tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10398274054597315622012-01-01T12:57:24.899-05:00Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.comBlogger281100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-83506665042454274552009-09-11T09:43:00.006-04:002009-09-11T10:35:58.325-04:00

It may have become apparent to some readers that I have run out of steam, blogwise. I've begun to feel that this blog, though it has proven exceptionally handy with respect to the workshops I teach, has outlived its usefulness to me; I find that I would prefer to direct my efforts elsewhere. I come to that conclusion with with no small amount of regret, as I know that many of you have found

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-39975477616481029542009-07-17T12:10:00.013-04:002009-07-17T16:39:46.210-04:00

You know what I love about this blog? Reference mileage. Oh, sure, it may be long, dull, and yellow. It may only have seven regular readers. It may be updated only as frequently as I get oil changes (every 5000 miles with the new car). But when people want to diagram sentences, find out how long Rumpelstiltskin slept*, learn what's further than the moon, or get advice on how to remove

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-56164736506312954392009-05-23T13:09:00.029-04:002009-05-27T09:05:08.565-04:00

So last Wednesday, when the story revisions for the spring writing workshop started coming in, I had one of those uh oh moments as I realised, too late, that over the last six weeks' teaching I'd missed out something fundamental: scenes. I never really explained what a scene is, or how you go about writing one-- not directly, anyway. In my experience, beginning writers produce better

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-72828177818243289012008-12-04T09:51:00.004-05:002008-12-04T15:18:03.205-05:00

Last night we held the last of the six workshops. Well, not the last forever workshop, as the group wants to keep meeting semi-regularly, so that they don't stop writing. This pleases me. It tells me I've done my job.It's like shelter cats: you can't save all of them. But if you can do something for one of them, or two or three-- and you do it-- then you've given something back. If I can

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-53057813415647044602008-11-20T08:39:00.009-05:002008-11-20T12:05:00.578-05:00

I find myself down to three workshoppers, with one session to go. I'd hoped the others might come back. I don't think they will. So that's the paragraphing exercise right out. Never doing that again.It kills me to lose people. As a teacher, you love working with those students of ample ability who cheerfully stick it out long enough to fly, because then you get to watch them fly; you hope

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-3393701404681323852008-11-13T10:15:00.010-05:002008-11-13T14:40:51.745-05:00

One of my workshoppers emailed me over the weekend with a panicked question about the "Chastity" assignment: I'm stuck, she told me. Can I use clauses and phrases that function as adverbs or adjectives? ...and as I recall, the same question came up when I did the exercise myself. I think technically it is cheating, if all we're doing is following the rules set by Le Guin. However, as I said

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-41202987400285068152008-11-06T09:10:00.008-05:002008-11-06T10:49:04.154-05:00

Here's the big secret about teaching writing: you don't have to be a monumentally successful writer to do it. You don't have to have a significant amount of publication experience behind you; you don't have to have been writing for twenty years. Both certainly help, of course, as does having a writing degree, if only because all three look good on a CV. But teaching is fundamentally about

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-9269257270830553132008-10-30T08:03:00.009-04:002008-10-30T09:55:27.535-04:00

This week, I learned that not everyone loves fiddling with sentences, and with the flow of a paragraph, as much as I do. You may find that you hate what follows; my workshoppers certainly did. Do it anyway. The torment doesn't last long, and the results can be interesting.My workshoppers wrote stellar stuff last night. So will you. Hop to it.Ebb and flow - the Narrative SentenceMaking stuff

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-69398759578466632602008-10-23T10:14:00.007-04:002008-10-23T15:04:40.814-04:00

So the first workshop session was last night. This is the second creative writing workshop I've taught for the library, and the first long workshop-- six weeks-- I've done in a while. I think it went well, in spite of occasional stammering and thought-train derailment on my part. Writing is easy. Leading a discussion is something else altogether. I suspect I will always find the latter more

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-14416019821374067982008-10-17T12:01:00.016-04:002009-09-11T10:43:57.095-04:00

My favourite chapter of The Graveyard Book.* Watch it if you haven't yet.I've been wanting to do a bloggy review of The Graveyard Book for about a week now, but the only things I can think to say are oh, and also wow, and cor, and perfect. It is: it's perfect. Just astonishing. And the Danse Macabre happens right in the middle of the book! Of course it does! Perfect!But it's something

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-41861988815430990252008-10-13T11:55:00.009-04:002008-10-13T14:50:57.216-04:00

Ten million trillion neutrinos will speed harmlessly through your brain and body in the time it takes to read this sentence. By the time you have read this sentence, they will be farther away than the moon.-- Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way*One of the books I just finished closes almost precisely on the same line, and with a similar image, as a short story I've been trying to write

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-62389815174477566842008-10-01T11:22:00.015-04:002008-10-02T11:52:29.925-04:00

Oh, we make it all sound so bloody easy, don't we? Writers, I mean. When we're writing well. We talk about writing as though we'd know. Start from a line, I says to students, when I have them. Start from an image. Start with what happened when you brushed your teeth this morning. Anything. Begin where you begin! I call it spew. Natalie Goldberg says to begin from First Thoughts, which is

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-39409283188649217842008-09-25T09:21:00.007-04:002008-09-25T09:49:03.657-04:00

Here's an exercise which I wish I could think of a way to use in a fiction workshop, but I'm not sure it'd really work: did you see Neil Gaiman's post this morning? He's written a found poem-- that is, taken an existing passage of text and turned it into a poem. You can get away with this kind of thing in poetry, because you're doing something new with the passage you find; its meaning changes

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-41762731228097308062008-09-09T16:18:00.030-04:002008-09-10T15:30:09.556-04:00

Just a poem today, for the night garden project. I wrote it with my best friend's daughter in mind. Heaven knows why I'd want to tell a two-and-a-half-year-old girl a thing like this.Tinkerbell and the Butterfly Bush(for Audrey) It isn't true that Tinkerbell came into our back yard at night, to buzz around in sunny moon- light and wait till my teeth fell out, so she could carve a new

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-55986186232636962332008-09-05T12:55:00.011-04:002008-09-05T17:16:54.052-04:00

It's been a weird week. After I finished the exercises in Steering the Craft, I wasn't sure where to go next in planning the writing workshop; I've sort of been flailing around. I do need some short stories to work with, and have been doing a lot of reading to that end. I'd appreciate your* input, too. I'm looking for favorite short stories-- the ones you love, the ones that stick with you,

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-61440718193113431012008-08-27T11:43:00.008-04:002008-08-27T13:06:14.572-04:00

Well, that about wraps it up for the Le Guin text-- though having worked through it, I think Steering the Craft is one of those books a writer can easily revisit regardless of ability or experience. It's not a manual of one-time, one-lesson exercises, where if you've done them, you've done them, and a return wouldn't pose much challenge. Steering the Craft wears well. You need it the way you need

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-60750790885384585562008-08-26T08:07:00.009-04:002009-05-22T10:17:41.408-04:00

My hub-man tells me I'm an editor at heart, and he is not wrong. I love revision. It's the easy bit, or so I tells myself. I don't have to make anything new happen, I don't have to fill any more space; instead I get to go back and mess with sentence rhythms (love that crazy rhythm), clear up anything that wants clarity, and cut anything that just doesn't work. I'm a little too good at it,

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-75929611250349460912008-08-20T09:15:00.007-04:002009-05-22T10:16:10.636-04:00

My fellow workshoppers and I-- back when I was taking graduate writing workshops-- spent a lot of time telling each other what not to write, often without really meaning to. I remember one friend whose big beef was cliché. She was an extremely gifted writer and a sensitive, intelligent reader-- one of the people I enjoyed working with most, and to whom I'd go first when I needed advice. But

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-70288030916670945392008-08-18T11:16:00.004-04:002009-05-22T10:15:06.722-04:00

It's taken me a while to get through the exercises in Chapter 9 of Steering the Craft, which all have to do with the different ways dialogue and narration reveal information in a story-- about a character, about something that happened in the past, about something that's to come-- anything the reader needs to know or which the story itself needs in order to be lively, and rich. The trick isn't

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-40862577167575339102008-08-13T12:30:00.010-04:002009-05-22T10:12:18.680-04:00

I have a lot of trouble making point-of-view shifts in fiction; it's often the thing that can bring whatever I'm working on to a screaming halt. My instincts tell me to shift like I'm driving a Jag convertible at a hundred miles an hour along a clifftop, with the sea crashing on jagged rocks below. Reason reminds me that I never learned to drive a stick in the first place: and for that matter,

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-84906915697844612612008-08-12T12:52:00.011-04:002009-05-22T10:10:46.186-04:00

This next exercise from Steering the Craft is rather long; as such, I've only posted my results from Part One. It's similar to yesterday's exercise, in that Le Guin suggests that the reader write several versions of the same scene using many different points of view: first using limited third person, then a detached narrator*, next an observer-narrator**, and finally using the involved-author

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-73757275295924891662008-08-11T09:50:00.016-04:002009-05-22T10:09:34.120-04:00

I was surprised, recently, when my husband told me that he doesn't like stories which use first-person narration. For some reason, he just can't bring himself to make the imaginative leap a reader needs to make, along with the writer, for that particular point of view to succeed. He just doesn't buy it. When a narrator tells him that he did this, or said that, or went there, hubby wants to say

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-2066003691697501472008-08-08T11:08:00.013-04:002009-05-22T10:08:15.704-04:00

I won't try to hide it: the fifth exercise-- which deals with the sparing and effective use (or avoidance) of adjectives and adverbs-- is killing me.Write a paragraph to a page (200-350 words) of descriptive narrative prose without adjectives or adverbs. No dialogue.The point is to give a vivid description of a scene or action, using only verbs, nouns, pronouns, and articles. Adverbs of time

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-11172341993557471462008-08-07T10:04:00.010-04:002009-05-22T10:06:36.127-04:00

I have fallen head over heels in love Steering the Craft, and I've only worked my way up to chapter four. Ursula K. Le Guin is my new hero. We've gone miles beyond the mere consideration of a text from which to teach, here: she's rescued me. She's tricked me into writing. I sit down to an exercise and suddenly there are these ideas; I don't even know where they've come from. I didn't know

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-41963600010004338522008-08-06T08:49:00.021-04:002009-09-11T10:40:28.526-04:00

The above moth is a Pandorus Sphinx. I met him yesterday, nestling in the vines along a low wall which fronts a house couple of streets away from mine; I crouched to stare at him for a long time. I needed to keep as much of him as I could in my head, since the camera was at home.* I got the pictures in the end, of course, but the idea of the moth's been with me since-- how it felt to happen

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-24373058889752653922008-08-05T09:35:00.014-04:002009-05-22T10:00:30.492-04:00

Playing with sentences, with words and lines, is one of my favorite things about writing. (Confidentially, I like messing with sentences better than I like making stuff up-- which can be troublesome if you mean to write fiction.) There are all sorts of rhythmic possibilities and shades of meaning in a line, and a myriad ways you might enrich them, given the right tools. I love punctuation for

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-50209396271505557062008-08-04T07:07:00.009-04:002008-08-04T10:26:56.497-04:00

That would have been a much better title for this blog-- mind your ears-- than the one I chose. Mind your ears is a directive and a joke: listen, now, but-- whoop, careful! Don't trip. Pay attention. Follow the sound. Keep your feet. Look to where the sound leads you.I begin with sound when I write. It's a funny thing to say, but it's true: when I begin a story or an essay, I'll often

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1039827405459731562.post-12632062601537286832008-08-03T12:26:00.001-04:002008-08-03T12:26:59.218-04:00

this is a brand new blog, how lovely

Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03251196964275450121noreply@blogger.com4