Sister Writes

It's Thanksgiving Day here in Canada and I am feeling grateful for the many talented women I have met through Sister Writes.
Writing within and for this community is a constant pleasure.

One of the things I love to do is share titles of books that have helped and inspired my writing.

"What If?: Writing exercises for fiction writers," 3rd edition, c.2010, by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter is a classic text I have recently discovered.

"Ten to One," from Hester Kaplan, is an exercise in this book that requires you to narrow your story down to essentials only. The " rules" provide a framework that can produce surprising results.

Here's what to do:

Write a complete story in fifty-five words. First sentence will be 10 words, your 2nd sentence nine words, your 3rd will be eight words and so on until the final sentence= one word.

My example is below, inspired by the Boston Marathon 2021 which is being run today.

"Maggie's Marathon"

Boston Marathon morning Maggie woke at
four, her foot twitching.
At five, she was outside, nobody else in sight.
By six, she'd managed to walk one block.
Breath ragged, sweat dripping, she circled again.
She passed her neighbour, who waved.
Her heart beat its thanks.
Tears at her door.
The television on.
Race begun.
Triumph.

This summer, I have been Writing Alone and With Others, with the help of Pat Schneider's classic book of the same name.

"Using Random Words," is one of the exercises I keep coming back to. As Schneider points out, "this exercise springs [you] out of [your] own literal memories and habitual patterns."

Here's how it works:

On a blank page list 10-15 nouns in a column.
In the next column, list 10-15 modifiers. Do this quickly without making any connections.
Then connect nouns and modifiers in unlikely pairs.

Write a piece using as many pairs as you can.

Here is my latest exercise:

My 10 nouns:
coffee, pepper, sponge, can, toaster, violet, cupboard, recliner, triangle, stairway.

10 modifiers: sparkling, stretchy, tough, speedy, garbled, porous, gooey, pristine, petulant, rosy.

My unlikely pairs:

Gooey coffee. Speedy pepper.
Tough sponge. Rosy can.
Petulant toaster. Sparkling violet
Porous cupboard. Stretchy recliner
Pristine triangle. Garbled stairway.

What I wrote:

Breakfast?

I couldn't get my bearings and the gooey coffee wasn't helping. The pots and pots of sparkling violets hurt my eyes.

I was in a stretchy recliner, uncomfortably positioned.

The petulant toaster was yelling, "butter or margarine?" and a clamour of voices answered unintelligibly.

I could see a garbled stairway; an escape route? But I couldn't adjust the stretchy recliner to get myself up. I felt stuck, trapped in this gooey triangle.

Just then, a porous cupboard next to the petulant toaster began leaking speedy pepper
that spilled out and over the counter and the room erupted in a chorus of sneezes.

***
This was a free write, about 10 minutes. I have made a few copy edits but otherwise this is what I wrote in my notebook.

The unlikely pairs brought to mind my Dad's time in Long Term Care. The speaker is a resident.

***

You can use this exercise, with fresh lists of nouns and modifiers, anytime, to jump start your writing.
It's also fun to do with a group. Collectively come up with the nouns and modifiers, and let each person make their own unlikely pairs.

I couldn't stop reading,
Kevin Barry's latest collection of stories, "That Old Country Music."

During this pandemic, my desk has been home to stacks of fiction that have gone unread, but Barry's captivating narratives, told in language that sings from the page, was hard to resist. The characters, sketched with fine lyrical strokes, inhabit an assortment of deftly drawn West of Ireland locales.

From, "Deer Season:"
"He was tall and thin and did not have a pronouncedly masculine walk--he could not be taken for a farmer. His step was carefully picked out and it had a hesitancy to it. He brought to her mind the heron."

And these images of place, from the same story:
"The morning was bright, with a breeze that moves the light's sharp points on the lanes, and the hedges were opulent with berries and the high grasses raced in the late-summer fields."

"...the excellence of your ear..." is how writer, John Jeremiah Sullivan put it to Kevin Barry, in an interview in The Paris Review, September 19, 2019. He asked Barry if he had to work at the effect he created with his writing, or if he just heard the world this way."

Barry replied with a tip we can all take to heart:
" I read the work aloud, a lot, with editing pen in hand...the ear knows!"

"That Old Country Music," was published just prior to the pandemic, but these comments from Barry about writing fiction sound like wise advice for the state we are in:
"As a writer of fiction, you're vividly aware that life is always hovering toward a condition of shapelessness, and you're trying to put a shape on it, you're trying to tell stories around it. Writing fiction is, I think, a survival mechanism."