During a recent class, I discussed rhythm, starting with a passage from Ursula Le Guin’s excellent Steering the Craft, and moving on to Virginia Woolf’s equally excellent explanation: “Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words.” Simple, right? I then read aloud one of my favorite examples of style/rhythm/right words. It’s three paragraphs … [Read more...]
Writing Tips
The Editor’s Burden; Or, Why We Proofread
Editors read differently from people who are not editors. A part of our brain holds an imaginary red pen and corrects punctuation as we read, chooses stronger verbs, strikes out adverbs, and always, always, fixes typos and misspellings. The red pen doesn’t get too much use in published books, but I am not surprised when I do find random errors. Even considering how many times a manuscript and then … [Read more...]
Building Characters
I was reminded in class the other day of a writing exercise that I call Building Characters. The idea came to me from a chapter in a student’s memoir, about a bus trip her family took in Great Britain and Western Europe in the early 1960s. The group was an intriguing collection of characters—starting with the tour guide, the wonderfully named Mr. Pinchback—and it occurred to me that students could … [Read more...]
“I’m Doing the Best I Can”
For my birthday last year, a friend gave me a book, one that I probably would not have bought for myself because it’s a memoir. I don’t tend to read memoirs. But I loved the title: All the Way to the Tigers. Who wouldn’t be intrigued? And the author’s name rang a bell—Mary Morris. I checked to see what else she had written and recalled that many years ago, I had read one or two of her novels. So, … [Read more...]
Revisions
Some writers have told me they dread revisions. They love the initial creation of a work—a poem, essay, short story, novel; that rush of excitement as the ideas flow, as the words pour out effortlessly and they seem to enter an out-of-body state. Revisions aren’t like that. Revisions can mean staring at the screen or paper, head in hand, wondering what the heck you were trying to say in a … [Read more...]
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