One Chapter at a Time

Recently, I was encouraging a friend who had lost momentum and confidence on a book length project. I suggested "fear of book" as the problem.

For years I limited myself to magazine articles and short stories, because the idea of a book length project overwhelmed me. I had ideas for books, I might even get the first couple of chapters on paper. Then the day would come when I'd allow free rein to "monkey mind", as New Mexico writer/writing coach Natalie Goldberg calls our internal critic. Next I'd open the bottom file cabinet drawer and drop that idea into the abyss. My internal critic told me that writing a book, fiction or non-fiction required myriad details and consistent writing through out...can you really do that, Martie? "Uh huh, I thought not!"

Then came the day when I signed on the dotted line...I would complete a book on contract. Not so easy to drop in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet. I had no choice but to face my fears. In doing that it occurred to me that if I could write a decent sentence, a decent paragraph, a decent article or short story, I could write a book. It is after all just a matter of stringing a group of sentences together. A book I told myself is written one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time.

The book is better if those sentences, those paragraphs are consistently interesting and well written, but they aren't all going to be. Every few thousand words most of us write something boring, convoluted, redundant or maybe even ignorant. But, hey, what are editors for? I don't mind any more making an editor's day. In fact, I am pretty sure I can do that rather consistently and still get to the end of a book, one sentence, one paragraph, one chapter at a time.

A Dark and Stormy Night

In checking through a list of writing contest deadlines, I came across this statement:
"The official deadline is April 15 (a date that Americans associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories). The actual deadline may be as late as June 30."
Following a link, I was treated to; "The contest accepts submissions every day of the livelong year." "Wild Card Rule: Resist the temptation to work with puns like 'It was a stark and dormy night.'" And, "Finally, in keeping with the gravitas, high seriousness, and general bignitude of the contest, the grand prize winner will receive . . . a pittance."

As you might have guessed, I was on the website for the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest where "www means wretched writers welcome." The contest was named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton whose 1830 English character, Paul Clifford, generously provided the words "It was a dark and stormy night," for 20th century English teachers.

If you are trying to avoid your blog, your journal, your unfinished manuscript, that deadline ticking ever closer, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest website will provide a half an hour's diversion. I particularly enjoyed the TheRules page.

If you are interested in submitting your 50 words to this annual contest your invited to send your entries to:
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Department of English
San Jose State University
San Jose, CA 95192-0090, or

"To inflict your BLFC entry electronically, digitally [go to the website] and stimulate Bulwer's nasal member" including your name, phone number, and addresses and e-mail address.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Becoming a Writer Seriously

I just stumbled (yes my usual mode of negotiating the Internet) on to a wonderful "blog" on writing for writers. Unlike my own, which acts as a tool of exploration of my own experiences as a writer and hopefully passes on some interesting information, ideas, inspiration to other writers, this blog is loaded with practical information.

Titled Becoming a Writer Seriously; Tools and Trade Secrets for Aspiring Writers, the blog was conceived and developed by friend and fellow member of the Puerto Vallarta Writers Group, Tom Colvin. Though Tom refers to Becoming a Writer Seriously on the About Us page as a blog, it is to me a full-fledged serious website. This last statement may further expose my confusion in the cyber world...oh well.

Becoming a Writer Seriously promises to provide software, tools, secrets and how-to information for writers, screenwriters, novelists. Tom says, "In gestation for over a year, this blog was launched the first week of January 2007. To avoid overload on vistors & subscribers, major posts will be uploaded only once or twice a week, along with whatever tidbits about tools and trade secrets for writers come to light. Emphasis will be on detailed descriptions of HOW writers can utilize available TOOLS to best advantage. Over time, the blog will also provide an overview of the various pieces comprising the BUSINESS side of writing. Our aim is to become an indispensible resource & reference on the web for writers."

Check it out and let me know if you find it helpful.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Play Writing with Teens

Like every subject I am interested in I just discovered there is a confusing number of website related to play writing and teens. I thought I was feeling rusty when I facilitated a creative writing workshop for teens this winter. Hadn't worked with that age group for several years. Now I have been asked and agreed to work with a group of teens who will create a stage production for the entertainment of children in their local libraries summer reading program. I am an old teacher. I am a published writer. I have edited a variety of writing projects including plays and truthfully I used to think myself quite the thespian when I would stage, write and direct my younger brothers and cousins through productions based on my favorite comic strips. But, I still felt I needed a little guidance on this project.

Still confined to the house 90% of the time as caregiver to my elderly and ill mother, I naturally looked to the Internet for my research. Again, I am reminded of the Tower of Babel (see my blog post titled Babel, February 7, 2007 ). So, please, old teachers and active writers, which source of guidance would you suggest for assisting teens in structuring a play?
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Anne Lamott's Good Writing

I read recently in a review of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, that she said that the very first thing she tells new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth.

I was thinking about first words when I came across this review, because at the time I was preparing for a writing workshop that I had been asked to teach with a group of teens. I hadn't conducted a teen writing workshop, for several years and was feeling a bit uneasy. I had written at the top of my notebook page, "Writing is about painting pictures with words." That was about as far as I had gotten with my preparatory notes.

It was a familiar, comfortable group of words for me. I'd been using the image to open workshops for years for children through adults. I think I first used the sentence in a classroom of dyslexic pre-teens who were convinced that because they could not spell, could in fact barely read, that they could not write. It was an image they could grasp and in which they could find hope. We can all describe, paint pictures with words and if our image is not as finely crafted as that of other's or satisfying to our own ear, we can work it over.

I love Lamott's Bird by Bird and the truth of the statement "...good writing is about telling the truth." I'm not sure I would open my next teen workshop with it, however. I'm not sure truth gives teens much hope. But, I have been placing it at the top of my own pages of images for the last couple of months.
Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse

Fuzzy Writing from Fuzzy Memoires for a Fuzzy Period

A friend from Marine-on-St. Croix, Jimmy Johnson, pointed out to me one spring about twenty-eight years ago, that this is a fuzzy time of year. Well, not exactly fuzzy! Maybe, he said blurry!

Everyone knows my memory is not so great today as it was three decades ago. What I do remember is that we were standing on the steps of the Lutheran Church (what else) in the nearby town of Scandia on an April morning. Neither of our families belonged to that church. It being Minnesota, we had our own perfectly good Lutheran Church in our own Scandinavian community of Marine just three miles down river. I think the Johnson's were Catholic anyway. I can only guess that we were in Scandia for a wedding, a funeral, or a Minnesota cultural exchange program for our children. Ya, you betcha, let's show the kids how those northern Lutherans do things.

Jim pointed towards the trees in the park. He said he loved the particular shade of green that occurred for only a few days in spring as the trees start to bud. Then, he said it gives everything a blurred quality, as though you had slightly crossed your eyes. It was a passing comment to a neighbor. It stuck with me, maybe because there was joy and passion in the observation, or maybe because the poetry of it took me by surprise. I thought of Jim as a jock, with interesting political views, who liked to joke. However, for most of three decades, I've watched for those days every spring, where ever I am, but not this one.

I've been doing one of the hardest jobs of my life for most of two years; caring for my elderly mother who has multiple health issues, the primary two being cancer and dementia. I never expected the job to go this many months, nor would my mother have wanted to live to the debilitated state her diseases have brought her. Unfortunately, her mind did not survive in tact long enough for her to make the deal of surrender with her spirit. Now it is out of her hands and ours. I say of her physical survival, "she is a mean little Irish machine." No, not Scandinavian.

The last two months have been the most demanding and, as things progress naturally, the next weeks will each be harder than the previous. Some time early in March, with spring approaching, my vision went fuzzy, figuratively. I've spent the two months since plodding through the damp, smelly, sticky, silent tasks of care giving, fuzzy day after day, wondering each morning if it would be the last. Days have blurred into weeks and the weeks into two months.

Suddenly, this morning I see that the leaves of the Maple tree in the front yard are wide, approaching jade green. They're defined, identifiable by several sharp points on each as descended from the Maple leaves of last year. I've missed that crossed eyed lime-hued blur of spring, two months of positive writing and two months of writing this blog! I have been writing, as I must, whiney poor me bits, and the basic stuff to make my deadlines. I have taught a couple of workshops. But, this morning's message for me is that it is time to sharpen my focus, emerge from the fuzziness of a spring unobserved and keep living. My mother would want that.

Copyright © 2007 by Martie LaCasse