Show and Tell

I feel this class has helped me to grow as a writer. From poetry to creative essays, I have discovered new and unique aspects of creative writing. However, the one piece of advice I have found most valuable is to show details in my writing rather than tell.

In fact, an English instructor once said to me, “Show, don’t tell.” That phrase captured my attention, but I always struggled to execute the concept. There seemed no concrete method to replace telling with showing. This class has helped me to discover ways to move in that direction.

Through the many creative writing assignments, I finally comprehend that showing is a way to evoke an emotion in your reader by using words. The writing is meant to appeal to the five senses and make a person feel like they are actually there, experiencing what the character is experiencing. Showing draws the reader into the story. Reflecting on the many pieces I have read, my favorites are always the ones with vivid descriptions: the stories that conjure an image in my mind. The pieces that “tell” me details in a cut-and-dry manner are the ones I put down; they do not engage.

In writing, it is my goal to entertain others. I do not want to be the author whose work is dry and uninspired. Now, I feel I can one day reach this goal, because, each time I pick up a pencil or set my fingers to the keyboard, I remind myself: “Show, don’t tell.”

Oppressive Overshadowing

In Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, the chapter “Total Eclipse” used exceptionally memorable imagery to capture a once-in-a-lifetime experience: a total solar eclipse. Dillard’s vivid descriptions of the eclipse paint a very solemn and apocalyptic image in my mind.

To our eyes, light scattering off surfaces gives them their color. When the moon is between the sun and us, it blocks the infrared rays from reaching the Earth’s surface, giving the entire area a cold, dark look. “The sun was going, and the world was wrong…This color had never been seen on earth. The hues were metallic; their finish was matte…The darkness of night mixed with the colors of day.”  The earth going dark is familiar in the gradual form of twilight descending. It is unnatural to be a bright morning and then “abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky”

For many, darkness is synonymous with evil and desolation. From Dillard’s word paintings, the image of these tendrils of shadow is “eerie as hell.” They are floating across the brightly lit Earth, coating everything in their path with midnight. “It rolled at you across the land at 1,800 miles an hour, hauling darkness like plague behind it.” No one can escape its clutches.

“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt,

It lies behind stars and under hills,

And empty holes it fills,

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, kills laughter.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Feather-Light Futures

“It’s as if the past were sinking like lead, while the feather-light future defies gravity.” Bernard Cooper expertly writes Maps to Anywhere, illustrating throughout the course of his reflections how the past can hold a person down. By living in past memories, it is difficult to embrace the present. For Cooper, the event he seems to dwell upon most is the death of his brother. From my own experiences, it is always difficult to let go of loved ones. It takes years to move beyond the grief phase; each loss seems to take a small part of my heart. That place never fully heals, but eventually it does scar over with good memories and the pain fades.  

With a loss, there is often one question floating through people’s minds, “why, if no one wants to, [does] everyone dies.” This is the question that could be the cause the deluges of tears; those still left on earth cry, not because they are sad for the deceased, but because they miss them. Constant longing for their return, renews the sorrow. It is this living in the past that pulls anyone down like lead, as Cooper describes it. 

However, there is always a hope of a feather-light future where we can all move on from past grievances. This is the hope that keeps us all going from day to day. Without it, we would never be able to remember people with fondness: move on. As Navajo proverb says, “You cannot see the future with tears in your eyes.”

Surgery of the Samurai

As Ernest Hemingway said, “The only kind of writing is rewriting.” This is the most tedious part of any authors’ journey: the revision process. To effectively revise, a writer must cut his or her work up: moving sentences or entire paragraphs, adding words to make it flow, essentially reworking the entire piece.”  Natalie Goldberg captures the essence of revising in her chapters “The Samurai” and “Reading and Rewriting” from Writing Down the Bones.

Goldberg draws an analogy between revising a piece and using a samurai sword. “Like a samurai with an empty mind who cut their opponents in half, be willing not to be sentimental about your writing when you reread it. Look at it with a clear, piercing mind.” The first part accurately captures how I look at the task of rewriting: a brutal, mindless murder of innocent words. However, I often find it difficult to clear my mind and mutilate, then rebuild my own piece.

I must perfect my eyes to be as sharp as a samurai’s blade. It is only then when I can properly dissect my writing. “When you’re in the samurai space, you have to be tough. Not mean, but with the toughness of truth.” It is very difficult to look at my own writing and see what flows, what is a complete mess, and what reads as beautiful prose. I know what I mean to say, so I read it that way, mentally filling in all the gaps. In other cases, I like each individual sentence so much that I cannot bear to remove even one, despite the lack of cohesion. However, this is when I need to get into the samurai mindset and remove myself from the sentimentality of my work. It is then I can remember Goldberg’s words: “Write one good line, you’ll be famous. Write a lot of lukewarm pieces, you’ll put people to sleep.”

Human Compassion

According to Arthur Schopenhauer, “Compassion is the basis of morality.” In her piece The Fifth Story, Clarice Lispector interweaves multiple tales to form a complex image of humanity versus a guilty conscience. To many, insects such as the common cockroach are just pests to be exterminated. However, using these varmints, Lispector introduces the recurring argument reading the value of a life. “Should I renew the lethal sugar every night [and kill more of nature’s creation]?” Despite the fact that these bugs invade homes, carry diseases and scare the unsuspecting, their extermination is strangely accompanied by the despicable feeling of having killed a living creature.

While calling attention to the mindless killing of creatures, Lispector provides a brilliant literary example of how a simple story can have much more to it than meets the eye. As she first tells the story of the “murder” of the cockroaches, she introduces it simply as a successful way to kill the pests, calmly stating, “The cockroaches died,” to summarize the results of her sugary and deadly potion. She proceeds to tell the same story again, this time adding details of her malicious outrage over the invasion of the cockroaches and the burning desire to eradicate them. She adds on two more drafts of the same murderous tale, each time adding details and sculpting the scene of the crime.

By the fourth story, Lispector evokes a newfound sympathy for the cockroaches by introducing the plight of right versus wrong: either bear the creepy-crawly invasions or butcher the pests. Even the executioner “trembled at the sight of that hardening gypsum, the depravity of existence would shatter my inner form.” With it arrives a choice “between two paths…Any choice would mean sacrificing either myself or my soul. I chose.” But Lispector does not reveal the slayer’s choice; instead, she leaves it to our interpretation as to what the fifth story would hold.

This decision on the author’s part makes the reader think more about killing helpless and innocent creatures, who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I cannot count the number of times a poor spider or mosquito has lain smashed, by my doing. Yet, I have felt little remorse; to me they are just pests with no purpose in life. But is this the case? Or, would it be better to give them a little human compassion?

  

A Spark of Inspiration

As William Arthur Ward said, “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” I have encountered many great teachers in my educational career and each one, in his or her own way, has inspired me. This inspiration enables me to remember and comprehend far more about a subject. This is what made Miss Ferenczi, the intriguing substitute teacher in Charles Baxter’s Gryphon, a great teacher: she encouraged the students to think and learn.

Instead of following the typical class schedule, Ms. Ferenczi chooses to engage the students in her own unique way. When she was talking, “there was not a sound in the classroom, except for Miss Ferenczi’s voice.…No one even went to bathroom.” This rapt attention is the gift of an extraordinary instructor. Miss Ferenczi appealed to youths’ learning style with storytelling. And no one was going to forget the interesting facts she illustrated.

For example, for the unit on Egypt Miss Ferenczi did not bore everyone with dates, facts, and details to memorize. Instead, she engrained the Egyptian’s beliefs into each student’s head by describing, “how they [people] behaved—‘well or ill’—in life,” could affect their prospects of reincarnation. Or, that “people act the way they do because of magnetism produced by tidal forces in the solar system, forces produced by the sun and by its ‘planetary ally,’ Jupiter.” Miss Ferenczi’s “ideas themselves were, as the dictionary would say, fabulous.” With such vivid and captivating ideas, none of Miss Ferenczi’s students would ever forget the religious aspects of Egyptian culture.

For young minds, Miss Ferenczi manages to capture the most important foundations of education: an interest in learning. Once this spark is lit for a student, it could be the start of something big; it could change a person’s life. As my great-aunt once said to me, “Labor for learning before you grow old, for learning is better than silver or gold. Silver and gold will vanish away, but a good education will never decay.”

Be the Character

Fiction: fantasies, sci-fi, historical dramatizations, novels. But what is fiction? To me, as long as a story is not narrating a documented event, anything and everything can fall under the category of “fiction.” While the typical format to a story contains a beginning, climax, and end, with creative stories, there is freedom to stretch these guidelines. This is why I enjoy writing fiction. Once a story begins to flow onto paper, there is no right or wrong way to progress a plot; I have creative license.

However, before I can reach the point of “creative licensing,” I must begin sculpting a piece of fiction. I have always fought writer’s block. I know what I want to have happen in each story, but I can never seem to reach the end. The middle becomes like wading through mud and traps me with a slow, dull plot line until I am stuck. The best piece of advice that allowed me to overcome my writer’s block was simply to let the character write the story. This came from Anne Lamott’s chapter on “Character” in her book Bird By Bird.

Previously, I had always made the mistake of trying to get my character to conform to my desired plot. This would make for very dry prose, full of specific descriptions. Just the other day, I attempted to write a short piece of fiction, but kept on stumbling over illustrating a scene to my reader. Lamott’s suggestion to dig deep while getting to know your main character was what saved my story from being boring and me from stress. While writing, I tried to put myself in my character’s shoes: thinking about the little things that are important to her, discovering the way she thinks, opening myself to her opinions. The moment I did that, the story flowed. I removed many of the dry descriptions and began to show the depth through my character’s reactions and feelings. Looking through her eyes allowed me to get a glimpse into another life and, hopefully, convey that to the reader.

While I have tried to write novels and short stories before, I found doing so problematic. It was not until this last short fiction attempt that things finally came together for me. From now on, I will definitely be taking Lamott’s advice and molding the plot to the character instead of the character to the plot.

Pondering...

When I was younger, I always loved Nancy Drew mysteries; now that I am older, I devour books such as A Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Gailbraith. The cliffhangers abundant throughout mystery novels make them impossible to put down. They leave the reader wondering “why?” or “how?” after each sentence. This thought-provoking characteristic draws me to mystery stories. While not a novel, Sharon Krinsky’s collection titled Mystery Stories is no different.

While each of Krinsky’s stories is only a brief paragraph, they capture my attention. It intrigues me how she can illustrate an image or conflict in no more than five sentences. Upon first glance, the stories seem to be relatively straightforward. Krinsky is simply telling her readers about something that happened. However, she is careful never to quite reveal the full story. With each piece, she leaves me wondering and guessing about the significance of minute details. My favorite example of this was Krinsky’s piece “The Red Coats:”

I wear two red coats to a party. I deposit them on the bed. When I go back to get them, one of them is gone. The one that is there is missing its top layer. It is not red anymore—it’s grey with a black lining.

In this piece, Krinsky leaves a number of unanswered questions. The most prevalent in my mind are, “what happened to the one red coat and the top layer of the other?” and “why would someone only take the top layer of a coat?” Krinsky’s deliberate elimination of details leaves the reader to speculate. Was the man remembering wrong? Why would he wear “two red coats” in the first place? What about the missing coat? Could someone have mistaken the coat for his own? What makes him think the grey and black coat is his? There are infinite possibilities.

Despite the inconclusiveness of “The Red Coats,” I like it. My mind will keep coming back to this story, thinking of the many unanswered questions. These Mystery Stories are very memorable. Whether or not a reader likes them, he or she will not be able to read them without pondering the puzzling details.

"Don't judge a book by its cover."

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” But why not? The cover art from City Eclogue perfectly depicts the collection of poems within. The image on the front of the book is unique, purposeful, chaotic, and colorful. It gives little glimpses into a busy city block. In City Eclogue, Roberson seems to tell us a story in his own unique, purposeful, chaotic, and colorful way. In a matter of 120 pages, City Eclogue evokes an image of the bedlam of city life.  

Roberson paints vivid pictures with his words, making the reader feel like he or she has stepped into another world: “dirt mouth curse and graffiti,” “the street as it crested the hill,/the buildings on each side   the railings/of a moon bridge.” With each of his poems, Roberson introduces yet another aspect of city living. From the trash heaps to the transportation, from the buildings to the small natural oases, he touches on it all.

To capture the image, Roberson completes the impression of the city by appealing to the senses. He describes the running of an engine, “as noise in/an otherwise harmonious/system/the blues.” Or the quiet as, “simple quiet not the same as no birds sing,/definitely not the dead of no birds sing…a not quite here running/sound underground, sidewalk’s grate vibrationless.” The mass of humans at a train station are compared to the restlessness of gulls. The ever-changing train schedules portrayed as “a flock of tin birds taking off.” Even the simplest of Roberson’s details, forces his readers to look at the world in a new and distinctive way.

The Virtues of Verse

When I was in grade school, poetry was one of my favorite forms of literature. Ever since reading Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” is the thing with feathers years ago, her name has stuck in my memory. I devoured Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven and committed Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Swing to memory. These three, along with Robert Frost, Shel Silverstein, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, enchanted me with their words. Something about the language and rhythm of these poets’ works captured my heart. When I saw Dickinson’s name listed as the author of 377 (949), which is titled Under the Light, yet under, it was like coming home. After reading many poems previously unfamiliar to me, the ease of Dickinson’s verses and meter greeted me like an old friend.

It is easy to read Under the lights, yet under aloud. Other poems I have read have had such varied lengths of line that it was difficult to keep the constant beat I enjoy in poetry. With this poem, Dickinson stuck to a fairly uniform number of syllables for each line. In the first and third stanza, the number of syllables per line goes seven, seven, seven, six. Stanzas two and four are a bit more varied (six, five, six, five and seven, six, eight, seven respectively), but still easily read together. For me, Dickinson’s consistency makes it easier to move past deciphering the rhythm and into comprehension of the meaning of her poem.

The overall tone of Under the light, yet under is gloomy. In the first stanza, Dickinson gives a sense of claustrophobia: “Under the Light,…the Grass and the Dirt,…the Beetle’s Cellar…the Clover’s Root.” When reading those lines, I feel buried deep, almost suffocating. She contrasted this subterranean feeling with one of soaring, light as a feather into clouds. “Over the Light,…the Arc of the Bird,…the Comet’s chimney…the Cubit’s Head.” This juxtaposition, coupled with the final line of the poem “Between Ourselves and the Dead!” evokes the image of a grave and heaven.

After someone dies, the distance between his or her spirit and us seems to be the most hopeless emotional chasm to cross.  Death is irreversible, cold and unfeeling, leaving those still alive to mourn the loss alone. The body of the deceased is buried under the earth in a grave; his or her spirit is above, watching over us from heaven. Both are out of reach no matter how hard we try. 

Remember to "Let Yourself Write"

What is it about a blank page that zaps any coherent thoughts once floating about in my head, turning them into fog and fluff? Julia Cameron hits the nail on the head in an excerpt from her book, The Right to Write; as she says, “the blank page creates a sense of seriousness.…We forget the term ‘rough draft’ and want everything to emerge as well-polished gems.” I have struggled with this for a long time; writing always seems to draw out the perfectionist side of me. Cameron stresses that writing is not intended as a cause of stress. It should give us joy, not be the means “to self-doubt, to self-scrutiny in the place of self-expression.”

According to Cameron, we were all born with the ability to write well, savoring the power of words. However, academic aspects of writing crush this spirit in many of us. The second an English paper is assigned there is a collective groan. With a specific audience in mind, it is important to watch the sneaky semi-colon and ellipses to make sure they do not find a way into the middle of a sentence. Suddenly every sentence fragment is glaring up from the paper, nearly shouting, “I’m missing my subject!” Or, “Where’s the verb?” When confronted with paper, it is sometimes difficult to remember what the difference is between “there” and “their” or whether “i” comes before or after “e” when following a “c”. Before academia, it did not matter whether everybody ate grandma (“Let us eat grandma!”) because a pesky comma went missing. Now the pressure is on to save all the grandmas out there: “Let us eat, grandma!”

Papers returned with red marks all over ruin the pride felt at completing an assignment. Instead, it becomes important to follow the many confusing grammar rules to a T, follow standard Modern Language Association (MLA) formatting, and keep that oh-so-important 4.0 grade point average. This squelches the creativity out of students and soon they replace belief in themselves with the belief that writing is painful and impossible. “As a result, most of us try to write too carefully. We try to do it ‘right.’ We try to sound smart.” This is the problem: it is impossible to write well when trying too hard. It just does not flow. The title of Cameron’s second chapter says it all: “Let Yourself Write.”

This short phrase is, for me, the best advice Cameron gives on the subject of writing. The times when I force myself to let go and just write are when some of my best pieces of work result. My freshman year of high school, I had this one teacher who assigned journal prompts each week. She would set us strict time limits for each of three prompts, usually ten, fifteen, and twenty minutes. In so little time, I had to keep writing constantly to complete the prompt. Ever since then, I have tried to apply similar time constraints to my academic writing. When I stick to these time limits, it is always much easier to write. I suddenly have to get something down on paper and the spontaneity produces more interesting work, without the stress usually associated with a paper.

Well, I actually let myself free write, conquering the blank page. And I must admit, it feels pretty good. 

Poetry: Expressively Equivocal

Poetry is one of the equivocal forms of writing, yet also one of the most expressive. When reading poetry, it is often hard to draw a poet’s meaning from his words. Each line can be interpreted in so many ways. It takes many read-throughs to fully comprehend the genius of a poem’s language and imagery, and the impeccable details within. But once those are grasped, poems show a depth of expression which other genres are unable to portray.

The title of the poem Lens immediately caught my eye; it led me to the conclusion that the author, Reginald Shepherd, was describing the lens of a camera. The first time reading it through, it did not make any sense to me.  What does the phrase “where the blue meets blue, where sky meets the sky” have to do with photography?

Once I examined the language of the poem more thoroughly, the “lens” being described seemed to be not that of a camera, but the lens of a human’s eye. With this definition of the word, the poem took on a new meaning for me. It told the all too familiar story of love and heartbreak. The blue meeting blue suddenly appeared in my mind as two blue-eyed people, looking into each other’s eyes, each hiding things: conflicted feelings and tears.

Many of the other poems in the packet were equally as hard to read and the meanings of them remain elusive. The part of me that is hanging on to grammar rules is irritated by the lack of punctuation and capitalization, the run-on sentences and odd word usage. By far the most difficult part of reading poetry is the creative words choice. It is hard to get my mind past the common meaning of a word and embrace the more unusual definition. One such example was the word “summer” in Lens. I could not make sense of the line “where silence becomes summer, there where summer wouldn’t wait” until I discovered “summer” can also be defined as a period of maturing powers. Despite poetry’s ambiguity, it is still a beautiful style of communication.

Elements of Writing

Being an avid reader has enabled me to recognize well-written works. However, I do not know the qualities that define “good writing.” For most of my life, if anyone asked me about liking writing, my answer would have been an emphatic “no.” From a young age, I enjoyed writing poetry; I would come up with a sudden inspiration and soon would have a stanza of a poem mentally jotted down. However, I never considered this “writing.” It was always fun and rarely for school. When I was in eighth grade, I reconnected with a friend of mine who is an enthusiastic creative writer. It did not take me long to catch the writing bug once she suggested co-writing a fiction series. It was at that moment my love of creative writing was born.

We attended a local summer camp on Eastern Michigan University’s campus, called Inkstains. It is a camp designed to help young writers flourish in their creative talents. This camp provided me with a spark for writing, but in a one-week session, it is difficult to capture the essence of creative writing. I have never taken a formal creative writing course and still have many questions. What elements are crucial to a riveting story? How is it possible to capture a reader’s attention in one sentence? How does a writer add unexpected plot twists? What causes a piece to evoke a vivid image or emotion in a reader’s mind? What are the many different rhythms, meters, and scansions of poems?

While I am not as experienced in poetry and creating a well-written story, I have a thorough background in prose. I have taken three composition courses in high school, each of which introduced me to new aspects of the written language. I thought academic writing would be tedious, but in those classes, I discovered that there is room for interpretation and creativity in even a standard, 5-paragraph essay. From that first moment of realization, I have ceased dreading a formal paper; instead, I challenge myself to try and make it enjoyable while still fulfilling the assignment. While I do not prefer prose to poetry or vice versa, I believe the element of creative writing is my passion.

Howdy!

Hello everyone! My name is Shelby Lubienski. I am seventeen and have many (too many) interests; it always seems as though there is not enough time in a day for all of them. Outside of school, I enjoy swing and Irish dance, snowboarding, sleeping, reading, playing with my dog (a border collie mix named Kayley), and watching all the latest episodes of ABC's show, Castle. In school, it is a toss-up between science, math, and English as far as which would be labeled my “favorite subject.” I seem to enjoy them all for different reasons. While I am undeclared, I am leaning towards a major in some field of science (possibly meteorology). Between school and extracurricular, I could really use a 48-hour day! ;) I am looking forward to class this semester and meeting you all!