Editing and being wordy

I am reading "Getting the Words Right: 39 Ways to Improve Your Writing" by Theodore A. Rees Cheney. Writer's Digest Books: 2005 that I bought from Powell's the other day. I spent some time at the store to make sure it would be a book I really could use. It is proving to be just that.

In the first chapter, it goes after a habit that I have and one that many writers have and that is including extra words, paragraphs, chapters, whatever. I will look at a chapter or a sentence and love the way it sounds or looks and hate to push the delete key. Not too long ago, I would not hit it at all. Now, I am getting better at it. One writer, Carolyn See, says it is "killing your children". Oh, I can tell you from experience it is exactly that.

Someone asked a friend of mine who is a published writer how he knew how he knew what to put in and what to take out. "Feelings will tell me every time. Make no mistake. When I write some incredibly beautiful prose but it makes me uneasy then I know it is something that needs to be removed. " Another writer who writes some of the best prose in the business removes more than she writes and she just puts it in a special file she keeps on her word processor so she can do it without tearing her nightgown (she writes in her bed clothes.).

I think that is where extensive reading comes in. A writer who reads as well as writes just knows what is working and what is not. If something sounds clumsy, it usually is. Sometimes, you have to put the writing down and take a break and eat some lunch or have some coffee but come back and look at it again. I knew one writer only who was drunk or stoned all of the time he was writing. When everything in his body began to fail, he took an overdose and left this world and he was stoned when he did. I think he was the rare exception. I don't think he ever wrote sober so never knew if he could nor not. He said he could feel his feelings better.

I never write drunk or stoned and when I tried it many years ago and read the result I was convinced that I was not one of those rare examples. I need to be sober when I write. I think I need to be sober when I exist. I often tell people I rarely drink because of the calories, but truth be told, I just don't like the feeling of an artificial high. I get high naturally although never too high because one can fall really fast and long and that is no fun.

Again, I am the kind of writer who depends on feelings. I also listen to what I am writing so I can see and understand what it is I am trying to say. I also put things away and then pick them up again and read them again. Often when I read old blogs, I re-edit them. It helps to put the stuff out there because I am practicing my writing and then publishing them. I don't get paid for my blog, but I try the best I can. I have learned so much blogging.

Of course, it is a one-sided conversation with myself. I often don't know what I am thinking about something until I write about it. If I write something and I feel good about it, and I put it down and come back and still have that good feeling about it then I did it well. The main purpose in life is to have a good time at it. Writing is something I don't have to do, but it is. Call it a compulsion but it is one of the treats of life as reading and listening to music. Editing can be fun too.

Writing to Deal with Problems

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the more you travel, the more it becomes apparent you can’t escape yourself. I think when I was growing up, I really wanted to escape where I was, my family of origin and their craziness. Then because the insanity was with me in my mind, I walked right into more it when I established my own family. It took a lot of work on dealing with my inner demons to finally escape so that when I traveled, I did not take the twisted monsters of my family with me.

For the most part, I did most of the inner self work through writing. There was the journal writing, but there was other kinds of writing such as novels, poetry and short stories. I tried therapy at different places and with the exception of one hypnotherapist, I never found as much relief and self knowledge as I found in writing.

I always found words to be miracles in that one could put legitimacy to what was being felt and experienced especially when told repeatedly that it was not happening. It was. The words and sentences were the proof. I gathered all of the facts and put them down and I saw how what I was told was unreal was real. Writing saved my life. Other writers with similar backgrounds have said the same.

It isn’t just people like me with dysfunctional families but members of populations who have lived with the knowledge they are told they are not as good as the main population or that what they are feeling is not right or they should discount their own feelings of worth. I think that is why certain groups of people suddenly burst forth with great writers who express a counter opinion of worth from the mainstream or writers who write in secret in an oppressive government who tells them they are happy and free when they know they are not. Examples are the gay and lesbian populations of many countries including the United States. Women in many countries around the world write in journals . In China, women evolved their own special language so men would not read what they were writing about.

I am not writing here that expressing oneself on paper or on the computer screen is a cure all for depression or for other mental problems because it is not. It certainly did not lift Ernest Hemingway out of his depression. I remember where I was, walking the streets of Imperial Beach in California, when I heard on my small Japanese transistor radio when it was announced that he had died from a self-inflicted gunshot. Many writers could not write themselves out of their mental problems. I just know it helped me stay ahead of mine. Sometimes even writing can’t help. Still, it helps tremendously.

When I moved here to Portland, I did not take my problems with me or for the most part. Maybe I will find out next week I did. Who knows? If I did, I will write about it. What I do know is that I will have a new batch of them here. I will be starting my classes soon and have to deal with the impossible to ignore rejected manuscripts all writers get and the Battle of the Bulge that I have fought all of my life and the battles yet to manifest on the horizon.

Believing the Self

I grew up in a very dysfunctional family and was taught to disregard what was happening around me. Unfortunately, I learned too well and took those lessons with me into adulthood so that when I met adults I was involved in other people's sick games. I was astonished that I would be involved with the same things that I had tried so hard to escape. Again, what was happening me during those times as an adult I disregarded it especially when people told me that it was not happening. I believed them.

Things have changed. I write the things that are in my head now and I don't care what others say. I report it and take it as the truth. When I first found out that my house was stripped of its contents, I told my adult child that I was thinking of getting rid of some stuff when I got back. I did not want him to feel bad about what he did. When I got back to my house and saw the empty rooms where bookcases and books filled were I was heartsick. I saw the missing paintings, jewelry, television sets, furniture and sat in my room and became depressed and gained 20 lbs. Then I heard my ex-husband was coming back. I moved to Portland, Oregon.

I started to write in my journal and finally get mad. I began to see the enormity of what had happened to me. Then I had to get over the pain and detach and get on with my life. I did it with writing. There is still so much more to do. This morning, I started to edit some of my short stories. I got ready to take some art and exercise classes next month.

The family of my origin was such a dysfunctional family that my oldest sibling became a psychopath, my brother was a drug and alcohol addict who had issues with women and killed himself after a lifetime of unhappiness and depression. My parents are deceased now and although I ended up getting along with my mother during the last few years of her life, I never got along with my father and was glad when he died at 70 years or so. I was always afraid he would be a ghost and haunt me and I am glad to say he didn't. I had nightmares about him for years after his death. I never had nightmares about my mother after her death. I really believe she was a demon. I have nothing to do with my sister for she not only steals but does far worst and is better I stay away from her. All this I carefully note in my journals.

I am being more honest in this writing blog than I have been in the past. When I was a child, my father beat us all up with impunity. No one cared about this in those days of the early 1950,s and I still have the scars to prove it. My mother in her unhappiness beat us as well. Both of them were twisted sexually and abuse all of us from an early age. I worked hard to find help and did in Redding from providers that I paid myself. I could never get help from the Veterans Administration because there were so little help in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for women although this has changed somewhat in recent years. I also found that meditation especially writing meditation was a god-sent for me.

Now, when relatives tell me I said this or that, I tell them I am not in the same situation and tell them I never said that. I no longer let them tell me what is real and what is not. I tell myself what is in reality and what is not. I wish I could have learned this earlier, but it is good that I learned it now than never.

Writing has and is saving my life. Writing dangerously is writing honestly. It is being honest with not only the self but the public. It is putting things down in one's own voice. I have a friend who is gay and was told all of his life that there was something wrong with him because he did not want to find a woman and settle down and have children. He would rather have found a man and had a good time because he does not want to settle down with anyone because like me he finds trusting someone enough to live with is very difficult. Also he finds that he is a very happy man enjoying his life and not beating himself up because he lets others judge him. It took so long for me to stop doing that too. He helped me stop that by reading his memoirs along with my own writing. His family is angry at him for writing about his past with them and uncovering all of their ugly secrets. The last lawsuit was recently thrown out of court. They always are.

Not all of us have such ugly pasts but we all have pasts. We also have presents and it is good to record them because the minute we shut our eyes at night the present becomes the past. I watched an old movie, "The Mating Game", on Netflix last night. Everyone in the movie are no longer alive. I could look up all of the stars such as John Lund and Gene Tierney and see what happened to them after the movie was filmed and where they are buried.

We all end up in the cemetery at one point and it would be nice to record the past so we can read it and learn where we were last year, five or ten years before. It was too bad none of those people in that movie recorded their lives for all of them had interesting ones. Those are the ones who have entries in Wikipedia. Many of us won't. We should be the stars in our own lives. We would be if we are recording our lives and if necessary writing dangerously those things that happened to us to not only release the anger but to help others in similar places as my friend did in his memoirs.

Writing Dangerously

Pat Conroy in his book, “The Reading Life” talks about his love affair with the English language: “I have always taken a child’s joy in the painterly loveliness of the English language. As a writer, I try to make that language pitch and roll, soar above the Eastern Flyway, reverse its field at will, howl and reel in the darkness, bellow when frightened, and pray when it approaches the eminence or divinity of nature itself. “

That is well and good for Conroy and I can understand how he loves language, but I didn’t start off with that love. Don’t get me wrong, I love language and the words on paper and how the meanings of words sing to me of things, ideas and even about people who lived long ago and even those who live now. I loved writing at first because it put terms and thus validation to what was happening to me. Language made me feel less alone in the world and the horror of my childhood became less of a nightmare because words made it seem like I could share it with others and that there were other human beings who were suffering as much as I was. Later I found out through words that people suffered far more than I did.

For instance, the words or term of post traumatic stress was a miracle when I came onto it and realized that this was what I had and why I acted the way I did. I went to see therapists at the Veteran Administration and would ask them what was wrong with me and the idiot would answer, “why do you need to know?” He would never say. Finally, in my reading I found the answer which was validated by a therapist in Redding, CA. I felt such a sense of relief and also that I finally knew after all of these years.

Perhaps that is why I found the concept of “dangerous writing” so appealing if I understand it correctly is that it seemed to give me permission to write the things that happened to me and to disregard the taboos that is placed on me if I was to tell the world and myself what happened and what still lurks in the shadows of my mind. Tom Spanbauer has his own reasons for writing what he wants to write and I have mine.

It’s ironic in that Conroy went through his own Hell with an abusive father but he had a loving mother. He wrote about it in his novels. I had no such thing. I had two abusive parents and attempts to bond with my mother did not work. I bonded with a brother to some extent and I bonded to books and to an inner world I would escape to during moments of abuse. What makes this whole process even worse was the way I did it. To escape the horrible abuse, I split into different and complete personalities and when I tried to get help for them the medical establishment, in part, disagreed whether or not this process even existed. I am talking about Dissociated Identity Disorder or DID or Multiple Personality Disorder or MPD. It was something to the public to titillate about and not something that saved me from becoming a psychopath. I survived and was abused further by an ex-husband.

I lucked out and I believed it was with spiritual help I found a hypnotherapist who helped me to integrate which I did. I then began to start the process of forgiving although I don’t think that is the right word. I wanted to stop being mad at those individuals so I can get on with life; but I needed to learn from those lessons otherwise I would be taken advantage as I was last year by my own son and his father. I needed to stop living in the same swamp of ugly hell my parents had put me in and escape from those who would attempt to put others including me for whatever reasons. I need further healing so I can let go. I also think I am not the only one in this particular place as I learned years before. There are others who went through what I want through. Maybe I can help others.

I think Spanbauer is right in that one can find redemption and detachment through writing through writing dangerously. If this is what is meant by dangerous writing then I agree. For such a long time I have been trying to figure out how to write what I want to write and was stymied by the inability to do so. Now, I am beginning to see a glimmer of light.

Using Writing To Think

I have often used my journal to figure out what I think about a certain matter or subject. Often, I will start to write about something and find out my opinion is different than what I thought it would be. Many writers have stated that they write to find out who they are and what they think about things and people.

Pat Conroy in his book, "The Reading Life", (Doubleday: 2010) states: "Good writing is the hardest form of thinking." I can concur on that. I have been writing on a daily basis for many years and it involves turning my thoughts into words and it is rarely satisfactory. It sounds so great, so steeped in wisdom and beauty once it is in the head and so mundane once it is on the computer screen or on paper.

Words are limiting and restricting in what they do to the thoughts. I am always reminded of the example of the word 'snow' and how the Eskimo people in Alaska have so many words to express snow and the English language have so few. When I first saw frost as a teenager in Southern California, all I could do was describe it as dew that is frozen on the ground and cars. I had no idea it was frost and was amazed when someone told me what it was. Another example for me is all the different hues of green of the trees. How do you describe the trees when there is a wind and they are all moving like a chorus of different textures and colors of green?

When you are saying things that are life changing or describing something incredibly important like the death of a parent or the love that you feel towards your child as he or she is being born, you have to put words together in sentences and make it mean what is in your heart and mind and that all depends on your word arsenal and your talents. You face the limitation of the language itself and your own ability to capture the magic.

Sometimes, it works. When you exercise those muscles that go into writing of mind and hands along with the heart and it flows with the spirit of the Tao, it flows freely and it full of the enchantment all magicians yearn for. It soars with the eagles, becomes the substances of rainbows and flies with the foam of waterfalls and in the clouds. Then you feel the extra amount of wizardry that writers feel now and then. It works best when you practice and practice every day and read the words of other writers.

Some writers write because they have stories to tell. I do that. But to be honest, I write because I cannot stop writing. I have to put my fingers on the keyboard or the pen on the paper. Even if no one else reads what I have written, I will still need to write. I also need to read no matter what it is that I am reading, I still need to read. For me, writing and reading is part of the same process. All of it is governed by the process of thinking. Writing and reading is thinking.

Pat Conroy looked at his world through his parents and family. I did not. I lived my life as an individual. I did not look for heroes although there are writers that I like very much, I have no need to see them up close and personal. I just want to read their words. When my sons were growing up, I saw many well-known people with my children and we met numerous ones. The most important reality is my own. I did not bond with any of my family but with books and music.

Conroy also uses novels and other kinds of writing to understand the world he lives in. I do that too. Conroy feels stories are paramount to everything else. Sometimes, I have found ideas to be important and have read novels which were written to express ideas. One of the most important elements in any story that I read is that I must like someone in the story. If I don't like anyone, I rarely stay with the story or book. The same goes for anything including movies. I need to think when I read so the writer must not do all of the work and I am a mindless and passive reader. It sounds too much like television which I don't much like. I want to wonder and question things and come to my own conclusions. PBS is a good example that has some programs that presents ideas and the audience must come up with their own judgments.

There is a lot of the world that I don't understand. That is a lot of motivation for me to keep writing. I like to think about what is happening around me and what it is that is really out there in the world and inside the inner world. I figure I have plenty of to write about. Every time I think I have reach a layer of understanding in my life, another layer is showing up underneath it and the whole process starts again.

Details

I have wanted to be a writer since the age of 7 years. Although I have read everything I could get my hands on, I knew at that age I was not very talented or capable as a writer. I couldn't spell worth a darn and knew practically nothing about grammar. What I had in my head never did translate onto the page. Of course, I had the excuse that I was a kid. Over the years, that excuse got weaker and weaker, but I wrote anyhow. It was the passion that kept me going.

I read authors that really have this wonderful gift and of course they work hard at it. I am reading "My Reading Life" by Pat Conway(Doubleday:2010) and he writes about books and writing since they are linked in many ways for a writer. He writes: "As a writer, I would have to walk many strange avenues, staying loose and keeping my eyes open, memorizing the names of streets and the faces of strangers, listening to unknown tongues, exploring severe, tended gardens, being aware of the traffic and the besieged faces pressed against windows in dimply lit houses."

I learned along the way, it was not a matter of just learning the words, grammar and way of putting sentences down; I had to learn to notice the details with my eyes wide open and see where I was and remember the people around me, the sounds of the music of life and the emotions of the moment. When I first started to write in earnest, I remember trying to write about walking on a forest path, on a busy street and although I have been there so many times I could not remember. I could not describe it as a writer. I was a big blank. I read other writers' descriptions and they put me as the reader on the forest path or on that sidewalk. I couldn't. They used words I knew the meanings and word structure I was familiar with but they did their homework by noticing the details of where they were on any given moment.

There were times as a young adult, I withdrew into myself and just worked on school work and did the least on whatever minimum wage job I had to get by. Of course, I did my homework but the world during those times seemed surreal. Noticing people and places were not considerations for me at the time and I noticed this deficient in my writing. I did not have a computer as they were not in vogue at the time. My writing suffered greatly. It wasn't a waste for I got through college and never did stop reading. Still, I would walk down the street and feel as if my feet did not touch the ground.

I have since married, divorced, had children and recorded details in my journals. I have found that worked best for me. I have gotten used to noticing my surroundings and my writing as improved tremendously. I even enjoy it now. When I travel, I pay more attention to my journal than the camera. I even sketch different places and love describing the places and people that I see. I am now a confirmed people watcher. I sit with my journal and just write what I observe. People rarely pay any attention to me especially since I have become a senior citizen. I would think laptops would be a great asset in the art of describing one's surrounding since there are so many people in restaurants and other places with their fingers on the keyboards just typing way and no one pays any attention to them.

I am not an expert on what writers should do but what this writer has done and what has worked for me. I know until I started to watch, describe and record my surroundings I was of no use as a writer. I wrote lifeless prose. I had to be able to describe a brick building and the windows in it as well as the doorway in a story. If I couldn't see it in my mind's eye, the reader could not see it either. If I could not see the character and describe him or her, then the reader could not as well. I often read how other writers do it, but it is actually doing it myself that makes all of the difference. I take what other writers do and apply it to what works for me. Everyone does it differently and there is no right or wrong way of doing it except not to do it at all.

The other day, I finished a murder mystery by Georges Simenon, "Maigret and the Apparition" (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1964). I have read many of Simenon's murder mysteries involving Chief Superintendent Maigret. In all honesty, I read this book to discover why his books were vivid and real to me when I read them. I have never been to Paris, but I can see Maigret and the streets and buildings as well as the people of Paris clearly.

It is a simple story involving a shooting of a police officer for an unknown reason. He describes the victim, Lognon, by his nickname, "Inspector Hapless" and he lies in a hospital close to death while Maigret probes the reasons why Lognon was where he was when he was shot. Each time the author describes the food that everyone eats, the buildings they are in and even the clothes they are wearing even the unimportant characters as one woman's husband who works as a night porter. He is sitting in a chair in a ugly purple robe, legs crossed and one slipper dangling from one foot. Yet, the description is not laborious and complicated. Simenon threads his descriptions through a lens that is concise and meaningful. Little does the reader realize that it is the marriages of the victim, Maigret, other characters that are being described. It is not a careless list of descriptions but carefully put together list of details that not only is part of the plot but gives meaning within the story itself. The crime is about art theft and murder but it is about marriage and how marriage differs with different people. There are good ample reasons that Simenon is considered an outstanding writer of this genre. In this case, he did it with details, effortlessly and almost without the reader's notice.

I learned a valuable lesson about the importance about details a while back. I took a speed reading course so I could whiz through my books in college and gain the important information about plots from the books I read. I had to unlearn all of those things I picked up in speed reading because I lost the flavor of the prose and because I missed the details of the book. Now, instead of reading a book just for the plot, I read it for the wholeness of the experience. I am the better for it. The same goes for writing. I put things down slowly and then come back to it with my editing pencil and put the details in it without being wordy keeping in mind the advice about not using adverbs unless my life depended on it.

The only enemy I have in reading is time. Pat Conroy's book is a library book so I have to keep at it and not go at it as slowly as I did with Simenon's murder mystery which I own. I also can't mark up Conroy's book since I don't own it. Still, I don't check out five or six books like I used to do when younger. The most I ever check out is three. I doubt if I will get to the third book before they are due.

I have never taken a creative writing class. I just let myself teach me what I need to know by doing the two essential things every writer needs to do, read and write. Other writers have done the same. When I was writing, I could see I was lacking in that area and needed to fix that hole before I could go on with what I wanted to do. I know there are writers out there that need those creative writing classes, but I am comfortable doing what I am doing now. I leave my options open, "staying loose and keeping my eyes open."

Memory

I am reading Pat Conroy's book, "My Reading Life"(Doubleday: 2010) and in it he writes about his life as well as the books he read and the books he wrote. He wrote about his life growing up as a military brat, the son of a U.S. Marine fighter pilot. It was a rough life which he describes in his book, "The Great Santini". His mother divorces his father after 33 years of marriage and one year after his father retired from the military.

During his childhood, his father was cruel to his seven children and to his wife and none of them ever told anyone of the hell they lived at home. Conroy wrote: "Because I was born to be a novelist, I remembered every scene, every beating, every drop of blood shed by my sweet and innocent family."(pg 195)

My father was not in the military, but he beat us and drank heavily. My mother finally divorced him after many years of marriage. I wrote about it in the journals I kept as no one cared about child abuse then. My mother never told anyone and denied it until the day she died including the alcoholic rage he would be in from time to time. Alcohol played a part in my brother's death as it plays a part in my sister's life. Luckily, it skipped over mine.

I was with a friend the other day and he had forgotten some of the times we had over the years. We had been friends since the 1980's and he is a very intelligent man and a few years younger than me. It seemed a little sad to me as he has not kept a journal. During the time that I have known him, he has been in a happy marriage to a wonderful partner and they are still happy together.

We were gazing at the journals that I had in a closet in my office in my new apartment. I still have them although I have no idea what will happen to them once I am finally gone; my youngest son saved them when my ex-husband and oldest son did the Purge in 2010 while I was overseas. I will forever be grateful to him for that. When my memories are disappearing, I can look over those journals and be reminded as I was the other day when I read the journal I wrote just before leaving for Korea in March 2010. I remember accurately what I was doing but not what I was feeling.

There were many times, I would look things up to be reminded of what was happening to me at certain times in my life and get a surprise at my reactions at a certain event or be re-acquainted with my feelings for I often remembered it differently. The events I usually got it right but my emotions were often different. Of course, I am looking at the past with hindsight. I could see how my first marriage was falling apart way before it really did. I just did not want to admit it to myself. The signs were certainly there. I am reminded of people who have since left my life. I often described dreams I have forgotten about. I wrote about my fears, angers and loves. I wrote about loving someone that I have long since forgot about. I wrote about the incidents of raising children, some very funny and treasured. My children are middle-age now. I am so glad I did.

Pat Conroy is a very gifted writer and although he is not one of my favorite; I can understand his book about his reading life the same as I can understand about being in a family in which the father was brutal and cruel. He still loved his father, but I never loved mine. I envy Conroy. I think this was possible because of his remarkable mother. I had trouble with my mother who beat us too. My mother came from another country and felt so disappointed in her choice for a husband and took her disappointment out on her children. Although we made peace before she left this earth, this estrangement left its mark on my life. I wrote about it in my journals as well. I don't know the end result of my writing life, but I do know that writing saved my life and continues to enrich my life.

The Two Me's

I am in the midst of moving. Some of what is being packed are my journals and one journal was sitting all by itself and I looked at it. It was the journal I kept when I retired from civil service in 2002. I looked at parts of it and read this day's entry for it was set in the same time of the year. I could tell immediately that there were differences between the self that was going through a transition in 2002 and the transition that I am going through now.

That is the advantage of keeping journals for I would have thought that there was nothing new between those two periods of time and the journal told me differently. I could tell that I was still tied up with my job at the state agency I had walked out of at the end of March of 2002. There were some communication happening and I was feeling pain and sorrow from it. I was also active with the state union although I was in a transition period with them as well. I was the president of the Northern California part and a assistant chairperson of a committee that was very active in civil rights. On that day, April 28, 2002, I was finishing and returning from training some stewards in Sacramento.

There was no doubt I was feeling doubt about the future as I am now. I think from the writing that I was more tied into the past as I am now. I was angry and hurt from what had happened on the work site and was inclined to think about that. I wanted an end to that pain and tried to find ways of dodging that pain through my writing. I can see dark depression in everything I wrote then and it seems to pour off the page. I can certainly understand that reaction, but I was in no mood to feel it then. I wanted it gone. I wanted to get to the next chapter and to end the one I was in.

Although I am in a similar place, I am not so depressed although I could feel it when I read the journal. The degree of unhappiness that I am feeling is not going anywhere soon as I am not completely happy with the move that I am undertaking although I can see the necessity of it as I could see it in 2002. I will continue to feel what I am feeling now when I complete the final stage to Portland. I am sad about the broken relationship with my oldest son although I am optimistic about healing it sometime in the future. It just won't be happening anytime soon.

I think I am more honest now. I am more honest at how I look at him and certainly more honest at how I look at his father. I need time away from James and I am hoping never to see Dan again. I look at the nine long years that happened between the transition period that occurred in 2002 and now and I want to say that it is about time some growth took place. I am trying not to chastise myself like that anymore. Life has a way of beating one over the head. I don't need to add blows to this.

I look out of my window and can see how things change. A sycamore tree that has been there since I bought this house in 1997 has died and its dead bare branches stretch out from a corner of the window. Two new houses were built across the street and I can just barely see the tops of the roofs. What I can't see so readily are the changes that happened to me over the years. Pictures can show the ravages of time, but not what has been happening inside. Journals can do that. Mine certainly showed me aspects of me that had changed in the chapter of transition when I retired. Other journals that I wrote in Korea showed me other changes. I think I am more able to accept these situations. It still does not mean it gets easier. Change is never easy but as a tree that is tossing and turning never slows down the river my protesting the change never really slows down the passing of the years. It just happens. Life is what it is.

VS Naipaul’s Rules for Beginners

VS Naipaul’s Rules for Beginners

1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.

2. Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements.

3. Do not use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words.

4. Never use words whose meaning you are not sure of. If you break this rule you should look for other work.

5. The beginner should avoid using adjectives, except those of colour, size and number. Use as few adverbs as possible.

6. Avoid the abstract. Always go for the concrete.

7. Every day, for six months at least, practice writing in this way. Small words; short, clear, concrete sentences. It may be awkward, but it’s training you in the use of language. It may even be getting rid of the bad language habits you picked up at the university. You may go beyond these rules after you have thoroughly understood and mastered them.

I am not saying that you should follow the above rules without exception, but these are good rules to keep in mind. I am also a believer in breaking rules too. Still, these rules that I found today are great and if you need some rules in your writing life, you can't get any better than these.

Dark Hour of Despair

What happens when the dark hour of despair turns out to be a dark day, week, month and so on of despair? When I am writing on my own blog, I try to have the answer before I begin. What does a writer do when she or he turns around and faces rejection on everyone or those we treasured the most? We feel despair and then we pick up the pen otherwise we die. When we feel totally alone in the world and we have gotten old enough when most of our friends have died, we feel the dark night of despair we turn to the spiritual guides but we do it with writing.

Certainly, what is happening to me right now is not unique. When times are hard,writers, artists, are busy expressing themselves through their art. That is why so much of what humans are capable in artistic endeavor develops in hard times. I was born into hard times surrounded by good times. It remains to be seen if I can rise above what has happened to be the artist and writer I need to be in order to express what is happening to me and not fall down to the suspicion that it is not happening but in my mind, the black hole of all writers that rises up as a black wall to stop the words from coming from the mind and soul and yes from the heart. In short, I must believe in myself and my vision.

In all writers, there is a center where doubt comes up and becomes, if allowed, the black hole of despair and decay, some call it the monkey mind and others call it a writer's block, the gray cloud, or whatever. It stops one from believing in one self. Every single writer has a valid message and work to give to the world. It may not end up in the Canon of memorable fiction or non-fiction but every writer if he or she is true to their craft has something valid to offer. One must believe in that. As the putting of one foot in front of another, it is the putting of one word after the other in spite of the fact that others might not agree it does not matter you must believe, the writer must believe.

Some people write and no one reads. That is the miracle of the Internet. I put my stuff out there and some people read. My despair does not involve my ability to communicate for that is coming along just fine. It is my personal life where my family sees me differently than I do. That could be a point of sadness when love becomes a trap, a way of controlling another. I find that intolerable.

I have had love affairs in my life, some consummated and others not; but the greatest love affair I ever had is the one I am still having with the English language. It has been a wild ride that I am determined to continue. It is most useful when the darkest hour of despair is upon me as it is right now. Could anyone ask for anything else?

Lawsuits, etc.

Ted called me from Key West this morning. I liked that since I just got a call from someone who wanted to talk to my youngest son. I asked who it was since I just put the phone on the charger and I knew my son was still asleep. I said I was my son's mother. He said he was my son's grandfather. I ran to the other side of the house since the only grandfather was my ex-husband's father and I was afraid something had happened to my oldest son who is a state policeman. My son ran and answered the phone and it was his father who had disguised his voice. I breathed a sigh of relief. My son gave his father his correct phone number for future reference although his other brother has it. I have no idea why he needed to call me.

Of course, Ted, was full of espresso and not feeling well as he had just been served a summons. He was ready to release a book in a few days in which he describes a rape that happened to him when he was nine years old. The rapist had read an advance copy of the book that he got from Ted's mother and he felt that people would know who he was from the description. He was suing Ted for damages and an order to stop the release of the book.

"It just brings up all of the things I felt back then," he said over the phone. I could hear the hissing of the espresso machine and people talking in the distance. "He told me not to tell anyone although I was injured. My mother saw the blood on my shorts and took me to the hospital. I told her who it was and she didn't tell the police either. None of us did."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because he was my father's brother and he was supporting us. Dad was somewhere trying to make a big killing or something. My mother said if he was arrested or people knew he raped a boy, he would harm him as a doctor. And we would not have any money to live on. "

That part was not in the book. I had read the advance copy of the book already. It was his best and did not want to see it stopped although I had no idea if his uncle had enough to do that. I asked him about that.

"No, the publisher always makes sure I have plenty of evidence before we start a run of a book. I have a notarized statement from my mother and from a cousin who was raped by him too. He does not know we have that. I support my mother now so he does not have the power of the purse anymore."

I thought about the many writers that did not have that and how many of them have been sued some for good reasons and some for speaking the truth when someone did not want the truth out there. I heard an lawyer at a League of Women Voters say that the worst thing you can do to a public official was to embarrass him or her. I think that goes for anyone. The doctor in question was now retired. I wonder why the cousin did not sue him except that it was beyond the statue of limitations or men still find it embarrassing that they were raped by men. Ted is not one of them, thank goodness.

Ted said that although he knew he was gay before he was raped, but he had nightmares from that experience for years. He had told his uncle that he might be gay and was scared with that knowledge and the good doctor told him that he gave him some lessons on what it was like to be gay. Ted wrote about being powerless and starring at the mattress as he was being held down and for a long time he thought of sex as painful and degrading. He found out it was not that way at all although he has not been able to sustain a long lasting relationship with anyone, but that is another book he will write someday. He did not want to tell me about it as it would ruin the book if he did.

What he did want to talk about was a discussion that he had with another writer who said writers are not what they write about and Ted had disagreed. Another writer who wrote about writing meditation and novels as well was there in Key West for a writer's workshop and she agreed with Ted. She said she had different parts of her self in her novels and that she was her books but in metaphor form. I had to think about that for a while. Am I my books, stories, these blogs? Yes and no.

Ted said that several other writers were of that opinion. Sometimes the stuff they wrote were not of themselves but from somewhere else outside of self, almost a spiritual bonding of the writer and of the Cosmos. I liked that and agreed to it in part. Sometimes when I am writing, something takes over and I am writing with something else I can't identify that writes with me. Sometimes, it is not there. Ted said he never has that feeling but works on uncovering the layers of experiences that is him so he is what he writes. The writing meditation teacher agrees although she feels a spiritual connection it is still her writing,her words.

I am sure the debate continued after I got off the phone. Ted was there with the other writers for the same conference on writing. He is always amazed that people pay so much money to just hear them in person. Sometimes when it is not far from where I live, he sends me tickets to those conferences. I go when I can. It is the transportation that is the problem. Still, he did raise some interesting questions as he always do. There are no definite answers.

The Ending

A blog that I was reading about advice for writers said that a writer should write the ending of his or her novel first. I always know the ending of a novel that I am working on and of late the ending of a short story although I may not know exactly how the characters will get there. I just create them and let them loose. That may not be how other writers do it, but that is my way. I hate it when they do what they want to do instead of what I want them to do but the ending is always the same. Joe always ends up with Jill or Sally ends up will Sadie or whatever. What I never know is the information they learn along the way. I learn right along with the characters.

There has been many times that I know a character will do something but not for the reason I assumed it would be. I think that happens in real life except in fiction we get to study them a bit before they act or after wards. For instance, my ex-husband trashed my house in my absence last year. I was astonished and never really understood completely why although I have hints. If it was a story I would have been forewarned by traveling with the character before he did it and after wards. I have a feeling the ex-husband is dealing with issues that have nothing to do with me. As a writer I would have been able to play with it in fiction.

I wrote a response to a letter to the editor supposedly written by a fifth grader yesterday in the Record Searchlight. I suspected it was not but by a child but by a parent. The letter writer used the movie, "The Princess Bride", to make a point about reality. Reality has many different sides that we can never see as a human being in the drama that is being played out and a movie is a very thin slice of that drama. Fiction is a more satisfying portrayal of what is happening but is still not the complete truth. Nothing is. I am still learning about things that happened to me as a teenager. I see things that I did not understand back then but now with more information of life understand more. Its a complex business. I cautioned her not to derive her sense of reality from the movies.

As in novels, life has only one ending. That is an easy one. The train track that we are going down at this increasingly fast speed ends the same way. Each of us, no matter how much we hope differently, will die. It is the middle that changes and that is where the pen hits the paper or the fingers hits the keys. The is the whole crux of the matter. A few times when I wrote murder mysteries, which I so love to read, I knew the what the crime or murder was but rarely how it was done. I could come up with why and even who the murderer was. I was short on the details on how the crime was done. The crime was the perfect crime for even I couldn't figure out how it was done. In real life, I was too aware that most criminals are stupid.

I love it when the reasons we do things are a mystery even from ourselves. I see this happen over and over again especially when I worked as a social worker. I see mothers who live controverted lives in their households so they wouldn't find out that their husbands were molesting the children because he was bringing in big paychecks. Ugly as it was, they were unaware consciously they were doing this although it was plain to me. People live lives on several layers all of the time. It is called denial. Heavens know I have been there on many occasions.

Writers live in denial too and that is why we should all have the edit pencil at hand or the delete key handy. We put things away for a time and return and see things we missed before glaring at us. Some writers call it "killing our babies" because we have to delete some of our best writing because it just does not belong in the story. Some writers put it aside to use in another story or book which I think is a great idea.

Time is a great healer for many things in real life but it gives the much needed detachment for our work and helps us spot things we would not have otherwise have seen before. It is that way in life as I wrote I understand things that happened to me in the past because we change. Again, we need it too in our writing although we do have to let our work go and start new stories, books or we get mired in the traps of perfection which is not a good thing for writers, a little but not a swamp that buries us.

My friend Ted who writes memoirs always knows the ending of his books. He is alive when he starts his books and he is alive when he ends it. He likes to say his books are his celebration of his sobriety. He is uncovering one layer after another as he descends into the madness that was his life for so long. Once he exhausts these layers and the mine is finally bare, he figures he will start to write novels or something. He isn't worried. The vein of gold that he is working on is very rich.

I think that is better than Forest who sends his servant-wife out there into the world to have adventures with who knows who and what and then makes her report them in detail so he can write a book about them. I often wonder who takes care of the children when she is out there having adventures. Forest can do that because he is good in turning out good prose, but Ted is right when he says his fiction is surface fiction. His characters rarely understand what is going on around them. They just enjoy the world in lurid phases and enjoy the good life. What the heck, people buy his books but I notice there is always a bunch in the second hand stores. No one seems to want to keep them. Forest always knows the end of his books and after he talks to his servant-wife, he knows the middle. I am curious about his servant-wife's sense of self or lack of one that she is willing to do anything he wants. She even wears clothes that he picks out for her that is very suggestive. She is still young enough to wear them but what happens when she gets too old? Will he find willing women? Experience tells me that if you have enough money you will.

I enjoy writing. I think one should write the way it is the most enjoyable. Of course, most writers don't depend on their earnings to pay the rent or house payment and put food in the fridge. Forest is the exception as Ted is. Most even with books to their credit have day jobs. That is why being a writer has been an occupation for the upper classes. It is certain that I don't depend on it for if I did I would be homeless. There is lots of advice out there for writers. That very fact used to appall me because I thought there must be a lot of writers out there making a living. Now, I try not to think about it and just do what I want to do and have some fun doing it. I think one should always know the end of a story or novel as one knows the end of life but like everything else, it isn't necessary so in fiction. In life, I am afraid nothing you can do is going to get you out of that date with the cemetery no matter what religion you follow tells you. Sorry....