I found something shiny in my email

Image by Vicky Brock via Flickr

I found something shiny in my email.

Email is not one of my favourite tasks. It’s a never-ending pile and it’s always in danger of collapsing on me. I’ve tried many strategies to manage it but nothing is working so far.

There are four sorts of email I do like – emails from friends, emails from people who love to read or write, emails from my editor and emails from kids whose school I’ve visited.

I always encourage kids to email me. I love to hear they enjoyed my session or that they like to read and sometimes, not very often, I get an email from a kid who likes to write.

Two days ago an email arrived headed: Can you help me with my story? from a girl at a school I had visited last month. I responded to say I would love to but I was drowning in work for the next two days and I would get back to her then.

This afternoon I opened the email attachment. It wasn’t a lot – a beginning and an end. Her problem was finding what went in the middle.

The writing was wonderful and beautifully crafted. I sat there stunned.

Sure, it needed a little polishing. It was obviously the work of a young person and I would have chosen different words from my own wider adult vocabulary but I know she’ll find those herself if she keeps writing. She doesn’t need me to pre-empt that.

I don’t know how old she is, I would guess maybe Year 5, probably Year 6. What she had was laid out with headings – beginning, complication and ending – the things she had learned in class. I do know that I’d be pleased with myself if I had written that beginning and end - the immediately engaging character, the perfectly timed humour, the visual action scene - and in the end, a killer last line.

I edited a little, explaining why – pruning an unnecessary sentence, removing a piece of “telling” and correcting the speech attribution punctuation. I wasn’t game to touch anything else. And it didn’t need me to.  Finally, I made a list of suggestions for how to find the story for the missing middle. I hoped she might share the next installment with me.

I polished lightly because it was already shining. The shiniest thing I’ve ever found in my email.

Sandy Writes - In defence of the Thesaurus

Cartoon by Dave Walker. at We Blog Cartoons.

I'm always interested to read what other writers having to say about their writing process, I have a Pinterest Board for Writers On Writing where I have begun to pin my favourites. There's not a lot there at the moment so I'm looking for suggestions if you've got one to recommend.

Sometimes I find myself disagreeing, even with someone as talented as Stephen King. His books are wonderful and I learned so much from his On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, but when I he said: "Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule", I had to shake my head. It's not like that for me at all.

I understand where he's coming from. The thesaurus is often consulted to find a 'better word' for a variety of reasons - more unique, more formal, more literary - and invariably a word chosen on such basis will ruin any sentence it is placed in.

But there are exceptions. There are are different ways to use a thesaurus. I open the thesaurus when the word I have in my head doesn't feel right - it doesn't match the feeling I have in my heart. I am rarely looking for a replacement word - I am looking for a different word that may set me thinking in a different direction. A word may lead to an image, almost never to a direct insertion.

I particular like how the Visual Thesaurus works in this way. Sometimes the word I end up with is not a synonym by a long shot, but it is a word that feels like it fits or helps me to find a more fitting string of words. The Visual Thesaurus is an organic way to search for a word. As you step out along the nodes the correlation between word and meaning widens but the correlation between word and feel is not lessened.

Well, that's the way it works for me.

Sandy Writes - In Defence of Short sentences

When I began to write I immediately noticed a major difference between the style that came naturally to me and the works of fiction I loved to read. My sentences were usually quite short. I was appalled that I couldn't get this simple thing right. I tried hard to improve - to model my writing on the work of authors I admired. But it just wouldn't happen.

When my first book was accepted for publication I thought perhaps it didn't really matter. But some months later, when I took my own book from my library shelf to read, I was disappointed all over again. It didn't read like a real book. It was full of short sentences.

In time, I've grown comfortable with those short sentences. I can still build beautiful images or fast action. It's all about how I string them together and I love writing them.

One of the websites I like to visit is Maria Popova's Brain Pickings. Today I discovered in her review of Several Short Sentences About Writing, these words of wisdom from another short sentence defender:

You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences.
How long is a good idea?
Does it become less good if it’s expressed in two sentences instead of one?
[…]
Writing short sentences will help you write strong, balanced sentences of any length. Strong, lengthy sentences are really just strong, short sentences joined in various ways.

E.B White was also a defender of short sentences. Another Brain Pickings post on that here.

And a final comment from Several Short Sentences about Writing by Verilyn Klinkenborg: The only link between you and the reader is the sentence you’re making.

The length of the sentence really doesn't matter after all.

SANDY WRITES - Time to Write

So often I hear: I want to write so much. I've got a story to tell but I don't have the time yet.

I understand. I truly do. But as I carefully explain, there never will be time unless you make it. Stay up half an hour later every night. Stuff ten minutes of ideas into a notebook while you are sitting at the bus stop. Time to write isn't born. It's made.

I don't know how often I convince anyone but I think I did once. We were having a conversation mid-panel-break and when the break was over, she picked up her bag, thanked me and said goodbye. 'Aren't you going to stay for the other half of the panel discussion,' I asked. 'No,' she said, smiling. 'I'm going home to write. Making time starts now.' I wish I knew her name becuase I suspect it might be on the front of a book one day soon.

I too struggle to find the time to write. I have a family and a daytime job. More books on shelves hasn't made any extra time miraculously appear. In fact, quite the opposite. Now I also need time to speak in schools and attend festivals. I love that part but it means I have less time than ever to write.

Sometimes I rush down to my laptop before dinner and scrawl a quick pargraph from an idea I've been carrying around in my head (or notebook) all day. I read it through and delete half of it. After dinner I rush back, in between supervising homework and packing lunches. I delete those few remaining sentences and wonder why I bothered with them in the first place.

Sometimes I feel too tired to write later at night. Usually I don't get back to my office until 11pm. Maybe I'll take the day off and write some more in the morning, I think. Mum, my tooth hurts, can you make a dental appointment before school? OK. Maybe I'll write in the afternoon, I decide. Mum, can you pick me up early from soccer? OK. I'm flexible. I can do this. It's got to be the midnight hour or nothing. *sigh*

I'll be tired and sleepy but a cup of tea will help. And once the fingers are flying, the words are usually flowing. Hopefully I'll write something good. And if it doesn't work out that way, I'll just delete it tomorrow in those few moments before dinner. Sometimes I make a lot of progress and sometimes I make a little. But I always make some time to write.