Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 31

Not Knowing Yet

Creative people are comfortable with not knowing yet.

—an unknown jazz musician

How that quote resonates with me! And challenges me at the same time. Because the truth is that “comfortable” doesn’t quite fit. I understand that part of creation is accepting those times when I don’t know yet, can’t know, have to wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. But it would be a gross exaggeration to say I am “comfortable” with such a state of affairs.

Recently I have set other work aside—yes, even Blue-Eyed Wo...

Go into Yourself

Rainer Maria Rilke

There is only one thing to do. Go into yourself. Examine your reason for writing. Discover whether it is rooted in the depths of your heart, and find out whether you would rather die than be forbidden to write. Above all, ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night, have I no choice but to write? Dig deep within for the truest answer, and if the answer is a strong and simple yes, then build your life upon this necessity. Your life henceforth, down to its most ordinary and...

Writing Nature

white-throated sparrow

How I admire those writers who are also naturalists, or at least have a very specific knowledge of the flora and fauna that surrounds us.

I write about nature often and love the natural world deeply, but my knowledge is limited. In fact, my ignorance of all that surrounds me—the names of plants, the identity of bird calls, the life cycles of this and that—is profound. I am not even a gardener. (After paying someone to landscape my yard I find myself surrounded by a host o...

Follow Up on A Curious Thought

New Harry Potter (c) Jim McKay

Two weeks ago I wrote a blog about new scientific research which maintains that the brain doesn’t recognize the difference between an imagined act and one actually carried out. This scientific discovery intrigued me and brought a fundamental question to mind. What does our brain’s presumed inability to distinguish between imagination and reality mean for creators and purveyors of fiction? I offered no answers, only the question.

One of my readers, Donna Marie, cam...

First Law of Writing

Sir Isaac Newton

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

—Newton’s Third Law of Motion

For every truth uttered by a writer there is an equal and opposite truth available from another writer.

—Marion Dane Bauer’s First Law of Writing

John Keats, in an 1818 letter: “If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.”

Elizabeth Bishop: “Writing poetry is an unnatural act. It takes skill to make it seem natural.”

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Dear Readers.

Perhaps the first l...

A Curious Thought

Here’s a curious thought for storytellers and purveyors of stories to consider: Neuroscientists tell us that the brain does not distinguish between imagining an experience and actually doing it. That’s why athletes are taught to imagine improving their technique as part of their training. It’s why psychologists working with people with phobias teach their patients to imagine the thing they fear as preparation for actually facing it.

Surely it’s also why stories carry so much power!

And that’s a...

I used to Speak in Schools

I used to speak in schools. Most who write books for young people do that, at least through the early years of their careers. It’s a crucial way of supplementing what is otherwise often a meager income and of making contact with our readers.

School visits are thrilling. The best of them make you feel like royalty from the moment you walk in the front door, colorful banners proclaiming your presence, principals greeting you, children in their Sunday best introducing you, enthusiasm buzzing thro...

Every, Every Minute

For a number of years now I have been a student of Buddhism. Despite its ancient practice as a religion, I don’t turn to Buddhism for religious experience. Actually, Buddhism can meld compatibly with nearly any religious practice or with a denial of all. What I have found in it is a fascinating and highly beneficial form of psychology.

Western psychology is so negative, so bent of naming dysfunction: neurotic, psychotic, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, narcissistic . . . and on and on. There i...

Pity the Children

Pity the Children

For the United States, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be over soon. We will leave behind, after our defeats, wreckage and death, the contagion of violence and hatred, unending grief, and millions of children who were brutalized and robbed of their childhood. Americans who did not suffer will forget. People maimed physically or psychologically by the violence, especially the Iraqi and Afghan children, will never escape. Time and memory will play their usual tricks. Thos...

In Defense of Repression

Last week I talked about the difference between sentiment and sentimentality in our stories and, in particular, I invoked the cut-away technique used so much by films. Bring your readers/viewers right to the brink of the kind of powerful moment they already know as inevitable, then leave them to play the details out in their own minds. But stepping back from such moments isn’t the only way to play them or the only point to consider about effectively drawing feelings from our readers.

How do we...