InkTank Writers' Salon Emporium

State of Letters

2008-07-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank Our Poet Heroes

In Why Poetry Matters (The Chronicle Review, June 27, 2008) Jay Parini argues that poetry doesn’t matter to most people. “They go about their business as usual, rarely consulting their Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Frost,” he says. “One has to wonder if poetry has any place in the 21st century, when music videos and satellite television offer daunting competition for poems, which demand a good deal of attention and considerable analytic skills, as well as some knowledge of the traditions of poetry.”

Parini goes on to argue that poetry only stopped mattering in the 20th century, when “something went amiss” and poetry became difficult. “That is, poets began to reflect the complexities of modern culture, its fierce disjunctions,” he says. Before that, poets such as Scott, Byron, and Longfellow, ruled the world. They were cultural heroes, as well as best sellers. And people loved their poetry because “it provided them with narratives that entertained and inspired. It gave them words to attach to their feelings.”

When even articles that argue for the value of literature (Parini’s title is Why Poetry Matters, after all) situate the art form in a rhetorical battle that it can never hope to win, what hope does it have of asserting itself as a valid, useful, or even practical endeavor. Of course television trumps poetry in the popularity contest. Television trumps everything. But if it’s true that poetry is largely regarded as “too difficult” to be worth the trouble for the ordinary reader, it seems something must have indeed gone amiss. What is it? Why don’t people connect to poetry in their everyday lives?

Let’s make the question a bigger one about literature in general: What place does literature have in your life? Is it about entertainment? Inspiration? Emotion? How connected is your experience of reading to your experience of writing?

You Better, You Better, You Better
I recall being immensely irritated by my first assignment in my first graduate program: I had to write about the state of contemporary literature. And then the second assignment pissed me off even more: I had to write a paper addressing the question, “Why do you write?” I think I believed myself above these concerns. I felt they should be self-evident—I read what I like and I write because I’m a writer—but it turned out that not even I knew what I liked or why I liked what I liked or why I was doing what I was doing, which was existentially weird and a little depressing.

If you hate me as much as I hated my professors for asking you to write about these things, I can’t say I blame you, but I’m going ahead with it anyway. Worse, I’m going to ask you to do it in storytelling form. Answer one of the two questions (“What is the state of contemporary literature?” or “Why do you write?”) in the form of a poem, essay, story, play, or some strange hybrid. Write your piece from the second person perspective, or (in other words) from the perspective of a “you.” Go team!

The Line Breakup

2008-03-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Forms of literature are often defined in opposition to one another: Poetry isn’t prose because it’s lineated, and prose isn’t poetry because it runs to the margins. Of course, some poems aren’t lineated, which causes a rift in this trusty little system. But not only are line breaks a defining element in poetry, they’re also a powerful tool. We use line breaks to create rhythm and rhyming beats, to suggest meaning, and to create shape on the page. Knowing the power of the line break doesn’t make it any less difficult to harness, of course. Unless you’re working with a standardized form (like a sonnet or a sestina) the prospect of turning a block of “prose” into a block of “poetry” can seem like a pretty daunting task. What time is the right time to break a line?

Here are a few good reasons to break lines:
1. When there is a natural pause in the poem.
2. When punctuation marks a pause.
3. When the break causes a moment of interest or ambiguity in the next line.

See if you can use this basic system to break the lines in this poem by Matthea Harvey. Use a backslash ( / ) to denote a linebreak.

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Under its glass lid, the square of cheese is like any other element of the imagination--cough in the tugboat, muff summering somewhere in mothballs. Have a humbug. The world is slow to dissolve & leave us. Is it your hermeneut's helmet not letting me filter through? The submarine sinks with a purpose: Scientist Inside Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile I am not well. Don't know how to go on Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary about bees--yet another box in a box. The present is in there somewhere.

From Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3 (2001).

Now let’s look at how the poet actually broke her lines. Does she seem to be following this logic? Any logic? Let’s look at some specific moments in the poem. One thing about poetry: sometimes the moments that pull away from expectations are the brilliant sparks that pull us in as readers. Good poems use elements of form (like line breaks) to synergize language and meaning and that isn’t always about following the rules.

Break Dancing

Write a short paragraph of prose (use Harvey as a model, if you like) without thinking about line breaks. Then, re-write your piece with lineation, making any adjustments to language that prove necessary. What happens to tone? Meaning?

Poems by Matthea Harvey

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Under its glass lid, the square
of cheese is like any other element

of the imagination--cough in the tugboat,
muff summering somewhere in mothballs.

Have a humbug. The world is slow
to dissolve & leave us. Is it your

hermeneut's helmet not letting me
filter through? The submarine sinks

with a purpose: Scientist Inside
Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile

I am not well. Don't know how to go on
Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary

about bees--yet another box in a box.
The present is in there somewhere.

From Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3 (2001).

FIRST PERSON FABULOUS

First Person fumed & fizzed under Third Person’s tongue while Third Person slumped at the diner counter, talking, as usual, to no one.Third Person thought First Person was the toilet paper trailing from Third Person’s shoe, the tiara Third Person once wore in a dream to a funeral. First Person thought Third Person was a layer of tar on a gorgeous pink nautilus, a foot on a fountain, a tin hiding the macaroons and First Person was that nautilus, that fountain, that pile of macaroons. Sometimes First Person broke free on first dates (with a Second Person) & then there was the delicious rush of “I this” and “I that” but then no phone call & for weeks Third Person wouldn’t let First Person near anyone. Poor First Person. Currently she was exiled to the world of postcards (having a lovely time)—& even then that beast of a Third Person used the implied “I” just to drive First Person crazy. She felt like a television staring at the remote, begging to be turned on. She had so many things she wanted to say. If only she could survive on her own, she’d make Third Person choke on herself & when the detectives arrived & all eyes were on her, she’d cry out, “I did it! I did it! Yes, dahlings, it was me!

Originally appeared in Delmar.

Measure of Success

2008-03-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Many of the writers I know measure their own worth by the quality and quantity of the writing they’re doing. No matter what else they may accomplish in the week, if they don’t get good pages, they don’t feel good about themselves. (Somehow, it usually doesn’t work the other way around, perhaps because, when the writing is going well, all of the other fucked up things about life seem to come into plain view.)

If you think of yourself as a writer, your sense of self will inevitably be influenced by the success of your work, whatever that may mean for you, but judging your life by your performance in one small area is an almost certain recipe for depression and anxiety, which can wear on you until it becomes what Coleridge called “an indefinite indescribable Terror.” Coleridge considered himself a paralytic writer once he reached his thirties and he wasted much of the rest of his life on opium addiction. That’s probably a fate most of us would like to avoid, but how do we maintain a commitment to our craft if we don’t invest and invest fully? Where do we draw the line between ambition and masochism? Gertrude Stein said, “You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result.” In my darkest moments, I think that’s easier said than done, but I’ve also got a few tricks up my sleeve:

1. I try to have a few different kinds of projects in the works at all times. When the novel overwhelms me, I turn to one of the three or four short stories I’ve got in the works. And if those don’t appeal to me, I work on an essay or some prose poems. Or, I just focus on reading. I consider the time I spend with books, time I’m spending on my own work.

2. I let people make fun of me for my self-important writerly drama. No amount of earnest pleading with me will convince me to lighten up about the amount of work I’ve been getting done lately, but call me an asshole and I’ll probably drop it.

3. If I can’t get over that ten page hump (the obstacle that stalls most of my stories, even those that I finish quickly) I look for fragments of stories that might juxtapose nicely with the work I’ve already done.

Give It A Shot
Here are a few items that I’ve been keeping in reserve. Select one and begin writing on it, with a piece of your own work in mind. Don’t worry about the connective tissue between the two. Let the language itself lead you from word to word.

1. While having lunch at a neighbor’s house, a woman hears her own husband’s description on the news. When she sees his photo on the television, she has no doubt that it’s him.

2. Since the early 1990s, trillions of discarded plastic items have converged, held together by swirling currents, to form the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch that now covers an area twice the size of the United States and weighs about 100 million tons.

3. A 25-year-old woman was arrested for assault after fighting with her boyfriend in the shower over whether the his dog could join them. The boyfriend said that he hoped his next girlfriend would appreciate the dog more.

Good Tools

2008-01-18T05:19:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Narrative Perspective
It’s often said that one good measure of a writer’s strength and ability is his or her handling of narrative perspective. Failures or breaks in point-of-view are problems common to the beginner; they’re also very noticeable because they disrupt the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. (When the perspective fails, we’re all suddenly very aware of the writer behind the writing, floundering.) As we develop as writers, we become more aware of the conventions. We learn by doing. And once we gain some fluency, it becomes less about screwing up and more about the ways in which we can make tools like point-of-view work even harder for us.

One of the most useful maneuvers a storyteller can master is the ability to offer the reader a look around a first person narration: No one in the office was talking to me. They couldn’t handle real fashion. Also, they were jealous little barn hens.

One of the most complex maneuvers in the storyteller’s arsenal is the use of free indirect discourse: Brie was wearing the black gown to the office again, despite the looks. Her grief costume, they called it. Could she help that the season’s lines were austere? Could she help that belted cell phones passed for accessories there? One day, they’d regret the taunting. They’d get down on their knees and beg her to reform them.

Dialogue
Good dialogue is a bit of paradox. When we say dialogue seems “real” what we really mean is that it’s an effective fraud. It’s free of the stink of artifice. If it were actually true to life, it would be wrought with backward sentence structures and littered with umm’s and err’s and ahh’s. When dialogue is informational, we know it’s fake—it’s advancing the writer’s agenda—and without some surrounding exposition or narration, dialogue can seem like a pair of disembodied voices in an empty white room. If dialogue doesn’t move the storytelling horizontally or vertically, it can feel clunky and out of place. And if we’re not invested deeply in the world of the story, dialogue can seem off or inaccurate or just plain wrong. A lot of folks think that writing good dialogue is about finding just the right thing to say. But maybe it’s really about timing and rhythm:

“I thought you weren’t talking to me today.”
“I’m not. I’m too embarrassed to be talking to you.”
“Well, I don’t know why you’d say that.”
“You know exactly why I’d say that.”
“Explain it to me.”
“You’d like that. It would give you a chance to feel justifiably hurt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Right now you’re just fake hurt. You’re the kind of hurt people do when they know they’re wrong. It’s a kind of trap.”

X+Y=Style
People tend to think of a writer’s style as his or her voice and there’s no question that voice is an identifying factor, but even writers who use a “transparent,” rather than “voicey,” kind of language have distinct and recognizable styles. A writer’s use of narrative perspective and treatment of dialogue can have a whole freaking lot to do with the overall feel of the writing. Developing your style of dealing with these elements can be much more important than an especially brilliant turn of phrase. Just by taking a quick look at how different people deal with the same basic scenario, we can see how personal style can emerge from these kinds of choices. Take one of the perspectives at the top and a chunk of dialogue from the bottom and write a scene. Change the language as much as you like.

Dialect Coach

2008-01-14T16:30:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

“Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y’ de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel’s flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them?”
- George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

“I ‘uz mos’ to de foot er de islan’ b’fo’ I foun’ a good place.”
- Mark Twain’s Huck Finn

Let’s be frank: Eye dialect (which pretends to represent nonstandard speech by variant or phonetic spelling) is problematic. For one thing, it’s really distracting. It diverts attention away from what was said and places the focus on how it was said. At its best, it’s a shade gratuitous, if not a little insulting. At its worst, it’s racist, classist, and condescending; it implies an ignorance on the part of the speaker, or a lack of education, or both, whether it means to or not. Consider the examples above: Shaw attempts to represent the speech of a poor street woman and Twain attempts to represent the speech of a slave. Notice anything problematic about this scenario? Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style recommends that you use eye dialect with caution—“Do not use dialect unless you are a devoted student of the tongue you hope to reproduce”—for the obvious reasons.

We’ve talked before about how to signal dialects that are essential to the story without reproducing the peculiarities of expression: It’s often enough just to describe how a speaker speaks in order to imbue the character’s language with a dialect a reader will “hear.” Beyond that, you can evoke dialect through sentence structure—cadences of speech. Let’s see how this works: Imagine a scenario in which a father walks in on his teenaged son and a young girl in the garage.

Begin here with a cadence that might work to signal a dialect:
He buttoned his jacket up to his neck and kicked a flap of mud from his shoe. “I don’t care what the hell you two do, just as long as you’re not doing it here,” he said.

And now add information about the way the speaker speaks:
He buttoned his jacket up to his neck and kicked a flap of mud from his shoe. “I don’t care what the hell you two do,” he said, his low hollow drawl burning. “Just as long as you’re not doing it here.”

Where would you place this character in the world? What kind of guy is he?

Y’all Hear Now?
Begin with the same scenario and establish a different dialect through your word choice and your arrangement of words.

Bad Language

2008-01-14T16:27:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

What the fuck’s the problem with using a few fucking curse words in your fucking writing? The truth of the fucking matter is that people curse all of the fucking time in real life. Why the fuck shouldn’t they do it in motherfucking storytelling?

Profanity isn’t new to literature, of course. Even Shakespeare cursed, but Shakespeare was also censored, both in his own time and beyond. The most famous alteration of his works, Thomas and Harriet Bowdler's Family Shakespeare (1818), omitted “those words and expressions that cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family,” so as not to “raise a blush to the cheeks of modesty” and as recently as 1996, one of his plays (Twelfth Night) was banned in an American school on the basis of its obscene content.

The debate about the appropriateness of certain language in literature is often cast as just such a collision between conflicting standards of morality and propriety. It’s the censor prudes against the corruptor potty mouths. And, to be fair, this collision is a real one. It plays out in our publishing houses and our theatres again and again, but it’s most apparent in the perpetual squabbling over what you can and can’t say on television. These days, you can say the words bitch and shit but you still can’t say God damn, and holy fuck is out of the question. It all seems so silly and arbitrary and besides the point and maybe it is. The debate over profanity in literature is perhaps more accurately cast as a technical matter, at least for the practitioners of the art; it’s about earning the trust of the reader and keeping it. Some find gratuitous cursing in literature objectionable, but where is the line between gratuitous language and earned language? Where would you draw it? Why?

1. I never use profanity in my writing. It’s cheap.
2. I only use profanity when the moment absolutely calls for it—no more than once or twice in a selection.
3. I only use profanity in dialogue, never in narration.
4. I use profanity, but I try to use it sparingly.
5. If my narrator/character is the type of person who curses, I see no problem with bringing that language into the writing.
6. I use exactly as much profanity as I want to use. If a reader has a problem, he or she can stop reading.

Dirty Birds
According to George Carlin in 1972, the original seven words, you can never say on television were, shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. Write a passage in which you earn the use of one or more of these seven forbidden words. If you are morally or aesthetically opposed to the use of profanity in writing, write a passage in which you replace one or more of the seven forbidden words with a viable substitute.

We Are Famous

2007-12-21T08:52:00.000-08:00

The Salon features heavily in this InkTank film. Because we're gorgeous, I suppose. Check it out.

WRITE HERE: The InkTank Writing Competition

2007-12-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

COMPLETE RULES AND GUIDELINES:

* A 1st prize of $200 and publication in CityBeat, will be awarded to the best original and unpublished work written by a writer living in the Cincinnati area. The winner will also receive an invitation to perform the winning selection at the InkTank Writing Competition Reading in Spring 2008.
* Runner-up prizes will include publication on the InkTank website and official InkTank merchandise. Runners-up will also receive an invitation to perform their winning selections at the InkTank Writing Competition Reading in Spring 2008.
* Entrants must reside within 25 miles of the City of Cincinnati at the time of submission.
* The entry fee is $5 for InkTank members* and $10 for non-members, payable to InkTank by check or money order - DO NOT SEND CASH. *To find out how to become an InkTank member, please scroll down to the bottom of this newsletter.
* You may enter the competition as many times as you like, but you must pay for each of your entries. All proceeds from the competition will go to support InkTank, a 501(c)3 non-profit writing and literacy organization in Cincinnati.
* Entries must be typed-not handwritten-in 12 pt font, printed or copied on standard manuscript-grade paper. Please double-space your stories and essays. You may space your poems however you like. Please use a paperclip or staple to hold everything together.
* Submit stories or essays of NO MORE THAN 4,000 words, and poems of NO MORE THAN 100 lines. Please do not send material that has been published elsewhere.
* Don't forget to include your name and complete contact information (phone number, home address, e-mail address) on your submission(s). Submissions lacking this information will be disqualified.
* We are unable to return submissions-please do not send your only existing copy-and we also regret that we are unable to accept electronic submissions at this time.
* All entries must be postmarked by February 1, 2008, and sent via postal mail or hand-delivered to InkTank, 1311 Main Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202.

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

A few words about this year's judge:

BROCK CLARKE is the author of The Ordinary White Boy, What We Won't Do, Carrying the Torch, and the recently published and heavily praised, An Arsonists' Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. He has twice been a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Fiction. His work has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, OneStory, the Believer, the Georgia Review, and the Southern Review; in the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies; and on NPR's Selected Shorts. He teaches creative writing at the University of Cincinnati.

An InkTank Event

2007-11-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

I hope to see you there!

Object Lessons: Part One

2007-11-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank

We’ve spoken before about the ways in which place can become a character in storytelling. Here’s one area we explored: It’s not enough just to set the work there and it’s not enough to describe it in great detail, in order for place to become a character; the place has be a force in the story. It has to shape events in the ways that only it can. If that doesn’t happen, it’s merely window dressing. (There’s nothing wrong with window dressing, by the way. Look in any window—almost everyone has it.) If you want place to work as a force in a story, you have to actualize and individualize the power of that specific place. And part of doing that, is coming to a fuller understanding of what exactly you think that power is.

What is the force of this place?

I asked you to bring along an object this evening so that we might investigate some gut intuitions. But I don’t want us to regard our places as inanimate objects. Rather, I’m asking you to access the emotional associations your object possesses. What are they and what force have they had upon your life? Whether or not this particular force—or place—is the one you’d choose to investigate in your private work, try giving this material a spin. Write a paragraph or a stanza or two that gives this place a chance of impacting a story.

Showy and Telly

2007-09-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

The issue of filtering came up recently (thanks Mike!) and I wasn’t quite sure what that had to do with showing and telling, but after a little investigation, I now see what the story is. Here’s an example of what Janet Burroway calls filtering in her book On Writing. (Let’s assume that the following passages are drawn from the middle of a story about Mark, told in 3rd person limited POV.)

1. Mark could see the Ginkgos on his fence’s perimeter. He thought the leaves looked like loose hands flapping.

2. The Gingko leaves on the fence’s perimeter flapped like loose hands.

There are several differences between these two versions of the same scene, but the distinction Burroway would make has to do with the immediacy of the language. In the first version, the words he could see and he thought serve to slow down the storytelling. Phrases such as he could, he thought, he sensed, he saw, he looked, he watched, and he knew only tell us what we already know—we don’t need to be reminded that the narrator is telling the story from the character’s point-of-view—and thus they clog up the prose. They tell, when showing is the stronger choice.

The second version creates a more intimate cognitive experience for readers because it places them in direct contact with language we might reasonably assume is coming directly from the character. We’re seeing the Ginkgo leaves with Mark; that’s a different experience than seeing Mark seeing the Ginkgo leaves. You see?

I would add to Burroway’s assessment that sometimes a heightened awareness of the narrator/character relationship isn’t such a bad thing. If you want your narrator to editorialize the character’s behavior, for example, phrases like he could, he thought, he sensed, he saw, he looked, he watched, and he knew can come in handy. They inflate the distance between narrator and character and you become aware of one’s thoughts as slightly distinct from the other. Consider these passages from the same story about Mark:

1. Mark could see that Lara was starting to like him. It was in her face, he thought, the way it was less tight in the corner of her jaw. The shift was subtle, but he was sure of it. Soon he’d ask her again: Could she ever love a man like him?

2. Lara’s face was less tight than it had been the last time he’d asked for her heart. It was time to ask her again.

I think both passages work to convey an awareness of Mark’s ignorance to the reader, but the first version is more clear on that count. In one sense, the first passage is about what Mark thinks and what he thinks he can see. (It might also be about what he doesn’t see.) The point? When these kinds of phrases can serve a purpose, they may be worth inserting; otherwise, though, they tend to dull the storytelling. It’s the classic balance between showing and telling that we’re after. But now we have two new tools to take into battle.

Dilating and Contracting
Choose one of the approaches we’ve talked about today and go crazy with one of the four example passages above. Expand the distance between narrator and character in order to editorialize Mark’s thoughts and behaviors, or collapse the distance between narrator and character in order to bring your readers in close to Mark’s experience of the world. Aim for a complete passage.

Salon Writers Write

2007-09-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

by MaryKate Moran

No one living in their first apartment has bought much of their own furniture. Not anyone I know. Almost everything in my apartment belongs to my grandparents. Or, as I usually say because she's the one who lived longer, my grandma. I was proud to afford a cloth lantern, bookshelf and rug. The other rug is from her, as is the rattan chair, the coffee table, the desk, the floor lamp, the card table that acts as a breakfast bar and vanity,the leather loveseat, plus the silverware and cookware and toaster.

I used to sink into that loveseat when it was back in Grosse Pointe Farms, knowing I was supposed to visit with my grandma, but unsure of what to say. The leather would warm up quickly and the armrest was the right height to lie back.

When we were younger my brother and I couldn't wait to turn on her cable TV, something we usually had the decency to wait for until our first full day of each visit. As her hearing went, the television, set on any channel – there were no favorites – was pumped up louder. In the last years of her life, her reliable armchair, the one piece of furniture that wasn't doled out amongst the family but
instead sat in the room at the nursing home when she died, scooted closer to the screen. And she fell asleep a lot. And then I'd try to think of something to say for when she woke up.

Salon Writers Write

2007-09-04T14:18:00.001-07:00

It was the only thing I could find open along that highway that early.

It was a nice little eatery...30 years ago. Now there was grime between the floor tiles, and grime between the seat cushions. Grime worked itself into every crevice it could find.

And they made donuts just liked Tom's did.

It was something I hadn't smelled since I was 17 and dating Angie - a name I couldn't remember if asked for it without the smell of fried donuts, sickly sweet old jellies, and powered sugar in the air.

She was tiny and never ate them, but always had two waiting for me on nights I picked her up. Tom's Donuts were the smell of new love and summer sex. But after a few months passed it was just the stink of someone needing to shower after work.

The smell got to me. One day I missed a closing - then missed them all. Feelings were hurt, guilt was carried and buried deep unearthed by the smell of donuts.

Time to drive. It's five hours to Atlanta.

--
Howard McEwen, CFA

Changes

2007-08-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

Please note the changes in the workshop schedule. I am, it seems, a less than talented calendar reader.

A Preface to the Prologue

2007-08-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Traditionally, the prologue is an explanatory first act or scene. It gives the audience information (a bit of backstory, for example) as they enter the world of the story. But it can also do much more than that. Let’s take a look at a very famous prologue:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

The prologue of Act One of this play gives us the skinny on the Montague and Capulet feud (that’s the backstory) but it also summarizes the plot: It tells us that our young lovers are doomed and that their deaths will extinguish the ancient grudge between families. One might ask, Why see the play if you already know what will happen? And, in fact, that’s a frequent complaint lodged against prologues—that they stand needlessly between the audience and the story—but in this case, the prologue does more than just let the cat out of the bag. It generates interest and intrigue and it evokes the tonal darkness that will descend upon Verona. Besides, it’s just beautiful lyric writing, a stinging pleasure to experience. This is a prologue that does more than one job and does more than one job very well, and while we can’t all expect to be the Shakespeares of the day, we certainly can take this lesson from his work and bring it to our own.

Here’s a little ditty we like to call “Not Entirely Good Reasons to Write A Prologue.”
I’m not sure people will understand a word of my story, if I don’t explain it all to them first; I’m pretty sure no one will get past the boring first chapter/act so I have to attach something flashy and splashy to the start; I think prologues are pretty cool—everyone is doing them these days; My prologue is actually just my first chapter/act, I’m just calling it a prologue because they’re pretty cool; My story’s structure is so complex that no one will be able to follow it without a guide—that’s where the prologue comes in; I already have a first chapter/act, but I want to write what comes before that in the plot, so I’m calling it a prologue; the prologue seems like a good place to me to tell my audience a little something about myself/my wife/my dog/my take on the Darfur conflict; the really cool thing that happens on page 542 looks nice on page one too; I forgot about this one character, so I’m letting him narrate the prologue.

Bring It, Shakespeare
I’m going to give you a plot synopsis—you write the prologue for the story. You choose your own genre of storytelling and you choose the jobs you’d like your prologue to do and you choose the approach and level of

Family Ties

2007-07-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Many writers find writing about their families therapeutic—they’re able to exorcise their demons or honor their angels, so to speak, by putting the stories down. Some writers write about their families out of a sense of obligation—perhaps they fear the stories will die if they don’t tell them, or that the stories will remain unjustly suppressed. Some writers write about their families simply because it’s good material, and some do it because it’s simply material, and some writers do it because they can’t help it. Why do you write about your family?

It might be a good idea to spend some time meditating on the why before you begin to address the how because the answer can have a pretty significant impact on your approach.

There are (at least) two issues that make writing about family very difficult for some:
1. Telling the truth—or your version of it—can get you into trouble with the people you love. Or, even those you hate, or feel ambivalent about, I suppose. Even if you’re estranged from your family, you’re still connected. When it comes down to it, you have to make a decision: what is the value of telling the truth to you? If it’s worth potentially upsetting a few people, do it. If not, do something else. Either way, be as honest as possible. Whatever that means.

2. Telling the truth—or your version of it—does not always make for good storytelling. Just because your Mom (an absolute saint!) helped you through that awkward knee-boots phase doesn’t mean she’ll make for an interesting character. Nor does the fact that your terror of uncle explodes your pet frogs when he visits mean that he will make a compelling character. Characters—even characters who are also real people—have to have dimensions in order to be interesting to readers. The same standards of storytelling that apply to all of the other kinds of writing we investigate apply to family stories too.

Too Close for Comfort
Proximity can really mess up storytelling. Family is often hard to write about because it’s so close. But it’s also for this reason that family so hard not to write about. Wedging in a bit of distance is one way of getting around the interference. Whether you decide to go public with your family narrative or not, give a distancing technique a shot and see what happens. Here are a few to try today. Pick one and go:
Assume a collective perspective—a “we” perhaps.
Assume the perspective of a non-family member, an invented character.
Assume the perspective of an actual family member, who is not you.
Apply the tone and language of a fairy tale to the story.
Begin by writing seemingly innocuous moments instead of the big flashy ones.
Others you’d like to suggest?

It's Magical

2007-07-11T04:04:00.002-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Gabriel García Márquez: “My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic.”

One of our earliest impulses as storytellers is to fantasize. We imagine alternate worlds in which the seemingly impossible can happen or we imagine the entry of impossible elements to our own world. The magical realism so popular in literature today is not so different. It’s a kind of writing that performs a variation on a basic rhetorical maneuver: it melds the “real” with the “unreal” in order that one may reflect certain properties of the other in a meaningful way. By the end of Márquez’s short story, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” for example, the old winged man manages to seem more humane than the humans who trap and torture him; the “unreal” element casts a critical gaze on the “real” elements of the story. And in Percival Everett’s “The Fix,” the addition of the “unreal” element into the “real” world—a man who can fix anything, including death—has the effect of turning the “real” world into a disturbingly unreal and comically overblown place. Both stories can be read as kind of social critique, but the messages they may seem to convey aren’t as straightforward as you might think—they can’t be reduced into simple morals or lessons. At the same time, the sense that these stories aim to tell us something about ourselves is palpable. We’re compelled—directed by the storyteller—to think about the stories after we’ve left them.

It’s one thing to recognize how magical realism works and it’s another thing to pull off the trick of convincing readers to suspend their disbelief when fantastic or absurd elements come into the storytelling. After all, a good reader is a critical reader—one engaged enough with the story to ask the logical questions. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you’re attempting the absurd:

o All worlds, no matter how fantastic, have rules and boundaries. Once you establish rules, you can’t change them without jeopardizing your own authority as the storyteller.
o You’d be surprised how far you can get by simply adopting an air of authority in your writing. If you effectively treat a fantastic element as though it’s entirely ordinary in the world of the story, your readers will follow you. Or, if you simply predict their concerns and questions—perhaps by embodying them in an incredulous character—you’ll be able to assuage their concerns. Failing to answer pertinent concerns will loosen the story’s grip on the reader.
o Persuasive details need not be directed solely at the physical. In fact, leaving a little room for the reader’s imagination to become involved can enhance the world of the story dramatically. Many writers rely upon familiar (or traditional) stories to fill in the blanks for them.
o Choose your mysteries wisely. If readers feel as though the storyteller is withholding pertinent information, they’ll begin to lose trust. Always reveal, never conceal.

Let’s Get Fantastical

Many writers complain that they can’t write magical realism because they can’t think of anything interesting or fresh enough to write about, or because they can’t write about fantastic elements convincingly. Here’s what I have to say to that: Many of the most effective stories in this genre begin by depicting the ordinary and the everyday astutely. When they veer into the extraordinary, we may not expect it, but we’re inclined to follow because they’ve already established their authority. Even if you don’t trust your imagination to create something effectively “unreal,” you can probably trust yourself to recognize the real. Begin with what you know and then allow yourself to stray into the unknown. Let’s start with an average, everyday moment (one we’ll think of together) and then gradually introduce an “unreal” element.

Quickness

2007-07-11T04:04:00.001-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Calvino says that “a story is an operation carried out on the length of time involved, an enchantment that acts on the passing of time, either contracting or dilating it.” As surgeons, what kind of tools do we have with which to operate on time?

1. Modal writing allows us to talk about how things generally are. This creates the impression that time has passed, even if it hasn’t in terms of the progression down the page. We may begin in-scene, for example, and then talk modally about the consequences of that scene as they’ve played out generally for the characters. A short paragraph of modal writing can stand in for a few hours, days, or even years of time. It keeps readers at a bit of a distance, though, and I’d advise avoiding long passages of modal writing.

2. Simple time expressions allow us to move forward in large or small increments. Later that year, Wednesday, at 4 p.m. that evening—that’s all it takes at the opening of a paragraph or section to set your readers in time.

3. Space breaks can be used to suggest movement in time with the proviso that it’s a mistake to assume that your readers will know exactly how much time has passed after the break. It helps to rhyme events, as Calvino phrases it, if you’re using white space to signify the passage of time

4. Economy of expression is an idea that Calvino treats exceedingly well in his essay. The idea is that every detail has a necessary function in the plot. For many of us, that’s easier said than done. It helps to think of the details you’ve imagined as the negative space around the story. Your investment in imagining the world of the story will be communicated in the authority with which you are able to write about it.

Let’s do the Timewarp

Let’s begin where the excerpt of "The Feathered Ogre" leaves off and work together (or alone, if you’re so inclined) to create a fairy tale that employs some of the enchantments on time that we’ve discussed here today.

On Dialogue, On

2007-06-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
That’s What You Say

There’s a specific and ripe power in dialogue that can’t be matched by other levels of discourse in storytelling. In short, it’s sublime. Its delivery is pure and immediate, or at least it can be. When dialogue is working well, the barriers between our readers and our characters can seem to vanish. The marks on the page fall away and readers believe they’re witnessing people using their voices in the world—they hear the words spoken. It’s a powerful tool we’re dealing with here.

Readers look to dialogue to gain an unfiltered understanding of who characters are. Rather than trusting a narrator’s or another character’s estimation of a character, readers can see for themselves how that character responds in conversation. When readers sense the writer behind the dialogue, it fails. And it can fail massively. We’re going to work on ways to avoid that today.

Every direct utterance in a story is an opportunity to do at least two jobs. Dialogue should always work on the level of character development. (After all, the things people say and the way they phrase them can tell you a lot about them.) But it can also raise and lower tension, move the plot, and add significantly to the verisimilitude of the storytelling. Although dialogue can be used to reveal information successfully, informational dialogue is the kiss of death. Please oh please do not use dialogue to establish the setting or the detailed histories between characters—it’s so embarrassing. And try to get out of the way of your dialogue. Use tags that disappear, like “he said” and “she said.” Interrupt when you need to create pauses in conversation or to move someone around, but not because you want to explain how the reader should interpret something.

My sense is that dialogue should be used sparingly. It should come in when it can do more than one job and it should come in when it can do those jobs better than any other kinds of discourse in the story. Cut out words and phrases that aren’t absolutely necessary to create the tone and timbre of the exchanges you’re aiming to create. Think about the way people actually talk and then try to concentrate and streamline the speech. The first step in learning to write good dialogue is learning to listen. Remember, though, that dialogue isn’t transcribed speech; it’s storytelling that works to render the illusion of direct discourse. We’ll make this craftshop topic a two part deal. Here’s part one:

Listen to Me
Let’s partner up. I’ll give you simple directives with which to stage a conversation. This isn’t acting, exactly. (Try to restrain your inner hams.) It’s an experiment in real speech. After you have your conversation, write it down to the best of your memory. From there, try to create dialogue.

The Deal with POV

2007-04-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

Perspective is an issue we’ve returned to fairly often in this group. And I think one of the reasons it keeps coming up, is because we’re so tempted by the siren song of the mobile third-person perspective. How nice, it seems, to be able to shift in and out of character’s minds and stories. And what’s stopping us from doing that if that’s what we want to do? Here’s where the conversation went the last time it was raised:

1. RULES: There is no rule against the use of an omniscient narrator—of course there isn’t—but it is true today that many stories written in the third-person perspective, are written in the third-person limited perspective. This means that the story resides near one character, though it may shift to another between chapters or sections or even paragraphs. You’ll find that stories that are written from an omniscient perspective generally have something in common: a very strong narrative voice that is the controlling force of the story. Think of One Hundred Years of Solitude. We follow that story from character to character because the narrator leads us there carefully. Each move that the narrator makes in that novel, is made for a reason that is clear to the reader. The voice is thick and big and easily identifiable and consistent.

2. READERS: Frequent shifts between characters in the third person that take place without an apparent system of logic irritate readers. They can become lost, they can feel violated, and worst of all, they can lose faith in the writer. Frequent shifts between characters in the third person can also prevent readers from fully entering the world of the story. Readers would rather understand the story from one character’s perspective, than know what everyone in the book is thinking about everything that happens, if it means that they can spend a little quality time getting to know that one character. In other words, rather than opening the story, frequent POV shifts often close the story to readers, restricting them to an unsatisfying surface level.

3. TRAPS: Many writers fall into the POV shift trap early on because they simply don’t know the stakes. But others fall in because (in truth) it is easier to tell readers what characters are thinking or hiding than finding ways to show it. For many readers and editors alike, shifts in the third-person are signs of laziness or sloppiness. Even if you’re making a deliberate choice, that choice may be interpreted in that way. You should know that before you decide to take the risk.

4. PREROGATIVE: It’s yours. But a little time spent deciding exactly why you’ve made the choice you’ve made in terms of perspective is a gift you should give yourself. You deserve it and so do your readers.

I wanted to revisit these ideas tonight because they bear repeating and because it’s time to move the conversation past them now. Let’s start looking at the issue of perspective in a more holistic way. Like choosing the genre in which to place your story, choosing a narrative perspective requires a bit of contemplation and meditation. While it’s true that sometimes the choice is instinctive and immediate—we know exactly how to tell the story as it comes to us—investigation can only enrich our choices. In other words, it pays to know precisely why a particular story fits a particular perspective. It’s information we can use to take the story to a new level of consistency and artistry and it’s information we can carry to the next story we write.

Different choices result in different effects, tonal and otherwise. The selection of the narrative perspective should have its roots in the needs and desires of the story itself, (which you must investigate in order to determine) and the selection should be an informed process. It helps to know the advantages and disadvantages common to each perspective first-hand, but we can summarize for you here because we’re so damn nice.

GROUP GENERATED LIST
1st person perspective:
2nd person perspective:
3rd person limited perspective:
3rd person omniscient perspective:

Let’s write a passage together, using the same story, but different perspectives and see how it all falls out.

You Are Not Me Are You

2007-04-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

The debate over whether or not we are entitled to write about experiences that are not our own is one that occurs often in workshops. It arises more often when men write from the perspective of women than it does when women write from the perspective of men. And it arises even more often when white men write from the perspective of people (men and women) of color. “What is the deal?” those of you who are white men among us might be thinking. Others of you might be thinking, “What is their deal” of the white men among us. Before we get too carried away with all of this thinking, here is the deal:

As writers (and particularly those writing from a traditionally dominant perspective) we should be aware and respectful of the history that problematizes stories that may appear to intend to voice the authentic and true experiences of a traditionally marginalized people as authentic and true. As the story. When a story tries to be about what it’s really like, for example, to be a black woman, the identity of the writer may justly come into play. If the writer is not a black woman, readers are often inclined to ask questions: What makes you think you know what it’s like? What makes you think you have the right to tell (or take ownership of) that story? These are good questions insofar as they engage us in a discussion about the politics of identity and their stakes in storytelling. But when they’re compelled first by a certain cloying tension present in the storytelling and second by the fact of the identity of the writer, they’re even better questions.

We’ve all read stories wherein we begin to feel the lining of the perspective pull from the storytelling surface and fray. The story suddenly feels less “real” because the details aren’t quite right or because the voice is off or because the storytelling is trying too hard to prove a point. We’re pulled out of the world of the story long enough to wonder about the writer behind the storytelling and sometimes that’s all it takes to devastate the experience for us or to call it into question. It isn’t wrong to write about experiences that are not your own, but it is sometimes hard. Most failures that occur in this regard occur on the level of imagination and investment. The worst of these failures occur as a result of a lack of respect or consideration for the perspective assumed and those are the stories that get everyone upset.

For those with concerns about how “real” the story can be when the gender, race, ethnicity, age, nationality, or class of the writer does not match the character’s, consider the challenges facing the fantasy writer. Can people who aren’t hobbits or dragons or aliens write from those perspectives? Of course they can. Just as you can write from any perspective you choose. But the choice should be INFORMED and CONSIDERED and the execution must be INVESTED. We can learn a good deal about others by writing from their perspectives. We learn about them just as we learn about those characters that are like us. To inhabit the world of the story wholly is our responsibility as writers, as well as our aim. If we can’t maintain that focus in our work, how can we expect our readers to do so?

The Old Switcheroo
Choose a perspective that is vastly different from your own. Imagine a character that inhabits that perspective. But instead of writing from that character’s perspective, write from the perspective of a character (very much like yourself) who is observing that (very different) character from a distance.

Salon Writers Write Conflict

2007-04-12T05:15:00.000-07:00

Joe's Approach-Avoidance Conflict
by Roger

The smell of freshly popped popcorn drifted from the basement up to the second floor. Joe's mouth watered and his stomach cramped. His mouth watering was real – he was hungry, especially for buttered popcorn. His stomach cramp might have been real, his diveriticulitis acting up. Or it might have been his imagination, a conditioned response, his gut reminding him how it ached after he ate popcorn.

But Joe couldn't close his nose; he couldn't avoid that fresh popcorn aroma. Maybe he'd eat just a little this time. Or eat it slowly, monitor his stomach's response, stop before it cramped up on him.

He got up and tiptoed downstairs, approaching the basement like a thief – a petty thief. A petty thief wondering if he'd get away with it this time.

Conflicted

2007-03-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank

All of the handbooks and guides and professors and writers will tell you that conflict is important. Without it, the story is an anecdote without a turn. It’s as flat and as compelling as a paper moon held to a cardboard sky. But the blunt instrument isn’t the only tool in our storytelling arsenal. Conflict can be rendered with surgical precision. A mere tonal shift can be as compelling as a catfight in an alley, if not more so. The problem may be that the word conflict has some dicey connotations: battle, clash, combat, fracas, struggle, war, rivalry, brawl, fight, rancor, animosity. If we’re not interested in writing about those kinds of things, we may feel like we don’t need conflict in our stories. On the other hand, we may mistakenly think that inserting a fracas or two should fulfill the conflict requirement on our storytelling checklist. In order for the occasion of the story to be apparent to our readers, though, they must be able to sense (though not necessarily pinpoint) a certain pressure in the storytelling. They have to feel that there are stakes and the stakes have to be interior to the story—they can’t feel like they’re being imposed on the story from the outside.

The reason I resist the word conflict a little is because it tends to reduce all of the many pressures and forces possible in a story to the level of plot. It isn’t enough to say that a thing did or did not happen between some people. And it isn’t enough to say that the thing was or was not important. The storytelling must be expressive, perhaps even performative. The storytelling is what makes verisimilitude a possibility, not the events of the plot. The problem editors and teachers see most frequently in manuscripts is a failure to artfully manage and synthesize the tensions and pressures that result from the events and relationships at play in the story. Here’s a list of common problems in order of their prevalence:

1. The Poorly Selected Entry Point.
The story begins either before or after the true occasion of the storytelling. We leave the story before the impact of an event is felt (leaving us feeling high and dry) or we enter the story after the event of interest has passed (leaving us feeling like we’ve missed all of the action). The view needs to shift a little.
2. The Anecdote That Passes Itself off As a Story
If I told you what happened to me at the dog park the other day, you might listen because you’re nice. The exchange between reader and writer is different. Folks often mistake the interesting anecdote for a good story and attempt to write it as they’ve told it. The problem with the interesting anecdote it isn’t a compelling story. Invest in character and voice and let the plot evolve organically from there.
3. The Case of the Missing Occasion
If the reader must ask of your story, “Why is the narrator telling this story of all the stories in all the world?” you are in for trouble. There may be more than one answer to this question available in a good story, but if a reader has to struggle (or worse, extrapolate) to find it, your storytelling has missed the mark.
4. Bring It to A Head
Tension and pressure in a story must culminate somehow. If the characters in the story don’t respond appropriately or don’t respond at all to conflict, the impact of the story won’t be heard. (I’ll concede here that a non-response can be an appropriate and natural response if done well, but I’ll also say that confrontation is always more interesting than avoidance.) On the other hand, high drama doesn’t always fly either. Try to stay away from language that forces meaning on the reader.

Cage Fight
Conflict doesn’t happen on the level of the plot alone. In fact, if the storytelling is working well, it happens everywhere, from the level of the language up. Together, we’ll generate a list of word pairs. Then we’ll write a passage that stages one word in the pair against the other. The goal is to create an effective sense of pressure and tension without relying upon an event to direct the storytelling. Put these two words in the ring and let them duke it out.

Three Things Above All

2007-03-16T12:52:00.000-07:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Storytelling Structure

We all know a good story when we hear one. We’ve been hearing them all our lives, which makes us experts. When a storyteller takes a false step, we sense it immediately, instinctually, deeply. Writer Italo Calvino draws a comparison between storytelling and telling jokes—when the teller’s timing is off, the joke fails. Jokes have to be exact and precise to succeed and so do stories. Calvino says that, to his mind, exactitude means three things above all: “(1) a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; (2) an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable images; (3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination.” Our topic of interest for this evening is the plan, but the plan can’t stand alone, as we will soon discover.

Some writers allow the story to evolve organically as they work. That means that they follow the words themselves, rather than a map they’ve conceived beforehand. But even those stories must follow a system of logic if they’re to be successful. The writer is always revising, pulling things into line. It doesn’t matter when the plan is formed, but how well-defined and well-calculated it is. It’s important to acknowledge here that the plan is ultimately for the reader—not the writer. Like you, your readers are expert listeners. If they sense you’ve made a false step, they won’t give you the laugh when you most want it.

What is a well-defined and well-calculated plan? This is the question that causes all (or most) of the drama. The idea that there is a sure-fire plan that fits any storytelling model is attractive because it’s easy. It turns a delicate art into a clunky equation: see graph on handout. You’ve probably seen this thing or things like it in the past. Many stories fit this model: they have discernable beginnings, middles, and ends; they have rising tension and conflicts; and they take place over a discrete unit of time. Not all successful stories fit this model, though, and having all the parts that make the whole does not ensure success. A lot of people find this out the hard way—after they’ve invested in novel writing software, for instance, or a course on manuscript marketing. A well-defined and well-calculated plan is one that guides the reader through the storytelling, using the structural patterns and storytelling conventions with which we’re all familiar. The reader senses the punch-line as he or she reads, senses the parts of the joke merging together. Part of the satisfaction for the reader is in using the story to imagine the punch-line (that engagement is probably more important than the punch-line itself) and part of the satisfaction is in the storytelling itself (meaning the quality of the language and the images invoked) and part of the satisfaction is in recognizing structural patterns. Success is contingent upon these things above all. The reason the graph doesn’t work is because it doesn’t take the complexity of the art into account. It tries and fails to stand alone.

What structural patterns do readers expect? This is a question any writer can answer just by reading. Open almost any novel and you’ll notice space breaks and chapter breaks—these are signs of an operating structure or plan. There is always a system of logic behind the breaks—a pattern—and the pattern leads the reader through the story. Chapters don’t need to be a specific length in terms of the number of pages, but they do need to be a specific length in terms of the advancement that occurs within them. Breaks within chapters don’t need to occur at specific intervals, but they do need to occur at regular intervals. Readers get nervous when the structure of the novel seems to determine the shape of the content, rather than the other way around. Structure evolves, it isn’t imposed. Let’s take a look at some novels and see if we can recognize any structural patterns.

Drama
In order to accommodate those who yearn every week for a writing exercise, we’ll use the pool of novels to conduct an experiment in tone. Select a passage with an apparent context and identify the tone of the writing with an adjective or two. Re-write that same passage (in your own words) so that the tone shifts dramatically.

Grit Nature Dirt Self

2007-03-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

Exercise Your InkTank
Nature

Writer Mary Gaitskill argues that the primary difficulty with sex in literature is our tendency to confuse and conflate reverence and politeness. It strikes me that if there is a problem with nature in literature, it’s probably similar: our tendency is to conflate respect and reverence. Nature writer David Gessner writes in “Sick of Nature,” “Too often when I flip through the pages of contemporary nature books the tone is awed, hushed, reverential. The same things that drove me away from Sunday School. And the same thing that drove me, unable to resist my own buffoonery, to fart loudly against the pews.” He reminds us that Thoreau’s book Walden has its share of bad puns and fart jokes too, including “references to Pythagrians and their love of beans.”

In attempt to convey the respect we feel is due the natural world, we’ve set it (and Thoreau as its writer-hero) above (ordinary, real, concrete) life. And by setting it above, we’ve set it beyond life in a sexless, humorless place, where (as Gessner phrases it) “nature becomes a kind of bland church.” We’ve inadvertently made it exactly what it’s not: untouchable and uninteresting. The point is, we need not treat nature with the stilted language of reverence and worship in order to demonstrate or evoke respect for it. In fact, we might better demonstrate our respect for nature by writing about its presence in and as ordinary life. Let’s write about it with the true grit and dirt of, well, true grit and dirt. Let’s bring it out of the exalted sky and back into our lives. Perhaps we can care better for it here.

Early Birds
Writers have long argued that the language we habitually use to talk about nature is problematic. Exhibit A: the word wilderness. It refers to untouched, uninhabited, uncultivated land. But the truth is that we’ve had our hands on nearly everything. Less than 5% of old growth forests remain in North America—we destroy 10,000 square km of ancient forests every year. We think of wilderness as other. We have to get away to get into it and once we’re there, we’re supposed to re-connect with it. But why can’t it be with us all of the time? Why can’t we stay connected? If we change the way we talk about nature, perhaps we can change the way we conceive of it and if we change the way we conceive of it, perhaps we can change its value and meaning on a larger cultural scale. In a very real way, many writers now see themselves as the most powerful (and necessary) tool in the environmental movement’s current arsenal. But whether or not you view your work as an instrument of change, you’re a person living in this world. We all have a history with nature. Think about your earliest experiences with it. I’m not necessarily talking about the first time you went camping. I’m asking you to look inside your everyday life. Write about it as you would any early experience, using the language of the personal narrative. Keep the inflated and elevated language of reverence out and aim for the true dirt and grit of ordinary life. Do your small part to change the lexicon.

Some compelling nature writers to investigate, should you feel compelled to do so: Joy Williams, Wendell Berry, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, Rachel Carson, William Cronon, Rick Bass.