yourpassions.tk

To my mind, a character who routinely muttered and mumbled would seem eccentric, to say the least, if not sullen or belligerent. An image that comes to mind is an old estate caretaker, wiry and bent with age, given to conversing with plants as he prunes them. Another is a street person suffering some form of mental illness. Not long ago I read an adventure novel, which charity demands I refrain from naming. I’ll refer to the author simply as Jane. The two main characters were teenagers of extraordinary intelligence and achievement. The imaginative plot held my interest, but as I read, I quickly became distracted by the number of times these brilliant, well-behaved young people muttered and mumbled. Hardly a page went by without one or another of these words appearing in at least one dialogue tag.  Maybe I would have been less aware of this if I didn’t teach classes in Writing Dynamic Dialogue , but having fairly recently completed an in-depth study of that topic, I took a closer look. ...

Earlier today I read a review of a book, Muses, Mentors and Monsters , by Elizabeth Benedict. The book features a collection of tributes from thirty writers to mentors who  changed their lives. I immediately thought of the mentor who changed my writing life by kicking it off. Lacking the opportunity to put this into a book, I'll pay tribute here to Larry Sparks , my main mentor while I was an off-campus grad student in the psych department at Central Washington U in the seventies. I doubt I would have made it through the mazes in that program if Larry's office hadn't been available as my centering spot. This gentle balding giant with the translucent cinammon buzzcut and droopy, pale blue eyes constantly urged and teased me to set aside my wild ideas of a counseling career and settle in to write. "You are the best writer I've ever had in any of my classes. That's what you excel at, what you do best. It's something you can do at home with your kids, and you c...

 Photo by Churl   A new tradition is being established today — the National Day on Writing , officially recognized by the US Senate . It  officially began at 12:01 EDT today. Every citizen is encouraged to submit a piece of writing, This may be anything from a polished story or poem to a shopping list. According to an article in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , Danielle Koupf, a doctoral student in English at the University of Pittsburgh, is trying to collect "scrap writing" in her gallery, including lists, sticky notes, homemade signs, letters and journal entries in order to "showcase the unacknowledged, ephemeral writing the pervades ordinary life." Memoir and other life writers may be especially interested in a special page on the National Association of Memoir Writers site that include an interview with founder Linda Joy Myers. Rather than dwell on the details, I encourage everyone to click over the the Post-Gazette page, the NAMW page, and the official Nat...

I’m stuck. At a dead end. At my wits’ end! I do not know how to handle this new writing challenge. This challenge is writing code for a new web page design that has become an obsession. I am determined to make it work, though it is beyond what I currently know how to do. I’ve got the basic structure in place, and just discovered one fatal design flaw. I know it can be done. I’ve seen the concept elsewhere. Right now I’m exploring my options for forging ahead and see that they are not much different for writing code than they would be if I were stuck writing a story that was mired down. As I see it the options  include: Continue by trial-and-error . I know a lot already, and sooner or later I’m bound to stumble on a solution. Keep surfing the net in search of solutions . That’s how I learned most of what I know. Find a book . I can learn nearly anything by reading about it, and the library is full of books. Take a class . I love classes. I learn from the questions other people ask as we...

Photo by Liz West from Flickr.com Words are the raw ingredients of communication. When we speak, we use inflection and pauses (together with facial expression and body language when we have visual contact) to add layers of meaning to the words. On the page, punctuation serves the same purpose. Just as tone of voice may vary to suit the speaker’s intent, so might punctuation. Compare these two examples to see what a difference punctuation can make. Dear John, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy—will you let me be yours? Gloria * * * Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no f...

Which came first, the Abba tunes or the musical plot? We all know the answer to that. The tunes in the musical Mamma Mia were hits in the years 1977-1982. Although the concept for the musical obviously came somewhat earlier, work on it did not begin until 1997, fifteen years after the last songs were released, and the movie wasn’t released until nine years after the stage play opened in 1999. Anyone who has seen this musical surely noticed how the two dozen tunes integrate  so seamlessly with the plot that anyone who wasn’t already familiar with the tunes could logically assume they were written for the purpose. Aside from incorporating voices of the actors and slight adaptations to segue them into the plot in places,  changes to the original tunes were so minor as to be imperceptible. So why do I claim this totally fictitious, over-the-top comedy musical is a model for writing memoir? Precisely because it takes isolated fragments of story (each song is a tiny story) and pulls them...