Tag Archives: Writing process

by Luanne | July 21, 2014 · 5:20 am

The Motif of Scrap

Last week, in A Baker’s Dozen, I listed my books’ series, or repeating patterns. I plan to take a brief look at one pattern each week. Today is one of my non-emotion patterns: SCRAP, which happens to be the title of my book. The motif of scrap(s), trash, theft, salvaging, and re-use runs through many scenes. Scrap represents destruction and chaos until scraps can be salvaged and re-used.

On the more positive side of trash and scrap, when I was a kid, my father sold teepee burners to dumps and then started his own garbage business. I wrote about the teepee burners here. When he had his own business, he used to find all kinds of usable trash. He brought me boxes of books and costume trunk clothes that had been thrown into dumpsters.

When my grandmother entered the nursing home, she left behind with my parents a Victorian crazy quilt, made of irregular scraps. I think of it as a guiding image for my book. I wrote about it on Anneli’s blog here.

Like most crazy quilts, the scraps are velvet and satin and embroidered with designs. Many of the designs are floral.

My father uses scrap metal to make art:

The metal flowers are my favorites.

I use scraps to make scrapbooks, and I used to make stained glass out of glass shards, but I had to quit when I moved years ago. You have to have a designated work area because the tiny glass fragments get all over and can be dangerous. Now that I have the room to work on my stained glass I no longer have the skill to break the glass.

The project I was in the middle of when I quit stained glass: a Mizrah which is hung on an eastern wall to point in the direction of Jerusalem

Does the image of scrap as I’ve described it above show up in your writing or your daily life?

52 Comments

Filed under Books, Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Memoir, Memoir writing theory, Nonfiction, Research and prep for writing, Writing, Writing goals

Tagged as Book Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Creative writing, creativity, Memoir, salvage, salvage art, scrap, Writing, Writing memoir, Writing process, Writing tips

by Luanne | July 14, 2014 · 5:20 am

A Baker’s Dozen?

In my post called Target My Structure, I talked about how Stuart Horwitz’s book Blueprint Your Bestseller is helping me organize my memoir.

One of the most important steps of structuring a book, according to Horwitz, is to identify the series in your book. As I mentioned in that post, “a series is anything that has ‘iterations.’ Repetitions, a pattern. But not just any pattern–a pattern where the series “undergoes a clear evolution.” It happens or shows up more than once and changes a bit? It’s probably a series.”

There is no set number of series a book should have, but 12 is a reasonable number. By happenstance, I have 12 series. Most of mine have to do with emotions, which is something that surprised me a great deal. I like imagery and metaphorical language, so I kind of thought I would find series with certain central metaphors or images. But when I did find iterations (repetitions) of an image, I would see that the image fit squarely within certain emotions that repeat throughout the book.

For instance, the image of a gun shows up in several scenes. In one scene, it’s a rifle. In another, it’s a pistol. In yet another, it’s a shotgun. But what is more important than the guns is that they represent the emotions fear and anger. Fear and anger are represented in different ways in many scenes. Guns are just one way they manifest themselves. But these emotions also show up in verbal arguments, physical abuse, and hiding/secrecy.

Once I had a list of my scenes in hand, I noticed that they correspond fairly well to the major emotions as identified by Pia Mellody.

ANGER

FEAR

PAIN

JOY

PASSION

LOVE

SHAME

GUILT

I also have a few other series in addition to these emotions, but I might add a 13th. And it would be called THERAPISTS ;).

Do emotions show up often in your writing?

40 Comments

Filed under Books, Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Memoir, Memoir writing theory, Nonfiction, Research and prep for writing, Writing, Writing goals

Tagged as Blueprint Your Bestseller, Book Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Creative writing, Memoir, Pia Mellody, Publishing, Stuart Horwitz, Writers Resources, Writing, Writing memoir, Writing process, Writing tips

by Luanne | May 19, 2014 · 5:20 am

Target My Structure

I’ve mentioned before that I have had many problems structuring my book. With 200,000 words of memoir already written, I was overwhelmed and confused about how best to structure the story. What to leave in and what to take out. Whether to organize chronologically or thematically.

So I was very happy to find the book, Blueprint Your Bestseller, by Stuart Horwitz. His “architectural” method is really working for me.

In following Horwitz’ plan, some of the first steps include identifying all the series in your book. You can’t know this until you have enough scenes written. So if you don’t have 50,000 or more words, I would just write out your scenes first. Then find all your series. A series is anything that has “iterations.” Repetitions, a pattern. But not just any pattern–a pattern where the series “undergoes a clear evolution.” It happens or shows up more than once and changes a bit? It’s probably a series.

Series can be symbols or metaphors like the hat that Holden wears in Catcher in the Rye. They can be characters, objects, phrases, settings, absolutely anything. When I worked on this aspect, I was shocked to discover that many of my series are emotions, such as anger, fear, and shame. Of course, these emotions don’t exist by themselves. They are represented by tangible events or objects, such as locked rooms and guns.

In another early step in this method, I discovered the “One Thing” my book is about. Horwitz took me on a sure path to find this out through a step by step process.

Every time I work on a new step I experience an epiphany about my book.

This past week I accomplished the next step. I created a target for my book, putting my “One Thing” in the center bullseye location. Then I placed post-it notes representing scenes (pink), series (yellow), characters (blue), and settings (green) on the board. Horwitz says, “The trick of the exercise is to put the narrative element closer to or farther from the bull’s-eye, or theme, depending on the strength of the relationship.” Doing this project, allowed me to see that certain scenes and settings were too far removed, whereas there is a close-knit relationship between everything else.

Caveat: I have so many scenes that I did not place all my scenes on the board. It would have been impossible. I expect to weed out scenes in the next step of the process.

The architecture method is supposed to work with any book, no matter the genre.

As a blogger or a writer, do you ever have problems with structure?

46 Comments

Filed under Books, Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Memoir, Memoir writing theory, Nonfiction, Research and prep for writing, Writing, Writing goals

Tagged as Blueprint Your Bestseller, Book Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Creative writing, Memoir, Publishing, Stuart Horwitz, Writers Resources, Writing, Writing memoir, Writing process, Writing tips

by Luanne | December 13, 2013 · 9:19 am

What the Blueprint Your Bestseller Process Looks Like

Renee is one of my in-person writing buddies. Look what she’s doing with her lovely book! This book she recommends by Stuart Horwitz is already winging its way to me so that I can do the same thing with mine. Best of luck, Renee!! xo

Photo by Renee

9 Comments

Filed under Books, Creative Nonfiction, Essay, Memoir, Memoir writing theory, Nonfiction, Research and prep for writing, Writing, Writing goals

Tagged as Book Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Creative writing, Memoir, Publishing, Stuart Horwitz, Writers Resources, Writing, Writing memoir, Writing process, Writing tips

by Luanne | December 12, 2012 · 5:30 am

Pearl Diving on My PC

My writing files are a mess. Unfinished drafts and scraps which feel as if they are done (for now) cohabit my file drawers and banker boxes and teetering stacks. I can deal with that kind of disorder. What’s worse is that my writing files on the computer are a mess. It’s harder for me to find files lost in computer chaos than in room mess.

So I started the long process of organizing my Word and WordPerfect files. That’s when I found a folder full of old (really old) poems, some published, most not. I’d forgotten that I had ever written them, but when I re-read them the old feelings came back and I remembered the complete writing process of many.

I’m not sure if this was a positive or negative event. It seems somehow outside that sort of experience. There’s a sense of déjà vu, but I also detect new layers in myself–strata added on in the years since I wrote those poems.

Here is one of my forgotten poems, published almost 200 years ago in 13th Moon. I wrote it when I was a grad student, newly moved to California from Michigan, feeling as if I’d left behind a part of my life.

Pearl diver in Japan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

***

Pearl Diving Off Mikura Jima

Fingers persuading back wind-beaten hair

under the cotton bonnet

of Puritans and infants and Japanese pearl seekers,

she adjusts her jumpsuit,

arches her naked feet,

and waits for the girl going first. Then she herself swoops

into the gelatinous,

pulsating ocean,

an entity

immune to the pull of the breeze.

*

Remember that dubbed horror movie we couldn’t shake

off–or wouldn’t? It was when

we thought the world was fun

in its irritated state.

Last week I found myself asking–

I was thinking of mock

ascensions and the superiority of irony–can we be Virgins

again.

*

I want the miracle.

Torrential murmurs from the primordial conch,

Do you believe in magic?

Saying yes–both at once–we knew

it could happen,

the re-entry, the nacre increasing,

radiant as babyskin.

But the horror movie

is a recurrent rerun–

terrifying and allegedly harmless.

*

The Japanese woman returns from the deep and shakes her head,

swings her open, empty hands,

simple kites in the pull of the breeze.

###

Each image in the poem brings back a specific memory for me. Watching pearl divers on television in my old house. Reading mock ascensions in Plath. Finding the spaniel with the ear hematoma. No, don’t bother going back to look: he’s there, but you can’t see him.

I’ve asked myself how it’s possible to remember the whole writing process for this poem and some of the others I discovered. And why it felt important to remember. I don’t really have an answer, though.

###

Thank you thank you thank you to Elizabeth at The Daily Creative Writer, Olivia Wolfe, and Nathan at manoftheword for nodding back at my blog (the Very Inspiring Blogger award). You’re all inspirations to me!

4 Comments

Filed under Memoir, Poetry

Tagged as Memoir, Memory, Michigan, Pearl hunting, Poem, Poet, Poetry, Writing process