Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail for October 7th, 2014

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.
Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.” ― William Faulkner

Who’s up next . . .
October 14: Jack Freiburger (poem), Katelin Cummins (new chapter 1, Battle of Sista), and Alicia Connolly Lohr (Coastie Girl, chapter 1).

October 21: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Andy Brown (chapter, Man Before the Fall), Bob Kralapp (???), Pat Edwards (???), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), and Judith McNeil (???).

November 4: Judith McNeil (???), Andy Pfeiffer (chapters, The Void), Millie Mader (chapter 59, Life on Hold), Kashmira Sheth & Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Bob Kralapp (???), and Jerry Peterson (short story).

Titling a book is not easy . . .
How Jaws became Jaws, an excerpt from Andre Bernard’s 1994 book Now all we need is a Title:

Peter Benchley remembers that “Jaws was the last, desperate compromise between me and my editor some twenty minutes before the book had to go to press. I had fiddled with a hundred alternatives, more or less: Great White, The Shark, Leviathan Rising, The Jaws of Death; a few Francoise Sagan rip-offs, like A Silence in the Water; and a few helpful suggestions from my father [writer Nathaniel Benchley], to wit: What’s That Noshin’ on My Laig? At last my editor and I agreed that we didn’t like any of the suggested titles, and, in fact, the only word we liked in any permutation was ‘jaws.’ I recall saying something to the effect of, ‘Screw it, let’s just call it Jaws,’ and my editor saying something like, ‘Okay, what the hell . . .’ My father didn’t like it; my agent didn’t like it; my wife didn’t like it; and I didn’t like it much. But the bottom line was, who cares? Nobody reads first novels anyway.”

Great words . . .
From Word Spy Paul McFedries:

statement socks
noun. A pair of socks chosen to make an impression, to stand out, or to express something about oneself.

Example Citations:
“An added bonus: Statement socks are an easy and often inexpensive indulgence. Though high-end designs are certainly available (you can buy $185 socks at Barney’s, should your path in life lead to that), you can also buy the socks at stores like Forever 21 and Target, the latter of which says it ‘has seen a steady interest’ in statement socks since introducing them in 2012.”– Megan Garber, ‘Like Lingerie for Men’: How Statement Socks Became So Trendy, The Atlantic, October 1, 2014

“Well, this year’s interpretation (see, I’m becoming fashiony by osmosis) is to create a biker boot with strategically placed holes in the ankle, to either let the sweat out or give the wearer a whole extra layer of dressing anxiety as they rootle through their sock drawer for appropriately ‘statement’ socks.”
– Lynne Barrett-Lee, Join the tartan army? I’d rather have a naked foot…, Wales Online, October 5, 2013

Earliest Citation:
“Bolder spirits will reach for a graphic bravado tie, neon-bright T-shirt, colorful statement socks, snappy ankle boots.”
– Catherine Fitzpatrick, Making the cut toward elegance, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 15, 1996

Notes:
The statement piece is well known in design and fashion circles, where it refers to an object that a person displays or wears to raise eyebrows, drop jaws, or say, well, something. Statement shoe is the oldest, first appearing in print around 1975, but other common variations on the theme include statement building (1981), statement jewelry (1988), statement necklace (1988), and statement hat (1999).

NaNoWriMo!
National Novel Writer’s Month is coming up, and NaNoWriMo.org has many tips on getting your novel done! This week, enjoy

The Author Huddle: 6 Tips to Finish Your First Draft

This week’s NaNo Coach, author Kristyn Kusek Lewis, sat down with Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish, to ask his writing advice:

Wrimos, lower the bar! According to Daniel Wallace, one of the most important things you can do this month is to not think too much. He knows of what he speaks: He is the author of five novels, including the acclaimed Big Fish, which was made into a motion picture of the same name in 2003, and is currently running on Broadway as a musical.

He also happens to frequent the same local café where I often write, and we met there recently to discuss some ways that you can make the most of the month. Here, his advice:

◦Much of writing is just doing it. I have a sign in my office that says Sit Down in big letters. There’s a tendency to let writing fall to the fifth or sixth place on our to-do lists each day, after shopping or cleaning or whatever, but it needs to be first or second. Commit to having a messy house—it means you have your priorities straight.

◦Suspend your editorial function while you’re writing a first draft—don’t worry so much about quality at this stage. Whether they take one month or several years, first drafts are not meant to be good. Spend this month just getting the stuff out and then when the month is over, I would put it away for a while. When you come back to it weeks or months later, it will be easier to discover what’s good and dispense with the things that aren’t.”

◦You simply cannot be thinking too much while you’re writing a first draft—in fact, that’s a great way not to write. A lot of my students hit the wall because they’re thinking too much, they want to take it really slowly and agonize over every word. A novel is going to take hard work no matter how you do it, so don’t get hung up on a single sentence at this phase, just get it out and know that you’re going to go back to it later.

◦Writing is tough for everyone, myself included, so you can’t get tripped up by a lack of confidence—or too much. In fact, if you think of yourself as a great writer, that’s a death sentence. You must know that you can always improve. I know that I’m imaginative and can craft a really great sentence but writing is very difficult for me—and it should be. It’s hard work.

◦One of the great joys of writing is the world you create through your senses. When you miss somebody, you miss their smell, the jacket they wore… Focus on these details, because it’s through the compilation of these things that we slowly create the imaginary worlds that become our work.

◦It helps to not be too precious about how you do your writing. I used to only write in one place but now I take my laptop everywhere—the backyard, the sofa…working in different environments can inspire in unexpected ways.