Karinwritesdangerously

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched—but not because
she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.

~ Denise Levertov, “The Fountain” in THE JACOB’S LADDER

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
Gustave Flaubert

A wise friend and mentor once shared an interesting experience: She decided to go through some of her old journals and pull out any snippets of insight or reflections that she felt might be helpful to her in her current life. In revisiting these journals, she was surprised and happy to see how she had worked through some key questions at an earlier point in her life and how certain concerns seemed to come up for her again and again. Having captured her concerns and trains of thought on paper gave her a very fulfilling sense of how far she had come in sorting out some major issues in her life.

Inspired by her, I’ve been jotting down thoughts in journals myself for over a year and it’s been very inspiring!

Many writers I admire kept journals. Virginia Woolf, If I recall correctly, kept running journals that paralleled her novel writing. She would often puzzle out themes or jot down character sketches in her journals — and many of her spontaneous musings and ideas eventually found their way into her fiction. I know that John Steinbeck also kept journals that chronicled the evolution his fictional creations. 

Along with the creative support that journaling offers us as writers, there’s also growing evidence of its health benefits and therapeutic value. Studies show that when you’re feeling frustrated or upset, simply jotting down a few positive personal qualities you like about yourself — that you’re a loyal friend or a great listener, for example — can help defuse your stress. In fact, people who made a point of doing this for two weeks reported feeling more upbeat and less irritated by daily events in their lives. Why? thinking about and jotting down what makes you special can spark self-confidence and positive emotions. 

Regularly writing down thoughts and feelings has also been shown in studies to improve memory, lower blood pressure, and strengthen the immune system. All of which just reinforces what we writers already know: Words matter. And when we write them down, their meaning often becomes clearer. 

So, if you’ve hit a thorny patch in a novel plot or you have just the glimmer of an idea for an essay, why not crack open a shiny new journal, jot down your ideas, and see where they take you? You might find that journaling juices up your prose. Write on!

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« A friend of mine once told me that a professor of hers said that if she wanted to quickly get the lay of the land in a new and unfamiliar area of study, she should head to her local children’s library. Why? Mainly because well-crafted children’s nonfiction books distill complex topics into their basic components. They cut the wheat from the chaff and get to the heart of the matter, often both economically and elegantly.

It turns out that kids’ books also have something to teach us about how to write an opening line that grabs readers and pulls them into a story. Opening lines are tough to write (tell me about it!), but they pack a lot of punch: They’re a key factor in a reader’s 30-second decision to buy a book. That’s right, unbelievable as it seems, you often have just half a minute to persuade a potential reader to commit to buying your story. 

Two tidbits of advice from Richard Peck, a veteran children’s writer, might be worth considering even if you’re writing an adult novel or short story: 1) If you’ve got an attention grabber — be sure to use it in the first line of your first chapter. 2) Make sure that action of your story has already begun before the opening line. 

Just to prime your creative pumps, here are the openings of a few popular juvenile-targeted novels, some of which have crossover appeal:

“The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school.” The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan

“There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.” The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.” Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein

“I remember lying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves.” Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

“Life was good before I met the monster.” Crank by Ellen Hopkins

“They took me in my nightgown.” Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys

Something to think about: Would you read on after these first lines? Write on!

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“To fly, we have to have resistance.”
Maya Lin

“Now I know we had no money
But I was rich as I could be
In my coat of many colors
My mama made for me.”
“Coat of Many Colors” by Dolly Parton

Hearing how one creative artist is motivated by another always gives me a boost—we all need to dip into someone else’s creative well now and then for a shot of energy and creativity. That’s why I loved reading about how a sitcoms actress became a huge Dolly Parton fan. Growing up in Texas, she listened to Dolly on the radio and came to admire her gifts as a singer-songwriter, especially her song about her “struggles coming up hard, “Coat of Many Colors.” 

“Coat” tells the story of how Dolly’s mother sewed together colorful rags to make her a winter coat and told her daughter not to be ashamed of wearing it because being poor was just a state of mind. 

Though the sitcoms actress “never wanted for anything,” her family also struggled and hearing Dolly’s song gave her heart. As she recalled, “Dolly’s courage on ‘Coat’ also helped me become an actress. The words took my focus off the superficial stuff and the discomfort of starting out and let me focus on what I needed to do to be good enough. Despite Dolly’s background, she was able to find her self-worth, work hard, and become special.”

What a tribute to the power of words! We never know how the songs or stories we write will find their way into someone else’s heart and show them a rainbow path they might not have seen or followed without us. Through our words, we can give each other wings. So let’s soar together today. Let’s fly high as we all write on! 

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“Faith is always an adventure.” Elsie Chamberlain

“Faith is the centerpiece of a connected life. It allows us to live by the grace of invisible strands. It is a belief in a wisdom superior to our own. Faith becomes a teacher in the absence of fact.” Terry Tempest Williams 

Faith: it’s an uncharted territory when it comes to our writing. But consider for a moment some of the many ways it’s defined in my trusty Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: 1) allegiance to duty or a person: loyalty; 2) fidelity to one’s promises; 3) sincerity of intentions; 4) firm belief in something for which there is no proof. 

Pondering these many meanings of faith, I’m struck by how important it is for us to have faith in our work and the sincerity of our intentions in pursuing that work. Every day, as we turn to the page, we encounter obstacles, internal and external, that can make us question the value of what we write and our faith in our ability to say what we want to say. 

We may find that our mind is sluggish, our energy is low, and that our spirits are flagging — any or all of these can shake our faith in our ability to go on. we may find ourselves coping with rejection or confusing feedback that seems to muddy the waters instead of giving us clarity. Or like me, some of us may be struggling with a rough revision that seems to be falling apart instead of coming together.

Any one of these obstacles can test our faith in what we’re trying to accomplish on the page. And if a few of them hit us all at once — well, that can be really tough. And since there’s no solid assurance — no proof — that any of our efforts will actually bear fruit, what is there to fall back on? What can we really rely on? 

Here’s the answer I’ve come up with: Faith in our ability to be faithful to our work. What does being faithful mean? It means being Loyal, constant, staunch, steadfast, resolute. 

So the next time we hit a road bump — and there’s surely one ahead — let’s hold fast to the sincere intentions we set for ourselves when we first started whatever project we’re working on. Let’s be faithful to those intentions. Let’s be faithful scribes—and write on.

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“We do not write to be understood. We write in order to understand.” C.S. Lewis

What wisdom there is in these words! While many of us do, in fact, write to be understood—to share who we are and what we know—in the end, all good writing is a voyage of discovery. One of the greatest gifts writing gives us—and our readers—is the gift of getting to the heart of things, of understanding.

When you think about it, writing is more than just explaining or describing. As Dinty Moore says so well in “The Mindful Writer,“ 

“To write requires learning, discovering, examining, interrogating. Writing is the process of putting down words, then stepping back, considering those words, trying to understand them.

“What have you written? What does it say? What does it fail to say? Do you even agree with what you have written?”

So often, our writing surprises us, doesn’t it? Once we set something down on paper, we see that it’s not set in stone. It may be true or not true. It may be only half true and need to be added to. Writing is above all else, an act of discovery:

We discover that our first idea needs changing or fine-tuning.

We discover that our characters are not who we think they are.

We discover that an idea doesn’t really reflect where we are now.

We discover that there’s much more to say and understand.

Wonderful isn’t it? To think that our words take us to hidden and exciting places in our own minds? That they free us to explore and grow and change—and to share what we’ve learned with readers?

In the end, I think writing dangerously is more expansive than our friend C.S. Lewis suggests. I believe that often we write to be understood and to understand. How about you? Write on!

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These I’ve Loved

These I’ve loved since I was little:
Wood to build with or to whittle,
Wind in the grass and falling rain,
First leaves along an April lane,
Yellow flowers, cloudy weather,
River-bottom smell, old leather,
Fields newly ploughed, young corn
in rows,
Back-country roads and cawing crows,
Stone walls with stiles going over,
Daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, and clover,
Night tunes of crickets, frog songs, too,
Starched cotton cloth, the color blue,
Bells that ring from white church steeple,
Friendly dogs and friendly people.

Elizabeth-Ellen Long

“The best advice for a budding writer is to ignore all advice.”

“A book, if it’s going to have any chance of succeeding…it’s got to be vibrant, and alive, it’s got to have a beating heart, it’s got to be organic. The only way you can get that is to have one mind working on it, which is yours.” Lee Child

With more than 60 million copies available in 60 languages and 96 countries, Lee knows how to spin a yarn — and how to create a hero with enduring appeal. Here’s how he once described Jack Reacher in an interview: “He’s also the descendant of a very ancient tradition: the noble loner, the knight errant, the mysterious stranger, who has shown up in stories forever… He is a truly universal character. I think I lucked into a very fortunate position, where I’m writing the modern iteration of a character who has existed for thousands of years.”

At a talk called “Tell, Don’t Show: Why Writing Rules are Mostly Wrong,” Child offered his views on how to keep readers reading:

Forget ‘Show, Don’t Tell’: Writers are storytellers — and that’s what readers depend on us to do; they don’t care about telling or showing, they just want to be carried through a book. “There is nothing wrong with just telling the story,” “So liberate yourself from that rule.”

Ask a question: According to Child, as human beings, we are hardwired to want the answers to questions. “The way to write a thriller is to ask a question a the beginning, and answer it at the end….For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader.” When he writes a thriller, Child doesn’t know the answer to the question it poses. He just takes it scene by scene, throwing in different obstacles as he figures out the answer along with his readers. 

Just write: Ultimately, Child says, all the writing rules people offer make crafting a book more complicated than it needs to be — and they can get in the way of reaching your readers: “My method is just to start on page one and keep going…” Write on, Lee!

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Advertising. Bloodstained. Cold-blooded. Fashionable. Hobnob. Moonbeam. New-fangled. Puking. Swagger. Worthless. Zany.
Words coined by Shakespeare

It’s been more than 450 years since Shakespeare put pen to paper. His birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23rd. In his honor, let’s ponder this little-known, but amazing, fact: The Bard is said to have invented between 1,700 and 3,000 words. No wonder he didn’t need a dictionary — he practically invented it!

Will’s not alone in the word-coining universe: George R.R. Martin, author of the incredibly popular Game of Throne series invented a whole language called Dothraki. In Dothraki, for example, “small clothes” translates into “underwear.” Bet you didn’t know that! See how much you learn reading KWD?

But I digress. Back to The Bard of Avon. Surely, our boy Will must have had tons of fun dreaming up all his freshly minted words and word combos. Just in case you want to do the same, here’s an overview of five of Wily Will’s tricky wordsmithing techniques:*

Verbing (changing nouns into verbs): When Cleopatra said, “I’ll unhair thy head!” she was verbing. When we say, parenting, shoulder the blame or table that motion, so are we.

Adjectivizing (think I just invented a new word!) — transforming verbs into adjectives. Example: After you filter water, it turns into filtered water. Barefaced, blushing and gloomy are all adjectives coined by Shakespeare.

Combining words: Clever new word combinations crop up in the media all the time and making these up has to be a blast. A few examples: Youniverse, Brangelina, tween, and authorpreneur. A variation, dubbed “portmanteaus,” refers to words that blend the sounds and meanings of two words. Blog, for example, is a shortened version of weblog (website plus log). A few more: jeggings (jeans plus leggings), screenager, and a personal favorite coined by Alex when he was four: freelax as in, “Just freelax, Mom!”

Agglutination: Whoa! Someone needs to invent a better word for this process – adding prefixes and suffixes. This results in words like: declutter and commoditize. A few gems from Shakespeare: discontent; invulnerable, metapmorphize.

Cold-blooded coining: Some words just spring from nowhere. A few Shakespeare conjured up one morning or afternoon when he was tired of writing Hamlet: addiction, lonely, and manager. Who knew?

Any words you or a friend have invented? I love to hear about them! Now that I’ve stoked your creative fires, let’s all write on!

* Kudos for an online story by Demian Farnworth called “Shakespeare’s 5 Rules for Making Up Words (to Get Attention)” from which I blushingly purloined these fashionable techniques and many of the zany examples.

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Flowers, green grass, Spring sunshine bursting with Vitamin D. With all this surrounding us, sometimes it’s hard to focus on writing. And with the days getting longer and longer, I don’t know about you, but adjusting my internal time clock has been challenging. For help in revving up, I turned to my trusty stack of Woman’s World magazines to find some easy energy boosters for us all:

Eat your oatmeal: Besides being low-cal and fiber-rich, oatmeal is a great source of B6, which activates the feel-good hormone, serotonin. You can get an even bigger boost by adding nuts and berries. And here’s another trick I’ve learned: If you’re like me and enjoy having a morning smoothie for breakfast, try adding a quarter-cup of dry oatmeal to it for some slow-burning protein.

Snack on sunflower seeds: If you’re prone to midmorning or afternoon slumps, you might be tempted to grab an energy bar or a snack that’s high in sugar. A better bet: munch on sunflower seeds. They’re rich in magnesium, which fights fatigue. Other magnesium-rich foods you can snack on for quick energy: pumpkin seeds, avocados, spinach, almonds, peanuts and cashews. Another slump-buster: combine a protein and complex carb like whole-grain crackers and cheese or peanut butter. This combo can give you an energy boost that lasts for hours.

Catch up on C: One in three Americans suffer from low levels of vitamin C according to experts. Since this vitamin helps cells convert food into energy, a shortfall can lead to fatigue. Eating a serving of citrus or taking 500 mg. of C daily can boost your energy in just three weeks. Other sources of C: tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, and leafy vegetables.

Snag a snooze: There’s loads of evidence that taking a short nap in the afternoon can recharge your battery. One study found that astronauts who took a 40-minute nap improved their performance by almost 35% and their alertness by 100%. So if you work at home, you might try this easy and enjoyable energizer. 

If you have any energy boosters that work for you, I’d love to share them. Write on! 

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