Karinwritesdangerously

“And do you think,” said the first swallow, “that the other call is not for us too, in its due season? The call of the lush meadow-grass, wet orchards, warm, insect-haunted ponds, of browsing cattle, of hay-making, and all the farm-buildings clustering round the House of the perfect Eaves?”
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Here is something worth pondering: How do we fashion images in our writing that entice our readers to come along with us to some place that’s far away in time and space from where they spend their days? Perhaps travel with us to some enchanted place that’s really a world or two away from all that’s known and remembered? 

Enticing images – ones that delight and startle our readers, inviting them to see the familiar with fresh eyes: Where do we find them? To my mind, among the best sources of inspiration are classic stories for children. Their language is often playful, rhythmic, and lyrical. There’s a wayfaring quality to it that seems to carry you forward. 

Wind in the Willows—what a gorgeously written story! Every page sparkles and snaps with wit and and original, evocative word choices. I plan to isolate a few of my favorite passages and challenge myself to bring the same brio and surprise to my children’s novel.

There’s so much to learn from wonderful writing! Wherever we find it, let’s savor it for both the pleasure it gives and the ideas it engenders. Write on!

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As we move toward the fall and fresh beginnings, you may be polishing some of the work you’re excited about with an eye toward submitting it to journals and contests. With this in mind, here’s some sage advising from an experienced editor:

1. Scope out the territory: In a nutshell, do your homework. Review one or more issues of the magazine you’re thinking of pitching. You may be able to borrow copies through your local interlibrary loan system, or find previously published issues on its website. A reading group I once belonged to ordered copies of a well-known journal so we could analyze its contents to get a feel for the types of submissions its editors might be receptive to. 

2. Don’t hold back: “Go deep…Readers love to experience what they’re reading, to relate to it on a visceral or emotional level. Gutsy writing is always appreciated.” 

3. Edit carefully: “Reading a piece through without noticing an error is a real joy for editors,” Have someone else edit your work before submitting: A piece riddled with typos creates a negative impression, no matter how strong the writing. 

4. Read the instructions: Editors have created them for a reason and if you’re submitting to them, follow their lead. If you don’t, the editors can easily assume that your writing might not be any better than your ability to read their guidelines. 

5. Retain your rights: When submitting, be sure to offer first time rights or nonexclusive rights only – that way, when you’ve written enough short stories, poems, or essays, you can combine them into an anthology and publish it under your name. Write on!

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« Never underestimate the reader’s imagination. It is more powerful than all your fine writing. True skill consists in inspiring, rather than in substituting yourself for it. »
David Lavender

Sage advice Pulitzer Prize nominee David Lavender offered back in the ’40s about writing short stories—still timely and intriguing:

Start with stakes, not plot: While it’s tempting to plunge your readers into the middle of your plot at a point of peak action, there’s often a major problem with this strategy: While the height of the conflict may be exciting, your readers don’t yet have a reason to care about your characters. And using flashbacks to reveal more about them isn’t a great solution, since it slows down the action. 

Another approach: Instead of using the opening of a story to set up the plot, use it to set up the stakes. Don’t start at a peak moment of conflict, start at the height of desire. “You need not worry about being dull if you can present within the first few hundred words a definite character in the grip of a definite emotion.” 

Introduce motivation deftly: If setting up a boy-loves-girl tale, for example, says Lavender, “I must show the boy immediately engaged in wanting the girl. I must do it with unobtrusive little touches. I must bring it out through the way he acts and what he says, being at all times careful not to let the reader guess that he is having something explained to him.” It’s the old show, don’t tell: Readers don’t want to hear about desire, they want to see it in action and feel it.

To sum up: Find out what your characters want most and begin your story there. Cut to the heart of their desires and work outward into your plot. Resist the urge to tell your readers everything. Have faith in their ability to figure things out.

Thinking of your readers as stake holders—what an intriguing idea!Lots to ponder and apply here as we all write on!

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“The people I have known on the water – the old timers I knew – eased with the winds. Do you think they live high stress? No. They lived simple. Their bodies even moved with it.

They knew a rhythm and a tempo – different from this hard driving tempo we are into on the beltways. Wheels going to work. Drivin’. “I once watched an old guy adze out a helm. Adze it out. I watched his rhythm.
I was blown away watching him. He worked that adze down that whole keel. Whack. Whack. All day long.

When you talk to someone like that, or hang out with them, their whole rhythm of stories, of song, their segue from song to story, is all in that beautiful simple balance. So I try to get hold of that in my songs,
and in the way I live. It is so important.”

Tom Wisner, folksinger and Chesapeake River advocate, interviewed by
artist Roderick Maciver (roderick-maciver-arts.com)

“So you see the imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas. . . . But they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and downstairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.”

“I learned…that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”
Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write

Wow! I love the whole idea of “moodling” — letting your mind wander. Brenda penned the words of wisdom quoted above in a much-beloved inspirational guide called If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit. 

Brenda, a highly successful journalist was both prolific and prophetic: New research totally bears out her belief that we need plenty of quiet time and unfocused, seemingly aimless activity in order to let the different parts of our brain make the connections that lead to exciting new ideas. She primed her own creative pump by walking six to nine miles a day. 

From all I’ve gathered, Brenda was a huge believer in the power of words and in the innate gifts of expression that we all have inside us. What an amazing encouragement counselor for us as we all write on!

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“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”

“I don’t understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. I’m interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.”

“I’ve never worked a day in my life. I’ve never worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy me, my joy. Get out of here tonight and say: ‘Am I being joyful?’ And if you’ve got a writer’s block, you can cure it this evening by stopping whatever you’re writing and doing something else. You picked the wrong subject.’”

Ray Bradbury

Ray, Ray! What a ray of sunshine! A writer who loves writing and crows about it! For a dose of inspiration, check out Zen and the Art of Writing.

Ray is widely known for his jarring science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451, but he’s truly a Renaissance writer: He penned novels, plays, poems, essays, film scripts, and hundreds of short stories. Ray said he wrote every day of his life for 69 years — and loved every minute. He was a big believer in getting out of your own way as a writer and letting stories bubble up from the subconscious.

Here’s an example from his own storied life: Ray spent a very wet, lonely winter in Ireland writing a film script adapting Moby Dick. He was miserable, and vowed that his time in Ireland would never find its way into his fiction. A few years later, however, what he called his “subliminal eye” triggered a memory of an Irish taxi driver that led to a play. He went on to write several short stories, poems, and essays, all fueled by his brief stay on the Emerald Isle. 

Ray recalls: “I found myself blessing the secret mind,” the inner eye that “observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” 

Finding ways to tap inner creativity is a major theme in his wonderful guide, Zen in the Art of Writing. I had a copy once, but gave it to a writer friend. Reading his beautiful musings on writing has inspired me to get another one and share its wisdom. 

Tap your own secret mind, turn to your inner eye — and write on!

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“Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward.”

“It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.”
Franz Kafka

The legendary violinist Niccolo Paganini was giving a well-attended performance. Only minutes before he was about to play, he rushed around backstage frantically searching for something. Then he went out and gave a musical rendition that proved to be one of the highlights of his career. After he stepped off the stage, someone asked why he was so agitated right before performing. “I forgot my Stradivarius,” he replied. He was forced to borrow another instrument. “But tonight,” he added, “I learned the most important lesson of my life. Before I thought the music was in my violin. Now I know the music is in me.”

This lovely story comes to us via my friend and mentor Rob Gilbert’s wonderful Success Hotline (973.743.4690) — and it never ceases to inspire me.

“Now I know the music is in me” — what a precious discovery and how true it is for all of us: The music is in me — and the music is in you. While I have no idea what your unique song is as a writer, I do know a few things about the music inside you:

It’s waiting for you: Whatever it is you long to say it is waiting inside you yearning to be said. It may wait so quietly that it can be ignored or overlooked — and even, sadly, remain unsung and unsaid. It may bubble up irrepressibly and mischievously. It may agitate and disturb you, giving you no peace until you respond to its call. But fierce or feather-light, it yearns to be recognized and nourished.

It’s calling you: You can ignore it and distract yourself from it. You can tease it by starting and then stopping projects. You can frustrate it by never pushing through to completion. You can rob it of strength through inaction and indecision. You can find a hundred ways not to answer its call, but it will somehow survive and persist.

It’s depending on you: You are the only one who can sing your particular song — there’s no one else. And so that song depends on you: on your desire, your discipline, your drive. Without you, it will never be sung. With your intention and ingenuity, it’s everything.

It wants to spring forth: Whatever your song, your unique vision or idea to shared, it inclines lifeward — it seeks expression and expansion. Nourish it with tender loving care, with devotion and discipline, and it will reward you by surprising you with unexpected turns of events, encounters, coincidences — little gifts from the universe to support, encourage, and embolden you. Write on!

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Brenda Ueland was an independent, highly successful writer who authored a classic called, If You Want to Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit. What a marvelous, magical title and guide!

Brenda was a true believer in the power of creativity and devoted much of her energy to helping people unleash the creative power within them. To inspire us all today, some quotes from her book: 

“Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his ‘true’ self and not from the self he thinks he ‘should’ be.” 

“I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. ” 

“No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.” 

“Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.” 

“Don’t always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. ‘I will not Reason and Compare,’ said Blake; ‘my business is to Create.’ Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.”

“The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.” 

“Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.” 

“…writing is not a performance but a generosity.” 

“Work freely and rollickingly” — what better advice is there? Write on!

Please help KWD grow by sharing: https://karinwritesdangerously.com/

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“I think we’ve learned that early reading is more than just a nice thing to do with kids. It really does have a very important role to play in building brain networks that will serve children long-term…”
Dr. John S. Hutton

How important is reading for young kids? The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy statement stating that literacy promotion should start at birth. What a call to action: Pediatricians caring for infants and toddlers should be advising parents about how important it is to read to even the youngest children. Bravo!

As one story on literacy noted, there are “extensive links between growing up with books and reading aloud, and later language development and school success.” What’s more, breakthrough studies have identified the complex interactions that take place when we lift a small child into our lap and open a picture book.

One study looked at brain activity in 3-to 5-year-olds as they listened to simple stories. They found differences in brain activity based on how much the children had been read to at home. Kids who were read to often in homes with books had more activity in a region of the left brain associated with integrating sound and visual stimulation. While this area is known to be very active when older kids read to themselves, it also lights up when younger kids hear stories. 

“When kids are hearing stories, they’re imagining in their mind’s eye,” noted Dr. John Hutton, the study’s lead author. This suggests that kids who are read to have more practice creating visual images will become more adept later at making images and stories out of words. Dr. Hutton speculated that a book may also spur creativity in a way that cartoons and screen-related visuals may not. As he put it, “When we show them a video of a story, do we short circuit that process a little? Are we taking that job away from them? They’re not having to imagine the story; it’s just being fed to them.”

In another set of findings, researchers discovered that the vocabulary in kids’ picture books is often richer than the speech they’re hearing on a daily basis. So kids who are read to hear more words and a greater variety of words, and have the chance to exercise their brains by forming images from those words. 

Aren’t books wonderful? They’re brain boosters, comforters, cuddle-in-a-lap snacks for the mind and heart. Reading rouses kids’ imaginations! What video or iPad offers all this? Write on!

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God Says Yes To Me

Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said sure it is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

This delightful poem is a gift to us from fellow author, editor and poetry lover, Toby Stein.

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