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Having tea with a friend of mine today was a nice reprieve to trotting home to research and write. That’s not exactly accurate in that it paints the research as a toil, which it isn’t. It’s engrossing. I look up and hours have gone by and I don’t know where. But the word is a little fuller and more defined. Both of them, actually – on paper and walking down the street soaking up the sunshine.
There’s something very right about it. Even if a piano falls tomorrow, just doing what I do is enough. Even if not another soul ever reads it. It’s like looking out from a mountain. Sure, there’s more to be polished and refined.
In fact, better work on that now.
But first here is a word of advice based on some otherwise very meaningful writing I read. Because you know anyone with a blog is entitled to some sort of baseless, high horse opinion. Anyway.
Don’t forget to count the ly words in the above before you take anything I say with much weight.
Don’t use adverbs. Not any and all, but the ones that most easily slide off your fingertips. The ones that end in -ly. THOSE adverbs.
If you find yourself repeating an ly word more than once a paragraph, stop using them. Entirely. Begin by finding a way to fit them at the end of your sentence. Then put the period in on the word before. Sit there and think on it. Do you really NEED that ly word to say what you’ve got to say? Writers like Stephen King would say no. Writers like Ursula Leguin would write amazing rebuttles for, and you will have tea and milk snorting through your nose while you read her. But then again, she knows what she’s doing. You don’t.
Every time you step down to -ly level in your writing, you’re trying to modify the meaning of an action to suit some other definition you haven’t bothered to explain though your plot. Did you ever notice the best poets don’t use -ly words but maybe once a stanza? Look at Stan Rice some time. The spark of good poetic writing is all in the connection between the words, jangling new ideas and connections. It is not the Jinga approach to stacking modifications on the base structural meaning of the language.
You would think poetry would be more about adding detail to the actions that occur, and perhaps bad poetry came about because of all those people hanging out at Walden after it was fashionable, trying to flint together the same magic of an internal soul, but failing, instead taking to the pattern of dramatizing the snowflake-like pattern of bird poop dripping from leaves. It wasn’t that exciting for the bird the first time around, and it’s not exciting now to hear how it sporadically, iridescently spools off the delicately (read: horrified) leaves.
Imagine a cat in snow. No matter what, that cat is your reader, shaking you off with every shuddering step through your flowery prose, unable to grasp what is modifying who, and what relevance it will have to the plot of your increasingly murky writing. Your reader feels out of breath and you’re writing about purposefully meddled-with crap. Don’t make them hold their breath with anything but suspense. Crap with a stick through it is still crap. Aerated, but crap. Crap that apparently doesn’t do anything meaningful but follow a gravitational swirl so predictable you have to add things that make it sound deeper than the doo you will find yourself in if you ever wake up from your trance and try to sell that dehydrated, shriveled pile to anyone who sits there through the whole recitation going “But wait. The bird missed you. Is that a metaphor for feminism? It had a traditionally feminine pose when it landed on the gravel, no?” Do you really want that on your conscience? No. Trust me, you don’t.
Your garden variety ly words are like garnish. If anything use them in the high-brow hoity toity device of misdirection to slap down those unhealthy misconceptions your reader holds dear. Use the twisting of the meaning for effect.
Don’t cling to your poetry with the somberness of an emu tweenster. If you’re going to be funny, do it on purpose. If you do it by accident, don’t do it again until you figure out why. Unless they pay you. And even if they pay you, is it enough? Eventually it won’t be. Figure out what the heck you’re doing, and don’t take the lazy approach of dressing up bored activities with bits of dramatic literary airbrushing.
Whenever possible try not to take a word that could stand on its own just to throw it on its knees to some other word you don’t actually want. You’re modifying the meaning of the unwanted action, and so your character is outwardly doing something that has no bearing on the turning of your story. You have them in a situation so unimportant that you have to focus on dolling up the minutia. The secret is that you should never have to work so hard to bring about any insight to who and why this character exists. Proper plot turning is all the fertilizer you need.
Worse, a lazy use of the -ly fosters stereotypes which if used unexpectedly-on-purpose can be quite funny as a contrast, but if used simply because this ly word goes poetically with the handle of a shovel, will only have your reader enjoying the mental equivalent of ditch digging with no backdrop.
When you use an adjective, you’re not plying the words, you’re defining characterization. “Tall man” is both clear and to the point, yet vague enough to let your reader fill in all sorts of personal preconceptions, allowing them to add real-life resemblances to your imagined characters in the events you create, just before you bash them all on the rocks and say “didn’t expect that, did you?” With such simple language, you create a very strong characterization. If you say “The man with the lengthy stride” you’re not doing anything bad, and in fact it’s a bit more toward the scale of poetic. You’re reader is not choking on rose petals. Yet. But keep that up and soon you have to work hard not to say “the gloweringly disputatious sneer of mendacity from the gangly man impatiently fleeing with extremely lengthy stride” is about ten words of nothing but time from my life that I want back. The tall man glowered. With sly mendacity he fled with an easy stride.
Note that I have the character doing something frictional (misdirecting) yet set in contrast to his relaxed outward behavior. I’ve established the question of “why?” before revealing the answer of “how,” which is how suspense and drama are allowed to begin instead of being cut out before the reader ever gets a chance to wonder. Lengthy would describe his stride, but I want to describe him. He’s not low on insulin now, an animal without a choice or psychological tension, instead he is complicated, easy, all in the same passage.
If you were bored on a desert island, which would you date? Periphrastic comparison is euphemistic poo dripping in the forest. It doesn’t get invited back to parties. Even deserted island parties.
Coincidentally, you and the deserted island? Guess who will be visiting you while you write?
Do make them interesting.
There are times when lunch is seriously the most sought after point in the day. You have an idea, or you want to keep the scent of a fresh story in your head. If you’re lucky you’ve stuck with your story long enough that you get inspiration without warning in the morning shower, and duly store it in memory until you can get to your scratch pad or the local deli to spread your laptop and have your way.
If you don’t think writers hunger for the keyboard as much as any other addict, you haven’t gone through your twelve step program yet. Unlike AA, you have to make up your own plan for how you instill discipline into an inherently narcissistic practice of trying to write the perfect page, and then taking a sip of your coffee, and doing it again. Writing isn’t by the hour. It’s tantric.
No, worse. It’s both.
I got down to the local deli today, found a darkly uninhabited corner, and sat down to do my work. My other work. Anyhow.
There are two women who sit across from me talking in fierce English-as-second language whispers about the terrors of their overlords, and in Manhattan I can believe it. It’s lovely to see the razor sharp wit and tough-as-nails survivorship these women portray. I feel for their predicament, but they’re having a more intimate and supportive friendship working off the record then any of the other people I know who work and live the white collar lifestyle. One of them shushes the other for her language. It’s engrossingly passionate talk, but quiet and easy to tone out. Public places like these are a godsend for writing, not because you have to have them, but because when you need to write and the energy is just shaking you, it’s good to be around others in a similar state.
Enter two lovely little girls who decide they will sit with nothing to eat, and do nothing at all but talk. Talk they do. By itself that is no bother. We all sneak in places when it’s cold out. But one of them has that nasal Fran Dresher cat rawl going on, and it’s loud. It’s ok to be excited about something. Who am I to argue, scrawling out my own thoughts? But when loudly cawing about how much you enjoy writing in public places to writing at home for the solid half hour every other writer would cherish, it becomes a moment of irony for the person in the room who is actually writing. It’s not that we’re unsocial creatures, but far removed from the acting exercises meant to poke and prod, we’re, you know. Busy.
The truth is, real writers don’t sit around talking about it in a practiced interview style. Present company included. When I’m talking about my dreams, I’m not practicing my game plan, and in my mind that makes talking about writing only a prelude to running home to get my groove on with a keyboard and a yellow legal pad. It should be the warm-up, not the queen’s wave.
If you’re not on this earth to be just another lunch-chat dreamer, remember every time someone catches starry-eyed interest in the discovery that you write, a little voice in the back of your mind should be forcibly reaching out from the shadows and smacking you hard upside your head for not actually WRITING. NOW. Go home and plunk down.
When you take the bait, starved little recluse you are, and tell someone “Oh yes! I’m writing X!” it’s actually reinforcing payment before delivery. I’m not saying flagellate yourself each morning with wet bamboo, but I am warning against the very real danger ALL new writers face of slipping into poseur status because it seems the easier life.
Likewise, don’t get stuck at parties or groups where this is the preferred activity. Don’t endure other people talking about writing and mistake them for people who actually write.
Most importantly, don’t become one of those people who spend their lunch breaks talking in a frenzy about when and how they like to write, gushing to some adoring onlooker, or worse, another would-be writer. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Use yours for your craft. Or if you’re like me, use them to pay rent, and then use what’s left for yourself. But don’t dare let yourself soak up the free reward and slow down.
