Spending five days at a writers’ conference is an irreproducible experience. This was my third visit to the Aspen Summer Words conference, and every year I gain more from the opportunity. Being around hundreds of other writers for hours on end provides insight into the writing process on so many levels. We learn from the professionals about how they reached their current level of success. But from the beginners, we learn anew what it’s like to have endless possibilities ahead. We learn from those writing about everyday life that every experience bears fruit from an artistic perspective, and we learn from those writing about international conflict and political upheaval how much power words can have, when insightfully expressed and disseminated to the right audience.
Last time, I came to this conference with a work in progress and devoted most of my time here to improving that manuscript. This time was different: I don’t have a specific project under way, but in some regards I learned more this time than last because I didn’t have the same laser focus on one piece of work. Instead, I talked about journalism and journaling, about blogging and Tweeting and reading.
I ran into friends from other conferences, and I met people for the first time. Some have accomplished far more than I have as a writer; others were barely ready to put pen to paper. I came away from every informal discussion and panel session feeling like I’d learned something.
As I said at the outset, attending a conference like this is an irreproducible experience. Spending time with other writers is different from gathering in any other group, and that’s not always a good thing. Some writers, in my opinion, spend far too much time discussing the craft and would be better off powering up their laptop and doing some writing. But spending this much time together, regardless of the content covered, affirms our validity. We are writers. Published many times over or never yet in print, confident in our abilities or barely able to read a sentence we’ve written aloud, we’re here because we care so much about self-expression and the written word. And that in itself makes gathering together a wonderful experience.
Showing posts with label writer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writer. Show all posts
Friday, June 24, 2011
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
If I heard it, I'll remember it
I was making a quick stop at the general store here in town when I ran into a woman I had met only once, at a New Year’s Eve party six months ago. She was buying a cake mix to make a Summer Solstice cake and mentioned that her elder daughter was home from college for the summer and doing an internship nearby. “And is she still seeing Henry?” I asked.
The woman looked briefly stunned. “How do you know about Henry?”
“You told us on New Year’s Eve. Oh, and by the way, I was thinking of you recently because of a novel I’m reading that reminded me of how you and your husband started dating in high school.”
Now she looked even more astonished. Oops, I’d done it again. I’m usually more careful, but because our encounter was unexpected, I’d let my guard down.
I have this very, very peculiar problem. Though this is entirely self-diagnosed, my theory is that I have a phonographic memory: not a photographic memory, where I remember what I see, but phonographic, where I remember what I hear. Specifically when people are telling me anecdotes about their lives. So when I’m talking to friends or acquaintances, I routinely refer to trivial details that they’ve relayed to me in the past, only to find them astonished and sometimes a little disturbed that I recall those details.
In my thirties, I finally realized that this tendency made me a bit of a social oddity and learned to rein it in. Now I pretend not to know things about people simply because I know there’s no way those people will remember having shared those details with me. Occasionally, people find it flattering that I remember the littlest stories they’ve recounted. For example, the mother of one of my daughter’s friends was amused when I remembered that her sons named a vitamin after their aunt, and now I always ask after Aunt Vitamin when I see this mom. But other people just find it weird, almost as if I’ve been spying on them. “What do you mean, how was my college roommate’s layover in Iceland?” they’ll snap, having long forgotten themselves that they mentioned to me one day at the post office that their roommate was en route to Europe via Iceland that very day.
And sometimes it makes certain events a little more boring than they might otherwise be. When I meet friends-of-friends, I can recall every detail that our mutual friend has told me about them – details that people often share as small talk at weddings and other get-togethers. So sometimes I pretend not to know that someone follows a vegan diet or once dated a U.S. senator’s son simply so that we’ll have something to talk about when we meet.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to talk to a newspaper columnist whose work I’d followed for a long time. I mentioned finding it funny that her son confused his kindergarten teacher with his rabbi. “My son is a senior in high school,” she said, sure I was thinking of someone else.
“But you wrote about it once,” I told her.
“I wrote a column about my son mistaking his kindergarten teacher for our rabbi?”
“Not a whole column. You just mentioned it.”
She clearly had no memory of including this tiny detail in a column that was probably about an entirely different topic. But I remembered.
I assume this phonographic memory is related to the fact that I became a journalist, though I’m not sure which came first: the interest in telling other people’s stories, or the improbable aptitude for remembering what I’ve heard. I tend to think I’m unusually attentive to what people tell me; thus I remember. But I suspect it’s somewhat physiological in nature as well, something about cognitive patterns. My sisters and my mother are both very good at remembering people’s stories as well, though I don’t think they’ve found it to be quite the social liability I have.
No matter; professionally it’s tremendously useful. I don’t need a Rolodex; it’s all in my memory, whether I need to contact someone who has a family member with a food allergy or track down a source who has a neighbor that works for NASA. And some of my friends have even learned to take advantage of me as a resource, which I fully support. One close friend routinely calls me when she needs to fact-check certain details of her own life. “What was the name of the town where I lived when I was studying in Russia?” she’ll ask. “What were the circumstances of the case I heard the first time I had jury duty?”
For a writer, this total recall is not a bad thing. Perhaps it will lessen somewhat with age. But in any case, I’ve learned to hold back most of the time so that I don’t come across like a stalker when I encounter acquaintances about whom I know far more than they realize. Except for times like today when I briefly lose those inhibitions.
The woman I ran into in the general store said that her daughter and Henry were not currently seeing each other. I’ll be more prudent about bringing up the subject next time we meet, which probably won’t be until next New Year’s Eve if then. But when I see her, I can ask how the Summer Solstice cake she made for her younger daughter and friends came out. There is that one advantage, after all: I’m never tongue-tied at parties. And if the CIA has any questions about anyone I’ve ever met, they know where to find me.
The woman looked briefly stunned. “How do you know about Henry?”
“You told us on New Year’s Eve. Oh, and by the way, I was thinking of you recently because of a novel I’m reading that reminded me of how you and your husband started dating in high school.”
Now she looked even more astonished. Oops, I’d done it again. I’m usually more careful, but because our encounter was unexpected, I’d let my guard down.
I have this very, very peculiar problem. Though this is entirely self-diagnosed, my theory is that I have a phonographic memory: not a photographic memory, where I remember what I see, but phonographic, where I remember what I hear. Specifically when people are telling me anecdotes about their lives. So when I’m talking to friends or acquaintances, I routinely refer to trivial details that they’ve relayed to me in the past, only to find them astonished and sometimes a little disturbed that I recall those details.
In my thirties, I finally realized that this tendency made me a bit of a social oddity and learned to rein it in. Now I pretend not to know things about people simply because I know there’s no way those people will remember having shared those details with me. Occasionally, people find it flattering that I remember the littlest stories they’ve recounted. For example, the mother of one of my daughter’s friends was amused when I remembered that her sons named a vitamin after their aunt, and now I always ask after Aunt Vitamin when I see this mom. But other people just find it weird, almost as if I’ve been spying on them. “What do you mean, how was my college roommate’s layover in Iceland?” they’ll snap, having long forgotten themselves that they mentioned to me one day at the post office that their roommate was en route to Europe via Iceland that very day.
And sometimes it makes certain events a little more boring than they might otherwise be. When I meet friends-of-friends, I can recall every detail that our mutual friend has told me about them – details that people often share as small talk at weddings and other get-togethers. So sometimes I pretend not to know that someone follows a vegan diet or once dated a U.S. senator’s son simply so that we’ll have something to talk about when we meet.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to talk to a newspaper columnist whose work I’d followed for a long time. I mentioned finding it funny that her son confused his kindergarten teacher with his rabbi. “My son is a senior in high school,” she said, sure I was thinking of someone else.
“But you wrote about it once,” I told her.
“I wrote a column about my son mistaking his kindergarten teacher for our rabbi?”
“Not a whole column. You just mentioned it.”
She clearly had no memory of including this tiny detail in a column that was probably about an entirely different topic. But I remembered.
I assume this phonographic memory is related to the fact that I became a journalist, though I’m not sure which came first: the interest in telling other people’s stories, or the improbable aptitude for remembering what I’ve heard. I tend to think I’m unusually attentive to what people tell me; thus I remember. But I suspect it’s somewhat physiological in nature as well, something about cognitive patterns. My sisters and my mother are both very good at remembering people’s stories as well, though I don’t think they’ve found it to be quite the social liability I have.
No matter; professionally it’s tremendously useful. I don’t need a Rolodex; it’s all in my memory, whether I need to contact someone who has a family member with a food allergy or track down a source who has a neighbor that works for NASA. And some of my friends have even learned to take advantage of me as a resource, which I fully support. One close friend routinely calls me when she needs to fact-check certain details of her own life. “What was the name of the town where I lived when I was studying in Russia?” she’ll ask. “What were the circumstances of the case I heard the first time I had jury duty?”
For a writer, this total recall is not a bad thing. Perhaps it will lessen somewhat with age. But in any case, I’ve learned to hold back most of the time so that I don’t come across like a stalker when I encounter acquaintances about whom I know far more than they realize. Except for times like today when I briefly lose those inhibitions.
The woman I ran into in the general store said that her daughter and Henry were not currently seeing each other. I’ll be more prudent about bringing up the subject next time we meet, which probably won’t be until next New Year’s Eve if then. But when I see her, I can ask how the Summer Solstice cake she made for her younger daughter and friends came out. There is that one advantage, after all: I’m never tongue-tied at parties. And if the CIA has any questions about anyone I’ve ever met, they know where to find me.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
A writer minds her adverbs
My agent sent me six pages of editorial suggestions earlier this week, and today I cleared my schedule to spend the entire work day contemplating her edits and revising my manuscript.
What a luxury: to be able to spend the day working on my own writing. Well, it wasn’t actually the whole day. I sat down to my desk just before 9 AM, with the contentment that comes from knowing the kids are at school, the livestock is grazing, the dog has had enough early-morning activity that she’ll doze for a few hours, the dishwasher is running and the kitchen floor is swept. A swept floor is, for me, the mint on the pillow, the symbol that I’ve made it through my morning clean-up list and am done with that part of the day. Even my husband was out at a series of work-related appointments. I was alone in the house with my manuscript and my revisions.
But first I had to do a couple of hours of consulting. Billable hours, you know -- never a good idea to neglect those. The municipal management consultant I work for has a community development plan due in just a few weeks, and I owed her a significant rewrite on the public water and sewer section. So I did that, and when I was done, the dog was staring at me anxiously. “I get paid to write, not to go running with you,” I told her. She stared some more. “We’ll go by noon,” I promised. At 11:45, dog-owner guilt won out over billable hours. Dogs can’t even tell time, I grumbled as I changed into my running clothes, but it’s the dog owner’s code of honor that when you tell your pup you’ll do something by noon, you stick to it.
After a short run, I pulled up my agent’s list of suggestions and opened my manuscript file. And as I read through the pages, I kept thinking, “Wow, do I use a lot of words. Words after words. Words piled on words. Words entangled with words.”
I don’t even use that many different words. My vocabulary is an embarrassment to me. It’s not that I misuse words – it’s that for a journalist, I don’t know very many. On various writing projects this week, I’ve found myself struggling for synonyms for the simplest words: “appealing.” “Wonderful.” “Thrill.” “Delighted.” All positive words, I now notice. Interesting that I seem to have plenty of ways to express negative reactions, but get stuck using the same words over and over again for the good stuff.
As a writer, I believe my greatest editorial flaw is using adverbs. Only recently did I start making myself methodically cross out adverbs. Oops, there’s another one. As I combed through my manuscript today, I was alarmed to note how many adverbs modified every verb and adjective. A business decision was described as “extremely problematic.” A plan was “perfectly reasonable.” A challenge was “enormously frustrating.” Modifiers modifying modifiers.
Finally I stopped deleting and took a moment to think about what the role of adverbs is. To further elucidate, I decided. To clarify the way in which something was done, or was perceived.
And sometimes that’s useful; but more often, it’s superfluous. My husband has a famous expression. Famous within our family, anyway. Once he grew exasperated listening to me give him information and said, “Stop explaining things!” “That’s our problem, isn’t it?” my father later commented. “We’re all such explainers.”
Adverbs explain things, and as Rick suggested, a lot of times those things don’t require further explanation. Familiar as I am with the “show don’t tell” max im, it’s true that I still feel the need to qualify, to use adverbs to further delineate the degree to which a certain description pertains. “extremely.” “Particularly.” “Severely.” “Barely.” “Somewhat.” “Very.””Absurdly.”
Just tell the story, I reminded myself. Show don’t tell. Or, as Strunk and White succinctly say – I mean, as Strunk and White say – “Use nouns and verbs.” Let the things and the actions carry the story along without trying to direct the reader’s interpretation.
If I could do that, and build my vocabulary with some new adjectives, I think I’d find myself to be a much more skilled writer in very little time. I mean, in little time.
So, a writer’s rsolution for today: fewer adverbs. Use nouns and verbs. Ultimately, Rick was right. Oops, I mean, Rick was right. It’s simply a matter of being straightforward. Oops again. It’s a matter of being straightforward. Stop explaining things.
What a luxury: to be able to spend the day working on my own writing. Well, it wasn’t actually the whole day. I sat down to my desk just before 9 AM, with the contentment that comes from knowing the kids are at school, the livestock is grazing, the dog has had enough early-morning activity that she’ll doze for a few hours, the dishwasher is running and the kitchen floor is swept. A swept floor is, for me, the mint on the pillow, the symbol that I’ve made it through my morning clean-up list and am done with that part of the day. Even my husband was out at a series of work-related appointments. I was alone in the house with my manuscript and my revisions.
But first I had to do a couple of hours of consulting. Billable hours, you know -- never a good idea to neglect those. The municipal management consultant I work for has a community development plan due in just a few weeks, and I owed her a significant rewrite on the public water and sewer section. So I did that, and when I was done, the dog was staring at me anxiously. “I get paid to write, not to go running with you,” I told her. She stared some more. “We’ll go by noon,” I promised. At 11:45, dog-owner guilt won out over billable hours. Dogs can’t even tell time, I grumbled as I changed into my running clothes, but it’s the dog owner’s code of honor that when you tell your pup you’ll do something by noon, you stick to it.
After a short run, I pulled up my agent’s list of suggestions and opened my manuscript file. And as I read through the pages, I kept thinking, “Wow, do I use a lot of words. Words after words. Words piled on words. Words entangled with words.”
I don’t even use that many different words. My vocabulary is an embarrassment to me. It’s not that I misuse words – it’s that for a journalist, I don’t know very many. On various writing projects this week, I’ve found myself struggling for synonyms for the simplest words: “appealing.” “Wonderful.” “Thrill.” “Delighted.” All positive words, I now notice. Interesting that I seem to have plenty of ways to express negative reactions, but get stuck using the same words over and over again for the good stuff.
As a writer, I believe my greatest editorial flaw is using adverbs. Only recently did I start making myself methodically cross out adverbs. Oops, there’s another one. As I combed through my manuscript today, I was alarmed to note how many adverbs modified every verb and adjective. A business decision was described as “extremely problematic.” A plan was “perfectly reasonable.” A challenge was “enormously frustrating.” Modifiers modifying modifiers.
Finally I stopped deleting and took a moment to think about what the role of adverbs is. To further elucidate, I decided. To clarify the way in which something was done, or was perceived.
And sometimes that’s useful; but more often, it’s superfluous. My husband has a famous expression. Famous within our family, anyway. Once he grew exasperated listening to me give him information and said, “Stop explaining things!” “That’s our problem, isn’t it?” my father later commented. “We’re all such explainers.”
Adverbs explain things, and as Rick suggested, a lot of times those things don’t require further explanation. Familiar as I am with the “show don’t tell” max im, it’s true that I still feel the need to qualify, to use adverbs to further delineate the degree to which a certain description pertains. “extremely.” “Particularly.” “Severely.” “Barely.” “Somewhat.” “Very.””Absurdly.”
Just tell the story, I reminded myself. Show don’t tell. Or, as Strunk and White succinctly say – I mean, as Strunk and White say – “Use nouns and verbs.” Let the things and the actions carry the story along without trying to direct the reader’s interpretation.
If I could do that, and build my vocabulary with some new adjectives, I think I’d find myself to be a much more skilled writer in very little time. I mean, in little time.
So, a writer’s rsolution for today: fewer adverbs. Use nouns and verbs. Ultimately, Rick was right. Oops, I mean, Rick was right. It’s simply a matter of being straightforward. Oops again. It’s a matter of being straightforward. Stop explaining things.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Social media and me, Part I: Why I really like Twitter
I think of my cousin Buck as what technology watchers call an early adapter. On the younger end of the baby boomer demographic, he has always been quick to use and acquire what’s new, from cell phones in the early 1990s to web-enabled wristwatches in the early 2000s. My son still remembers using Buck’s watch to look up the temperature during a Rockies game in July of 2005 (he discovered it was 106 degrees).
So when my literary agent urged me to sign up for Twitter, I figured Buck would be one of the few personal contacts I’d find already there. Most of my friends love Facebook, a technology I’ve diligently avoided. (“Once I find time to read the New York Times cover to cover every day, I’ll consider Facebook,” I always say when asked. Could still happen.) But so far, my social cohort hasn't been drawn in by Twitter, which resulted in a somewhat inscrutable exchange with my mother-in-law in which I said, “Not everyone is using Twitter. My friends don’t use Twitter.” She replied, “Well, your friends aren’t everyone!” “No,” I said, a little bit puzzled, “but they’re someone. So if they’re not using it, everyone can’t be.” These who’s-on-first exchanges are not altogether uncommon in our family.)
But Buck wasn't there. At least I couldn't find him. So I e-mailed him directly to ask him why he wasn’t on Twitter, and he admitted he didn’t quite understand how to use it. Or why.
This is how I felt a month ago, but in the past three weeks I’ve become something of a convert. For a writer, Twitter, with its severely abstemious limit of 140 characters including punctuation marks and spaces, is a terrific challenge in editorial self-discipline. I have trouble keeping my personal-essay columns to 800 words and my feature stories under 1,000 words: expressing a thought, even just one singular thought, cogently in 140 characters gives my editing skills a workout and has succeeded to do what no other medium could: taught me to eliminate adverbs. Can I really tell an anecdote about the kids, narrate a weekend excursion or describe a run in 140 characters? Why, what do you know: it turns out I can, when I absolutely have to.
I also like the quick-update format of Twitter. So often, events catch my attention but don’t seem to merit an actual letter or e-mail to anyone. It’s not that I’m too lazy to write it out; it’s that I’m not sure the event is worthy of taking up my reader’s time. E-mailing a friend or relative directly about, say, Holly learning to ride a bike or my first experience baking no-knead bread presupposes their interest in the topic. Posting a one-sentence “Tweet” informing them that Holly has mastered her two-wheeler or that the bread was a success doesn’t seem nearly as presumptuous. Conversely, I would love to get frequent brief updates from my friends and family members about those events they don’t bother to write to me about. For example, when I reached my cousin Buck by e-mail, he told me about bringing his eldest son to college last month. Had I not initiated the contact, he wouldn’t have bothered to write to me about that, and yet I was definitely interested. And probably so would everyone else who would choose to follow him on Twitter.
Moreover, despite the misconceptions of many non-users, Twitter isn’t just for letting your friends know when you’re about to eat a sandwich or have a new favorite song. It’s ideal for passing along articles and information pertinent to a particular topic. For example, I’m on the mailing list of an acquaintance who is deeply involved in the health care debate and frequently sends all his contacts links to articles about legislative actions and related news. Because you can use Twitter to forward links to items published elsewhere on line, he’d be well-advised to use this method to keep his friends informed, and he’d probably find it easy to build his mailing list as more people interested in the topic found their way to his posts.
And that brings me to another advantage of Twitter: I don’t have to decide who will be interested in what I have to say, because it’s opt-in on the reader’s part. Followers choose to subscribe to the Twitterer’s feed. Normally, whenever any of my essays or articles are published, I send the link to dozens of friends, colleagues and relatives, knowing it’s self-promotional of me but figuring they have the prerogative to ignore it. If they were all Twitter users, it would be their choice to “follow” me, thereby finding out via Twitter when I’ve just published something. And it’s also their prerogative not to follow me, so I’d no longer have to wonder whether to include them in my self-promotions or not.
Nonetheless, at this point most of my friends are still not Twitterers, though a small number have obligingly joined since I did. Naturaly, I still love long talks and good face-to-face visits, but I also like 140-character nuggets of information. If you haven't tried it yet and want to take a look, just go to my Twitter feed at www.Twitter.com/NancySWest, and then let me know what you think!
So when my literary agent urged me to sign up for Twitter, I figured Buck would be one of the few personal contacts I’d find already there. Most of my friends love Facebook, a technology I’ve diligently avoided. (“Once I find time to read the New York Times cover to cover every day, I’ll consider Facebook,” I always say when asked. Could still happen.) But so far, my social cohort hasn't been drawn in by Twitter, which resulted in a somewhat inscrutable exchange with my mother-in-law in which I said, “Not everyone is using Twitter. My friends don’t use Twitter.” She replied, “Well, your friends aren’t everyone!” “No,” I said, a little bit puzzled, “but they’re someone. So if they’re not using it, everyone can’t be.” These who’s-on-first exchanges are not altogether uncommon in our family.)
But Buck wasn't there. At least I couldn't find him. So I e-mailed him directly to ask him why he wasn’t on Twitter, and he admitted he didn’t quite understand how to use it. Or why.
This is how I felt a month ago, but in the past three weeks I’ve become something of a convert. For a writer, Twitter, with its severely abstemious limit of 140 characters including punctuation marks and spaces, is a terrific challenge in editorial self-discipline. I have trouble keeping my personal-essay columns to 800 words and my feature stories under 1,000 words: expressing a thought, even just one singular thought, cogently in 140 characters gives my editing skills a workout and has succeeded to do what no other medium could: taught me to eliminate adverbs. Can I really tell an anecdote about the kids, narrate a weekend excursion or describe a run in 140 characters? Why, what do you know: it turns out I can, when I absolutely have to.
I also like the quick-update format of Twitter. So often, events catch my attention but don’t seem to merit an actual letter or e-mail to anyone. It’s not that I’m too lazy to write it out; it’s that I’m not sure the event is worthy of taking up my reader’s time. E-mailing a friend or relative directly about, say, Holly learning to ride a bike or my first experience baking no-knead bread presupposes their interest in the topic. Posting a one-sentence “Tweet” informing them that Holly has mastered her two-wheeler or that the bread was a success doesn’t seem nearly as presumptuous. Conversely, I would love to get frequent brief updates from my friends and family members about those events they don’t bother to write to me about. For example, when I reached my cousin Buck by e-mail, he told me about bringing his eldest son to college last month. Had I not initiated the contact, he wouldn’t have bothered to write to me about that, and yet I was definitely interested. And probably so would everyone else who would choose to follow him on Twitter.
Moreover, despite the misconceptions of many non-users, Twitter isn’t just for letting your friends know when you’re about to eat a sandwich or have a new favorite song. It’s ideal for passing along articles and information pertinent to a particular topic. For example, I’m on the mailing list of an acquaintance who is deeply involved in the health care debate and frequently sends all his contacts links to articles about legislative actions and related news. Because you can use Twitter to forward links to items published elsewhere on line, he’d be well-advised to use this method to keep his friends informed, and he’d probably find it easy to build his mailing list as more people interested in the topic found their way to his posts.
And that brings me to another advantage of Twitter: I don’t have to decide who will be interested in what I have to say, because it’s opt-in on the reader’s part. Followers choose to subscribe to the Twitterer’s feed. Normally, whenever any of my essays or articles are published, I send the link to dozens of friends, colleagues and relatives, knowing it’s self-promotional of me but figuring they have the prerogative to ignore it. If they were all Twitter users, it would be their choice to “follow” me, thereby finding out via Twitter when I’ve just published something. And it’s also their prerogative not to follow me, so I’d no longer have to wonder whether to include them in my self-promotions or not.
Nonetheless, at this point most of my friends are still not Twitterers, though a small number have obligingly joined since I did. Naturaly, I still love long talks and good face-to-face visits, but I also like 140-character nuggets of information. If you haven't tried it yet and want to take a look, just go to my Twitter feed at www.Twitter.com/NancySWest, and then let me know what you think!
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