure statements you attribute to the book are accurate? A review my book group looked at immediately lost credibility when the writer used the wrong names for the characters.

There’s also an entire cottage industry on the Internet about how to write reviews specifically for Amazon, including information from Amazon itself . (Note that Amazon’s guidelines apply to all product reviews, whether they’re for books or hula hoops.) And although you must have at some point used an Amazon account to buy a product or service in order to post a review, and the product (in this case, the book) has to be available on Amazon, you don’t have to have bought the actual book you’re reviewing from Amazon. Consider your review a service to potential customers of Amazon.

Other Amazon tips are: Include the “why”: the best reviews include not only whether you liked or disliked a product (book) but also why. Be specific. Don’t make a review too long or too short. Suggested lengths are between 75 to 500 words. Minimum length is 20 words, maximum 5,000. And finally, give an honest opinion, even if it’s critical.

Happy New Year and get those reviews out there!

Wordcraft – This New Year, resolve to review

Resolutions have a way of sneaking up on us. I slid past last New Year’s Day without making any, only to realize a month later that a blog post about a friend’s books was really a book review. As much as I love to write, book reviews had always seemed reminiscent of the essays we all dreaded writing in school. Writing is fun, even when it’s hard. Essays are work. But a blog post once written—how easy is that, with maybe minor tweaking—to copy and paste to Goodreads, then to Amazon?

I tried the same thing with a few other posts from my Adventure classics series. Then the Dallas Mayor’s Summer Reading program, usually for kids, had a section this year for adults. Only we grownup readers had to submit a (gasp!) review of each book we read to qualify for the yummy prizes. After a summer of book reviews (duly posted also to Goodreads and Amazon), I figured I had the reviewing thing down. Sometimes readers even found them helpful.

And I thought: reviewing, it’s not that hard. The fact that, unlike in school, I wasn’t actually graded on it removed a lot of the pressure. And it’s a service to other writers and other readers, a way of giving back to the literary community.

It wasn’t until rather late this year that I started to wonder if there were actually any guidelines on how to write book reviews, other than the essay format we learned in school: tell people what you’re going to say, say it, then tell people what you said. With this additional caution for reviews: don’t tell them how the book ends.

Turns out, there’s quite a bit of information online about how to write a book review.

Mostly the advice turned out to be variations on the three-part method I learned in school, with some fine tuning, like this from the Writing Center at University of North Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences:

1. Introduction (including the name of the author, title of book and main theme)

2. Summary of content

3. Analysis and evaluation of the book

4. Conclusion, which is the old restatement issue

A few additional suggestions from UNC that I found helpful were: Review the book in front of you, not the book you wish the author had written. Be precise. (In other words, reviews such as one I read, that said, “it wasn’t what I expected,” aren’t precise. Or helpful to readers.) Never hesitate to challenge an assumption, but cite specific examples to back up your assertions. Finally, try to present a balanced argument about the value of the book for its audience.

The site Writing-World.com repeated the caution to review the actual book, not the one you wished had been written. I hope I don’t need to add that you actually need to have read the book before reviewing it? Or that you should check to be sure statements you attribute to the book are accurate? A review my book group looked at immediately lost credibility when the writer used the wrong names for the characters.

There’s also an entire cottage industry on the Internet about how to write reviews specifically for Amazon, including information from Amazon itself. (Note that Amazon’s guidelines apply to all product reviews, whether they’re for books or hula hoops.) And although you must have at some point used an Amazon account to buy a product or service in order to post a review, and the product (in this case, the book) has to be available on Amazon, you don’t have to buy the actual book you’re reviewing from Amazon. Presumably Amazon considers even non-buyer reviews a service to its customers.

Other Amazon tips are: Include the “why”: the best reviews include not only whether you liked or disliked a product (book) but also why. Be specific. Don’t make a review too long or too short. Suggested lengths are between 75 to 500 words. Minimum length is 20 words, maximum 5,000. And finally, give an honest opinion, even if it’s critical.

Happy New Year and get those reviews out there!

Wordcraft -- Promises to keep, not enough sleep

I planned to write about Dallas native Lawrence Wright’s return here to talk about the latest of his wonderful books, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief. Instead, I went home after lunch with my daughter and her family, took a nap, and missed the whole thing.

The lapse isn’t all bad. It gives me the latitude to write about some things that haven’t fit into the schedule, including a chance to keep readers updated on my writer’s resolutions for 2014 (“Resolutions for writers, in brief,” December 30, 2013.)

Resolution number one was to urge writers to get a library card, because we can’t write without reading. I already have a Dallas Public Library card, but as of this week I’m proud to say my grandchildren now have their own library cards from the Richardson, Texas, public library. Admittedly, they got the cards because they wanted to play math games simultaneously on the library’s computers instead of having to take turns like they do on their family computer. But a library card is a library card.

Resolution number two was to read, read, read. As of today, I’ve logged forty-four books read. The last an audio book of Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl series. I finished it at 11:22 p.m. Saturday, which may partly explain my need for a nap. I hope you’ll also notice improvements in my grammar!

Resolution number three was to keep a record of milestones. So here goes. This is the 552^nd post on this blog, with 34,710 page views, not including my own. Thanks to all of you readers for around the globe for checking in! I’ve submitted fifteen short stories in 2014, had four acceptances, with four stories still pending response from editors. Yes, that still leaves a lot of rejections. But today’s rejection may be, with more polishing, tomorrow’s acceptance. I’ve also sent twelve queries to agents about my novel. I’ll include them all as milestones, although a rejection from one agency landed in my inbox while I was still typing the next query. (Ouch!)

***

Other things that need to be said, but don’t fit the regular format:

The deadline for the young authors short story contest for this fall’s FenCon XI science fiction/fantasy convention has been extended to September 20. This contest is for writers in grades 3-12. There’s no entry fee, and winners can receive cash prizes as well as publication. For details, see www.fencon.org/youngauthor.html/.

Also for young writers, the Kids’ Zine Camp offered through the Dallas Writer’s Garret, July 28-August 2 gives tween and teen authors ages 10 - 19 the chance to create their own online magazine. See www.writersgarret.org/ for information.

The Pandora’s Box Poetry Showcase in Fair Park is scheduled for tonight, July 21, at 8 p.m., in the Margot Jones Theatre in 1121 First Avenue. I’ve heard poets at the Writer’s Garret workshops rave about performances in this intimate theater. See “July Edition: Pandora’s Box Poetry Showcase” on Facebook for details.

And finally (for now), there’s book review life after the Rejebian series ends this month. Rejebian’s sibling series, Authors LIVE!, resumes August 6, with John Dean’s The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It. For details, see
www.hpumc.org/authorslive/.

Wordcraft --Resolutions for writers, in brief

The thing that makes New Year’s resolutions so hard to keep is their too frequent vagueness. Or maybe it’s their habit of being just too open ended. Or too painful. It doesn’t have to be so. One year I resolved to kiss my loved ones and tell them every day that I loved them. I recommend it. And for this last post of 2013, I’ll list a very few resolutions for writers that are short, sweet and joys to keep.

Number One -- Get a library card! To write, we need to read. And we need to nurture other readers. So don’t just get a card for yourself, but for every member of your household.

If you’re an adult living in my town--Dallas, Texas--all you need to get a library card is a current government-issued photo identification and proof of Dallas residency, which can be as simple as a utility bill. If you’re applying for a card for a child, you as guardian, will need your photo ID and proof of Dallas residency, or the child’s school registration (within the city of Dallas) and/or ID. Teens may apply for their own library card with a current Dallas school or government ID. In some cases, you may even get a Dallas library card for limited use if you’re not a city resident (although you should check with your local library about its requirements). For specifics, see http://dallaslibrary2.org/about/libraryCards.php/.

Number Two -- About that reading thing. . . . The more I wrote, the less time I thought there would be to read. But in Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he notes that he reads sixty or seventy books yearly. If King, who releases a new book practically every hour, can find that time to read, can’t we? Consider shoehorning in reading time with audio books, which King likes as much as I do.

And (although this is anticipating resolution number three) consider keeping a record of books read. Since I sometimes feel uncomfortable about not having read whatever the book of the hour is, I fall back on the wisdom of my newly favorite author, Pierre Bayard and his How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Bayard marvelously organizes reading in cultural contexts. And speaking of cultural contexts, I’ll be searching for new reads from around the globe, via
http://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/.

Number Three -- Keep a record of progress. Writing is hard lonely work. If we don’t keep track of our milestones, who will? So, let’s keep logs of stories, poems and articles we’ve written. And of stories, poems and articles published. If we write blogs, notice how many posts we write and how our writing improves along the way.

Number Four -- Make a collection that doesn’t cost anything, which in some ways is also a record of progress. I have a tiny notebook of first sentences from books I love. Or we can collect last sentences, such as the lyrical passages Cormac McCarthy typically ends with to compensate for his blood-soaked prose. Or worst sentences, to make us laugh. Whatever we collect, it should be something that gives us joy, such as this short and lovely first sentence from my recent reading, “It began to snow.” (The Samurai, by Shusaku Endo). (RIP, Leonard Elmore. Sometimes it’s okay to write about weather.)

Wordcraft -- Resolution III: dare to daydream

It’s entry number three in the annual list of New Year's resolutions for writers. And much as parents and teachers may have criticized us (okay, criticized me) for daydreaming, it’s more than an escape. It’s a necessary part of any creative work.

“At its simplest, daydreaming (or mind wandering, if you prefer that term), is just another information-processing system, but a highly creative one,” editor Amy Fries writes in her blog at Psychology Today. “(Einstein) famously said, ‘When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.’”

Or consider the connection Sigmund Freud drew between daydreaming and creative writing, as Maria Popova discusses at her blog Brainpickings. “The child’s best-loved and most intense occupation is with his play or games. Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? . . . The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously. . .”

With the likes of Freud and Einstein weighing in, how can we afford to disparage daydreaming as, well, child’s play? And though it may sound crazy to give advice on how to daydream, serious dreaming requires serious effort. Not so much to dream as to make a clear space for dreaming.

I admit, working quiet time into a day isn’t easy. For starters, it means I have to stop filling my down time up with entertainment. I’m talking about turning off the IPod, TV, game system, even the Internet. (But only after you finish reading this!) At least once in a while, we must take out the ear buds that insulate us from the world, ourselves, and our deeper work.

While clearing space inside our heads, let’s get a move on. Consider Einstein’s love of walking while carrying on that conversation with his thoughts. I have a gym
membership, but how can I daydream while I’m busy checking heart rates, mileage, and calories burned on the machine readouts? My dog makes me do at least some of my exercise the old fashioned way. It gives my daydreams a breath of fresh air as well.

But aren’t daydreams, by their nature, ephemeral? How is it possible to hang on to the insights of our daydreams? I found taking a notepad and pencil to boring work meetings always made me look industrious, although I was really “daydreaming” -- jotting down story ideas, descriptions, and dialogue. I’ve also survived jury duty summons with the aid of a notebook. I like soft-bound ones small enough to fit in a purse or pocket. Anne Lamott writes that she carries index cards to capture insights. Use whatever works for you, even -- although I write this with some trepidation -- a mobile device.

And while we’re at it, let’s do some real dreaming, by getting enough sleep. Sleep that will leave what Stephen King calls “the boys in the basement” free to work on the stuff of your daydreams.

For more insights from Fries and Popova on the importance of daydreaming, see www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-power-daydreaming/ and www.brainpickings.org/.