Inspirational Storymakers Keynote, Martine Leavitt

I have known Martine Leavitt for some time now. She's the most gracious, and kind person you could ever meet. Martine was my WIFYR Conference instructor for 2 and 1/2 (the half is a long story) workshops, including two years ago when I got to be her assisstant. She's smart, well prepared and I just wanted to soak in all that knowledge. I'm trying hard to incorporate what she taught me, from emotional and concrete desires and objective correllative to metaphor.

Martine also encouraged me to keep writing and believe in my gift. That means more than I can say.

Last weekend as the LDStorymakers conference keynote speaker, Martine shared her personal experiences with writing.

Martine has seven children, and says she used a trick of putting them in the tub with lots of bubbles and writing as she sat on the toilet seat.

"I couldn’t write to a certain word count, or a certain number of pages. Nothing could be guaranteed. But I needed to write myself soul-fed and happy. I discovered that I didn’t need to write a lot to be happy, I just needed to write something good. I found that even a single perfect, beautiful sentence with perhaps a fresh and compelling image, could make me feel nourished and ready to take on the burgeoning masses."

Exactly. I, too, need to write to feel soul-fed and happy. I recently listened to part of a Q&A with David Archuleta on lds.org. He described not understanding his feelings until he began to sing. When my feelings confuse me, I write them out until they make sense.

Martine spoke of how each writer has different needs. Like Virginia Woolfe, she wanted time and a place of her own. But writing while seated at the edge of a child-and-bubble filled tub taught her "to write spare and taut, to write each word as if it were special, precious, to write a sentence that nobody else in the world had written."

Just as she was asked to teach at Vermont College of Fine Arts, a part-time position that would give her the time she craved, Martine was also asked to serve as Relief Society president, a very busy LDS church position where she would work closely with the local bishop and be responsible to administer to the needs of all the women in the local congregation. As she did for her children, Martine again sacrficed her precious time.

Martine told us that her time in church service taught her love, an emotion that she poured into her next incredible book, MY BOOK OF LIFE BY ANGEL. She says, "It was a small book written with great love. As it turns out, learning to love better was something I needed more than time."

I came home after the keynote to very unexpected news that made me weep. Which made me all the more grateful for these words from Martine: "The very things that appear to be obstacles may be the very thing we need to make our first book or our next book the best book we can write."

It isn't so much that I think of my life trials simply as future book material. It's much more than that. I can only write that which I am. Martine's books are full of hope, goodness, compassion and light simply because that's who she is. Martine is someone who chose to take her life experiences as a mother, a single parent, a student, a teacher, and a woman of faith, and learned to craft not only one perfect sentence, many quite perfect books, but also to write a life. The audience, seeing the result of effort combined with love, gave her a standing ovation. Martine touched our hearts and inspired us. I hope to emulate her example both in my days and in my writing.

Pain and Plotting: What Makes Writing Resonate?

I didn't get invited to a neighborhood Halloween Party. By someone I thought was my friend.

So what? My teen years are so far in my rear view mirror I shouldn't even be able to wave at them. I'm a mom, then kind always telling my kids not to assume negative intent in others.

I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt me.

But even at my ripe old parental age, I'm still hurt.

Sorry, I don't want this to be a pit post. (Catchy. I like it.) Instead, I want to explore why we write, and why we read certain books.

Sure, I write kid lit  because I still like cupcakes and ironing fall leaves between wax paper. On a deeper level, it's also a cathartic exercise. My way of still waving back at years that I still remember, and perhaps need to work through. Like sixth grade. That year I purposely got hit in dodge ball to avoid having to play with the mean kids. Someone told my one friend that she could increase her popularity by un-friending me (no, that wasn't a word at the time, and it didn't involve online networking). That year didn't last forever, but in truth good things can come even from being the class pariah.

As we began our WIFYR workshop class last summer, Martine Leavitt quoted Katherine Patterson. "If I had known the debt I would owe to all those mean girls, I would have thanked them then."

How's that?

"Use it all," Martine told us. The pain of not getting invited, the sense of never fitting in, the girl who teased you so much you plotted to put a thumb tack on her chair.

Good writing resonates with these deeper feelings. It's good to create a likeable character. It's better, even essential, to create one who suffers. Not in a whiny, martyr syndrome way, but in a way we care about, one that makes us identify with their pain as well as their determination.

Fiction is valuable because it is truth wrapped up in story. What truth? For one, life isn't always parties and prom queens and getting picked first at kick ball. And when the character throws her own party or ends up as campaign manager for the thumb tack bully, we close the book somehow feel ready to face life again.

And just for fun, here's my Halloween Costume (for Dance Trance, not the party I've been whining about). It's supposed to be Lady Death from the Hispanic Day of the Dead celebration. I'm really into Sugar Skull face painting right now. Still trying to figure out why everything posts sideways!

Tenacity--the Successful Writer's Secret

I went to the Solstice Writing Conference a couple of weekends ago. Not only was it delightful having a conference in my home court, but the invited authors, including Ann Cannon, Louise Plummer, and Dean Hughes, were a delight as well.

In Thursday's panel discussion, the topic of bad reviews came up. Louise Plummer mentioned how a bad review (from a random person posting on Amazon, not a knowledgeable critic) stopped her writing for some time. Even Louise? Ann Cannon made a great point. "If you want to write, you have to be tenacious." She said not everyone is going to like your writing, but the writers who make it have one thing in common: they don't quit.

The next day I got to test this maxim when I made the mistake of discussing a current plot idea with a non-writer. Bad idea. After hearing the message that my plot had completely unrealistic, impossible ideas, I changed the subject and spent the next hour depressed.

 I tend to be too concerned about what people think, according to that same plot-wounding family member. I take critique suggestions seriously, and have learned to listen rather than argue. I've never been the it's-my-story-and-you-just-don't-get-it's-brilliance type. So why wasn't I scrapping the entire book?

 I finally went for a walk in light rain that turned into a thunderstorm. As I darted from awning to awning, my brain sifted through ideas on how to rework my plot egress. Soon I had a potential solution, and felt good that I hadn't quit. But how do you know when to keep working on a book, and when to realize an idea just isn't worth continuing?

 At WIFYR, our workshop asked Martine Leavitt that question. She told us to hold onto the stories that are in your heart. If we're going to put our work out there in knowing it may end up with critic heel marks, it has to mean something to us. We have to believe it in knowing not everyone else will. If we are writing just to meet someone else's expectations, our ideas will shift as quickly as the newest trend. But when we write the story that means everything to us, it's different. We may shelve it for a time, wait for the ideas to ripen or even for our ability to write it to increase. But if it keeps coming back to us, we must at some point get back to the story.

Don't get me wrong. I refuse to blindly move ahead with a bad idea. I will continue renovations to make sure the plot is solid, the story line doesn't wander, and in this case, remove any plot twists too unrealistic to allow the reader to continue her path of suspended belief. But I can't give up the book itself. Because even as I'm taking a long, pouting walk through a rainstorm, the story is in my head with every step. It's stuck there, because my heart can't let it go.

WIFYR Recap #3: Children's Writing Cliches to Avoid

I'm guilty. If you're not sure you are, do a manuscript search. See how many times your characters roll their eyes, get various pains in their stomachs, have pounding hearts, or breathe deeply. I, for one, know my characters should have asthma to justify all the times I call attention to their lungs.

In Martine Leavitt's workshop at WIFYR, she talked about cliches. Any description of emotion that refers to internal organs--lungs included--is cliche. She says even vomiting is hard to do without sounding trite.

I've sometimes gone to absurd lengths to describe fear, sadness, or grief in a more original way, only to sound a little weird. "Her heart line-danced in her chest" or "His stomach mooed" may not be much of an improvement over pounding hearts or growling stomachs.

Martine suggested that instead of looking for new variations on old cliches, we try metaphor. One caveat: metaphors should be used sparingly, and should feel natural rather than superimposed on the scene.

In TOM FINDER, Martine Leavitt used gravity as a metaphor. In HECK SUPERHERO, she used quantum physics.We can find what works in our manuscripts by looking for patterns. She said our inner creative genius may come up in the repetition. To see it, we  must read our work over and over, looking carefully.

Martine spoke of the book, THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURINA TATE, and how the author spends pages describing how Calpurnia's mother, in her layers of long clothing, suffers from the heat. By contrast, Calpurnia sets off to discover a new species. In making this comparison, the author effectively shows how Calpurnia is destined to become a different species of woman.

She suggested when we're tempted to use a cliche, we instead have the character pause for a beat, then use objects specific to character and setting to describe the emotion. I took ten pages of a story I'm beginning, and was surprised to learn she liked the part where the character is upset with her father at breakfast. Instead of saying how angry she is, my mc looks down at her plate (the specific object) and says, "I hate poached eggs. It looks like a giant eyeball."

 As Martine Leavitt said, a good metaphor surprises with the unlikeness of things compared, while at the same time making reader marvel at how it fits.

My challenge for all of us is to look for the patterns already in our writing, and deepen them into relevant metaphors. Don't you love the idea of making a reader marvel?

Injured Wings and Writing Tics

The ER doc said my arm wasn't broken. So no big deal, right? Almost two weeks later, I'm still wearing the brace and typing with an ice pack draped over my splint. This does not make writing easy. Yes, I'm complaining (sorry), but this isn't meant to be a pity post.

Instead, considering my bad wing has me thinking about things that keep our manuscripts from flying. Writing Tics, as Martine Leavitt calls them. All writers have these. Some of us have to go back and consciously insert setting into our work. Others have to add a sense of time or insert dialogue into pages of description.

At WIFYR, Martine Leavitt spoke of a need for restraint. Agent Stephen Fraser calls a similar tendency "chatter," and Alane Ferguson called a similar concept "burying your lead."

In essence, when you write the perfect line, don’t run right past it and on to more words. Pull back a little. As you edit, one way to look for this tic is to underline phrases that contain key points, then read the sentence that comes next. Even if humorous or cute, when these words detract from the previous important message, they may need a red pen death.

Similarly, when Martine told us to avoid cliche in describing emotion, she said a lot can be accomplished by having our characters simply pause. Not a long, dramatic pause that stops the action, but a moment for the character to absorb what just happened. In doing this, the reader will recognize its import as well.

Whether it's a character pausing briefly in the scene, or slashing a useless attention hog of a sentence, restraint can streamline our work and help us avoid one dreaded writer tic.

Tomorrow: more on cliche descriptions.