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Tag Archives: writing

Midwives to a story

05 Wednesday Apr 2023

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Story, writing

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writers groups, writing

Putting your soul under somebody else’s microscope isn’t easy. But that’s what writers do when they join a writing group, a gang of fellow authors who hear or read the first draft as it comes in bits and pieces fresh from the fingertips of the author. First audience, cheerleader, critic and deadline monitor, writers show up for each other every week to perform all these functions.

A writing group on its best behavior balances a delight in the first draft with an ability to help tease out its flaws, helping the writer get to his or her polished final draft.

I got lucky in the realm of writing groups. The generous and talented author Liz Engstrom took me under her wing many years ago. We’ve been in and out of writing groups together for a long time.

But the last couple of years our little group — five then four then three as covid and other changes peeled folks away — became something special. Thoughtful, kind, funny, and, yes, critical but only in the service of the story.

This month we get to celebrate our fellow writing group member, author Paul Neville, whose most excellent novel “The Garbage Brothers” is now published, with positive reviews coming in and bookstore events planned.

I loved this story as it came to us, chapter by chapter. I loved getting to experience it in small bites. And I loved witnessing its transition from fine idea to powerful narrative.

I highly recommend writers groups because I’ve seen the benefit. Liz has a great guide on setting up a writers group, a format that we used for a long time, and still, mostly, adhere to. If you’re lucky you’ll find fellow authors as knowledgeable as Liz and as intuitive as Paul.

Oh, and do read Paul’s book. I highly recommend it, too.

Congratulations Mr. Neville. I loved watching this book be born.

Ups, downs, etc.

26 Tuesday Jul 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, learning, Random, writing

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learning goals, querying literary agents, self-regulation, willpower, writing

I stumbled on a couple of concepts that deserve mulling: performance goals vs. learning goals, described by Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck, and willpower as emotion, described by Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

Dweck’s work notes that learning goals help us work beyond mistakes and failure while performance goals can stop us before our efforts can lead to improved outcomes.

Inzlicht’s research, or my understanding of it, suggests that willpower comes and goes, much like happiness, anger, etc.

This week, I’ll keep learning goals in mind, as I work on the things that have challenged me lately (writing a successful query letter to an agent, for example). Also this week, I’ll recognize that in the face of ebbing willpower (sometimes it’s really challenging to reach for the fizzy water and not the glass of wine), there are strategies to deploy and keep me on track until the willpower circles back around. In other words, not a failure of character, just the normal cycling of my feelings.

For help with the agent querying, I’m delving into the great advice of agent Janet Reid, whose web site is really helpful and whose Query Shark blog is harsh but good education.

Place matters

12 Thursday May 2022

Posted by supalmer in Random, Retro reads, Story, writing

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describing place, Willa Cather, writing

willcather.org

I’m embedded in “The Essential Willa Cather Collection” and revisiting my profound appreciation for her work. Cather wrote in the early part of the 20th century, and among many accolades her novel “One of Ours” received a Pulitzer Prize in 1923. I had previously read her classic “My Antonia” but I wasn’t familiar with her other books, short stories and essays.

This collection includes many short stories, essays and critiques and her first novel, “Alexander’s Bridge,” as well as “My Antonia.” Cather is known for bringing alive the Nebraska prairie and the immigrants who lived there at the turn of the century. I am in awe of her ability to shape mood through descriptions of place.

Here’s just a bit from “Alexander’s Bridge” where Cather is describing Chestnut Street in Boston: “Wilson was standing quite still, contemplating with a whimsical smile the slanting street with its worn paving, its irregular, gravely colored houses and the row of naked trees on which the thin sunlight was still shining.”

I hadn’t read any of her short stories until now and just finished “On the Divide,” published in a shortlived magazine The Mahogany Tree in 1892. It’s an odd, rich story that does that thing at the end that some authors manage. With one last sentence, the entire story is perfectly knit.

A gifted sister

26 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Random, writing

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art, Betsy James, creativity, Nedra Matteucci Gallery, writing

Seven Cities of Gold: Wings, Artist Betsy James

My good friend Chris James and I have known each other 40 years, and while I knew he had a gifted sister — Betsy James, both an author and an artist — I hadn’t ever seen her work until we visited the Nedra Matteucci Gallery in Santa Fe this month. Goodness me.

I just felt drawn into her work, which captures a magical nexus of sky/land/humans. Oh and birds.

Then I checked her web site and now I’m pulled into her books. Currently reading “Roadsouls.” It’s still early days, but there is something a little Ursula-Le-Guin Earthsea-ish about this book.

Her webpage has some fine observations about creativity. I particularly liked this bit about tithing.

Everybody needs an editor

06 Thursday Jan 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Story, writing

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daily practice, editing, writing

I wrote a farewell piece to a chef and a restaurant that closed at the end of the year. The place is just a few blocks from where I live. Craig and I probably ate there once a week over the last five years. Cozy ambiance, friendly staff, amazingly delicious food: It was hard to say goodbye.

Eugene’s scrappy weekly (slogan: We’ve got issues) published the piece, and it got a fine edit from Camilla Mortensen.

Lessons:

  1. Everybody needs an editor.
  2. I am longwinded at the beginning, essentially clearing my throat with way more wordage than actually needed.

My writing group can also be good for this reminder. At our last meeting, the first 600 or so words of a short story I’m working on did not pass muster. But the writing group can be ignored. (What the heck do these veteran and well-published writers know?) The editor of an actual publication cannot be. I confess I mentally harrumphed at Camilla’s notes, but once I made the changes I agreed with her. So, um, on that short story…back to the drawing board.

Being edited also reminds me of the overlap between beginner’s mind, where we are at play, and expert’s mind, where we employ the skills we’ve honed while at play.

Photo above by writer/editor/photographer/friend Bob Keefer. (If you don’t know Bob’s work, do yourself a favor and check out his web site.)

Beginner’s mind, learner’s mind, expert’s mind

06 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by supalmer in Random

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inspiration, writing

Chinese silk embroidery from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum collection/Susan Palmer

I started the morning thinking about beginner’s mind, what it means, how to achieve it. I wondered if there were research about the efficacy of this practice and typed into the Google search engine “beginner’s mind,” limiting my search to sites with a .gov address. Surprisingly, the first thing listed was not research but an essay by a physician about the value of bringing “beginner’s mind” to patient encounters. I had been thinking about it from a different perspective, being a learner of something new, not an expert using the practice of beginner’s mind to inform my work. But I like this redirect.

I’ll use it today, a writing day for me.

The image above is an example of stunning embroidery practiced by Chinese textile artists. Despite its age, about 170 years, it’s vibrant, intricate, alive. Part of the Jordan Schnitzer’s Museum of Art collection, I can’t help but think the artist brought beginner’s mind to what is a deeply technical challenge. I know a little, a very little, about this kind of embroidery, because I’ve been practicing it for a couple of years. I’m part way through a Trish Burr design, and this practice, currently known as thread painting, uses single strands of thread (the Chinese used silk, but today, cotton is also commonly used), to create these lush images. The stitches, essentially straight lines of less than 1/8 inch to 1/2 inch long, result in the most opulent look.

Susan Palmer

My little owl is a work in progress, and I would say that rather than being in beginner’s mind, I’m more in learner’s mind. I wonder if it’s possible to hold a mutual awareness.

Power of self knowledge

29 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by supalmer in Random, Story, writing

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writing, slow work, NaNoWriMo, got-done list

Every year when November rolls around, I have this internal argument that goes like this: I will jump in and do “National Novel Writing Month.” I will finish my novel. Sure I have 40,000 or 60,000 words to go but no problem! I can do it. Then the other side of my brain, says, Hold on there, sister. When it comes to writing you’re a walker, not a sprinter. I am ever-so-slightly oriented toward procrastination and pondering NaNoWriMo always gives me this energy jolt of thinking I can make up for time lost to day-dreaming, dancing, drawing and other things that keep me from the keyboard. I have done NaNoWriMo at least once. I have started NaNoWriMo at least twice. I would not dissuade others from trying it, and it is especially useful for those who struggle to get anything down on the page. But I do better mentally as the tortoise not the hare. And I am happily plodding along with my current project. This month, I wrote 5,000 words. I did not have the adrenaline rush that can come with a massive word-dump. But I also had some great thinking time. There are many people extolling the virtue of more deliberative processes (examples here and here). Slow work is my current comfort zone. So if you are someone who got buzzed on NaNoWriMo but didn’t get as far as you dreamed you would, take a moment to be grateful for the work you did do. Add a little cheery note to your “got done” list and keep on keepin’ on.

A story about kids for adults

17 Wednesday Nov 2021

Posted by supalmer in Retro reads, writing

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author, good reads, westerns, writing

http://www.louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm

Western author Louis L’Amour, wrote a really fine book with two children as the protagonists. “Down the Long Hills,” published in 1968, won a Golden Spur award and I don’t know how his publisher marketed this book, but the cover design is more classic western than middle-grade reader. I stumbled on it in the 1980s and it’s one of those classics I like to re-read. I sometimes wonder about these genre labels focused on age, how much they help and how much they hinder those of us looking for the next good read.

The missing years

15 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by supalmer in Random

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change, writing

I really haven’t just been lying around with the lovely Kate on my lap for the last eight years, although that would have been a worthy use of my time. Nope. Quit my newspapering job. Got hired to help a Eugene nonprofit expand its mission around the country. Got divorced. Got married. Remodeled a house. Finished a novel. Wrote another novel. And rediscovered Exquisite Now. In coming days, I’ll fill in some of the blanks of the last few years. Love to hear from others who left their blog behind, missed it and came back. Specifically, how are you different? Thanks for any sharing.

Disintermediate this!

05 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by supalmer in Random, Story, What they said

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electronic publishing, good quote, writing

Here‘s a succinct little essay on electronic publishing from the Atlantic, (thank you Alan Jacobs) that I love not only for its respect for the value of copy editors, but also because it introduced me to this great quote from Colorado College librarian Steve Lawson: “Publishers are scared that the Internet is going to disintermediate their asses into the dustbin of history, and the best response that many of them have come up with is to express their fear through hatred.”

Don’t know about that, but I do know that I will now be spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find a way to use “disintermediate their asses” in a conversation.

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