Telling Herstories: The Broad View

Aloha, Mahalo, and Other Words from Hawaii

ABC's of Writing, Matilda Butler, Post #6

 

I missed my scheduled posting on Monday -- my regular day to write on SCN’s Telling HerStories. The brief five minute video that I thought I’d finish on Sunday took me all day Monday to complete. “Don’t worry,” I told Kendra. “I’ll have the video on YouTube on Monday.” Well, at 11:58 PM California time, that statement became true. By then, it was too late to post here. If I had run into additional complications with the video, I might have had to rely on Hawaii time where I still had three more hours before midnight.

 

The notion was relevant because I was creating the first of four videos I'm calling Postcards from Hawaii. These are writing prompts that occurred to me while I was on the Big Island earlier this month for a combined celebration of my husband’s birthday and our 40th wedding anniversary. Although part of each day was spent working on one of my final chapters for Writing Alchemy, I still had a relaxing time.

When I travel, my mind often causes me to focus on just one or two elements. But Hawaii is a place that engages all the senses -- the sweet scent of plumeria, the growling sound of the ocean grabbing fistfuls of sand, the dramatic sight of ancient black lava flows, the taste of plant-ripened pineapple--juices running down my arm, and the rough feel of coral beneath my feet as I wade in the shallow waters. 

Hawaii replenishes my creative well. Do you have a place that provides you with new ideas? In my video, I discuss one special place on the Big Island and it’s meaning. I hope you’ll go take a look and then leave me a comment. I’d like to know what you think about my writing prompt and discussion.

Aloha and Mahalo. When I say these two Hawaiian words, the state of calm that I feel while on the Big Island returns. As writers, we know that words are the only tool we have to express our lives. Aloha is used for hello and good bye, but can also mean love. Visitors often read that saying Aloha opens one to the awareness of a sacred space and that Mahalo is an expression of gratitude and has the potential to transform your life. I offer you these words today with the hope that they help you give life to your writing and enable you to feel the blessing of gratitude for what you write.

Enjoy the first Postcards from Hawaii by clicking here.

 

 

 

 

Words, Language and Vocabulary: Our Building Blocks

ABC's of Writing, Matilda Butler, Post #5

Words. Language. These are the building blocks for a writer’s story. A poet parses language one way, often looking for the fewest, most precise words to convey thought. In this paragraph, I’ve already been more casual in my use of words than a poet. A humorist looks for juxtapositions in language that will make the reader laugh. And fiction and memoir writers want to find the words that will bring the reader into her story, words that will enable her to convey a message. 

When we think of words, of language, we usually start with our own vocabulary. Many of us rely on a thesaurus to help us find a better word, perhaps one we don’t normally use but one that could be found within the network of interchangeable words we employ. Even when we include dialogue in our writing, we usually draw on our own vocabulary.

This past week, I saw David McCullough’s John Adams. While admitting that I cheated by seeing the 3 DVD set movie (originally an HBO mini-series) rather than reading the book, I found the visual presentation to be superb. If you look on Amazon for the DVD, you can view a brief video of McCullough talking about this movie version of his book. He worked closely with the production company. In particular, he talks about the level of detail in the sets, the props, the costumes, and the vocabulary.

Ah, here we are again with vocabulary. Because my mind was filled with thoughts and images of John Adams and Abigail Adams, I spotted McCullough’s chapter in my copy of The Writing Life; Writers on How They Think and Work. By reading literature written during Adam’s lifetime, McCullough began to develop a better sense of how language and even what language was used during that time. McCullough writes: “...when John Adams called the Quakers of Philadelphia ‘dull as beetles,’ he was only employing a familiar expression." 

What does all this have to do with our memoir writing? We often fall back on our own vocabulary when we write about an older generation, when when we engage them in written dialogue. What words did they use that may not even be in use today? What expressions were popular when our parents or grandparents were in their 20s or 30s or 40s? How about when they were teenagers? We can’t come up with the answers without research. 

McCullough’s chapter focuses on the incredible amount of research he does for all of his books although his examples relate to his writing John Adams. He mentions words like “spatterdashes” and “diabled.” (If you’d like to know the meaning of these words, click here.) How does he write in a way that is true to the period? Well, that became the subject of my Writing in Five video this week that I’ve just posted on Women’s Memoirs. 

When you’re working about another person, consider the person’s likely language influenced by books or other people. This will help you write truer to the person. 

If you’d like to see my brief Writing in Five video, click here. I think David McCullough’s concept of “marinate the head” that I focus on may be useful to you when you’re researching your memoir.

Examining the Reflection

Matilda Butler, ABC's of Writing, Post #4

Earlier today I was talking with Kendra about the new Writing in Five video that I'd just finished. After describing my insight from Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend from Far Away about the importance in memoir to reflect rather than recount, Kendra remembered something that her mother had told her.

Kendra's mother was a commercial artist and taught both her daughters many of the techniques that artists use. Some of these techniques were basic like use of rubber cement. Others seemed esoteric at the time. One of these techniques was the use of a mirror to more carefully examine a work than is possible by just looking at it. 

As she explained this to Kendra, the mirror can make it difficult to put on eye shadow or position a hat or level a hair bow because the left and right are reversed. In compensating for the mirror, the brain is forced to examine the image in an active manner. In other words, the auto-pilot doesn't function. Her mother said that artists sometimes hold their work up to the mirror as a way to give it a fresh look so they can see what else is needed or if they have achieved their goal.

Similarly, it seems that the writer needs a way to move beyond the way we usually look at our lives. We know so many of the facts that we can often get stuck in recounting them. If we can find the equivalent of holding our work up to a mirror, then we'll realize that the reflection may be showing us something new.

I invite you to view my latest video.

Competition and Verbs

Matilda Butler, ABC's of Writing #3

This week, the friendly competition with Kendra continues. As you may recall, last Monday, Kendra blogged about her new writing tip video that focused on adverbs. Her inspiration was Stephen King’s statement that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs” and that video, called Writing Tips: Root Out the Adverbs, is already beating my previous one in number of views. But more about that in a moment.

I’ve just posted a new video, Writing Tips: Control Your Verbs. I benefited from reading Rita Mae Brown’s book Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer’s Manual and decided to pass along her advice on use of verbs. No, Kendra and I aren’t trying to teach grammar. Verbs are one of the key building blocks of writing and paying attention to our use of them can make us stronger writers, conveying our message more powerfully. (Yes, I realize I just used an adverb. No one’s perfect.)

A common situation in writing is that we struggle to simply get the story on paper. Who has time to think about the specific words? This is quite acceptable for our first drafts. But then it is time to go back and examine each sentence and paragraph. One question you might want to ask: Does this verb take my reader in the right direction? It isn’t only about strong verbs. Sometimes your passage is delicate and soft verbs are appropriate. Perhaps you are expressing a mood and you need verbs that convey the emotional content. Keep in mind what you want you reader to learn and make sure verbs help you tell the story. And, as Kendra pointed out last week, don’t expect an adverb to make up for a weak or inappropriate verb.

Bear with me for some statistics

Well, back to this competition that Kendra started. She challenged me to create a Writing Tip video that was less than five minutes. Always a sucker for a dare, I produced a 2:33 video on finding the beginning of your story and blogged about it last time. This week’s video comes in a 4:50 beating Kendra’s which is 5:39. Why does all this matter? On the minor level, it matters because we call our series Writing in Five. On a major level, it is helping us to focus better and shape our content. We’re both quite close to the target time.

Here’s the score:

Number of Matilda’s videos that are less than five minutes:  2

Number of Kendra’s videos that are less than five minutes:  0

Now it might seem that I’m the current winner. However, there is another element that is even more important -- the number of views

Number of videos with 50 views or more:

Matilda has 3 videos (74, 81, and 92 views)

Kendra has 4 videos (50, 63, 86, and 111 views)

On the surface, this may seem fairly close, but it isn’t for two reasons. First, Kendra not only wins with more videos in the 50 or greater views category, but she also authored the video with the highest number of views. In addition, I’ve created more videos so by sheer force of number, you’d think I would triumph. Even when I total her number of views (344) and mine (429) and divide by the number of videos we’ve each produced (5 for Kendra; 7 for me), she still wins -- an average of 69 views for each of her videos and 61 for mine.

 Would you help me out?

I’d appreciate your help. Please click on this link --  http://womensmemoirs.com  -- and play the Writing in Five video about verbs. I think Rita Mae Brown will furnish your mind with a new perspective and respect for the ever-present verb. That's what you’ll get. I’ll get views and hopefully can beat Kendra.  

Stay tuned for more videos and competitions.

How I Met Kendra's Challenge

Matilda Butler, ABC's of Writing #2

                                                               

Last week, Kendra issued a challenge in her Getting Read post on this blog. She wrote about the importance of creating videos that are short and just how hard that is. Well, actually, she said it was damned hard. As many of you know, Kendra and I are finishing our book, Writing Alchemy. Because we’ve found so much advice for writers in the books we’ve researched, we decided to produce videos.

Now Kendra is great with names and suggested we call our series Writing in Five. These would be five minute videos, each with a single tip from a published author. How hard could that be? Somehow, my first video had to be done while on the road. This meant that in a hotel room I had to figure out how to:

-- print the script I’d written

-- create my own version of a teleprompter, 

-- get the video taken.  

...                                                                        

The hotel's business office seemed an obvious place to print the script, but the printer wasn't working. Fortunately, the manager took my thumb drive back to her computer and brought me the pages. The outrageous teleprompter involved a hangar. I taped the script (with tape begged from the front desk) so that it hung like a Japanese scroll and then held it in place with the skirt clips. My partner had to hold the hangar at the same time that he used the camera. Pretty funny. It took multiple takes and a lot of laughter before we got it right.

All was fine until I finished the production steps, by then the middle of the night, and tried to upload the video to YouTube. I  kept getting a rejection message. After I Googled the problem, I found that my video was too long. Gad, it was something like 12 minutes. 

With some judicious cutting, I got the video down to just under 10 without having to get out the camera again. The next day I told Kendra that perhaps we should call these Writing in Ten. “No,” she insisted, “we’ll just need to write shorter scripts.” Week after week, we worked on making our scripts shorter, but we’ve never been able to break the five minute mark.

UNTIL THIS TIME. I know. A writer isn’t supposed to use all caps. However, it is my way of saying that I not only took Kendra’s challenge, I made a Writing in Five video that is 2 minutes and 33 seconds. How did I do that? 

Here’s what I didn’t do. 

First, I didn’t change the type of topics we want to cover. I began with one of the rules of writing from Elmore Leonard. This one has to do with finding where your story starts. Many of us struggle with that aspect of writing so it seemed like a good point to investigate.

Second, I didn’t skimp on showing an application of Leonard’s tip. With some additional research, I found a Hemingway example that illustrated the point Leonard made. 

Here’s what I did.

I realized I had to change my approach. Rather than writing my typical script and then cutting some words and sentences, I needed a fresh look at creating a brief writing tip that still conveyed valuable information. 

It turns out that Kendra both issued the challenge and then gave me a hint how to do this. She didn’t intend to give me the idea but she did in her blog about creating book trailers. After discussing the importance of short videos, around two minutes, she put four video book trailers in the blog. I analyzed each of them. Although it’s possible to have a short script, I realized that this week I’d try to create a video that told everything on the screen. No spoken words from me.    

...                                          

If there wasn’t going to be a voice, then there needed to be music. I spent time looking for royalty-free music I could use and once I found a site, I spent hours listening to music so that I'd have something that would go with this particular video. Since Leonard’s early books were westerns and then his later books were mysteries, I thought I could be quite clever and segue from music appropriate for one genre and then the next. However, there wasn’t enough time in two minutes to manage that. One piece of music would have to do. And finally, I needed to do the easy stuff -- deciding exactly what I wanted to convey and creating the slides. It wasn’t really easy to be brief, but I was determined.

As Kendra wrote last week: "In fact, Matilda will be doing the next Writing in Five. I'll let you in on a little secret--she's very competitive. She's going to do everything she can to turn in a stellar video performance in under five minutes. " 

Kendra's statement calls for True Confessions. I am competitive. Let me share a little story about the first time I realized I had this character flaw. I was in graduate school at Northwestern University. My older son (I had two at the time) was competitive rather than cooperative in his preschool and that bothered me. I voiced my concern  to a colleague, Tom, saying that I just couldn’t understand why he was like that. Tom looked at me and said, “Well. It’s obvious. He gets it from you.” That gave me a start. It was like passing a mirror in the dark when someone suddenly turns on the light.

So here I am, almost 45 years later, still competitive. The insight now is that in 1965 women weren’t supposed to be competitive. I suppose that’s why I was so shocked by Tom’s statement. Fortunately, the Civil Rights Act and Title IX and other changes in the 60s and 70s began to expand the range of acceptable roles for women. Today I’m comfortable in my skin.

Help me be competitive. Please go see my new video and let me know what you think of this short format. You can put your comments on this post or just beneath the video. Do you need more context for the writing tip from Elmore Leonard? This is the first time I’ve added a writing prompt to these Writing in Five videos. Do you like that or should I just stop with the writing tip from Leonard? Your ideas help move us forward. I’m already contemplating my next video and your thoughts can help shape what we do. 

What would Elmore Leonard think of this post? He’d say I didn’t pay attention to the writing rule I’m sharing in the video. In other words, I’m giving a lot of context and back story before getting to the point. It seems to me that blogs, at least in 2010, can still be part-journaling, part-storytelling, part-information/part-opinion sharing. How would I find the start to this blog if I viewed it as a story? Click here to see Elmore Leonard’s advice.

A New Beginning: The ABC's of Writing

Matilda Butler, The ABC's of Writing, Post #1

Welcome to the first of my ABC’s of Writing blogs on Telling HerStories. If you’re expecting a Sue Grafton style series starring a writer version of Kinsey Millhone, you are going to be disappointed. I hope instead you’re adventuresome and willing to join me on a journey into the art and craft of writing as I examine advice by authors who share their insights and thoughts.

Kendra Bonnett and I have begun a series of videos that we call Writing in Five: Quick Tips. I’ll try to have a new one for you each time I post here. In the past few months, Kendra and I have shared wisdom from Stephen King, Elizabeth Berg, Brenda Ueland, William Zinsser, Anne Lamott, Rita Mae Brown, Ernest Hemingway and others in our brief videos. This week, I was exploring the book Creating Fiction, edited by Julie Checkoway  and turned one of the contributed chapters into a quick tip video for you.

Why bother to read a book about the craft of fiction writing when you’re working in the memoir genre? What can you learn that might enhance the writing of your life story? Well, you probably already know the answer. Good writing is simply good writing whether it is fiction or nonfiction.

I was particularly interested in Alyce Miller’s chapter entitled “A Container of Multitudes, or When ‘I’ Isn’t ‘Me’: The Art of First Person.” When you’re writing about your life, you’re obviously thinking about yourself. (That was four variations on the word you in the same sentence.) So it is natural to put your voice into the way you write dialogue, even dialogue of others in the story. But there are many times when the “I” isn’t “me.” at least not me right now. For example, assume you are writing about your childhood. You need to forget how you think and talk now. You need to become a different “I.” You need to become again that small child. Or, assume you are writing about someone else in your life. When that person speaks, try to imagine yourself as that person. This becomes easier, as you’ll see in this week’s video, if you think of yourself as an actor, assuming the role of the other person.

Here’s the link to Writing in Five: Quick Tip #10 Your Writer’s Persona. Be sure to leave your thoughts about this subject in the Comments field below the video.

Alyce Miller, by the way, is the author of two award-winning volumes of short stories. You’ll learn more about her in the video.