Karinwritesdangerously

This brings a smile to my face — it reminds me of Alex, my beloved, intrepid son, who knows all about the joys of of flying on two wheels!

Going Down Hill on a Bicycle
A Boy’s Song

Henry Charles Beeching

With lifted feet, hands still,
I am poised, and down the hill
Dart, with heedful mind;
The air goes by in a wind.

Swifter and yet more swift,
Till the heart with a mighty lift
Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:
“O bird, see; bird, I can fly.

‘Is this, is this your joy?
O bird, then I, though a boy,
For a golden moment share
Your feathery life in air!’

Say, heart, is there aught like this
In a world that is full of bliss?
‘Tis more than skating, bound
Steel-shod to the level ground.

Speed slackens now, I float
Awhile in my airy boat;
Till, when the wheels scarce crawl,
My feet to the treadles fall.

Alas, that the longest hill
Must end in a vale, but still,
Who climbs with toil, wheresoe’er,
Shall find wings waiting there.

My son Alex’s focus, discipline, sense of adventure, and willingness to go all out on his bike have always been a source of inspiration to me. Let’s find our wings today as we all write on!

Share this:

•  Print
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  X
•  Reddit
• More

“There’s an old Chinese proverb that says: ‘One demonstration is worth more than a thousand words.’ A good rule, I learned, is never to say anything you can dramatize. Better yet: never dramatize anything yourself that you can get the customer or prospect to do. Let the customer perform. Put him into action. In other words: Let the customer help you make the sale.” Frank Bettger

This gem of wisdom comes from Frank’s classic guide, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling. When I read this nugget of advice, it jumped out at me: I realized that this principle applies to involving readers in our stories just as it does to customers in a sales pitch. Here’s what I mean: When we create active readers — when we make them “perform” and put them “into action” — they become more committed and engaged. 

Ever since I made this connection, I’ve been thinking about the different ways in which we can transform our readers from passive absorbers of our stories into active, fully engaged “performers.” Here are a few techniques I came up with:

Sketching details: In our earnest desire to help our readers see the worlds that we see in our own heads, we often overload our stories with so much color and description that we rob them of the joy and pleasure of imagining that world in their own unique way. I think this is one reason that books made from movies are so often disappointing — often, the graphic images in a film aren’t as emotionally satisfying as the pictures we create ourselves. So a deft, light touch in sketching details may prove more provocative.

Enliven the action: Action sequences and high drama offer rich opportunities for giving readers an adrenalin rush and hooking them emotionally. Combining “headlongedness” (love this word, I made it up!) — that breathless sense of forward momentum with just the right pacing can really put your reader into the thick of things.

Push the pause button: While action sequences can help hook your reader, if you pile them on too quickly or without giving the reader the time to process them, the result can be distancing rather than involving. So consider giving your reader moments to reflect and integrate what’s happened.

Sprinkle clues: The enormous and continuing popularity of mysteries is proof positive of a compelling tendency we can use to our advantage: Many readers love to solve puzzles. With this in mind, consider creating mysteries within your story and then peppering it with clues. I’ve done this in my children’s novel — it’s loads of fun and has added some extra zing and zip.

End chapters with cliffhangers: This is an old tried-and-true way of keeping your reader actively engaged in your story — but since its works, why not use it? Crafting these little verbal pushes from page to page is challenging, but very satisfying. Why not give it a go?

I’ve come up with five “active reader” techniques here, but I’m sure there are tons more. Any approach you’ve used that’s worked well for you? I’d love to hear about it. Write on!

Share this:

•  Print
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  X
•  Reddit
• More

Just as July 4th ended one year, the idea to create my own Declaration of Independence as a writer occurred to me. So I’ve declared July 5 as my own personal Independence Day. As a source of inspiration, the July 4, 1776 version is unbeatable. What could be more compelling than these bold, forthright words, which sparked a revolution and truly changed the world:

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.“

Quoting this statement, I was struck by the phrase “unalienable Rights” and in particular, the word “unalienable,” which is variously defined as “incapable of being surrendered or transferred,” “non-negotiable,” and “sacrosanct.” “Sacrosanct” piqued my interest and sent me on another little word chase. I came up with “sacred,” “respected,” “untouchable.” Now that’s food for thought.

What sacred, non-negotiable, untouchable rights do I want to endow myself with as a writer on my personal Independence Day ? Let’s start with these:

I endow myself with the right to believe in my work and its intrinsic value.

I endow myself with the right to honor and nurture my desire to devote the
time needed to pursue my craft and push my writing to the next level.

I endow myself with the right to put my creative writing center stage and to
do whatever it takes to create forward motion each day.

I endow myself with the right to pursue any ideas, tools, training, and experience
that will help me improve my craft.

I endow myself with the right to see myself as part of a long and joyful tradition of
storytellers and myth makers who enrich the world through words.

Well that’s what I came up with. How about you?

Share this:

•  Print
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  X
•  Reddit
• More

Happy July 4th! In honor of Independence Day, let’s launch the holiday weekend with wisdom from our Founding Fathers:

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”
Samuel Adams

“Citizens by birth or by choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same Religion, Manners, Habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and Liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts — of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”
George Washington’s Farewell Address

“This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
Benjamin Franklin

“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”
John Adams

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.”

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Thomas Jefferson

Share this:

•  Print
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  X
•  Reddit
• More

As a fiction writer you will often be working through ‘some observing consciousness.’ Yet when you… ask readers to step back and observe the observer — to look at rather than through the character — you start to tell-not-show and rip us briefly out of the scene.”
Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction

Skilled writers employ an artful combination of showing and telling to convey necessary information while keeping a reader engaged and turning the page. But as we strive to balance these two forms of story sharing, there’s a fine line between letting readers observe a character and letting them actually experience the scene through the character’s eyes. Consider these two examples:

1) She stood at the cracked open window and saw a cat dart under a picnic table. She noticed the way its tail swished, back and forth, back and forth. It reminded her of a pendulum.

2) She stood at the cracked open window. A cat darted under a picnic table. Its tail swished back and forth, back and forth, a pendulum.

In paragraph 1, the words “saw,” “noticed,” and “reminded,” all act as filters — barriers that create emotional distance. In paragraph 2, filter words are removed and we see the action through the character’s eyes, not by watching her watching the action.

Filter words are often used in nonfiction, such as biography, because it’s impossible to verify what a character might have seen or felt. In fiction, filter words can seem deceptively useful. It’s easy to let them creep into our prose, but excising them can make our stories tighter and emotionally more affecting.

Here’s a simple exercise: Take a few paragraphs of your work and circle any filter words you spot, including: “saw,” “heard,” “thought,” “watched,” “seemed,” “felt,” “noticed,” and “remembered.” Then read each sentence with the filters and without them and note the difference. If you do this consisently, you’ll become more and more attuned to when and how you use filters in your work. Write on!

Share this:

•  Print
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  X
•  Reddit
• More

« I think so much of writing is about the courage to express ourselves, to be true to our own voice, to find our vision, our voice, and put it out there. Also, allow yourself to write badly in the beginning. That’s good tried and true advice. And then let it evolve as you rewrite. » Sue Monk Kidd 

Author of The Secret Life of Bees, her highly acclaimed debut novel set in the South in the 1960’s, Sue also penned a historical novel, The Invention of Wings, which is set in 19th century South Carolina and focuses on the lives of the Grimke sisters, legendary abolitionists. Here, she describes her writing process:

Incubating ideas: “An idea comes to me from the inside out, and I will play with it. If I play with it awhile and it really starts to sprout a story, then I know it’s a novel I can really write.” The Secret Life of Bees started with the image of a girl lying in bed and bees flying around the room. Her imagination took off and she “just played with it fro a long time, and it really started to create a story.”

Writing strategy: Sue likes to let her ideas simmer, but once she starts writing, a disciplined approach kicks in: “I keep banker’s hours. I work every day, immersed in the whole thing, really working with my craft in a disciplined way but allowing for spontaneous, mysterious inspiration to come.”

Inciting questions: “My novels usually start with two questions: ‘Who is my character?’ ‘What does my character want?’ The whole story will flow out of the answers I’m able to bring to those two questions.” 

Researching: Sue did about six months of research before she began writing The Invention of Wings — traveling to historic sites, reading primary sources and biographies. “In writing a historical novel, detail is everything. You want to create this authentic world where readers can feel like they can see it, feel it, hear it.”

Revision: I rewrite as I go. It’s a slower process, but somehow that works best for me. I allow myself to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite a chapter, and then I have a certain moment when I realize that yes, now, it’s exactly what I want it to be and I can go on.”

Finding the « courage to express ourselves, to find our vision, our voice » — that’s what writing dangerously is all about! And what a fascinating revision approach Sue has! Something to ponder and play with as we all write on!

Share this:

•  Print
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  X
•  Reddit
• More

When you’ve been working on a major writing project — one that’s consumed significant amounts of time and energy — it’s very easy to shift into overdrive and begin overwriting. I know, because there have been several times during the revision of my children’s novel where I’ve come perilously close to doing this and a few instances where I stepped over the line. So how do you know when you’re really done with what seems to be a final revision? 

When is enough enough? A few hard-won tips from the frontlines:

STOP before your plot gets too unwieldy: I started my novel with a handful of characters and an inciting incident and basically wrote my way into a plot. Once I wrote my first draft, I realized that my plot was jerry-built. While it worked well in some places, it was cumbersome in others. In this latest revision, I’ve created a much stronger story arc. But as I wrapped up this latest round of changes, I began to tinker with a plot again — adding a twist here, and a twist there. While some of these worked, I recently realized that I was in danger of overcomplicating my story. So I stopped.

STOP before you create too many characters: As your story deepens and becomes richer, the temptation to add characters can be almost overwhelming. But if you give in to it, you can end up writing a new version of War and Peace, with so many characters and subplots that most of your readers won’t be able or even interested in keeping them all straight. Better to put your energy into building up your main characters than letting your bit players grow like Topsy. 

STOP before your theme is muddied or lost: If you write past the point when you should have stopped, you run the danger of obscuring or even losing the “big picture” — the overarching theme(s) of the story you set out to tell. I think this happens most often when we lose confidence in our original vision or simply lose sight of it because we’ve written past it because we’re in overdrive and can’t stop ourselves from wanting to make sure that everyone will absolutely know what we were trying to say. So instead of letting our story tell our story, we try to tell it — and can’t see the forest for the trees. 

STOP before your tinkering damages instead of improves: This is a tough tendency to put the brakes on, because it’s so tempting. Believe me, I know the feeling! But after years of writing, I’ve learned to recognize when my puttering around is making things worse instead of better. When I see this happening, I force myself to stop because I know that the end result is going to be that I’ll waste a lot of time going back and restoring things that were actually better than what I ended up with because I couldn’t stop fussing. Avoid this! You are not helping yourself — or your story.

I hope some of this hard-won experiences proves helpful. If you have any warning signs that you’ve learned to heed on the road to wrapping up, I’d love to have you share them. Write on!

Share this:

•  Print
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  X
•  Reddit
• More

A gathering of wisdom to spark our enjoyment and creativity! These words of wisdom come to us from Sarajane Giere, a cherished KWD reader and the award-winning author of “My Pilot,” a memoir:

“Aim at heaven and you get the earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” C.C. Lewis

“We live not by things, but by the meanings of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation.” Antoine de St. Exupery

“With a child’s imagination, you can own half the world.” Neil Simon

“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” Molders

“When friends failed or full palled or spirits flagged, there was my typewriter and there was my world, my oyster.” Edna Ferber

“Put your hero in a lake and every time he comes up for air, take your foot and shove him under again—wait until the end when you rescue him, unless it’s a tragedy, in which case, you hold him under for good.” Sinclair Lewis

“What takes place between reader and writer is ‘the exchange of dreams.’ A writer writes memories, dreams and lies. It makes no difference if it’s true—what matters most are the emotions.” Lois Lowry

“…characters, once conceived, have a willful habit of jumping the reservation and must be herded back into the boundaries of the story.” A.B. Guthrie

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

“Style is the self, escaping into the pen.” E.B. White

Thank you, Sarajane! And now, inspired and emboldened, let’s all write on!

Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon

Li Po

Among the blossoms, a single jar of wine.
No one else here, I ladle it out myself.

Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon,
and facing my shadow makes friends three,

though moon has never understood wine,
and shadow only trails along behind me.

Kindred a moment with moon and shadow,
I’ve found a joy that must infuse spring:

I sing, and moon rocks back and forth;
I dance, and shadow tumbles into pieces.

Sober, we’re together and happy. Drunk,
we scatter away into our own directions.

Intimate forever, we’ll wander carefree
and meet again in Star River distances.

—Li Po, eighth century

Star River is the Milky Way

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.”
Pearl S. Buck

A cornucopia of writerly wisdom to brighten your day and inspire you! 

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends.” Helen Keller

“Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City, Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars have learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.”
Annie Dillard

“Just now I can feel that little quivering of the pen which has always foreshadowed the happy delivery of a good book.”
Emile Zola

“None of the writing is easy, but I no longer refuse to do it for fear that I’ll fail to get it right. It can never be right, I know; it can only be done.”
Nancy Mairs

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”
Willa Cather

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
Richard Bach

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what he saw in a plain way.”
John Ruskin

“I still read everything aloud. I have a fundamental conviction that if a sentence cannot be read aloud with sincerity, conviction, and communicable emphasis, it’s not a good sentence. Good writing requires good rhythms and good words.”
Richard Marius

“The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.”
Robert Frost

“I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true — hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.”
Ray Bradbury

May these words give our own words wings as we all write on!

Share this:

•  Print
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  X
•  Reddit
• More