Building Your Writing Toolkit: Part one – Know how you Start to Write.

Everyone writes differently: some people sit down at a blank page and dump a poem or essay out with little effort (at least for a first draft) while others require laborious research and planning to get even so much as a title on the page. Some people have an innate grasp of dialogue, while others would prefer to never deal with how people speak to each other. No matter how or what you write, though, there are certain things that help you reach the end game of your writing (i.e., anything that you consider finished). In light of that, I’m going to talk about what I’ve started calling my Writing Toolkit, offering suggestions about how you might be able to get your tools in order to facilitate your writing process. This will be an ongoing blog, with probably 7 posts to create a toolkit that will make your life easier as a writer.

Know how you start to write.
The first thing you need when you’re writing is knowledge of how you begin writing – this may seem a bit paradoxical but it’s true; until you know how you start you’ll have trouble creating ideal situations for your writing. Do you plan, plot and ponder or do you skip, skid and slide your way into the writing project you’re working on – either way you need to know you get going in order to hone your skill.

Minimal planning:

I write and plan mostly in my head. I know that it doesn’t really help me to sit down at a computer and force out a document if I don’t really have it planned in my head – the piece will feel forced and I won’t be happy with it. That being said, I do sometimes plan on paper, especially if a project is important or has a very broad span – in these cases a rough plan will keep me on track and give me something to refer to when I get stuck.

A typical plan for an essay for me might look like this:
Thesis: Ben Franklin wasn’t just a selfish bastard or a selfless altruist, but managed to incorporate altruism with self-service.
Proof: Ben Franklin as a selfish bastard (takes advantage of situations he creates) **One or two Examples**
Ben Franklin as an altruist (gives up copyrights for the betterment of a large segment of society)**One or two Examples**
Ben Franklin’s altruism as self-serving (encouraging paper currency as a printer, manipulating the throne while making money for local wagon owners, starting up businesses and taking a large percentage, etc.)**Majority of Proofs >10**
Conclusion: Ben Franklin was a lot more complicated than most history classes are willing to admit.

While a typical outline for a long short story or a short novel might look like this:
I – Intro to antagonist – position of strength, likeable
II – Intro to universe
III – Intro to protagonist – prickly, somewhat weak
A. Protagonist in Universe
IV – Protagonist backslides
A. The universe sucks and is hard to handle.
V – Pro. Vs Ant. – Pro growth, snaps out of problem.
VI – Pro wins by making space in universe, ignoring problems posed by Ant.
VII – Ant. Pissy about Pro, can’t do anything about it.
A. The universe sucks and is hard to handle when you’re a dick.
(It should now be clear that I prefer anti-heroes.)

These plans might look somewhat contradictory – an essay is only going to be 5000 words or less while a short novel might be 100 pages, but both plans are about the same length; the reason for this, with my writing in particular, is that I write specifics in my head – the characters are usually formed before I start a piece so I don’t need to make notes to myself about them, and I usually don’t start writing fiction without a central conflict planned in my head so there’s no need to write that out either.

Intensive planning:

But what if you are a consummate planner, what if you need detailed outlines to get from one paragraph to the next? The key here is to not let yourself get trapped in a plan –especially not early in the writing process.

I knew a hardcore Planner in college – she planned from the beginning of the quarter until the final period on her final essay, and she wrote terrible essays. Why? If she planned so meticulously, shouldn’t she have gotten better grades? No – because she planned before she knew what she was planning. If you are going to meticulously plan your writing, don’t write your plan until AFTER you’ve done your research.

Let’s take my Benjamin Franklin essay as an example, and modify it to fit this girl’s methods:
Thesis: Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant founding father and was also a consummate altruist, sacrificing his inventions and time to the public good.
Proof: Giving away the patent for the Franklin Stove
A.B.C….
Forming the Fire Department
A.B.C…
Forming the Police Department/Neighborhood Watch
A.B.C…
Planning the Sweeping of the Streets
A.B.C…
Planning the Lighting of the Streets
A.B.C….
Serving as a Diplomat instead of continuing in business
A.B.C…
Volunteering to take public positions, but not in position of power.
A.B.C…
Conclusion: Benjamin Franklin did a lot of good for America at his own expense, and selflessly served this country in its formative years.

Now, all of this is true, Ben Franklin did all of these things and he did them well – so why doesn’t the girl get a good grade on her essay? Because that’s only half of the truth – there’s a lot of evidence that Ben Franklin did most of what he did because he was a selfish prick who wanted to control people whom he thought were too stupid to control themselves. While our Planner was researching, she came across this information, she was well aware of the very strong counter-argument to her thesis, but she ignored it why? Even though she wrote on a different topic, I asked these questions of her (I had helped her with some research and found counter-arguments that she wholly ignored) and thus can give you a direct quote: “Well, all that stuff didn’t fit in with the essay I had planned on writing, so I didn’t put it in because it would change my argument too much.”

Planners out there: do your research before you plan.
Everyone out there: don’t plan your initial research.

You should go into a piece with an open mind – if you’re outlining a story or planning an essay, make sure you’re allowing reality to shape your work – pushing too hard to make a piece work when it simply doesn’t only leads to heartbreak.

Another example: Once I wrote a short story – it was a Science Fiction story and I thought it was pretty cool. I had some of my friends look it over, and they liked it, but one of my friends (who happened to be an intern at JPL at the time) was blessedly blunt with me about it: “Alli, the science is wrong. Space travel doesn’t work like that.” I tried to get around it, to change parts of the story, to make the story conform to science that didn’t fit and it made the story worse. I scrapped the story, re-wrote it with the reliance on space travel significantly minimized, and it made the story better.

No planning:

So let’s say you just sit down and freewrite – you let the words pour out and you hit “print” whenever your fingers have stopped moving for more than five minutes – what do you need in order to do better at the beginning? Well, it’s not the beginning you probably need help with, it’s the end.

If you don’t plan your writing, you need to rewrite your freewrites.

You may have noticed is that I don’t list plans for my poetry or short stories: the reason for this is that I don’t plan poetry or short stories – I write them in my head, rewrite them on paper, rewrite them on a computer, then do one or two more drafts before I’m satisfied, usually making only minor changes in the last three drafts – what you should note is that I make at least three drafts: I don’t care who the hell you think you are, but you should be doing the same – drafting at least once or twice to ensure a better product.

Freewriting is a great exercise, and it serves as a good illustration of what potential is evident in an idea, but freewrites aren’t final products.

If you are a freewriter, before you hit “print” you should go through your text a few times: check for grammar errors, check for places where the structure is weak, check that the whole coheres, and check a few more times for good measure. It’s no good to have written something that has brilliant elements if it’s riddled with non-sequiturs; there’s no point in displaying your beautiful control of language if your writing doesn’t have a message (thesis, theme, moral – whatever – there has to be some kind of payout other than beautiful language – even if it is a poem); there’s no value in making an excellent point of the language you use to express it is broken and incomprehensible. Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite.

This goes for everyone, but non-planners especially need to pay special attention to their work in order to ensure that it can be understood and appreciated by your audience.

Anyway, that went a hell of a lot longer than I expected (my non-planning side in evidence) so I’m going to cut it off now: I’ll be back on Sunday, February 5th with my next toolkit tip – How do you write Best?

Until then, figure out how you start and let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Alli.

Finding Forms of Language (and listening to some dope music)

So far in college I’ve never received an assignment that I’ve absolutely hated. I’ve always accepted whatever it is that I have to do, and, even if I have to stay up for a few days straight, I do it happily. I like that rush of progress that comes from working on a challenging paper… But with all that said, I think this paper that I recently received in my Shakespeare course has to be at the top of my list of least favorites.

Let me complain for a second:

I had to write 4 mini-essays (150-250 words), which each focused on a different moment in some of Shakespeare’s plays. Sounds easy enough, right? My task was “to make explicit what is implicit in the play” – I was actually pretty excited about the project until I got to the part where the professor spelled out how each one of the mini-essays should be laid out. He wanted the first sentence to be this, and the second to be that, and so on…

I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I was initially pissed that some “Shakes-pe-herian” was trying to tell me how to formulate my thoughts. I am a writer because I love the freedom of creation. To me, writers are like the Green Lanterns of Literature (<--let’s see who gets the comic-book reference). Basically, what I’m saying is that my work is nothing more than my thoughts manifested in exactly the way that I see fit for them to be presented – all of my choices are my own. From the start, I knew this assignment was going to be hell for me.

I struggled with the assignment, and I hated every second of it; every sentence that I had to write twisted me up inside... but after 2 all-nighters, caffeinated and frustrated, I noticed the title of the handout that my professor had given me, "The Commentary Form", and I had an extremely helpful realization: the true artist of language can manipulate his thoughts into any form, be it a piece of flash-fiction or creative non-fiction, a poem, a biography, or a novel... or even an assignment. A great writer works to manipulate the language within the structural setting of the form.

I sat and thought for a while, and I was amazed at all of the different forms I could think of. Even within the form of poetry there are countless different types of poems, and each type of poem has its own structural identity that allows the language in it to be compared and contrasted with other poems of the same type. I guess in terms of Literary Theory, I got to experience structuralist theory at it's best at about 3:30 in the morning.

The idea stayed fresh in my mind for a few days, and I began applying the theory to things other than writing.. I'd like to leave you with what I think is one of the forms that I enjoy the most. I don't really know if this form already has a name, so I'll just call it the "Assumed-Role Poetic Flash-Fiction Form" (please, help me with a better name, because that one sucks).

Here are the lyrics, and you can listen to the song on the video down below.

The Waitress

A city full of people and my favorite is that waitress
And she treats me like some type of common vagrant
I see her everyday, but there's nothing to say
Unless I decide to step inside of that cafe
I only get to sit if I buy something to eat
Otherwise it's best to keep my feet moving down that street
And god damn she's a hard bitch
Talks at me like I'm the bad dog that got into the garbage
Yeah I know that the toilet is for customers
You ain't got to tangle up the strings to make this puppet work
It doesn't have to be a game of patty cake
But it ain't like you don't know I sleep in that alleyway
And by the way, I can see it in your eyes
You're angry with your life, not a stranger to the fight
I bet you hate every man that you date
And you're probably addicted to all types of escape
You take it out on me that you're all alone
When you know you got your own closet full of hollow bones
Watch the tone when you speak to old folks
I'm grown, just trying to get out of this Minnesota cold
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/a/atmosphere/the_waitress.html ]
Look lady, I'm homeless, I'm crazy
I'm so hopeless I'm suicidal daily
If you and I can't co-exist, let's fake it
Cause I ain't got the energy it takes for this relationship

I'm waiting for a city bus to flatten me
And transport me to the ever after happily
Maybe reincarnate and with luck
Come back to Earth as a cockroach in your tip cup
She said she's had it up to here
She's gonna call authorities if I don't disappear
I love her threats, it rejuvenates my breath
I give her stress for the reaction that it gets
I got a pocket full of pan-handled money
On a cup of bad coffee and a stale honey bun
In front of everyone she calls me bum
But she notices my absence on them afternoons I don't come
So here I am, thorn in her hip
Holding down the corner table all morning with some corn chips
Ignoring the insults and evil eyes
I feed off of 'em, I wonder when she'll realize
That she's the only reason I visit
The only woman in my world that acknowledges my existence
And if my ship ever comes, I'll miss it
Because I'm getting old and I ain't got much left to give it
So there it is and I have to live with it
I had the chance to make a difference, but I didn't
In the cafe bathroom drinking free tap water
Thinking: "Damn, I should've been a better father to my daughter"

-Slug (of Atmosphere)

Until next time,

S.Pine

LETTER TO THE LEAVES: A TIP FOR PREPARING YOUR NEXT RESEARCH PAPER

From the desk of Bermuda Blues:

My Fellow Contributors,

I am in the process of researching a paper on Jonathan Edwards's Personal Narrative. I have already gathered the necessary resources. Most of the books I have checked out are secondary criticisms about Edwards and the literature he wrote. However, in order to get a better understanding of who Edwards was as a man and by extension who he was as an author, I have found it is important to learn more than just what another scholar has thought about him. What is important is to understand the environment in which Edwards wrote and the personal factors which motivated him to write.

In order to accomplish this, I have been reading the biography, Johnathan Edwards: A Life, written by George Marsden. This book has been instrumental in helping me get a feel for who Edwards was as a young man as well as the environment he was raised in, which developed his creative genius.

This technique, of uncovering the foundation of an author's motivations and inspirations, is extremely useful when you are critically analyzing personal narratives or literature in the fields of Realism, and Romanticism because in each of these, there are aspects of the author in both the structure and the content. William Wordsworth's Prelude is an example of a poet using language and structure to express the poet's mind. William Dean Howells, the author of Hazard of New Fortunes, put pieces of himself into the characters he created. Basil March and Angus Beaton, the main protagonists, embody many of the same characteristics that Howells saw in himself. By commanding a firm grasp on the stimuli that developed each of these creative minds you would be better able to anticipate and better understand the imagery in each particular author's work.

This understanding will lend its hand in better interpreting what critics are discussing and will help you to see the limits of their criticisms. Finding these limits will help you find a place to plant and grow your paper to ensure you are going out to new frontiers of literary discovery.

I end with this: start early and read often. Don't sell yourself out from the possibility of taking literature in a new direction and leaving your mark on the world, if only for your own fulfillment.

Undoubtedly Yours,

Bermuda