On Writing – Page 3 – Sharon M. Scarborough-Author

New Produce

Our memories from childhood are the things that often resurface when we get older. I have a vivid memory of biting into a fresh tomato, still warm from being on the vine in the garden and the juice running down my face onto the front of my top. Then, of course, I added salt to the ripened red fruit. Disclaimer—scientifically a tomato is a fruit; to me it’s still a vegetable. And there was nothing better tasting to me. I have not found a tomato to match that taste in several decades.

The problem is that in my memory nothing can match that atmosphere of sitting on the front porch and eating tomatoes.

Unless it was sitting on the porch and eating watermelon. Now that was really a treat. My grandparents didn’t grow watermelons. They were smart and admitted their limitations. Grandmother was magic in the garden, but she never mastered watermelons. Truth be told, it took a certain soil to raise good watermelons.

At any rate, Granddaddy usually was the picker. After looking over a truckload of melons and thumping and looking at the field spot (you know, that flattened yellow spot where the melon sat and grew, soaking up moisture and sunshine slowly, getting sweeter and juicer each day) he would commit to a purchase. Then, after a trip home, the melon got rolled under the bed on the linoleum in the coolest room and left there for at least a day to be as cool as possible before cutting.

Sadly, most melons and tomatoes today don’t taste as good as they used to. I think that’s due to memories setting the goal so high, but also to the rush. Farmers are rushed to get produce to market. And you know what happens when you mess with (rush) Mother Nature.

One of my girls is going to have a raised garden next year. It will be hard, hot work, but she’s excited to get to it. I know my grandmother will be there in spirit, cheering her on.

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”

-Annie Proulx

Sense of Wonder

The most popular books and movies of all time all have one thing in common: They transport audiences better than other books and movies in their genre….. David Farland in his advice to writer’s column.

The sense of wonder is an amazing thing. I was reminded of this when I went through some books that my grandson was giving away in an effort to clear off his book shelves. Many of the books were about magic and new worlds.

The point I’m making is that really enjoyable books transport the reader to another place. That is done by appealing to one’s emotions. A reader is pulled deep into a book or movie and the reader feels the increased heartbeat, the rush of adrenaline, the hurry through the words to find out what happens to the characters. But, wait, these are not ordinary characters. These people are friends and family—we know them, we care about them.

That’s what I’ve been trying to create in the last scenes of the next Nightingale book. That’s also the reason why I have so many readers when I write about food.

People who read about Southern cooking remember their own meals and family and special moments.

Right now, I’m hungry for cream of wheat (or oatmeal) with brown sugar or maple syrup. That was often the breakfast before going out to get on a cold school bus. The house was cold because the fireplace couldn’t warm up quickly. But with my belly full of warm food and surrounded by love, I could conquer the world—at least for a few minutes.

Photo from Unsplash by Patrick Fore

Home

When do we start calling a place home? I started calling the different house “home” the first night I slept there. We (I’m including Maxx in this because he whines when we get near home) were eager to get into new digs. Photo from Unsplash by Annie Spratt

Maxx has already settled into home by napping in the sunshine or running after a squirrel. I began being more at home after unpacking a few boxes and setting up the computer for writing. I have been pretty good at writing something everyday since we’ve moved.

Sometimes I only get a few sentences done, but I try to not be too hard on myself. I’m still learning and will continue to learn about this craft called writing as I settle into a new home.

Friends and Family

This getting wiser as one gets older is a bit of a challenge. Don’t get me wrong: wiser is good. But I find myself sometimes thinking of the past with all the hurt that goes with growing up. I still wish I had hugged my grandparents more. I really wish I had told my children I loved them more often. I’ve mentioned this to cousins and they may or may not have missed the hugs and affection.

There is more to it, of course. Families are full of agonies and angst. Families are about love and hate and all those gritty, unmentionable emotions like lust and greed. Families are perfect for a writer to explore and write about. As a matter of fact, most works of fiction have a family somewhere in their pages. No matter what genre of fiction you choose, families are there.

So, getting wiser took far too long for me. I wish I’d listened to my grandparents:)

Love to Write?

Photo from Unsplash by Annie Spratt

When I mentioned Dwight Swain’s book in an earlier post I started thinking about people who write because they love to write for themselves. Every writer I know loves to write because they enjoy putting words on paper, but ultimately, they want to share.

Does any writer put words on paper and then put the paper in a desk drawer? (Yes, I know, first drafts should never see the light of day, forever in the trunk or drawer or burned. Some of my prose….aye yah yuk.; but I digress.)

What I’m getting at is that some people write because they love writing, and some people write because they are good at it and want to get paid for their work. So, books about the craft may address the esoteric reasons for writing and some may simply address how to make your essay or novel clearer.

No matter what the reason for writing, if it makes you feel better to get the words on paper, I think its valuable—maybe even therapeutic. And read—reading makes a better writer, but that’s a different post.

Yearning

I’ve been thinking about motive and yearning in writing. Part of the prescriptive of writing is that the hero/heroine has a goal, which is pretty obvious and a need (want, desire, yearning) that he may be unaware of, but is crucial to the story. I love the word yearning. It is poetic. And, to me it is descriptive of the gut-wrenching realization that a character must finally come to see in a really well-done novel. I am aiming for more yearning—almost realized—in the work in progress, but an author learns along with the character.

“A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”

— Burrhus Frederic Skinner, 1904-1990, commonly known as B. F. Skinner, American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher, born March 20th, in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania.

Endurance and Faith

James Lee Burke is a writer I admire. He’s been writing for years and gives great advice to aspiring writers in interviews. He has written over 30 books and went one time for 13 years without selling a novel. He’s a great source of inspiration, so I urge you to look him up on whatever source you use for research. About creativity, Burke says,

“I believe creativity is a votive gift, presented arbitrarily by the hand of God, and those who possess it are simply its vessel. Those who become grandiose and vain about its presence in their lives usually see it taken from them and given to someone else. At least that has been my experience.”

Burke writes every day. He has said that he tries to write two scenes a day, no more, no less, but at the end of a year he has a novel done.

Burke also is well known for the imagery in his work. The environment is almost a character. The following is the opening paragraph from The Glass Rainbow.

“The room I had rented in an old part of Natchez seemed more reflective of New Orleans than a river town in Mississippi. The ventilated storm shutters were slatted with a pink glow, as soft and filtered and cool in color as the spring sunrise can be in the Garden District, the courtyard outside touched with mist off the river, the pastel walls deep in shadow and stained with lichen above the flower beds, the brick walkways smelling of damp stone and the wild spearmint that grew in green clusters between the bricks. I could see the shadows of banana trees moving in the window screens, the humidity condensing and threading along the fronds like veins in living tissue. I could hear a ship’s horn blowing somewhere out on the river, a long hooting sound that was absorbed and muted inside the mist, thwarting its own purpose. A wood-bladed fan revolved slowly above my bed, the incandescence of the lightbulbs attached to it reduced to a dim yellow smudge inside frosted-glass shades that were fluted to resemble flowers. The wood floor and the garish wallpaper and the rain spots on the ceiling belonged to another era, one that was outside time and unheedful of the demands of commerce. Perhaps as a reminder of that fact, the only clock in the room was a round windup mechanism that possessed neither a glass cover nor hands on its face.”

Songwriters

I have always admired songwriters. Think about Dolly Parton’s song, “Jolene.” You can listen to the lyrics and see the green-eyed beauty named Jolene who is taking away the singer’s lover. (Never mind the fact that Parton says she saw a little girl with green eyes, who was named Jolene, who inspired the song.) Or think of Clayton Delaney, by Tom T. Hall. When I interviewed him (many years ago), Hall said a lot of his music came from his surroundings.

One of Hall’s most famous early releases was “The Year that Clayton Delaney Died.” As with “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” the song was gleaned from a true story; the song is a tribute to a drunken guitar player who fell on hard times and taught Hall how to play the guitar when he was a boy. Hall said, “It started out with just me sitting down with a guitar and thinking, ‘Well, I want to thank Clayton.’” Another of Hall’s acclaimed songs, the philosophic “Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine,” was drawn from a conversation he enjoyed with an elderly black man in a Miami bar. Hall’s own favorite song was “I Love” in 1974, which lists all the things in life that he holds most dear.

Photo from Unsplash by Mohammad Metri

Reading

Reading has been, and continues to be, one of my favorite things to do. You can imagine my delight when someone advised “Read everything you can and always ‘read up’.” That is, read writers who are better at their craft than you are. And, read out of your favorite genre to broaden your understanding. Reading is educational for a writer.

One of my problems is a desire to devour a book rapidly, especially when its written by one of my favorite authors. When that happens I miss some of the ‘educational’ nuances that a writer appreciates and may use in her own writing. For instance, in one of the books I’ve read a child is held captive in the climax of the novel. The hero is facing the child while the villain has an arm around her neck. Earlier in the book the hero and child had exchanged remarks about Through the Looking Glass and the Jabberwock who has fierce teeth and nails.

The hero makes a remark about their secret of enjoying reading and what the Jabberwock does. The child gets the hint and bites the villain’s arm, which makes her rescue possible. That is a terrific ending to a tense scene and I hope I can use some variation in the future. In my rapid reading I might cruise past the early scene between the hero and child.

But, my point is: I go back and reread books that I enjoy and the second read is slow and savory. Every word is delicious.

Photo is by Laura Kapfer in Unsplash.

Smart people

“Here are three traits I would report from a long trail of meeting and interviewing people who by any reckoning are very intelligent.

They all know it.
Virtually none of them (need to) say it.
They know what they don’t know. This to me is the most consistent marker of real intelligence. The more acute someone’s ability to perceive and assess, the more likely that person is to recognize his or her limits. . . . generally the cliche is true: the clearest mark of intelligence, even ‘genius,’ is awareness of one’s limits and ignorance.”

— James Mackenzie Fallows, American writer and journalist; from his article, “How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves,”The Atlantic, January 6, 2018