Aug 08

What to Expect When Your Writing Class is Online

Tempted by the forty free online writing classes available at my public library, I enrolled as an experiment. The full catalog of 350 courses competed with MOOCs (massive open online courses) and delivered a shorter continuing education opportunity in writing and other business topics. I joined with a hundred online learners from across the country and Canada for a brief six weeks of creative writing lessons. The interaction and other classmates were as interesting as the course content.

The exercises began innocently enough asking each student’s reason for taking the class. I’ll share several of my submissions. For instance, here’s my introduction:

The dog made me do it. He worries about neglecting important things like watching sunsets, skipping rocks at the lake and hiking nearby trails.

sitting writer2It was irreverent compared to the other classmates’ expressions of genuine excitement and unbridled nervousness. They used their first name, their full name or a nickname like Jelly Bean, Milwaukee Maiden, GalSal or Mother Bird. The anonymous classroom became a haven for over sharing. I discovered, most of the class was currently in crisis – death of a loved one, newly retired, birth of an infant, empty nests, schizophrenia, cancer, abuse, graduates from high school or college, English lit major wanna be’s, traumatized veterans, divorcees, joblessness, dead end jobs, stressful “on the verge of quitting” jobs, sexuality concerns, and caregivers to parents and spouses. The class offered an outlet to cope, a catharsis for the traumas of the past, present and future.

To that note, I was not so far removed from crisis myself. One of the assignments required writing about a candle. Pent up emotions spilled into this exercise. Yes, tears fell on the keyboard over an imaginary candle with a fictitious past.

The tin box sits next to an empty and worn book of matches from a Mexican restaurant near my mother’s old house and a cigarette lighter I confiscated when my teenager flirted with smoking. Graphic whirls of block printed roses decorate the lid. The image resembles both my college hand-carved block printing and my Connecticut rose garden including the wicked, hateful thorns of the floribundas deceptively named Cinderella. Yet, the tin hints of a different Cinderella – purses, crowns, wavy flourishes and little flower dots of pink – and a costume, plastic face mask on top of a printed rayon tunic visible through the cellophane window of a shallow cardboard box. I lift the candle’s lid, smell the sickly perfume of roses and remember my mother. I spark the lighter. The candle wick, a charred nub at the bottom of a melted ring in the wax, fails to light. I return the heart-shaped tin and matches to the drawer with other keepsakes and throw the lighter in the trash under the sink.

Two months after writing about that candle, I reread my passage and still feel the complex emotional mother child relationship, filled with roses, thorns and cigarette lighters. Fortunately, the next assignment was safe from my own memories and focused on a prompt, an ex-spouse arriving on a bus in a snowstorm. Each student chose a point of view and present or past tense. My classmates, more savvy to the woes and causes of divorce, wrote of anger, betrayal, infidelities, abuse and addiction. Instead, I wrote of a homesick young man uncertain of his future.

John jolted awake at the bus driver’s announcement of Grand Haven. The snow globe effect of pelting white flakes obscured the view of his hometown bus depot. He grabbed his backpack and rushed to the door to find whichever family member drew the short straw and had to pick him up in this miserable weather. His mom probably paced at home at the front door waiting for him, having planned a family get-together to hear his tales of living in New York, the small bit part in an off Broadway theater and his new friends in the city. Bounding down the steps, John slipped on the last wet step, tumbled out the door and landed spread eagle on top of a woman waiting with her bag. Expecting her to be angry or hurt, John jumped up only to discover Martha hysterically laughing and joking about his daring dive and poor timing to wait until their divorce was final for a grand effort.

The most joyful assignment embraced free writing – unfiltered and unedited. The instructor explained about Galumphing and Bricolage. Galumphing was to select an item from three different categories – a person, a place, and an object. I chose Bricolage which was to write whatever comes to mind about trivial objects, such as a candy wrapper.

The iridescent candy wrapper rested in my palm, a tidy two inch square of yellowish cellophane. In my kitchen, I sucked on the hard candy, mystified at the pleasant, yet unrecognizable, exotic flavor. And when I glanced again at the wrapper, it was twice the size. I scratched at my head, pondering where had I found this odd candy. Oh yes, it was in the console of my car after I had let my lost, and recently found, relative Larry take the car for the week to Burning Man. I wanted to ask him about the candy, but Larry, was still sleeping in my guest bedroom, a walk-in closet if you want to be precise, and by the sound of his snoring, probably out of contact for the next four to six days. Now, the candy wrapper was weighing heavy on my hands and increasing to the size of a poster board. I reached for the ruler in my kitchen drawer and found I was too short. The wrapper had not grow; I had shrunk. Naked, I slipped out of my very large clothes and tore a bit of the wrapper to use for petite clothing. I vaguely remembered seeing other candies in different colored wrappers. If the yellow wrapped candy made me small, what did the others do? Which color should I eat next?

For each of the assignments The instructor urged the class to follow the golden rule of feedback – give comments to receive comments. My fragile crisis-fraught classmates needed support, encouragement and praise for their brave undertakings. And every evening, I returned to the class website to see the comments left for me, such as the ones below on my Bricolage candy wrapper exercise.

Jenn on 5/28/2015 10:09:51 AM

What a great twist! I love it! Makes me think of Alice in Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So creative!

GalSal on 5/28/2015 12:46:57 PM

Wow–I was so fooled until you said you had shrunk.  Great imagination!

Chuck on 5/29/2015 8:17:01 AM

Great creativity, it kept me spellbound.  Are we having fun yet?

Joy on 5/29/2015 5:27:38 PM

I struggled with bricolage but you made it seem easy to be creative with something so simple

Dave on 5/30/2015 10:10:56 AM

A great start and you could take it in two interesting ways.  The obvious, fantasy way, is to go on a hunt for the other candy.  The other way, the candy having come from Burning Man, is that the character is tripping and she might have some explaining to do to people that wonder why she is running around naked with a piece of candy wrapper for clothing.

Lea on 5/30/2015 6:42:35 PM

It also makes me think of Alice in Wonderland! I like the normalcy at the beginning while it slowly starts to become magical. Great 🙂

Mama Crow on 6/1/2015 5:53:07 AM

What an adventurous piece! Great job keeping the imagination vividly strong!

Milwaukee Maiden/Linda on 6/3/2015 4:52:21 PM

Very good storyline with a twist. I enjoyed reading it. You will make a great writer.

The course made me appreciate the ability of technology to engage humanity across the country. The encouraging comments were fun and an unexpected treasure. Before the class ended and all the words deleted, I copied the comments to a file and saved them for a time when I might need generous and supportive comments. For now, another class begins.

 

Aug 06

Ways to Practice Your Craft

This year my family celebrated their 62nd annual reunion. The events take place in different states and this year the gathering took place in Michigan. Each year, as part of the fun, a souvenir book with a schedule of activities and family milestones was distributed to each participant. As chairperson of the hosting committee, I combined my love of writing and joy in researching genealogy in a special section of the souvenir book.

I solicited help from my sister who interviewed several cousins about past reunions. Her son took photos of Detroit and my husband edited my finished work. I’m still receiving positive comments about the book.

I now return to my fiction writing with the idea in the back of my head of writing a longer memoir. But first I have to decide if there would be interest in the story outside of my extended family.

How would a writer decide what would be of interest to readers of memoirs? Does the story have to be about surviving catastrophic events? Does the memoir have to take place during turbulent times? Or can the memoir relate the everyday events in the lives of several generations and how they stay connected?

What type of memoir holds your interest?

 

 

Aug 03

Tales from the Road: 36 hours in Philadelphia

Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love. The people I met during a short stopover lived up to the title—friendly and open to sharing their stories. It’s amazing what you can learn in a short city visit if you’re willing to ask and listen.

Chartered Bus Driver

In the morning while taking a bus into the heart of Philadelphia I was the only passenger. This wasn’t a city bus, rather one of the chartered versions that get hired for events, conferences, and groups. Having the bus to myself seemed like an opportunity to chat, which the driver was happy to do. She’d driven for over 16 years, based in different states. I was intrigued. For someone who’s seen much of the country, driving passengers from many different walks of life, I wondered at the stories she could share. So I asked.

“You must have dealt with all kinds of people during your travels?”

She chuckled. She had drug dealers, murderers, and other criminals. One time during a required rest stop, police were waiting with drug sniffing dogs. The animals sniffed out drugs in a bike that was chopped up and stuffed with drugs in the tires and frame. The drug carrier had residue all over him.

When asked if given a choice as a passenger–drug dealer or intoxicated businessperson–which would she want on the bus? Without hesitation, she chose the drug dealer. “He won’t make no trouble. He keeps to himself, not wanting attention.” Made perfect sense.

Cab Drivers

Cabbie 1

One cabbie who took me from the downtown area back to my hotel had much to say about education funding. He felt the burden of ever increasing taxes to support the public schools. He wondered why he should pay for a system, that in his opinion showed no progress or success. When I suggested that some of the corporate entities in the city were most likely paying few taxes, he fiercely defended the tax breaks that corporations like the Philadelphia Eagles and other corporations received because they created jobs. Without those breaks, the corporations might threaten to leave the city, taking their jobs with them, to settle in another city that would be happy to offer the tax break incentives. If he’s correct, it’s an unfortunate vicious cycle. Those with the most income pay less taxes to develop their future employees and entrepreneurs, while the majority with less income carry the heaviest burden. Yet the very person who suffers is willing to pay the burdensome taxes so that corporate CEOs can keep their multimillion dollar bonuses from the tax savings they extract from the city.

Cabbie 2

During the second night, while returning to the hotel, I rode with a cabbie who was at the end of his shift. He was an articulate individual with strong opinions. I found this to be the case with most of the cab drivers during my trip.

His pet peeves were drivers:

  •      Who did not use their turn signal or use it appropriately.
  •      Driving fast in a downpour, causing potential accidents.
  •      Drivers who do not follow the traffic signs.
  •      Slowing down to gawk at accidents rather than drive on by.

I must admit I share his pet peeves.

There was an accident of 3-4 cars on the highway. Police lights everywhere. Looked like the cars had lost control, creating an accident. As traffic merged into his lane, the cabbie would not allow a car to pull in front of him in the lane. He held his lane all the way through.

He held strongly to the idea that professional sports are controlled by the gambling industry. The New England Patriots’ win over the Seattle Seahawks was an example of sports rigging to meet the spread. He rejected the idea that perhaps the final play of the Seahawks offence was just a very bad decision.

Science Leadership Academy

While visiting this school for a professional growth meeting, it was interesting to see what one school sought to achieve. Being summer time, without children around, it’s hard to gauge a school’s progress, yet there were many interesting signs. The teachers spoke of the students fondly as involved in their learning community. The school-wide norms were professional and inclusive of students as partners with the adults for culture building.

Core Values

Inquiry

Research

Collaboration

Presentation

Reflection

It’s refreshing to be in an inner-city school where staff are eager to continue their work with students, and to grow their own capacity to meet needs and challenge students to achieve higher.

Philadelphians are passionate. I hope to return and experience more.

 

Jul 24

Gasping for Air

2015-07 PicI miss the days when every gas station had a machine where you could pump up your tires for free. Not only free but where 99 times out of 100 the station had an air pump that actually worked. It’s an odd thing to wax nostalgic about I know, but a recent series of issues with my tires put me in that frame of mind.

It started with an oil change at one of those quick drive-thru places. The attendant asked if I’d open my driver door so he could see how many pounds of air should be in my tires. “Thirty pounds” I distinctly heard him say as he read the label. A few minutes later the familiar hiss of the air compressor sounded from the back of my car. My attention shifted to the game of solitaire I played on my phone while the attendant serviced my car. Once all the fluids were checked and changed and the bill paid, I made my way straight home.

Imagine my surprise the next day when I took my car out to go to a hair appointment and the dashboard indicator warned me that one or more of my tires were low on air. Pressing a few buttons to get a quick check of the readings revealed each tire contained only about twenty pounds. I got lucky. The first gas station I came to had a working air pump, no one in line, and didn’t cost anything to use. Since I didn’t have to pull out the portable compressor I keep in my trunk, I managed to fill all of my tires and get to my appointment just a few minutes late.

Two weeks later, on my way in to work, I got another message on my dashboard saying my left front tire was low. I had an appointment after work so I left a few minutes early intending to use my portable compressor to fill up the tire before I took off. I got the compressor from the trunk and sat in the driver seat pulling the cord out to connect it to the power outlet. Somehow, in the process I lost the inside of the plug making my compressor useless.

After a brief search for… for… well for something I had absolutely no clue about, I decided to try the gas station just a few blocks from my building. Did they have a pump? Oh yes. Did it work? No. In fact, it had so much yellow tape tied around it I wondered what heinous crime took place within the confines of a two foot wide by four feet high canister.

I decided to go ahead to the appointment and if I had time, I’d try the gas station near my destination. Traffic proved light so I did have time. I pulled my car up to the air pump. This one had no yellow tape wrapped around it, which looked promising. Then I saw it cost 75 cents to use. I had no quarters and no time to deal with trying to get change from the attendant, so I went on to my appointment.

When finished I started looking again for the errant innards of the compressor plug. I found a silver cap and a round plastic thing that looked like it should hold the silver cap in place. However, that still left a big hollow in the plug. After a little more searching, I found a fuse. Ah! Now I figured out how it went together. I quickly assembled things and, with some hesitation that I might short circuit my whole car, I plugged it into the power outlet. No sparks. No short circuit presented itself. Taking the compressor to the tire, I quickly filled it up to the required amount.

Now paranoid about my tires, I routinely checked the pressure indicators via the dashboard buttons. It kept showing the left front tire as low. I took out the pressure gauge that I keep in my glove compartment and checked the tire manually. The gauge indicated the tire held the required thirty pounds of pressure. Concluding that the dashboard gauge had an issue, I continued driving unconcerned until a few days later when I got a more severe message showing my tire as critically low. Working a hunch, I checked all my tires manually and found my right rear tire to be the culprit and not the left front as my dashboard had been telling me. I filled the offending tire up and eventually had it serviced for a slow leak.

As you may guess from the fact that I keep a portable compressor in my car, this is not the first go around I’ve had with tire issues and faulty air pumps at gas stations. It likely won’t be the last time either. So, I’ll stay wary of what my electronic indicators tell me, check my tires after oil changes, keep my pressure gauge in the glove box, and like an asthmatic keeps an inhaler nearby, I’ll store the compressor in my trunk for the next time my tires are ‘short of breath.’

Jul 23

Typo!

Every novelist needs a copy editor. Why? Because a copy editor makes sure the author is wearing his pants before he steps on stage, makes sure the author doesn’t have a trail of toilet paper stuck to her high heel as the lights come up. Yes, typos are that glaring.

Novelists cannot correct their own typographical errors because they know too much. Knowing what was meant to be said, the author reads what’s in their head not what’s on the page. It’s not a fault, just a fact. A copy editor will not have those preconceived blind spots. They will catch where you wrote breathe instead of breath. Copy editors will see the wrong use of their, they’re and there where your eyes will not. They will find your misplaced commas and misused semi colons and correct grammar where necessary. They will pick up on common wrong-word errors that spellcheck cannot, like typing were when you want where. And at finding missing little words like, for, an, and, at, or and so. Your mind’s eye does not see these kinds of mistakes, either.

Your copy editor is the last person to edit your story before you send it off to your publisher, so you’ll want to entrust this person with as polished a manuscript as possible. The best way to do this is to re-read your entire novel one last time, only lip-syncing it from start to finish.

You don’t have to say the words out loud, but you do need to move your tongue, lips and jaw. What happens is your mouth slows down your mind and forces you to say and see what is on the page. You are also likely to discover syntax errors, run on sentences, passive voices and homonyms, all the stuff that trips up coordination between the tongue and the eye. You’ll discover errors in pacing and entire passages that, really, can be cut. Your only criteria at this point is to clean up and clarify; everything else should be done. Reading like this will catch most of these common errors.

A good copy editor is essential today, whether you are self-publishing or have an agent. What comes out of his or her hands is what will stand the test of time. You, the author, will make all the suggested changes (or not) and correct the typos before submitting it, so in that sense you always have the last word. But by lip-syncing your novel one last time, you will make the copy editor’s job much easier, and much faster.

Who should you hire for this? Yes, I said hire, not ask as a favor. If you are really serious about wanting others to recognize your work, don’t skimp here. Ask other writers who they’ve used and who they would recommend. When you find someone you hear is good, and available, take them to dinner. You don’t have to wine and dine them, but get to know them and what they like to read. Ask them about their funniest stories with editing. That will tell you how much they like their job. Offer a few quips of your own about your research or who your protagonist is based on. At the end of dinner, you’ll both know each other better. You’re looking for someone who wants a personal stake in your novel, who wants to be as proud as you are to see their name attached to it. What they charge, what you pay, should be secondary to that.

How much you should pay is entirely up to you and your copy editor. Somewhere between a dollar a page and three dollars a page seems to be the going rate. The two copy editors I have worked with both charged a flat rate. I paid $250 for my first novel and $350 for my second, but they both moonlighted and neither could be bound to a timeline. The first time I hired a librarian, the second time an accountant. Both were equally methodical. I discovered accountants are very good at finding words that don’t add up, if you hire one who has a good command of the English language.  English teachers are another good source. An editor who reads your genre can be helpful, but don’t make that your only criteria. Critical editing is not what a copy editor edits for. All of your plot development, character development and timelines should be nailed down long before a copy editor sees it.

One final word on typos. No one gets them all, and that’s a good thing if you are in the antiquarian, collectable book business. If you don’t believe me, just go ask Alice. Or Huck. Or that “fool Red Cross woman” in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. True first print runs of these classics, identified by their typos, are selling for several times what a second printing will fetch. But that still doesn’t bode well for the author.