Tag: reading

Mother Writers

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Well, in a week I’ll be finished with my last design project for a while. This won’t be a complete sabbatical, since I’ll design some stuff for my Etsy shop, I’m sure, but it is a break from commissioned work, which is rewarding, but also very, very time- and brain-consuming.

I’m also giving birth in the next month(ish), so that will take up quite a bit of time and brain power. However, I would like to take this opportunity to get back to writing, even if it’s slow going.

How & when do mothers write?

That’s something I’m trying to figure out. Apparently there’s a book on the subject? (If you’ve got tips, please share.) The more I read about writers, the more I see a pattern—if they are women, they aren’t publishing while raising very small children. But I think they are still writing and reading, and I should be writing and reading, too, even with a toddler, puppy, and soon-to-be howling, hungry infant.

The baby steps are these:

  1. Read one literary novel each month
  2. Read short fiction and poetry once a week
  3. Create and execute one writing assignment biweekly or weekly
  4. Finish one poem or flash fiction piece per month

Eventually, the idea is I’ll get up to writing 1,000 words per day (excluding blogging and status updates), and then work my way up to 2,000 words per day.

That last one could take about ten years, or until the last of our brood is of school-age. We are well on our way to becoming brunette, American Weasleys over here.

Read one literary novel per month

I’ve got a book club going, and we are working through the Newbery (US) and Carnegie (UK) Medal Winners for juvenile fiction. They are short, simple reads that are deemed literary by librarians. Good place to start.

Read short fiction and poetry each week

The idea is to get as many contemporary voices into my head as possible. The Newbery and Carnegie medals are awarded each year, so 90% of the winners aren’t contemporary writers. I probably won’t blog on these a bunch, because that will soak up my writing time, but I’ll post recommended readings (what I liked) to my Facebook page. Feel free to share your own recommended readings for short fiction and poetry there, too! I’ll also post recommended readings on my blog under the Reading and Poetry tabs. (I just added one there this morning—check out Amy McCann’s “Human Climate” via Revolver)

Writing assignments and finishing poems

In an attempt to write more poetry and short fiction, I’ll be posting weekly or biweekly writing assignments here on the blog and then completing them for myself. The idea is that by the end of the month, I’ll have at least one I can turn into something more polished. I’m calling these short assignments “Fifteen Blinks,” the idea being that, whether the piece yields poetry or prose, you could read it in about 3 minutes.

If you want to join me on these assignments, please let me know! If I know other people are participating, I’m much more likely to stick to it and keep generating writing exercises. It’s an accountability thing.

I honestly have no idea what day of the week I’ll be posting Fifteen Blinks. Mondays I’m going to try to devote to motivational works and Author Chats. It’s going to be irregular at best, so your best bet is to subscribe to WriteLaraWrite via email (see right column for sign up) or follow me on Facebook.

Reading & Writing: Dr. Seuss

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Fiction

Writing The Cat in the Hat

The Cat in the Hat contains 1,626 words (source). Reportedly, Theodor Geisel thought he could write it in a couple weeks. It ended up taking him “a year and a half” (source).

Just something to think about.

reading

How to Read Dr. Seuss

You know, I’m really not a Dr. Seuss fan. It really isn’t his fault, except for the creepy way he illustrates feet. Mostly I blame the people that read his work aloud, because 99% of them read his rhymes in that ploddy, sing-song voice that is worse than the sound of two pieces of Styrofoam grating against each other. Take this page, for example:

(From Anita Silvey’s Children’s Book-A-Day Almanac)

Some people read it like they are learning to drive a stick for the first time:

Putmedown said the FISH

Thisisnofunat ALL

Putmedown said the FISH

Idonotwishto FALL

And then there’s those who read like first-year poetry students, trying to guess the meter:

Putme DOWN saidthe FISH

Thisis NO funat ALL

Putme DOWN saidthe FISH

Ido NOT wantto FALL

Just a note to readers of verse: inflect the words like a normal person. Just because something is written in meter doesn’t mean you should read it like you are sitting on a galloping horse. Ignore the rhyming words and line breaks and read it like a narrator during the narration, and an actor during dialogue.

“Put me dooooown!”

said the fish.

“This is no fun at all. Put. Me. Down!”

said the fish.

“I do NOT wish to FALL!”

Actors and actresses interpret dialogue differently, so each reader should read aloud differently. If you find yourself reading like the first two examples, break the habit, give yourself some credit as a reader, and have some fun with the reading!

Author Chats: Ethan Rutherford

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This is my first Author Chats post! I debated about which category I should file these under, and settled on Motivation Monday. Future Author Chats will be available on the Author Chats page!Motivation

Note: This post includes affiliate links. If you purchase from these links, you are supporting Write Lara Write! (I’d get about a penny per purchase.)

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing Ethan Rutherford share one of the short stories about to be published in his book The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories.

He read “Camp Winnesaka,” a desperate camp counselor’s tale of how they lost so many campers one fateful year, while attempting to get spirits (and enrollment) up. It was a terribly amusing dark comedy, and once Rutherford mentioned that many of his stories involve ships blowing up, I decided exactly what I’d be getting my husband for his birthday this year.

Since I didn’t actually conduct an interview with Rutherford, I just listened to the reading and then briefly chatted with him about writing, reading, and being an at-home parent, I’m just going to list my notes below in a semi-coherent matter. Note that these are not direct quotes, they are paraphrases. I am no court stenographer.

On Reading

Read like a maniac and read all sorts of writers.

Recommended reading:

On Writing

Just get the draft out. You don’t know what the story is about until it’s written.

And just try to tell a good story—don’t set out to write some big, deep message.

Write about things that make you uncomfortable.

To students of writing: You ease up on yourself as you get older. It’s easier to write when you aren’t panicking all the time.

About plot and character: Ask yourself, “What kind of person would do X, Y, Z?”

On his process: Rutherford writes in the same place, at the same desk, listening to the same music playlist, to get him ready to write. He also reads up to the point where he stopped before.

On Motivation

Make a list of what gets you creative. (Mine? Reading good literature, especially poetry. Watching movies that inspire me to create new worlds. Listening to my “creative inspiration” playlists. Experiencing life, being human and being around other humans.)

Every writer’s motivation and inspiration ebb and flow in a cycle. Once you go through the cycle a few times, you’ll begin to recognize where you’re at on the cycle, and you’ll know how to get back on top of things. (I like to think of them as “rainy seasons” and “dry seasons”.)

On Being an At-Home Parent / Writer

(I didn’t take notes during our chat, but we came up with the same conclusion:) Once your kid is mobile, good luck.

Motivation

That’s all I’ve got! I’m filing this under “Motivation Mondays” also, since I’m a bit late in posting, and this fits in both categories. Take some time and find out if there are readings or book signings or author talks in your local area. It’s always a great inspiration to me to hear other people read their own stories and talk about the writing process, because each writer is so different. And don’t forget to fill your heads with different writers by constantly reading new voices. If you can’t make time to read, you certainly can’t have time to write.

Favorite Passage in Literature

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“There are books that are so alive that you’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?” —Marina Tsvetaeva

I’m going to go ahead and let my nerd flag fly as I share my favorite passage in all of literature.

Backstory that you may feel free to skip over

In high school, I became a die-hard Lord of the Rings fan. Not so die-hard that I could speak Elvish fluently, but enough that I could beat the pants off anyone playing LOTR Trivial Pursuit. As I left for college to become a literature and writing major, I was overwhelmed with assigned reading. For the first time in years, I didn’t read the Lord of the Rings trilogy that summer (It gets better with every reading, I’ll have you know. I know the first run can be a bit rough—plenty of exposition that Tolkien fellow writes). I also didn’t want to be defined by my hard core geekiness. College was a new start, and a way for me to leave behind the high school angst and discover who I really was.

Over the last few years, I’d still cry at the credit music of The Return of the King, and the trailers for the movies still gave me goosebumps, but I haven’t picked up the books in nearly a decade. The literature major lasted only a couple of semesters before I despised my assigned reading. I soon dropped the Lit major and focused on writing. Sure, I still had stacks of reading material, but I was reading Billy Collins and Li-Young Lee and Aristotle instead of the monotonous feminist drivel that I had previously been beaten over the head with. You’ve read one feminist awakening novel, you’ve read them all. Trust me. (I much prefer feminist characters or themes in a book that isn’t just about feminism. Any book with rounded, realistic female characters is a feminist novel, IMHO.)

Now I’m the one writing too much expository. Anyway, since I’ve graduated, I’ve been able to coddle my love for reading and nurse it back to health. Yesterday I finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and read his Newbery Award acceptance speech, in which he wrote about the unadulterated love for books that he had as a youth. Today, I stumbled upon some Tolkien quotes, and as I was rereading the passage below—many years ago underlined and circled and starred in my first, now tattered paperback copy—I realized what a profound impact these words had on me as a teenager.

The novel version

(Frodo) “I don’t like anything here at all, step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.”
(Sam) “Yes, that’s so. And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say.
“But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually—their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on—and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same—like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?” [Book IV, chapter 8]

The movie version

“I can’t do this, Sam.”
“I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.”
“What are we holding onto, Sam?”
“That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.”

Reflection

The scene in the movie is a tender one, but even though it is rendered verbatim, as far as I can remember, it doesn’t come close to the impact I get from reading the dialogue. Reading lets my mind absorb the words and mull over them in a way that listening doesn’t. When I read these words today, I realized that this passage had—pardon the cliche—changed my life, or at least reflected the change that was already taking place. Like most American teenagers, I was moody and hard-hearted and pessimistic about the future. As I matured, I became more of an optimistic realist. Sure, things might be crappy, but they aren’t all that bad. Could be worse. Now I try to see the positive in everything. I hold on to the promise that things will get better if I just keep fighting. This belief has gotten me through many shadows—heartaches, losses, failures. Did this passage in The Two Towers eloquently state what I was already understanding, or did Tolkien’s words play a part in my transformation? I can’t say for certain which was the cause and which was the effect, but what I do know is that art is truth, and though fiction is made up, the best fiction is truthful.

As an adult, we can read the same book we treasured as a child and come to a completely different understanding of the novel. That’s why I love books. That’s also why I’ve started a book club of adults rereading (or reading for the first time) Newbery Medal and Carnegie Medal winners for juvenile fiction. Newbery is the US award, and Carnegie is the UK equivalent. This month is The Graveyard Book, which is the first book to ever win both medals and was a fairly appropriate choice for the month of October. If you are interested in following along with us, I will post the next few months’ of books on my blog as we come to them. I’ll also post my review of the books the following month.

Today’s post was a lengthy one! And I’m even posting it a day early. Two rarities on this blog. And to be even stranger, today I’m going to ask YOU a personal question.

Respond: Is there a fictional passage that impacted you in a profound way? Is there a book you read as a child and reread as an adult? Share your experiences below.