procrastinating

Word count goal for the day: 44,000.

Word count right now: 41,185.

The path from here to there seems insurmountable. One step, one word, at a time.

Literary and Commericial

I am drawn to literary writing, words pieced together like a beautiful piece of music or a delicate quilt. But literary writing is a hard sell even though many of the most famous pieces of award winning literature feature literary writing.

Commercial writing is, by definition, easier to place, easier to market, and easier to read. I think I've discovered the difference. Commercial writing pulls you through. It leaves you wanting to find out what happens next. It draws you to read the next page, the next chapter, just ten more minutes until you reach a satisfying end and pick up another book.

Literary writing invites you to soak in the comfort of its words. It doesn't pull you along with story, but encourages you to read a paragraph a second time, perhaps a third, so you can suck the juice out of each turn of phrase. It's satisfying, but exhausting.

I'm learning to appreciate the craft involved in good commercial writing. Jodi Picoult, Alexander McCall Smith, and J.K. Rowling invite me to read the next chapter... and the next book.

Pretension, affectation, and theatrics.

An Andre Reiu concert is lovely with its extravagant costumes and its lilting waltzes. But I wouldn't want to live there.

I long to be a brilliant writer, a poet composing works of literary genius. I crave the skill to inscribe the words of my heart on paper. But, in truth, I'm more of a down-to-earth, practical, messy person than an ethereal genius.

So, I shed the pretensions of writing an artful blog and commit myself to providing some good old useful information.

Practice Session

Fingers fly across the fingerboard singing out a complicated lyric run, but grind to a halt with a screech or a flat.

Start again. And 1 and 2 and...

From the bottom of the scale, the violinist slows the tempo, concentrating on the placement of each note. Once it's better, she plays it again. And again. And again. Until, hopefully, she plays it up to speed and without flaw.

Fingers on the keyboard. The writer taps out a sentence or two. She reads the words she wrote and leans on the backspace key. From the top, she rephrases her thought, but it's not quite right. She writes it again. And again. And again.

The reader sees only a string on words and phrases, strung together without discernible effort. If he only knew the practice, the effort, that went into each sentence. If the writer has practiced well, the reader will never notice.

Tempo

Largo, Andante, Andantino, Alegro, Vivace...

The breath before the music starts sets the tempo.

The breath before the words begin set the story's pace. Will the reader roll each word around in her head, savoring the texture of each sentence? Or will she devour the pages, one after the other, unable to wait to see what happens next?

The author sets the pace and with a skip or a slide, carries the reader along on a ride.

Upbeat

Like a beautiful trill inviting us into the symphony is a well-composed opening line. The first line of a story or book does more than launch us into the story. It sets the scene, piques interest, raises questions. The first line tells us if it's worth our time to move on to the second and then the third.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The Bible

In the very beginning? Who is this God? How did he get there? Why did he create? What happened next?

Call me Ishmael. Moby Dick

Was that his real name or is he hiding something? It sounds like he's starting a conversation. What does he have to say?

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker mixes into the jungle. The Poisonwood Bible

What do the cake mixes have to do with the jungle? Who is the "we" she's talking about?

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice-- not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. A Prayer for Owen Meany

Wow. How many questions does that bring up? I was breathless reading the first page of this book.

Breathless. That's the goal.

That's the upbeat.

Guest Composer: Betty Wyatt

No writer writes alone.

Each of us is the product of the people around us. Even the proverbial hermit writer has to deal with editors, publishers, agents, and the milk man.

Writers are readers. What we read shapes how we write. Thus, we must strive to read large quantities of quality literature.

From time to time I will feature a guest writer, either someone with a book to release or someone who has something to teach us all.

The first writer I'm going to promote is Betty Wyatt. She is the picture of determination, writing most of her newly self-published novel before 6 a.m. She dreamed of a finished book and now she has accomplished that dream. She followed that first rule of writing-- BICFOK. She also followed many other rules we will discuss later, including "write, rewrite, revise, then rewrite again until you have something worthwhile" and "ask for advice from as many as you can, then make your decision and stick with it."

I must admit that Betty Wyatt is not a random choice for first featured author. She happens to be my mother and I have watched her story unfold over the last several years.

Betty's new book, JESSIE: the story of a genteel lady in frontier Alaska, is available from lulu. Once there, do a search for "Betty Wyatt" and find her story.