Lynne M. Spreen's Blog, page 13

Writing Tips #1 – A Compendium

As a writer, you are part artist and part entrepreneur. Your days are spent writing (art), learning and practicing (craft), and engaging in business. 

Today I want to indulge in craft, that mental space where we absorb new strategies and techniques for bettering our art. We can dream of hitting just the right note, transporting our readers. 

In Dakota Blues, I wrote of a scene where, after a funeral in a Midwestern town, the guests assembled at a small clapboard house for the wake. Toward the end of the afternoon, after the potato salad and Jell-o and fleischküchle had been consumed, several women stood hip-to-hip at the kitchen sink, washing, rinsing, drying. As they worked, they laughed and gossiped. The camaraderie of that scene, the sisterliness of these women, reached my readers. I got a lot of nice comments about that.

As golfers say, even a blind squirrel will eventually find a nut.

Recently, I came under the tutelage of a superb, if entirely fictional, writing professor. Harry Hodgett exists only in the short story, “Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events,” by Kevin Moffett. Here are some of Hodgett’s tips:

Never dramatize a dream. (Hodgett uses “dramatize” as in, “don’t make it into a scene or story.”)
Never dramatize phone conversations. It’s too easy for them to hang up.
Never write about writing (because, I think, we writers are the only ones who believe the process–indeed, the life–is so fascinating that everyone would want to read about it. In fact, the only people who do are other writers.)
Never dramatize a funeral or a trip to the cemetery. (I’m guilty of both). They are too melodramatic, and too obvious.
Imagine a time for your characters when things might have turned out differently. Find the moment a choice was made that made all other choices impossible. Write it.
Never end your story with a character realizing something. Characters shouldn’t realize things; readers should.

I’m intrigued by #5. So much of writing is like a very cerebral puzzle. How can we tell our story within the constraints of X, Y, and Z? That challenges me.

Here’s something else: in this article “Sacred Carnality” by Mary Karr, the writer is exhorted to find the one sensory detail that will “be the key that unlocks the full internal psychic cinematic experience” for the reader.

For example, my first husband, a 19-year-old American native son, told me of sleeping in a rice paddy and waking up with leeches attached to his body. Leeches? In what universe is that normal? It’s appalling. It gets our attention. We can’t forget it. We’re horrified for him.

Have you ever thought about how much like a puzzle is the art of writing? What in particular intrigues you about the craft?

Writing Tips #1

As a writer, you are part artist and part entrepreneur. Your days are spent writing (art), learning and practicing (craft), and engaging in business. 

Today I want to indulge in craft, that mental space where we absorb new strategies and techniques for bettering our art. We can dream of hitting just the right note, transporting our readers. 

In Dakota Blues, I wrote of a scene where, after a funeral in a Midwestern town, the guests assembled at a small clapboard house for the wake. Toward the end of the afternoon, after the potato salad and Jell-o and fleischküchle had been consumed, several women stood hip-to-hip at the kitchen sink, washing, rinsing, drying. As they worked, they laughed and gossiped. The camaraderie of that scene, the sisterliness of these women, reached my readers. I got a lot of nice comments about that.

As golfers say, even a blind squirrel will eventually find a nut.

Recently, I came under the tutelage of a superb, if entirely fictional, writing professor. Harry Hodgett exists only in the short story, “Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events,” by Kevin Moffett. Here are some of Hodgett’s tips:

Never dramatize a dream. (Hodgett uses “dramatize” as in, “don’t make it into a scene or story.”)
Never dramatize phone conversations. It’s too easy for them to hang up.
Never write about writing (because, I think, we writers are the only ones who believe the process–indeed, the life–is so fascinating that everyone would want to read about it. In fact, the only people who do are other writers.)
Never dramatize a funeral or a trip to the cemetery. (I’m guilty of both). They are too melodramatic, and too obvious.
Imagine a time for your characters when things might have turned out differently. Find the moment a choice was made that made all other choices impossible. Write it.
Never end your story with a character realizing something. Characters shouldn’t realize things; readers should.

I’m intrigued by #5. So much of writing is like a very cerebral puzzle. How can we tell our story within the constraints of X, Y, and Z? That challenges me.

Here’s something else: in this article “Sacred Carnality” by Mary Karr, the writer is exhorted to find the one sensory detail that will “be the key that unlocks the full internal psychic cinematic experience” for the reader.

For example, my first husband, a 19-year-old American native son, told me of sleeping in a rice paddy and waking up with leeches attached to his body. Leeches? In what universe is that normal? It’s appalling. It gets our attention. We can’t forget it. We’re horrified for him.

Have you ever thought about how much like a puzzle is the art of writing? What in particular intrigues you about the craft?

The Growing Importance of Grandparents

Bill and I get flak sometimes over the amount of time and energy we put into our grandkids. Our peers sometimes joke, and sometimes offer heartfelt advice, about our choices. We hear:

Be careful how much you give up. You need time for yourself.
You don’t owe anybody anything, at this age.
They had ’em, let them raise them.

When our daughter-in-law who lives nearby went back to work after bearing first one, then a second grandchild, we provided daily childcare. The schedule changed as they grew old enough for outside day care and then preschool. Currently, we see them once a week. We’re also available if there’s an urgent situation, like one of them is too sick to go to school.

The early years of more intense babysitting were rewarding and difficult in equal measure. Here’s what another caregiving grandparent, a New Yorker, said about the experience, and we feel the same:

“Those were long days,” Ms. Rice says. “I did everything. I know where almost every path leads to in Central Park. I changed about 10,000 diapers. It was exhausting, but I was spending every day with my granddaughter and I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.”

It was tough. And honestly, I couldn’t do it now. Our reward was the feeling of closeness with the babies, and the satisfaction of having helped. As grandparents, we’re not alone. Whenever I stand around waiting for a school bell to ring, I am surrounded by grayhairs. Clearly, parents are relying on the elders for help. In our ever-busier work/family lives, it truly does take a village.

Per Van C. Tran, an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University,

“I think we’re in a very interesting cultural norm-shifting moment because (this level of grandparent involvement) was not expected or acceptable even a generation ago.”

I remember the stress of being a young, working mother. If I can save my adult kids from that anxiety, I will. If I have to give up something, so be it. Sure, I’ll draw the line at sacrificing my career goals…unless something critical happens. Then, I’ll give that up, too. Because it’s how I was raised. My dad, that extremely conflicted main character in my story, burned this concept into my heart:

Family is everything. 

At some point, my 90-year-old mother, who lives four blocks away, will need me. I know how it’ll go: at first, I’ll happily juggle my work and her needs. Then the former will seem like too much, and I’ll give it up for a while. Eventually, life will change again and I’ll have freedom to do whatever the hell I want. It’ll be me, me, me, until something else happens and I’ll figure things out again. It’s not always pretty, but it works.

 

 

What’s Your Book About? Your Logline and Synopsis

You’ve completed your manuscript. Congratulations! What’s the book about? 

Does this question stop you cold? How do you put it into a nice succinct speech? More importantly, how do you put it into the dread “Elevator Speech,” so named because in theory (in your dreams) you want to be ready when a publishing VIP steps onto your elevator and says, “What’s the book about?” Because if you can impress this person, your future may be launched!

So you mumble and stammer, and three minutes later, you’re still talking and the VIP is exiting the elevator, taking your dreams with her.

Another missed opportunity.

You go home and sit down at your desk, resolved to create an elevator speech that will dazzle and entice the next VIP, should you ever again be so lucky as to be in the presence of one. You sit and you think and you think and you sit, but the darned speech just won’t materialize. Has this happened to you? It happened to me, and I swear, it will never happen again, thanks to Chuck Sambuchino.

After I published Dakota Blues, I heard Chuck speak at a conference, and I took notes. As an editor at Writer’s Digest Magazine, Chuck has written books about the publishing world, including the well-known Guide to Literary Agents. At the conference, he called this list “The Five Versions of Your Novel from Short to Long.” He suggests you create them in this order:

Logline. This is a one-sentence line (also called a one-line) that explains what the story is about and shows the hook – the unique idea that will entice a reader. Think of it this way: if you and your friends are trying to decide what movie to see, how would you describe your choice in one sentence? “It’s about a 70-year-old widower, who hates being retired, so he lands a job as a senior intern at a fashion website.” (The Intern). Or, “An American attorney must negotiate the release of a U-2 spy plane pilot who was shot down over Russia at the height of the Cold War.” (Bridge of Spies)
Pitch: What you read on the back cover of a book. A paragraph or two.
Short Synopsis: Two pages or less, double spaced. A front-to-back telling of the story, boiling it down to its essentials.
Long Synopsis: Seven to eight pages, double spaced.
Manuscript

Of course, you’ll revise as you write, and things will change, but try it out on your next idea for a novel, before you begin to write. I did the first four steps above for a recent book which will never be published, because I realized through this process that the premise was flawed. Then I did it again for my current Work In Progress (WIP) and things are going much better.

It sure was a lot easier than starting with Number Five and working my way backward! Try it, and let me know what you think.

A Mindfulness Trick for You

Do you ever wish you could find a way to savor the moment more deeply? I know a powerful trick for doing just that.

The patios at Cottonwood Cove

Last Friday I wrote of spending a few days with Bill at Cottonwood Cove. I was excited about going there, not only because it’s a sentimental place for us, but also, because of the solitude and privacy. It’s pretty remote, and since it was late September, we thought no one else would be there, but the place was packed and noisy.

The next day, we returned from our boat picnic to find almost everyone had gone home. I was in heaven. Quiet is something I seek and appreciate constantly. (I’ll sometimes go out on my patio between 10 and 11 a.m. to savor it.) Mom taught me this. All us kids remember her saying, on those camping trips to the desert or mountains, so many years ago, “Oh! Listen to the quiet!”

View from the patio

So there we were, on our patio, looking out at the beach and marina, having finished a game of backgammon and enjoying a beer. The quiet was amazing.

I told Bill I felt so sentimental. To explain just how much, I said this, and this is the essence of the “trick:”

“I pretend it’s very late in my life, and I’m wishing so hard that I could go back and spend a day with you. Suddenly, I am transported. Somehow, I get to step back in time 30 years, and relive a moment – this moment. That’s where I am now. Back. And so grateful.”

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl says we should live each moment as if for the second time, wherein we recognize that we messed it up the first time around and now have a chance to return to the moment and do it right.

Frankl may have influenced me in my mindfulness trick, but there’s another explanation. When I was forty, I was returning to my job, six weeks after major surgery. It was a cool spring morning. Everyone was inside, working. Next door, the elementary school playground was silent, because the school day had begun. Everybody was going about their routine–without me.

Yet, there I was, given another chance to walk back inside my building and return to the comfort of my life. I felt almost as if I were returning from the dead, because if you’ve had scary surgery, and experienced that resignation, that alone-feeling of looking at your loved ones before going into the OR and thinking, “oh, well. See you in the next life,” you know what I mean. But now I had the opportunity to go back to my beloved world. Can you imagine my gratitude?

So that’s what I do now. I imagine I’m way, way in the future, but I get to come back right now to this very moment and appreciate it fully, deeply, and with the most intense gratitude. Try it. Let me know what happens.

Where the Writing Pros Are: Romance!

Romance is a genre that doesn’t always get the respect it deserves, but the authors are laughing all the way to the bank. Romance writers are the most prolific in the business, and it’s not unusual for them to make six figure annual incomes.

Catherine Bybee, NY Times Bestselling Author

Recently I attended a weekend writers’/readers’ conference in Palm Springs. As a productivity fiend, always looking for models and inspiration, I absolutely admire these women. (Most of them are women, although some men sneak in using pen names.) It’s not unusual for them to produce 40, 50, 60 novels. And don’t assume “the books are really short, anybody can do them.” First of all, they’re not “really short”, and even if they were, how many 50,000-word books have we produced? (Me: two. In ten years.)

At the conference, I ditched my pride and asked everybody about the Secret Template.

Where was the simple, easy-to-use story structure they all followed that allowed them to crank out so many books? Surely there was one.

Nope. Instead, I got a lot of friendly, helpful suggestions: Save the Cat, The Virgin’s Promise, Larry Brooks’ Story Structure. Etc. No secret template. Just old-fashioned three-act storytelling.

Back to the drawing boards for me.

As I reviewed the schedule, I was surprised to see a huge gap where Saturday’s lunch break was supposed to be. There were no classes, no formal anything. Instead, several hours were set aside to get ready for the late-afternoon and evening activities.

I chortled to Bill: “Oh my God, they have a salon! A makeup artist! Costumes to rent! The idea is, you get all fancied up for the evening and then get your picture taken with a cover model.” How shallow, how cheesy!

But then I thought, wait a minute. What if?

What if you were a romance writer and wanted a publicity photo of yourself and Mr. Pecs?
What if you made that photo into a lifesized poster for your next book signing?
What if you just got a nice looking headshot for your portfolio, regardless of your genre?

As with everything about the writing biz, these women are ahead of the rest of us! Next time I’m going to pay for a makeover and get my picture taken.

The conference was new to the area (they’d been in Las Vegas the past two years) so there were some hiccups, but I’d go again, if for no other reason than to rub elbows with these hard-working, professional writers. (And maybe a hunky cover model). If you’re curious about the conference, bookmark this website. Maybe they’ll do it again next year and you can get your picture taken, too! Just for professional purposes, of course.

Bumbling into Older Age

Whimsy doesn’t have to be limited to childhood.

“As we grow, we often have more fear of failure; our comfort zone shrinks, and we take fewer risks.” The quote, attributed to Yehuda Berg, delights me. I delight in rejecting it. Although maybe I should be more careful. 

A couple days ago, Bill and I stayed at Cottonwood Cove resort, part of the Lake Mead park system. Some of the marinas and beaches around Lake Mead are closed now, what with the drought and the lake level having sunk almost two hundred feet. I figured I’d never see it again, because of that and the fact that it’s getting harder to do everything. Like lug picnic stuff through triple-digit heat to a boat, and for Bill, getting back into the boat on those cheesy little ladders. But last weekend, we did one more sentimental trip.

Bill took the above picture of me, and then, taking my hands off the wheel, I took this picture of him. While the boat was still in motion.

Suddenly the boat turned sharply to the right. It was a little boat on a big lake, not going that fast, for Pete’s sake. Had my hip not bumped the wheel, it could have steered itself. But that’s not what happened.

The engine changed pitch to a loud roar. The boat wrenched hard to the right. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I felt disoriented. Bill’s voice cut through my shock: “Throttle down!” I pulled the throttle to neutral and the boat stopped. I sat down, breathing hard, horrified at my stupidity. The boat had done a complete 180.

And we weren’t even drinking yet.

Afterward, I asked him if I’d fallen out of the boat, did he know where the vests were? He didn’t.

Now, looking at my photo, I laugh. I look so proud, happy, and carefree. Not like the idiot I was.

But in spite of that, we were glad we went, and we’ll go again. Lake Mead Recreation Area is where Bill and I began our relationship, twenty years ago. We boat-camped at a deserted beach we named Donkey Poo. Guess why.

As the years passed, we vacationed at the various marinas and resorts around Lake Mead with everyone in the family. It’s such a sentimental place for us.

Cottonwood Cove marina at sunset

As Bill and I get older, we have more physical limitations. He’s 68; I’m 61. Not that old, but everybody ages differently. It’s wonderful to be a team, to be able to look out for each other. Because at this age, stuff happens.

On Tuesday at dawn, we were all packed and ready to leave the hotel. He was in the car, waiting for me. I was still in the hotel room, making one more just-in-case trip to the bathroom. I reached around to flush the toilet and my back started spasming! I could hardly stand. Barely made it to the bed, where I sat and though, “WTF do I do now? Can I even walk?” I couldn’t communicate with Bill or let him into the room. The key was on the dresser.

I did some deep breathing, tightened my abs, and stood. A few minutes later I wobbled out to the car, whimpering as I climbed in. We sat there for a minute, engine running.

“I can’t close my door,” I said. He unbuckled, climbed out, and shut it for me. It seemed chivalrous, although it wasn’t the most romantic situation. The car seat was comfortable, though, and I figured I’d be fine after resting my back all the way home – a four hour drive. As we drove out of the cove, Bill glanced in the rearview. “Oh, man, you should see the lake.”

“I can’t turn around,” I said.

He turned the car, facing the lake so I could see.

Cottonwood Cove at dawn

I love this man. We are bumbling and fumbling our way into old age together, laughing as we go. Sometimes we get scared, but we refuse to be limited by it. Life is what it is. Nobody lives forever, you get weak and die, but – within the limits of reality – you have to keep trying.

Maybe age is daunting, but I will never give up. I will deal with my aches and pains, and keep fighting, because you only get one shot. And I am so grateful to have Bill in my life, who twenty years later has become my soul mate.

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante; A Review

Book One of Four

I don’t normally post on Thursdays but I read all four of Ms. Ferrante’s novels, which are getting a lot of press right now. If you are thinking of reading the series, I did, and my review of the four books is here. See you tomorrow for our regular post on positive aging.

Amazon Gives You a Free Storefront. Are You Using It?

I know an author who is successful and sophisticated, but she’s wasting her Amazon.com author page. It lists her books, but that’s it. She hasn’t bothered to go to Author Central and personalize it.

This is a missed opportunity. If you were offered a little alcove for your books in the biggest bookstore in the world, wouldn’t you jump at the chance?

Some of us don’t. Maybe we think it’ll be a lot of work to create and maintain. We tell ourselves we’ll do it one day. Someday.

Meanwhile, the opportunities fly away.

Every day your Amazon Author Page just sits there, looking generic, is a wasted opportunity to sell, sell, sell. Amazon.com is the biggest bookstore on the planet. People can find your product while surfing the net. Search engines will point potential buyers to it. Once there, they see not just one book, but your entire shelf. And they see you.

When you populate your Amazon Author page, you can

advertise your brand (i.e. your niche and author voice),
create a bond with fans, both actual and potential, and
add your Author Page URL to your business card and email signature, thereby directing people to your books, which are all in one place. For example, mine is http://www.Amazon.com/author/lynnespreen.

You not only feature your books all in one place; you also gussy up that place with the following window dressing:

Up to eight photos of you or your topics, and you can choose one to enlarge and serve as your headshot (and you can change it any time you like)
up to two videos (book trailer or just something you shot at home; maybe even a short vacation video of the place that inspired your latest novel.)
If you’re on Twitter, and you should be, you can set it up so your latest tweets appear automatically (although as of this writing, the Twitter interface is going through some reconfiguring, so you won’t see it.)
You can automatically publish your blog posts to your Author Page.

All of the above help readers feel they know you, which builds interest and loyalty. When I see an underutilized author page, it seems as if the author doesn’t care about that. Here’s an example.

Now here’s an example of an Author Page that’s fully utilized. Which one seems more interested in reaching out to readers?

My page updates every time I publish a blog post or tweet on Twitter. I can change out the photos as I choose. Now all I have to do is write more books! (I’m halfway through the sequel to Dakota Blues.)

If you are interested in claiming and updating your Amazon Author Page, start here: Where to Go to Create or Update Your Author Page. All you need is your User Name and Password on Amazon (if you don’t have one, create an account.) They’ll walk you through it, it’s free, and it’s simple. Then you can market your book while you sleep.

If you have any questions, ask me and I’ll do my best to help you with this.

 

 

 

 

Girls Still Wait for Boys to Love Them

Warning: this post is sexually graphic and vulgar. Please don’t read it if that upsets you. It’s about online dating.  

In the Sept. 2015 issue of Vanity Fair, Nancy Jo Sales writes that twenty-somethings are hooking up via mobile apps like Tinder, OkCupid, Happn, etc.

One study reported there were nearly 100 million people using their phones “as a sort of all-day, every-day, handheld singles club, where they might find a sex partner as easily as they’d find a cheap flight to Florida.”

After posting their profiles, here are some of the modern-day greetings used by young men to attract women. I mean vaginas.

“I want to have you on all fours.”
“Send me some nudes.”
“Wanna fuck?”
“Come over and sit on my face.”
“I’m looking for something quick within the next 10-20 minutes. Are you available?”
“I’m looking for a cute girl like you that has a kinky side. Do you think you would like to get choked…” (He goes on.)

Clearly, the kids aren’t meeting at the library anymore.

According to the article by Nancy Jo Sales, normal dating is dead. These days, kids go online, find each other, screw, and start over. This is great for the guys. For the girls, God, they’re so stupid I want to put a gun to my head. Apparently they think this is the game they have to play, hoping one of the guys will notice their inner beauty and become their boyfriend and maybe even something more long-term.

Nothing changes. The song above depicts the same mindless capitulation, from fifty years ago. The only thing that’s different is the men’s casual disdain, if not outright misogyny. Here’s a quote from one of the johns. (Is it okay if I call you that? John?)

I think to an extent it is, like, sinister,” he says, “because I know that the average girl will think that there’s a chance that she can (convince him to enter into a serious relationship with her). If I were like, Hey, I just wanna bone, very few people would want to meet up with you…”

Another says,

When it’s so easy, when it’s so available to you, and you can meet somebody and fuck them in 20 minutes, it’s very hard to contain yourself…Now is that the kind of woman I potentially want to marry? Probably not.”

Yes, sure, women like sex as much as men do, and some women want it without strings attached. But according to Elizabeth Armstrong, professor of sociology who specializes in sexuality and gender at the University of Michigan, girls are still waiting by the phone:

For young women the problem…is still gender inequality. Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when something is going to be serious (or not)…There is still a pervasive double standard. We need to puzzle out why women have (not made strides) in the private arena.”

Here are some quotes from the young women interviewed for the article.

“Who doesn’t want to have sex? But it feels bad when they’re like, ‘See ya.'”
“It’s a contest to see who cares less, and guys win a lot at caring less.”
“Sex should stem from emotional intimacy, and it’s the opposite with us right now, and I think it really is kind of destroying females’ self-images.”
“Honestly, I feel like the body doesn’t even matter to them as long as you’re willing. It’s that bad.”
“But if you say any of this out loud, it’s like you’re weak, you’re not independent, you somehow missed the whole memo about third-wave feminism. ” (Please sign up for a women’s studies class, stat.)

One reason mobile dating proliferates is because the kids are so busy thumbing their smartphones that they don’t learn how to converse in person, sober. At one college, there’s a class in which an optional assignment is going out on an actual date. Per a girl quoted in the article, “(You have to) meet them sober and not when you’re both, like, blackout drunk. Like, get to know someone before you start something with them. And I know that’s scary.” Per the article,

…anxiety about intimacy comes from having ‘grown up on social media’ so ‘we don’t know how to talk to each other face-to-face.'”

According to Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction,

There have been two major transitions in heterosexual mating in the last four million years. The first was around 10,000-15,000 years ago, in the agricultural revolution, when we became less migratory and more settled. And the second major transition is with the rise of the Internet.”

Is this really the way society is going, or am I overreacting? Would love to hear from young and old alike who use these dating services; what’s your view? Is it as mercenary as this article portrays? Please share this post so we can hear from the greatest range of voices. Thanks.