Spring Cleaning the Writing Life

Spring has finally arrived in Northern California. We think. We hope. After record rainfall and cold, a small rise in the mercury has everyone dressed in tanks, shorts and flip flops, which don't hide the goosebumps.

As a child, I remember my mother's spring cleaning every year, though our house was already spotless. The furniture was moved for a thorough dusting and vacuuming, the wooden floors were waxed and polished, the windows cleaned with vinegar and newspaper, the cobwebs removed from attic to basement. She washed every rug, blanket and quilt and draped them on the clothesline to dry in the mottled sunshine. Cabinets were cleaned out and the Contac paper replaced, even under the kitchen sink. The broken, useless and out-of-date were tossed. By the end of the week, the house had a great freshness and exuberance after the long winter.

I would love to continue her tradition (I see merit in it) but I'm lucky to accomplish the basic weekly cleaning that keeps our house livable. If I were to choose one area to freshen, it would be my writing space, and I'm not just talking about my desk. I'm thinking that a good spring cleaning could extend to my writing life, as well.

I'm thinking of the box beneath my desk with the dusty files of just-begun stories I toyed with when I was trying to find my writer voice, as Sharon mentioned in her last post. Or the numerous revisions of the manuscripts that quietly and naturally expired before publication. Copies of revisions for books already published. The resources - now out of date - that I'd gathered for a series I wanted to write, but now realize isn't the direction I want to go.

Copies of old writing magazines. Shelves of books on writing, the writer's life, writer's devotionals, essays on the writing, how to get published, how to market, market guides, dictionaries, thesauruses, pocket dictionaries and thesauruses, word finders, synonym finders, baby names, and even more baby names. An old computer that died in the middle of my last manuscript. Tapes & CDs of writers conference sessions. Binders with worksheets for the tapes & CDs from writers conference sessions.

Why would a person keep all of this stuff, aside from the too-busy life that doesn't allow for much deep cleaning? Does the clutter define me as a writer? I've begun the task of cleaning this out several times, but the job turned out to be overwhelming and I ended by packing it all back in the tubs. Keeping a few indicators of the writer's journey makes great sense. We need to see the progress we've made. But at some point, this clutter can hold a person back. It can whisper, "This is you, now and forever. No freshness can penetrate." It can speak of failures and misguided attempts to define ourselves when we were just wandering and trying to discover who we are.

So, aside from ridding ourselves of the obvious junk, how do we spring clean the writing life? It could begin with something as simple as changing up a subscription from a writing magazine we no longer read cover to cover with something new. Perhaps we begin our writing time composing or reading a poem. Maybe we try submitting an article or personal experience piece to a magazine or story collection, something that has a beginning and end so we can see the results immediately, even if it's never published. Or we begin our autobiographies, keeping the bigger picture of our lives in mind.

We rid ourselves of the negative self-talk that keeps us in doubt of our calling and makes us question the time we sacrifice for it. We treat our writing as a job and reestablish our boundaries. We consider our writing time an appointment we keep with ourselves. No one else needs to know the reason.

With the changes in publishing, we may need to forgo the vision we had of publication and be open to something new, or be willing to change our trajectory altogether. We need to ask for a new vision of our futures as writers from the One who knows the best desired outcomes for us.

Can you think of more ways to spring clean your writing life? I would love to hear!

Coming Home as a Writer

In a comment to Bonnie's post, "Literary Fingerprints," Amy K. Sorrells said, "My current novel has a pretty unique voice, and I find my pen/fingers feel sluggish whenever I'm hesitant about speaking freely through her. It's when I open my heart unabashedly that my character is able to sing." That got me thinking about the difference between character's voice and author's voice in fiction. There are, or should be, as many "voices" in a novel as there are characters. The more distinct we make those voices -- without resorting to cliche -- the better our work is. That's not to say that conveying the voice of every character is an easy task; some will undoubtedly be more difficult than others to "get right." But getting it right is one of the most important jobs an author has. We talked recently about the voices in the best-selling novel The Help, about how you can "hear" each of the three POV characters as you read, and how you can easily distinguish between them. In fact, all the characters have strong, identifiable voices. I love to read novels like that, where the voices are so well executed that you feel a part of the story. That's not always the case, as anyone who reads much fiction can tell you.

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But there's a difference between the voices of the characters we create or read about, and the author's voice. Bonnie cited word choice and sentence structure as things that add to the author's voice, and she's absolutely right. As part of the writer's syntax, they help make an author's voice unique. Added to that are diction, author's personality, education and locale. It's the use/non-use/over-use of adjectives and adverbs, or falling into patterns of passive voice. It's the way punctuation is used; the tight or flowing style in which an author writes; their preference for dialogue/action tags. An author's voice should be as individual and identifiable as his or her physical voice, because one is as unique as the other.

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In Finding Your Author Voice, Michele Dunaway writes, "An author's voice is that mystical, interplanetary thing that you can't buy in Walgreen's or find on the Internet. But every best-selling author has it. So where did they get it? And better yet, where do you find it? Your author's voice is actually already with you. It's found deep inside you..." It's there in everything you write, from the first rough draft to the final spectacular one. It's part of your creative DNA. Even if you try to emulate another author, your own distinctions will inevitably shine through. Wendy Paine Miller, a frequent commentor on this blog, said, "I believe voice happens on the page when you lose yourself to the writing." William Brohaugh, in Write Tight (one of my favorite books on the craft of writing), agrees. He says, "Remember that voice and style should be quiet. They are not established with gimmick. When you strive for voice and style, you don't achieve it. You simply show off" (pg. 149).

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I've experimented with a variety of genres in my years of writing, but it was when I began to write contemporary women's fiction that I found my true and best author's voice. That's the genre where the best I have to offer comes through, where all the elements I mentioned above come together in the best way possible for this writer. It gets to the heart of who I am and what matters most to me. That's important for many reasons, not the least of which is that editors are not just looking for a great and unique story; they also want a great and unique authorial voice -- someone to tell that story in the most engaging way possible.

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I highly recommend that you experiment with different genres as you seek to find who you are as a writer. Write short stories to determine which genre is the "mystical" fit for you, to find where you shine, because not all genres are created equally for each and every author. If you find that you struggle with the work -- above and beyond what every writer experiences -- then maybe you haven't found your genre. Experiment! Experiment with tense and time and topic. If you're like me, you'll know when you've come home as a writer.

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Can you define your author's voice, even if just to yourself? Have you experimented with genres to find if one is a better fit than another? If so, did you learn anything about yourself as a writer?

Intentional Celebrating- A She Reads Guest Post

We interrupt this blog for breaking news of adorableness:

Yesterday, Sharon celebrated a new addition to

her family. A sweet puppy named Boo. We wanted to share his puppy cuteness with you - So adorable, he makes Monday happy! Yay!

Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

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The other day a friend emailed meaparagraph from a blog post she'd read. She thought I might like theconcept the author,Mandy Hubbard, was proposing. I've included it below so you can read it too: Someone once told me "Satisfaction is a dirty word." I always thought that was stupid. If you can't enjoy what you have, what's the point? But then I got into publishing, and then I understood. I understood what it was like to feel like it was never enough. I understood why

people became workaholics. I understood how hard it is to be satisified in this industry... So I bought a big glass vase, and whenever I have something to celebrate-- a new book deal, a foreign sale, etc--I pop champagne and I write on the bottom of the cork what I was celebrating, and drop it in the vase. Seeing that-- seeing that I've had things to celebrate in my career-- reminds me of my accomplishments.

The interesting thing about this is that my friend sent this paragraph to me moments after I had decided to start keeping a list of my writing victories. I took this as a confirmation that I was on the right track. I had reasoned that I needed to be intentional about celebrating my accomplishments instead of letting them get swept under the rug of striving. So I began my list, marking down the good things that had happened to me as a result of my writing. No moment was too insignificant. As more victories occurred tome, I added them. A theme began to emerge: losses and setbacks aside, I was onto something. This writing thing was worth pursuing.

However we choose to mark our victories, whether by saving champagne corks or buying ourselves flowers and snapping a picture to put in a simple photo album with the reason noted underneath, eating a piece of Godiva chocolate and jotting down the reason on the wrapper or simply beginning a list in a journal, in this industry we need to find reasons to celebrate and be intentional about doing so. It's too easy to get discouraged, too tempting to look around you at the other writers who seem to have good things undeservedly happen to them. By all means save those rejection letters, but also print those sweet emails from readers and save them too. We need touchstones, little altars everywhere that affirm our calling... and mark the confirmations that God sends along the way.

How do you celebrate your large and small victories as you move forward in your writingjourney? How would it help you to have a visual reminder of those victories?

The Novel as Sacred Art

On Monday, when Debbie wondered aloud - well, in print - why a person would create anonymously, I thought of Michelangelo's Pieta. It is the only sculpture he ever signed. He was twenty-four, a new, lesser-known artist.

Look at it - surely this was the most brilliant thing he had yet created, the work that would make him famous.

Can you see him hanging back, anonymous among the viewers, not many days past its unveiling? He listens to the chattered exclamations: Brilliant! Astonishing! The flesh so real it breaths. The emotion in Mary's upturned hand.

He smiles to himself. The crowd loves it. Loves him.

He wants to hear them say his name. He asks a passerby, "Who made this masterpiece?"

"I'm not sure," comes the reply. "But I think it is Cristoforo Solari."

"Oh yes," says someone else. "It is certainly Solari."

Perhaps that very day Michelangelo adds one last touch, a signature on the sash across Mary's chest:

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI, FLORENTINE, MADE THIS.

Later he feels ashamed for having done it. It's 1498, and typically, sacred art is not signed. It exists to bring glory not to its creator, but to The Creator. It is an act of worship, and the artist's dearest hope is that it is a contagious act of worship.

Want a modern example of how such art can function?

The other five authors of this blog gave me a gift of The Four Holy Gospels, published by Crossways, illumined by Makoto Fujimura. I can't tell you how lavish, how beautiful it is - or how happy I am for this breakthrough in the Christian world's attitude toward art that can't be fully grasped in a microsecond.

Neither can I express what an experience it is to read. In Matthew, where John cries out in the wilderness, "Make his paths straight," Fujimura has painted three parallel lines in red and gold and blue dotting down the page - a straight path. That path continues on the following spread, but on the next one, when the Pharisees complain that Jesus is healing on the Sabbath, the three lines get tangled and fade to gray. A page later that gray becomes a chain where Jesus confronts the Gadarene demoniac. But then the demoniac is delivered, and the chain unravels to three straight lines in red and gold and blue.

Imagine how I meditated, page after page, on the meaning of that path. It affected me in ways I can't put to words. It made me worship.

Could you do that with a novel? Can a story be considered sacred art? I think it has been done, in novels where the theme, or as I've heard it put in workshops, "the takeaway," is something that can't be grasped in a microsecond. It's not about what the reader can "take away," its more about what he longs to give. It's not that coming to Jesus will put your life in order. It's that he is beautiful. He is poetry. He is holy, and wholly astonishing. Didn't our hearts burn within us? Who wants him to tidy our small worlds if we can follow into his explosion of grace?

We Christian writers are often uncomfortable being labeled as such. After all, we don't talk about Christian plumbers as if they should have their own section of the phone book. (Perhaps its that separate section of the bookstore that irks us most.)

What if we thought of our work as sacred art? Not a job we do like any working-stiff author, but an act of worship that can spark an epidemic? Wouldn't that lend a meaning to the words, "Christian Fiction" that we can embrace?"

I so want to see a new Renaissance. Isn't this the time?

Care to be part of it?

Please talk. We love to read what you have to say.

Literary Fingerprints

On Monday, Debbie spoke about anonymous writing. A feeling most of us are familiar with, if for all the wrong reasons. In her post, she mentioned Don Foster’s idea of the literary fingerprint; the DNA from our pen that would convict any one of us of authoring a piece of writing. He was likely referring to habitual wording and phrasing, moldy metaphors we lean on. But, as I read Debbie’s post, I wondered if Foster was referring to voice – that ill defined, yet sought after attribute of writing no one understands but can only point to when it is present. If something of the writer sticks to everything he pens, certainly voice would be the glue. I’ve written and taught about voice in fiction. After several years of writing, I thought I might know something about the subject. Turns out I don’t. I’m not unhappy about the revelation. Writers are never bothered by being wrong. We know how to rewrite. And we know being absolutely right is the death of art.

Still, it surprised me when Roger Rosenblatt, in Unless it Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing, dismissed the subject of voice with a metaphorical wave of his hand. “Voice is merely the latest cliché to signify good writing. Its predecessor was ‘authority’.”
One man’s opinion. So what? Except that it sat right with me. I understood what he meant and why there was no need to talk about it any further. Voice is simply a way of saying that writer believed in herself.
In theater we call it stage presence. In film it’s scene stealer. That actor who chews the scenery, and makes us believe he is the character.

Voice is writing with an assurance that translates by osmosis to the reader. It has nothing to do with POV or which tense you tell the story in. It’s not about diphthongs or Irish accents. It’s plunging into story without timidity or throat clearing. By sheer perfection of word choice and sentence structure the author conveys her absolute confidence to the reader. An elbow nudge and wink from the captain of the ship. Authorial authority. Rosenblatt says, “Voice is the knowledge of what you want to say. After that, it becomes any voice that serves your purpose.”

Maybe that’s why he swatted the topic aside. It’s simply an outcome of years of perfecting the craft and art of writing enough to allow yourself to write like you mean it. And there’s no talking about that. There is only doing.I like the thought that my literary fingerprint may one day be confidence, not that my story is perfect, or even right, but that I deserve the opportunity to tell it my way.

I recommend Rosenblatt’s book for reasons I can’t articulate. Not because it will teach you about writing a novel, but it presses the writer's consciousness into your grey matter and you come away with a heightened ability to express what you’ve always known.

Author Known

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for an acquaintance from church. While it was a sad occasion, it was also the celebration of a life well lived with the sure hope of living in the presence of her Savior. During the service, several of her friends shared meaningful verses and quotes, and I found it interesting that at least half of the quotes were attributed to 'anonymous' or 'author unknown.' The quotes weren't especially stellar prose, but listeners were touched, just the same. I'm sure the authors would have been pleased to know the encouragement their words afforded to the grieving friends and family in attendance, but they never will.

So I began to wonder why a person would write anonymously. How many of us would continue to write if we received no compensation or credit for our hard work, and would we write any differently knowing that our identities would remain secret?

The internet provides anonymity to writers every day, for good or ill. Did you follow the Bronx Zoo Cobra on Twitter? Whoever tweeted for 'her' had a ball while she was on the loose, and it was all in good fun. But anonymity should never be an excuse for abuse or become someone's 'super power'. With anonymity should come responsibility.

Writing without a byline could offer such freedom, if responsibility were present. A reader may argue that there is nothing she couldn't say without affixing her name to it, but it's easier said than done. I know of a few topics I would write about or different styles I might try if I were assured secrecy, and you might know some, too. Maybe those are the things that should make their way into our stories in one form or another.

It is becoming more common to hear about people writing anonymously from places of political unrest or other potentially dangerous situations. But some just have a heavy burden and need the promise of a shadowy corner and a voice changer to get the words out. A writer friend of mine once wrote anonymously about passing a young female hitchhiker on a California highway. He and his wife were advanced in years and had felt vulnerable to crime, so they didn't stop and they always regretted their inaction. They never knew what happened to the girl, but she haunted them. Writing the story was a form of confession and penance, and was also a charge to the reader not to overlook opportunities to help others where we could. It allowed him to be truthful about a situation that was painful and shameful to him, and while editors would not normally prefer it, the magazine editor was more willing to print it anonymously.

As for how many of us would continue to write without some sort of recognition, I suppose it depends on our motivation for writing and how we see ourselves as stewards of what God has invested in us. It would take true humility to do one's best work and not yearn for a byline. Thankfully, God doesn't usually demand that of us.


By the way, apparently, all writers have literary fingerprints - their own unique patterns of phrases, punctuation and combinations that can give their identities away to folks like literary super sleuth Don Foster, author of 'Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous'. As an expert in attributional theory, he has been able to attribute a new poem written by 'W.S.' to William Shakespeare, uncover the anonymous author of 'Primary Colors' (a fictionalized look inside the Clinton political campaign) and help to convict the Unabomber. He says, "Give anonymous offenders enough verbal rope and column inches, and they will hang themselves for you, every time."

It makes me wonder what my literary fingerprints look like. Don't you wonder the same?
If, years later, someone like Mr. Foster discovered something you'd written anonymously, what would it be? I think for me it would be poetry, because it's something I'm not very good at but I admire. What about you?

School Lunches & the Perfect Button, Maybe

Announcement! Our winner of The Hinge of Your History goodies, chosen by random.org, is Susan Gregory! Susan, email us at novelmatters@gmail.com with your mailing address. Congratulations!

Welcome to our book talk of Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Although first published in 1974, the book remains influential and entertaining for burgeoning and seasoned writers. Anne is the kind of writing friend you want giving you advice. She's honest and practical. Join us in discussing the chapter "School Lunches" today. Remember, reading the chapter is not a prerequisite for adding to the conversation.

Okay, so this is my poopy first draft about school lunches as assigned in the chapter:

Lunchtime at Hudnall Elementary School was an orderly affair. Tables folded from the wall of the auditorium, where, besides eating our lunches, we watched the Dodgers play in the World Series and learned folk dances, which meant touching boys. Nothing so scintillating happened during lunch. Each grade was assigned a table, the boys sat on one side, the girls on the other. We didn't jockey for position to sit by our friends. We stepped into our seats in the order we stood in line.

Back in the classroom, the kids who bought hot lunches had lined up first. Because a 25-cent lunch was a luxury, I squirmed in my seat at the hot-lunch students seemed to have descended from Mount Olympus, so confident were they. On the days my harried mother pressed a quarter into my hand and I lined up with the privileged few, I stood taller, felt the inclusion. I bought my lunch maybe three times a year.

The rest of the time, I ate the very same thing every day. While my fellow students munched on

thick sandwiches of American cheese and deli meats with lettuce on white bread, I ate a bologna sandwich on wheat bread smothered with Miracle Whip, no lettuce. Also included, on the bottom of the bag to prevent my sandwich from being squished, were the requisite bag of celery and carrot sticks and a pithy apple. Mom used those plastic bags with the fold-over closure, so the sandwich was dry around the edges. Other students munched on Cheetos, Bugles, or cookies. I tried not to drool. Some kids carried 8 cents to buy ice cream for dessert. They sat on the patio, fully visible through a giant window, chasing rivilets of chocolate down their arms. I drank tepid milk from a plaid Thermos.

We raised our hands to be excused. Our plates and lunch bags were examined to see that we'd finished eating. We lined up silently to go out to noon recess. Who kept this order? Mrs. Zolatell, built like a pawn on a chess board. She carried a whistle and the power to make disruptive students sit on the bench during recess. I've always been a little chatty. That fact landed me on the bench--just once--where I cried for 30 minutes, and then threw up.

According to Anne, now that I've completed my poopy first draft, I have the

option to delete or revise, or to tip the memories over like a box of buttons. There might be something shiny and useful in there. I won't be writing about pithy apples soon, that's for sure. I ran into Mrs. Zolatell several years later, and she stood nearly a head shorter than me. By that time, the angst had drained out of me. I just found it creepy that they allowed her out during the day. Yes, yes, of course you're right. The interesting part is me losing my lunch. I missed a student council meeting. I hated being thought of as the kind of kid who would have to sit on the bench. I wanted to be good. Hmm. There's an interesting "button." How far would a character go to protect their reputation?

Is it too late to confess that I hate writing exercises like this? None of this dreck has anything to do with what I'm working on. And my writing time is so precious that a game like this seems foolhardy, wasteful. Okay, so it was fun to remember the lunchroom. The fresh faces of Nina and Ginny and Larry and Ivon are in front of me as I write this. And I feel downright lacsidazical. Maybe I do need to loosen up and play a little more.

Do you work this way? Do you do writing exercises, just follow the writing butterfly through a memory, to find something golden to enrich your writing? Can you convince me to give it a try?

So what did you carry in your lunch bag?