Painting With Words Like Painting With Color

    This past March I decided to paint the interior rooms of my house.  My husband and I have lived in our home for eight years and I was tired of the same drab nondescript creamy white walls  greeting me in bedroom, kitchen and hallway, and longed for color.

    I spent hours looking through  House Beautiful , Cottage Style, and other decorating magazines for ideas,  and days going  back and forth from my home  to Lowe's to discuss color with the expert  Emily in the paint department. When I finally decided each room would be a different color, I had to laugh at myself , and was reminded of Myrna Loy's character in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House  painstakingly  telling the contractor  the precise shade of  color she wanted in each room. After all her thoughtful description,  the contractor turns  to the painter and says,  " You got that ?"

  " Huh-huh",  replies  the painter, " Red, green,yellow, blue and white".

    Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House , a  comic  novel delightfully  written by Eric Hodgins in 1946, the scene I refer to is wonderfully highlighted in this youtube video.

 

    Perhaps  I  wasn't quite as precise as Mrs. Blandings,  but  I did  carefully and clearly   state I  wanted  the kitchen and family room yellow. Not a bright  lemon yellow, but a soft buttery yellow.  And the master bedroom and study I wanted  green, not a hunter green or pea green, but a rich colonial green. And on it went with each  color in each  room. Thankfully, Emily  was very patient, and helpful in making sure the colors were to my liking - even if she had to remix two or three times.

   While going through the exercise of choosing color and painting rooms of my house , I  thought about a book I read last year titled Word Painting  A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan. Just as I was trying to make the rooms of my home more descriptive, and interesting to visitors, so I strive to do with my writing - make the words more descriptive,  and interesting  to readers.  I must admit, painting seems the easier process with a  more consistent and better outcome; even so I write on!, and like paint that has to be mixed and remixed to find just the right shade and hue, so it is with the words we write,  they have to be written and rewritten before the completed story can be  finished.

   In her book, McClanahan tell  us The characters in our stories, songs, poems and essays embody our writing. They are our words made flesh. Sometimes they even speak for us, carrying much of the burden of plot, theme, mood, idea and emotion. But they do not exist until we describe them on the page. Until they are anchored  by our words, they drift,  bodiless and ethereal. They weigh nothing; they have no voice. Once we've written the first words our characters begin to take form. Soon they'll be more than mere names. They'll put on jeans or rubber hip boots, light thin cigarettes or thick cigars; they'll stutter or shout, buy a townhouse on the Upper East Side or a studio in the Village; they'll marry for life or survive a series of happy affairs; they'll beat their children  or embrace them. What they become is up to us. 

   Just as I thought about writing while painting the rooms of my home,  the next time I sit down to write memoir, short story, essay or poem, I'll think about the process of painting and contemplate  how similar  writing and painting are in  the  need to prepare and plot out your storyboard before starting,   paying attention  to detail and sometimes making a bold choice in choosing  character and description, adding color to the story.

*** NOTE:  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House written by American author, Eric Hodgins originally appeared as a   short story in the April 1946 issue of Fortune magazine.  If you are lucky enough to find a copy of the book in your local library or used book store, I recommend you grab it. Reading Hodgins is 'word painting' at its best, like walking into a colorfully painted room that helps describe the character and style of  home .
                                                                    

   

    

Guest Post: Burying Frank

 Courtesy of Bill Pigott, a Toronto Writer

What saved it from being unbearable was the hawthorn. In full bloom, it enveloped us in the breath of Spring.

If you counted the robin, there were five of us at the interment.

Frank had died at 84, alone. What family Frank had lived, perhaps understandably, far away.

Few people epitomized a name as well as Frank. For, Frank had been issued the deck of life with the people suit missing.

Frank’s unmarried crust had thickened with age. A great battlement shutting in profound neediness. Our last visit together looked like a disaster - unless you understood the codes.

“Turn down that goddam T.V.!” I walked across Frank’s living room and obeyed.

Frank’s right hand held a cigarette, precariously. The inch long ash threatening harm to a fine Persian rug. Frank’s body inscribed a “C” in the chair. The pose of slouching indifference reading “go away”. But, meaning “stay - please”.

In Frank’s right hand was a glass of Canadian whiskey - neat, dark brown. Soon, Frank would demand another drink. Please and thank you would not figure in that transaction either.

We had spent the afternoon watching golf - in silence. The Master’s was Frank’s favorite. All dressed, we would be going to Tachet, a neighborhood restaurant. A treat reserved for my visits to town. Frank looked natty in grey flannels, white shirt and black cardigan.

At Tachet, the food was French and they fussed. Perhaps they mistook Frank’s snarly nature as merely Parisian. By the end of dinner, it would be touch and go whether there was more food on Frank than in.

As we readied to go out, I knew we would have to face the “gauntlet”. The gauntlet was a steep wooden stairway that dropped about fifteen feet to the garage under Frank’s house. Frank insisted on taking those stairs unaided in spite of virtual blindness, and no sense of balance - the after effects of several mild strokes. And, three stiff whiskeys.

Frank teetered at the top of the stairs risking a five metre plunge. I stood two steps down, just in case. “Get out of my goddam way!” I didn’t. Frank fell forward grasping for the banister bars and found them. Four more heart-stopping lunges and Frank reached the bottom.

Fifteen minutes later, exhausted, I wheeled Frank into Tachet, set the brake and let the French take over.

Over dinner, Frank reprised one of the hidden things in Frank’s life - creativity.

Frank had worked for a large ad agency in Philadelphia - writing tag lines transforming product to image. I imagined the agency carefully sliding Frank’s meals under a door marked “Beware of Frank.”

“It was 1948," Frank said. An old client was seeking new directions. “Goddamned if they didn’t want a timeless catch phrase. Something simple. Simple is best. But, simple is the goddamned hardest. And, the bastards wanted it over night.”

With a morning deadline, Frank sat at home, rejected thoughts balled on the floor. Listening, I imagined Frank in the half light, shrouded in muse-choking smoke and railing.

“At 3:00 in the morning, I was done in. I had a line in front of me that looked promising. I decided to sleep on it. When I woke up, I knew I had it. “A Diamond Is Forever”. I wrote that. Put DeBeer’s on the map. Got a handshake from the boss. Bugger all else. Number one advertising slogan of the century - did you know that?” The tone was proud. “The goddam agency fired me in 1972 when it moved to New York. I guess I wasn’t forever.”

I cleaned as much of Frank’s dinner off Frank as I could without being obvious. We drove home. Frank went to bed and I left for the last time.

The robin brought me back to grave side. I heard the priest. But, I was thinking about Frank’s antisocial ways. And, imaging the obstacles she faced in the business world of the 1940's.

“Rest in peace Mary Frances Gerety. May God have mercy on you.” The priest concluded his ministrations with a splash of holy water and murmured condolences.

Then, we left Frank, alone. Under the hawthorn.

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