"Words Fail Me" by Patricia O'Conner

          "What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure." Samuel Johnson

Words Fail Me  What everyone who writes should know about writing; Harcourt Brace & Co., 1999 by Patricia O'Conner is a gem of a book for beginning writers.  It was easy to read and gives sensible, useful tips to make you a better writer. Good writing goes beyond mastery of words. "Good writing is writing that works, " states O'Conner. She believes a writer must have an understanding of the heart, the world and life. You have to have a capacity to make judgments. Following the rules, most of the time, will get you good writing. These are philosophies that she comes back to often.

The chapters are divided into sensible categories filled with humorous sentences of wisdom. "Crummy spelling," says O'Conner, "is more noticeable than crummy anything else." Her most important rule is "Your first duty to the reader is to make sense. Everything else -- eloquence, beautiful images, catchy phrases, melodic and rhythmic language -- comes later, if at all. I'm all for artistry, but it's better to write something homely and clear than something lovely and unintelligible."

Here are some compelling ideas she advocates.

1. Know your audience. Determine what things your audience (readers) have in common. Every choice you make is influenced by these communities. Write what you would like them to read. O'Conner says your writing will be clearer if you start with these tenets in place. Writing for ten year olds about pioneer cooking is different than writing about pioneer cooking for adult women. 
   Picture your reader, make him or her friendly and on your side, with you in this road you are both traveling. "Readers are not Olympic judges." They want to enjoy the time spent together. 
 Respect their intelligence by not talking down to them. 

2. Her mantra is: WHAT do I want to say, "HOW do I want to say it, and WHY do I want to say it. Write down ideas as they come to you. Also write a list of things you want to tell your readers. She calls this her "stash."  Cull from the stash and keep what you want in another place but never delete any ideas permanently. Change is fine. You can move ideas around once you get the basics down. The first two sentences of each paragraph must be strong.

3. According to O'Conner, there are several beginnings and a good beginning can win an audience for life.
   Summary beginnings...tell what you are going to tell them, tell them why it needs saying and how you will do it.
   Anecdotal beginnings...start with a short story or joke. These must be relevant to the topic of the rest of the story and age appropriate.
  Physical descriptions...set the scene by describing where the characters are and what they look like with their names.
  Leisurely opening...very hard to write. James Michener comes to mind It took him three chapters to tell you the sun was rising over Maui in his book  Hawaii. Audiences in today's fast paced world do not tolerate well leisurely openings.

4. Give yourself enough time to write. Set a schedule that you can stick to based on the other activities in your life. Some of us have school age children so our free time in between 9:00 and 2:00 with domestic chores thrown in. Others work at a job that negates free time from 7:30 AM to 6:00PM. Look at your schedules and determine what works. It may be every Saturday from 1:00-5:00PM or two hours daily.
 Every writer  has a time limit of how long he can write. Know yours. 
 O'Conner says that if you quit writing before your scheduled time, do not reward yourself with something pleasant like a cookie or reading for 20 minutes. Do some icky job until your scheduled writing time expires. 

Part 2 of this book: The Fundamental Things

1. "If you have done your homework, you do not have to disguise it in showy language." Use short words. Hemingway says that you need a built in  (paraphrased) baloney detector. Readers know inflated language versus true ideas expressed well. 
2. Short paragraphs are easier to read.
3. "Find an interesting verb and the rest of the sentence will take care of itself." Strong verbs don't need propping up. "He walked with a swagger." versus "He swaggered." "The meal took three hours to be eaten" versus, "They ate for three hours." Keep nouns and verbs close together to avoid confusion.
 Use single modifiers not " wet, red, snow-encrusted face."
4. Read your work aloud listening for cliches, boring phrases and stilted sentences.
5. Put the modifying item last. "This restaurant serves pumpkin ravioli, linguine and pasta." What it really serves is linguine, pasta and pumpkin ravioli.
6. Remove "training wheels" in your writing. "...music that is pleasing to the ear" and "...dancer is graceful on her feet." (How else would music be pleasing?)
7. Use exclamation points sparingly and never in multiples.

Part 3: Getting Better All The Time

1. Maintain the appropriate tone throughout. Good writing is not comedic in one part and grisly in another. Match the tone to the subject matter. 
2. "Rewriting is more than correcting what is wrong but pushing further what is acceptable."
O'Conner says to do a final analysis of your writing.
-----Do I still like the beginning?
-----Can I be simpler?
-----Do I make sense?
-----Do my numbers add up?
-----Do my sentences hang together?
-----Do I need every word modifier?
-----Have I got rhythm?
-----Am I playing the same tune throughout (tone of ideas)?
-----Am I using the right image?
-----Have I made my case?
-----How's my grammar?

I give this book five stars. She uses excellent examples for every point she makes. One final piece of advice from Patricia O'Conner: Any problem can be solved---sometimes by throwing it out.

Drawing/Painting and Writing

Power of the Pen writing conference is March 7, 2015 in Spokane, WA. The keynote speaker will be Mary Buckham. There will be several editors and agents taking pitches and giving workshops. The workshops will be geared toward writers of all genres of fiction. Here's the link to the website: http://www.iecrwaconference.com. The fee is $95 nonmembers, $70 members of Inland Empire Chapter of Romance Writers of America for this day long event.

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A person cannot sit down and paint the perfect picture immediately. You are painting a woodland landscape and you have trouble with the deer. You work on that area for a while, work on the clouds, return to the deer or walk away and read for thirty minutes. When you again start to paint, your ability to render the deer has changed and it works or it is worse.

The same goes for writing. You cannot sit down and write the perfect first draft. In fact, the harder it is to write a certain part the more effort it will require. Every writer faces this situation. Janet Evanovich says that it is difficult for her to write sex scenes. It requires champagne and copious supplies of M&M’s. For another writer, writing tension in a murder scene may be difficult. All writers stumble on a different aspect of the story. Do not try to be Stephen King, Flannery O’Conner,  John Grisham or Elizabeth George. Write the story you want to tell.

 Although The Starry Night  (left) by Vincent Van Gogh was painted during the day in Van Gogh's ground-floor studio in a mental institution Saint Paul-de Mansole, now a convent in St.Remy, France,  it would be accurate to state that the picture was painted from memory. The view has been identified as the one from his second story bedroom window, facing east (lower right) a view which Van Gogh painted variations no fewer than twenty-one times, including  Starry Night.  <sup>The other two painting are of the</sup>
 same field facing east from his bedroom on the second floor. "Through the iron-barred window," he wrote to his brother, Theo, around 23 May 1889, "I can see an enclosed square of wheat . . . above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory."

View today of mental institution
St. Remy, France
Van Gogh's room,
second floor middle window

View today from Van Gogh's
room in mental institution

 Van Gogh depicted the view at different times of day and under various weather conditions, including sunrise, moonrise, sunshine-filled days, overcast days, windy days, and one day with rain. The hospital staff did not allow Van Gogh to paint in his bedroom, but he was able to make sketches in ink or charcoal on paper (like a writer's rough drafts), and eventually he would base newer variations on previous versions. In fifteen of the twenty-one versions, cypress trees are visible beyond the far wall enclosing the wheat field. Writers cannot use the same theme twenty-one times but we can write various drafts of the same theme from different points of views or by making one the people the main character in one version and a secondary figure in another.

Van Gogh used the same inspiration for many paintings. Writers can do the same. We can combine our fourth grade school field trip to a California mission with a family vacation to the Santa Ynes Mountains in the same area years later and produce a scene for our story. What we cannot do is sell the same scenes in different books like Van Gogh could sell the same scene with only slight variations. If you do that, your books sounds like a well known author whose main character drinks Knob Creek at Elaine's with the same pal almost every night, bedding different women combined with a sketchily filled in mystery plot. It is a formula that has worked for him but readers get bored quickly and quit buying his books.

Writing takes a plot plus a subject and turns them into a story. A book has a flow just like a painting. Artistic scholars tell us we take our eyes on a journey through a painting starting at the upper left of the canvas and work our way toward the center. I disagree feeling that I look at the largest or brightest part of the painting first and work my way spiraling out from that point. The artist has a story she wishes to tell and devises a one dimensional way to do it. There may be several stories going on at the same time via smaller sections of the painting; these are likened to subplots in books.

Books tell stories with the luxury of more space, i.e., pages and multiple characters and subplot(s). I expect the main character to be introduced in the first chapter. I prefer he or she to have a name and an accurate physical description. The artist wants you to understand the main subject of the painting and then fill out the story as your eyes travel around the canvas. Painters repeat themes in various spots so that it is satisfying to the viewer. Books do the same. We repeat the struggle the protagonist is having by having him try different solutions and failing.

Think of your story like a drawing or a painting. Visualize your story then write down what you see. Add the details. Rewrite and fine tune. Publish.

Writing Skill Development

Our guest blogger today is Larry Telles of Dalton Gardens, ID

I have thought for many years that I was born at the right time. Looking back to those early years I can see that I was bound to be a writer. One of my necessary skills was imagination which I learned by listening to the radio. A mahogany appliance that appeared to glow in the dark sat on an end table in our living room. Narration, dialogue and sound effects became the critical parts of painting pictures in my mind.   

It was 1949, I was nearly twelve, and my grandmother who lived in Albany, California bought a television set. During the summer months I spent every Wednesday with her and my grandfather. There were only three stations we could watch went off-the-air at 9 p.m. each night. All three channels displayed our flag, in black and white and played the Star Spangled Banner.

By the mid-1950s, our three channels had added more programming like local news. With commercials at a very minimum, these stations turned to obtaining, through renting or buying, silent movies. For a young kid, they were clever and very funny. Over a short period of time I added a second notch in my writer’s bag of tricks. While watching these silent films I learned, “show, don’t tell.” These on screen actors had to convey emotion with hand gestures, body language, eye-brows and their mouths.

I learned all about action when nearly every Friday night my parents would take me to a local theater in Oakland, California to see two “B” Westerns, a newsreel, and cartoon. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t pursue writing after leaving high school. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that a forth item was added to my writer’s tool box.

Writing was not completely forgotten in the late 1960s to early 1970s, but I got interested in art. I had been drawing since I was nine years old and wanted to learn more. I enrolled in The Art Instruction Schools of Minnesota. I worked on this course while working at Pacific Bell in the Bay Area. When I got the chance, I transferred into the training department writing technical curriculum. There I learned all about pacing. It became necessary for me to choose words that got a point across without using hundreds of unnecessary words.

It was during this period that I began thinking about writing a children’s book. Technical writing during the day and fiction at night. I had seen an ad for The Institute of Children’s Literature in Pennsylvania and after a couple of years took three classes from them. My effort at the conclusion was a YA novel, The Hooded Rider of Whispering Pines, and several short stories written during those courses. This manuscript was put in a drawer only to see the light of day again in the late 1990s. I used it at Holy Names University in Oakland, California to challenge a creative writing class. I graduated with a BA in English (cum laude) in 1998. But the manuscript went back in the drawer.

I left California in 1999 and landed in Dalton Gardens, Idaho. I joined the Idaho Writers League in 2001. Years earlier I had joined the SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writer’s and Illustrators) and helped form the Inland Empire Chapter in Spokane. That manuscript is once again out of the drawer. However, it isn’t my first book. I wrote A Brief History of the Silent Screen and the World at that Time in 2008. I aimed the marketing “for the teen years to the seniors.” Most young adults would like to know where movies came from. My second book, Helen Gibson, Silent Serial Queen: Who Became Hollywood’s First Professional Stunt Woman. It was dedicated to all the young women who have a dream. Those short stories I did earlier were tweaked a bit and over the past four years won prizes at the IWL yearly contest.

So what does all of this mean? Don’t give up your writing. Make sure you have the right tools to do the job. Find an age group or genre you can relate to and start writing. Decide if you love fiction or non-fiction or both. Enter contests. Go to writing conferences. Join a writing group so you can get your work critiqued. If you know a teacher, see if you can read your work to a class. Kids are very blunt and will let you know what they think. I’ll bet a lot of you reading this have heard all of the above many times before. Well, it must be good advise, since it works!

LARRY TELLES, entertains readers with his fertile imagination in all sorts of yarns. The love of his writing life is children’s stories. Larry is presently marketing two books on film and a DVD, but his YA manuscript is currently being polished for publication in 2015.

Location as A Character

Think of Gone with The Wind not set in Atlanta but Washington, D.C., Les Miserable not in Paris but Berlin or HELP set in Detroit, MI not Jackson, MS and you have no story. In these books, location IS a character and a main character at that.

The question for the writer is how big a character do you want location to play. Does it define the action, is it a part of history that cannot be disputed, could the plot be plucked and set down in a different location without effecting the entire venture too much? How much would you have to explain if you set your novel some place else or change the dialog?

Many novels have the location as secondary plot. Under The Stars was set in Kenya in the 1930’s. The exoticness of the setting made the plot much more interesting. It helped the author to

grow her characters more easily due to the different ethnic morals and traditions she encounters. Daniel Steele’s novels could be set in any place and in any time. It doesn’t matter if her main character is rich, beautiful but troubled in Cote d’Azur, France, Denver, Manhattan or Rio de Janerio. She gets herself into the same predicaments and acts according to her set standards of the jet set. What happens in the location is not dependent upon the particular traits of Paris or Los Angeles.

A book set in a certain location may be a draw to readers. Many people want to learn things about another culture or geographical location and will pick up a book hoping to do so. If you want location to be a draw, do not set your novel in North Dakota unless it is during the 1870’s, early 1800’s or a mystery set in the oil area of the northwestern part of the state in 2014 where many people have emigrated for the high paying jobs. We just returned from a vacation in Whistler, B.C., Canada and Vancouver. I would love to set a novel in Vancouver but it could just as easily be set in Seattle, Portland or Lima, Peru if all I wanted was beautiful countryside with mountains, rain and evergreen trees. On the other side, talking about a geisha needs to be set in Japan because geisha were only a part of Japanese culture.

 I look for location as a primary factor in my fiction reading. I love to travel and enjoy reading more about a city or country because the characters are there. The Diana Gabledon series is intriguing because it takes the readers to the 1700’s in Scotland and then North Carolina and France. I love Daniel Silva’s mysteries because each one takes place in a European city or several and parts of Tel Aviv. I always learn something. On the other hand, Ethiopia as the location for Cutting for Stone, played a subtle and interesting part of the plot. However, the book could have been set in any third world country and the main plot sustained without difficulty.

Dialog has to be grounded in location but not to the point of possible misunderstanding. A “wee” here and there in a Scottish setting is appropriate and gives the reader a sense of the character. Most readers know the meaning of “bairn” (child) but would not understand “Awe’re a’Jock Tamson’s bairns” which means, “We are all God’s children, nobody is better than anybody else – we are all equal.” Most know that “havin’ a look under the bonnet” in Great Britain means someone is going to look under the hood of a car and not peeking under the hat of a baby. This reminds me of Tony Hillerman’s books set in Arizona in modern times where he uses numerous native American saying in their language but translates freely for the reader. It gives authenticity and flavor to the plot. A lot of his plots involved Native Americans and Caucasians together solving murders where the heritages of both entered into the plot line.

Are you taken by location when choosing a book? Do you find it hard to write your story if it is set in a different country. Do you ask yourself if this book has to be set in (place) and (time)? Does it work better in a different location or era? If you are stuck, try writing your story in a different location and/or era. No matter what you decide, remember that location influences what picture the reader develops in his mind. You want to make that as strong a part of the plot as you can. An exercise for learning is to write a short story set in a different country just to see what it entails.

“Haste Ye Back!" - Farewell saying meaning “return soon”.

How to Confuse Readers

While on a trip to Whistler and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada last week, I read several books. The one that interested me the most was Cheryl Strayed's autobiography Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Never have I been so full of conflict about a book. If I do not care for a book, I put it down. I did not care for this book but was challenged to find out why.

The writing was both bad and good. The main character had a few likable traits but mostly I did not care for her and her choices. She related parts of her life experiences, real or not, that were foreign and distasteful to me. I disliked her language and morals. I disliked her family. I found it hard to believe that she went on a 1,100 mile long trek along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) which runs from the Mexican border to Washington state, is rugged, and traverses through some serious wilderness areas. It was especially hard to read knowing it was written 17 years after she did the summer long hike. She based her recollections on her journal which she never mentioned writing.

I was not of the demographic for this book: young 20 year old somethings who were looking for  answers and adventure without actually working for either. So why did I read this long book? I kept hoping for a major change in the author because she finally took charge of her life instead of letting serendipity and dumb choices rule her life. Was she ever going to learn? And if so, what was she going to learn?

Most of the book was driven by her inability to accept the tragic death from cancer of her young mother, aged 45; Cheryl was in her early 20's when this happened. I am sure she was devastated but never possessed the skills or support system to be able to work through this challenge. She says she was able to understand it by the end of the hike. Hmm.

Strayed, an illogical made up legal name, took on a solo hike without any preparation except some wrong advice from a outfitters store and an old copy of someone else's experience hiking the PCT. She did not practice before hand, packed her back pack the night before she started the hike without knowing how to use many of the items she tried to carry. She had not broken in her hiking boots and was woefully unprepared for what life always hands you: unexpected often dangerous situations.

Again I wondered why I read this book. Strayed used metaphors poorly, left the reader hanging on some precipitous literary overhangs and with questions about the veracity of her sentences. BUT...she kept my interest through out. I kept expecting her daily struggles to be more interesting. I wanted her to learn some things along the way. I kept hoping for both. Instead, Stayed returned again and again to flashbacks to explain her present circumstances as if they were an excuse for her poor choices. Doing heroin for months on end, assessing every man for his potential for sex (should I ask him or will he ask me?), and marital and familial infidelity all were big events in her life. Unlike other readers, I did not mind the flashbacks as disabling to the concentration of the reader. She was able to move the story along seamlessly through them. Her days were monotonous with she wrote each line using the same description ad nauseum of how stinky and dirty she was, how her toenails were black and falling off and how often she laid in her tent at night wanting to read but not being able to. Yet I kept reading.

If I could understand the reasons for my reading this tome, I would write a best seller about an unsympathetic person who spends her days making poor choices and not bathing. It will be about a woman who professes to have read great literature but then has no intelligence to prepare to hike along miles of rugged desert territory. I will meet people along the way but distance myself from then because "I vont to be alone!" but never uses the time alone to think through her the reasons for her past choices or plan for a more stable future.

If we writers could let go of what we have learned about writing and try some absurd plot, maybe we too would be famous. Obviously there are points I did not understand about Strayed's writing. She has written several other successful books which I will not read.

I should have known I would not like this book when I realized it was an Oprah 2 book club choice. I never like the books Oprah chooses. This book is a national best seller and an about to be released movie starring Reese Witherspoon.

Have you read books you did not like and not because your book club was going to discuss them next week? Why did you do so? What compels us, especially writers who should know better, to read a book where we do not care for the main character or believe in the supposed veracity of the tale?

International Writing Conferences

Is your muse visiting Peru while you are stuck in Moscow, Denver, Phoenix, Inverness or Sydney? Here is a partial list of upcoming writing conferences. There are conferences for writers held in many cities and areas around the world throughout the year.  Google 'writing seminars', 'writing workshops', or 'writing conferences' and be overwhelmed with the possibilities. Most are held in the warmer months of each region. Several of them combine writing seminars with sightseeing in the host country.

Italy

Portugal

Astra Writing in Greece

September 19-29, 2014  www.astragreece.com 

Bread Loaf Writers' Conference - Sicily, Italy

workshops, lectures, classes

September 21-27, 2014  http://www.middlebury.edu/blwc

Weaving Words & Women: a Peruvian Adventure [ret]

October 3-14, 2014  www.pagelambert.com

Eat-Write-Travel   http://www.eat-write-travel.com 

Guatemala—11/9-16, 14

Slovenia Oct. 5-12

  

Summer Literary Seminar - Kenya

December 7-20, 2014  http://www.sumlitsem.org 

San Miguel Writers' Conference - Mexico

February 11-15, 2015  http://www.sumlitsem.org 

Summer Literary Seminar - Kenya

December 7-20, 2014  http://www.sumlitsem.org 

San Miguel Writers' Conference - Mexico

February 11-15, 2015  http://www.sumlitsem.org 

Perth International Arts Festival - Australia

February 13 - March 7, 2015  http://corporate.perthfestival.com.au 

Sirenland Writers Conference - Positano, Italy

March 22-28, 2015 http://sirenland.net 

Iceland Writers Retreat - Reykjavik, Iceland

workshops, panels, touring  www.icelandwritersretreat.com 

This writer does not endorse nor have specific knowledge of any of these conferences, retreats or seminars. Please research each one before registering.

Uh oh....plagiarism

By JENNIFER ROVA

Plagiarism is passing off as your own someone else’s work, ideas, thoughts, opinions, theories, statistics, facts, drawings, or paraphrasing the same. Recently several journalists and politicians were caught plagiarizing. Doris Kearns Goodwin, a well-known Pulitzer Prize winner, historian and political commentator was found to have plagiarized portions of her book about the Fitzgeralds and Kennedys. Other books she authored have also come under criticism. She admitted to some of it saying  “that she had an understanding that citations would not be required for all references, and that extensive footnotes already existed. Many doubted her claims, and she was forced to resign from the Pulitzer Prize board.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_plagiarism_incidents]   

Jane Goodall, internationally known primatologist, was proved to have plagiarized many sections of her book Seeds of Hope. Jonah Rehrer who was a science and technical writer for the NYT was accused of falsifying quotes as well as general plagiarism. Freed Zakaria, CNN commentator and editor at Time magazine was ultimately reinstated after he was accused of plagiarizing his own work! He failed to note that the lines in one article in TIME had been published in another magazine.

Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race in 1988 after it was found that he plagiarized a paper in law school. He was also found to have copied for his campaign speeches without noting from British politician Neil Kinnock. Rand Paul has been caught plagiarizing in one of his books. Vladimir Putin is accused of lifting several passages of his economic dissertation from a text book written by two University of Pittsburgh teachers. Alex Haley, Barack Obama, George Harrison and many video game authors have been accused and/or charged with plagiarism.

 There are 5 common forms of plagiarisms:

1.    Duplicating another’s words or phrases, etc. without identifying the speaker or author, or not    using quotation marks.

2.    Same as #1 except including quotation marks.

3.    Using another’s ideas by paraphrasing them without noting sources.een accused of plagiarism.

4.    Submit, enter or sell as your own work by merely rearranging words and/or phrases without footnotes.

5.    Intentional or unintentional, ignorance of the law is no defense.

The devil is in the details, however. According to copyright laws established in 1989, works are now protected with or without the copyright symbol; they are considered intellectual property. As long as the material can be shown to belong to someone other than you, even though altered but similar to the original form, without acknowledgement, it is considered plagiarism. Copyright laws do not protect facts considered “common knowledge.” Common knowledge is defined loosely as information generally known or known by a large group of people, e.g., Roosevelt was the author of the New Deal. Copyright laws can be in effect up to 75 years after the death of the author. There are many variants of the length depending upon how old the work is and who owns the copyright.

      Another gray area is “public domain.” This often, but not always, means intellectual property that “belongs” to the public and can therefore be used freely. There are variations of law depending on copyright laws in different countries as well as patents and trademarks. It is best to check with an attorney.

The punishments are of varying degrees often depending upon the venue and the amount of material copied. It seems to also depend upon your status in your field and your sponsoring company. Authors writing for well-known magazines or newspapers sometimes seem to be able to slide past legal reprisals, as do some financially lucrative authors. The publishers protect their popular writers. For the rest of us, the greater the amount of material copied the greater the punishment can be.  Most cases are considered misdemeanors bringing fines between $100 and $50,000 and can be accompanied by up to one year in jail. 

Generally, your offense is considered a felony if you earn more than about $2,500 from the book or article with the plagiarism. The punishment could be upwards of $250,000 and ten years jail time. In a business situation, the punishment is usually not of the prosecutorial kind (unless sued by the original author). It takes the form of a demotion, denial of promotions, monetary fine or firing. In the academic world, the punishment is often meted out by the professor which can result in a failing grade, failing the course or, under the auspices of the dean’s office, expulsion from the college or university. The easy use of the Internet has increased the instances of plagiarism in all venues.

      There are a few ways to protect yourself from prosecution of plagiarism.

First, avoid plagiarizing by understanding what constitutes plagiarism. When taking notes from various sources for your writing, clearly identify anything that is not in the public domain or not in your original words and thoughts. Keep all your notes, electronic, recorded and penned, in several backups in various venues; back up your computer file each time under a different name, e.g., essay plagerism-1, essay plagerism-2, etc. This will give you a paper and time trail to strengthen your case should you be charged or you wish to charge someone else with plagiarism.

      Check the style manuals for the organization for which you are writing as to how to format your written word. APA is the American Psychological Association used primarily in liberal arts settings, ACS (American Chemical Association) for writing in the science field, AP and Chicago styles for general writing. Publishing houses and business often have in-house guidelines they wish authors to follow. Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, began his book, “It was the best of times…” If you fail to properly credit your sources in your writing, it could easily become, “…the worst of times.”

(Disclaimer: this author does not represent the material in the essay to be thought of as legal knowledge or advice under any terms or conditions.

A Simile is Like A...really hard thing to write

By JENNIFER ROVA

A  simile is a literary device that shows the comparison between two different things. It uses the words "like" or "as" and is therefore a direct comparison. "Ben is as wise as an owl" says that someone or something is as wise as an owl. An owl is traditionally thought of in literature as being intelligent. "Agile as a monkey" is another example of a simile.

The challenge to a writer is to think of similes that are not cliches and to compare the two things you want. A good simile makes it easier to understand your text because it draws a visual picture. The reader can use several of his senses to interpret what you mean. Often he can visualize your image (oceans and spilled water, pumpkins and an orange sunset). Sometimes the reader can smell your simile. There is a children's book whose title is My Dog Smells Like Dirty Socks that illustrates that the reader uses his sense of smell to relate to what you are comparing.

A trite simile makes you sound lazy and is boring to the reader. "Her temper is like a volcano." "...hungry as a lion," "...eyes as big as dinner plates. Often a simile is funny:"Her new hire was as useful as a chocolate teapot."  


Recently I read two books where the authors had a remarkable talent for writing similes. The first book is All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

"The people in Berlin believed in them [the German army] like a nun believes in God. (pg. 102)
"Blood that had spread across the table thickens like cooling wax." (338)
"The Pyrenees gleam. A pitted moon stands on their crests as if impaled." (349)
"...veins that climb in Volkheimer's arm like vines." (152)
"Her skin was as pale as cream and as thin as a blade of grass." (137)
"When he stand up his knees crack like twigs." ((158)
"von Rumple climbs the ladder, his weight like a rag on the rungs." (201)
"..as easy as trying to pick feathers out of molasses." (126)
"Sleep falls over the child like a shadow."

The second book was a summer beach read by Elin Hilderbrandt.

"...plans falling together as neatly as bricks in a garden path."
"She was perpetually moving like a girl on amphetamines."
"Snoring like the old man who bumped his head..."

Many songs have similes. "It's A Hard Day's Night" by the Beetles. Bob Dylan's "Like a rolling stone" and Jon Bon Jovi's "My heart is like an open highway".

You will be in good company if your simile is as good as Shakespeare's:

"All the world's a stage
And all men and women are merely players,
They have their exits and their entrances."

Put your imagination to work and think up good similes. It will enhance your writing, make the reader smile, cry or shake his head and an editor think he has a new best seller on his desk.

Painting and Writing – Twins, Some Say

By JENNIFER ROVA

Petroglyths were the first forms of both writing and art. Before man invented an extensive language and lived long enough that events and people needed to be remembered, it didn’t matter that you could not draw or write, that you had no artistic talent. Some educators today define literacy as a human being who has the ability to write legibly and express meaningful thoughts. Art literacy is considered expendable. What a lot of us do not comprehend is that writing and painting/drawing (hereafter referred to as painting) share similar attributes enough so that we can easily find parallels between the two and use both to strengthen our main interest.

You cannot sit down and paint the perfect picture or write the perfect book. There is always a part of creating of which you are not so confident. You can paint people but you cannot do as good a job on animals. You can describe a scene so the reader feels like he is there but you have trouble writing dialog. You need to scrap off the paint or delete sections reworking until it is satisfying.

Are you able to visualize the completed painting before you start? Do you have a general idea of the composition of the painting but rearrange and change your mind as you continue to work? A detailed outline helps many writers get started. They feel they have done the majority of the work so the writing part is easy. While in Carrera, Italy, we visited an outdoor marble sculptor who first carved an entire, detailed replica of what his large sculpture would look like. It gave him an idea where problems may occur, if it looked in reality like it does in his mind and if his perspective is correct. 

I can easily buy into the right-brain, left-brain theory. Some people are not suited for the structured classroom and rigid curriculums. Right-brained people are described as thinking visually, intuitive and subjective and are often people who can solve problems creatively because they do not think linearly like right-brained people. Left-brained people are attentive to details, logical, analytical and objective. Into which side do you fall?

Writing must have plot and story to keep the reader interested. So do paintings. If you see the sunset  in the middle of the painting and move on to the next picture, you may miss the spider web in the lower right corner and the partially hidden canoe in the background. Those details tell a story.

Paintings express the artist’s thoughts, feelings and emotions even if it is a commissioned work with specific parameters. Novels are the same. We bring to these tasks our experiences, knowledge, feelings and emotions

If you look at Renoir’s “Luncheon on The Lake”, we can follow the yellow color from the tips of the shade cover, to the food on the table, the men's hats and background flags. In Gone with The Wind, we follow the lives of Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie and Ashley plus Miss Pitty Pat. In both instances, we look for the connections and why and how do these things and people tie together. What is their relationship? Why did the painter use yellow and why can we both like and dislike Scarlett? Artists and scribes use themes to give the viewer or reader a satisfying experience through development of these alike techniques.

Since painting and writing are so similar, I think the next time I am stuck in my writing, I may put it aside and draw. Maybe the art muses will talk to the writing muses in the room.

Be a Boy Scout about Your Writing

By JENNIFER ROVA

A white-tailed fawn born in June.
It jumped into our large window well.
Such a pretty baby! 

The motto of the Boy Scouts of America is “Be Prepared!” This holds true for writers also. The other day I rounded the corner of our house to find that a newborn white-tailed deer had jumped down into a large window well and could not get out. We had this happen before and were prepared. We knew not to touch it as human scent will make the doe reject her fawn and the baby will starve. We had a lost fawn in the neighborhood a year or two ago. People tried to reunite it with its mother but had neglected to wear gloves. The mother rejected her baby because of some anomaly or because humans had touched it. The fawn bleated several days for its mom and for food before finally lying down on our front lawn too weak to continue the fight. It died an hour or so later. The mother of this summer’s fawn had not abandoned her fawn. We saw her walking slowly and watching us from across the street. She knew where her baby was but was helpless.

The air conditioner unit is about 4.5"' high
He or she is so tiny. It will gradually lose the white spots

Several men who were installing replacement windows tried to help my husband by providing a ramp hoping the fawn would use it to climb out. It (she? he?) would have nothing to do with that plan. It tried to jump up onto a middle concrete tier several times but could not get its back legs to hold. Bob moved to one side of the well to encourage it to try again. After two more attempts, the fawn was able to stabilize itself on the middle landing and then jump the three feet to the grassy area of our lawn. It  bounded off joining its relieved mother.

Fawn successfully getting the courage to jump up the
second concrete tier of the window well and escape
Very brave for such a little one new to this world.

There are two lessons for writers here. The first is to be prepared as you never know when a story idea will present itself. Keeping writing supplies on hand (in a purse, pocket, car, boat or bicycle pack) will let you record thoughts while they are fresh in your mind. You can jot down details, emotions and possible story lines for future reference. With the fawn, I was at home and had a camera so I could document events as they happened. Carrying a camera as well as paper and pencil is a great asset to writing your story later. You can capture the scene exactly. Magazine editors love to have accompanying pictures to validate and illustrate your story.

The second lesson is patience. The fawn displayed patience despite being afraid of its situation and the humans around her. Her mother showed the same as she waited helplessly for her baby to return to her. My husband exercised caution and patience while encouraging this wayward fawn to jump higher than it thought it could. Writers need patience to develop their story ideas, to write, to rewrite, to submit and then wait for a response. Hurrying is not in the writer’s favor. Patience is.

Practice the Boy Scout motto - “Be Prepared!” - if you want to think of yourself as a writer.

Visit Before You Write

JENNIFER ROVA

After reading Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter and two weeks touring the Tuscany region of Italy, it is my recommendation that you visit the foreign country about which you are writing. Your five senses are educated to a degree you could not possibly resurrect from where you are writing be it at home, on the beach, or at the library. Your settings are enhanced by traveling to the location of you writing.

Tuscany sits in the middle western part of Italy. The Mediterranean Sea is on one side, the Apennine Mountains down the middle and the once magnificent city of Florence on the eastern boundary. This does not include Venice and is about 175 miles north of Rome. Beautiful Ruins is set in Cinque Terre (chink qw terr' a) area which is a stone's throw northwest of Tuscany.

 At the beginning of Beautiful Ruins, we are introduced to Pasquale and his dreams which include making his tiny village in the Cinque Terre region on the Mediterranean Sea into a world class resort. The author gives little to developing your ability to feel the area. There are minor descriptions of the flowers, soil, or the ocean and a lot about rocks. I am "not in the zone." Pasquale, one of the too many characters in the book, never blooms in my eye as the studly, handsome, black haired young Italian man you want him to be. The author talks about Pasquales' mama's cooking but you can never smell the Italian herbs, cheeses, bread and red wine that would enhance the feeling Walter was trying to project. He leaves us feeling the area and characters are dull.

Italians possess a different set of values describing who they are. What events we think  that would impact the region did not leave an obvious stamp. The people will mention that Florence was drastically bombed during WWII. But, the city contains ten centuries old duomos (cathedrals), and thousands of precious paintings (The Birth of Venus by Botticelli) and sculptures (Michelangelo’s David) worth untold billions of dollars. Those are what they are proud of and want you to see and appreciate.

The people of Tuscany center on what their ancestors had brought to the world stage. In the late 1300’s and early 1,400’s, the subjects of paintings changed from religious themes to paintings of actual people. Botticelli, Michelangelo (Mick-el-angelo, not My-cull-angelo), Galileo, and Leonardo da Vinci all lived during this time and competed with each other for commissions from wealthy patrons. The renaissance was promoted by the vast wealth and interest in the arts and learning by Lorenzo de’ Medici, or Lorenzo el Magnifico (1449-1492). Many advances in the sciences were developed then as well as democracy and ended by greed. Florence fought Siena, Pisa and Lucca for control of the water ports for trade. Italy was not unified until much later. Many of these cities practice today some of the festivals and pastimes developed then. The Palio in Siena is one horse race that has been enjoyed for since the 1,400’s. That is 600 years! (The race takes 90 seconds and the horse that crosses the finish line, with or without its rider, wins.) Pisa has its leaning tower, Lucca preserved fortress walls 35 feet wide, and Carrera its marble mining.

San Gimignano and vineyards

What Italian offer now are diverse things: their centuries of history in the arts that influenced who they are today; their food, wines and olive oil; the marble quarries; and their unique topography of mountains and rolling picturesque, farmland surrounded by salt water on three sides. They produce a lot of the world’s best wines from centuries old vineyards. The region of Tuscany is noted for acres of olives trees and grape vines carefully tended and harvested. Tuscan wines are enjoyed all over the world. They are proud of these things and live lives within them.

The Italians talk: fast, all at once, and loudly. They talk when someone else is talking. They are pleased when you make an effort if you are a foreigner who says “Bongiorno”, or “Bonasera”, or “Gratzie”. “Due biccheriere di vino rossa, per favore” doesn’t hurt to know either.*

The weather in Tuscany in the summer is HOT. I do not see how they stand it. These old cities and villages are made of centuries old black rock. The houses and businesses are bumped right to the edge of the road on either side with no spaces between buildings while the black rock or brick of the buildings makes the heat bounce off raising the temperature even more.

The food is Tuscany is renown. It is different than other regions of Italy. They use no salt in their many breads, pastries, or pasta. Sliced bread was served with the meals and it was to be used to sop up the left over sauce from the pasta…except they serve about a tablespoon of sauce with a medium sized bowl of rigatoni so no leftover sauce. Dinner is later when it is cooler and one can sit for hours sipping wine and talking with friends. Pastas are thicker and they do not cook them as long as we do. I thought they tasted like wallpaper paste. Pizza is served but not as much as in America. Theirs is very thin crust with little red or white sauce. Beautiful Ruins described none of these things.

I have tried to show the differences I noticed. In my writing, I would not have known that the Palio is such a long-standing tradition in Siena and would need to be part of any story set there. It is often the topic of conversation because the race is run twice a year and seriously competitive. I would not have been able to work in how absolutely marvelous the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence made of Carrera white, pink and green marble is, nor wonder at how the men could have constructed such an edifice with only rudimentary tools they had in 1296.

The countryside has its own scent, as do the little villages and bigger cities, all different. All these traits need to be in your understanding in order to make your story ring true. If you cannot visit a foreign country, fill notebooks full of research and “listen” to what that research is saying to you. Try to experience what you are reading. Cook or bake recipes from the country in your book. I experienced heat exhaustion six times while on this journey. Nobody could have explained how hot Siena is with its black stone. No air circulates so smells and sounds are louder than other places.

Jess Walter in Beautiful Ruins had none of this convincing background. The book wandered from sort of present back to the 1960's and Italy, Hollywood and Scotland. I never liked any of the characters so I did not care what happened to them. I put down the book about half way through and will donate it to the used book sale at my library. I realized how important first hand knowledge is to authentic writing.

*Two glasses of red wine, please.