Writer's Series Response

I really enjoyed hearing both of the poets read their work at last night’s reading. Even though I had noticed Olstein’s use of sound devices when I read Lost Alphabet, I noticed her sound techniques even more strongly this time hearing her read her work aloud. Even though her poetry didn’t conform to any regular rhyming patterns, the subtle sound devices of assonance and alliteration made the words flow together so beautifully that they seemed to have a melodic quality.  I noticed the same technique in David Daniel’s poetry too. His poem, “Ornaments” in particular struck me as a poem with a beautiful use of sound. The poem had a beautiful repetition of “s” sounds in phrases such as “the husks of insects” and “the dust will catch fire in the sun shaft.” The way that he repeated the phrase “and beat them” also seemed to serve a similar function to a rhyming pattern. Even though the poem didn’t use rhyme or a regular metrical pattern, the repetition of key words, sounds, and phrases worked to tie the ideas together and to create a beautiful echo of sounds. I would like to experiment more in my own poetry with using sound and rhythm to create a musical quality without a regular rhyme scheme or meter.

I also noticed that both of the poets had a knack for using an effective balance of plain and more ornate words in the diction of their poems. I like the way that they were able to take simple images and places and elevate them to a new level with the way that they described them in detail and used them in metaphors. I would like to emulate this practice of adding depth and meaning to ordinary objects in my own writing. I want to make sure that I don’t overlook any images or ideas just because they initially seem too simple or insignificant.

I also like the advice that Lisa Olstein gave in the Q and A section about not being too married to any one method of writing. I have a tendency sometimes to think that if I can’t follow my usual writing habits or be in my usual writing places I won’t be able to be as effective or productive. I know how important it is for me to be able to write in any place and in any situation because the writing habits that work best for me right now might not work as well or might not even be possible in the future. I liked Olstein’s statement about how our lives evolve and so our writing processes must evolve with them.

I noticed that a lot of the techniques the poet’s used and a lot of the things they talked about in the Q and A section can apply to other genres of writing besides poetry. While I want to emulate the poet’s techniques of sound and rhythm and their use of images and metaphor when I write poetry, I also think that these techniques are equally important and will apply just as much when I write fiction or creative nonfiction.  

Lost Alphabet ~ Reflection

One of the elements of Olstein’s prose poems that I most want to emulate in my own writing is her careful attention to sound devices. Usually, one of the first things I notice about a piece of writing is the way that the words sound together. Sometimes, when I read a poem through for the first time, I’m so distracted by beautiful combinations of sounds that I hardly notice what the words of the poem are saying, and I have to go back and re-read it at least once more to get the meaning. A lot of the time, though, I tend to notice sound in a more general way without being conscious of the specific combinations of sounds that make the words so beautiful. When I read, I want to work on being more aware of sound devices such as assonance, consonance, and alliteration, and rhythmic patterns. Even though many poems don’t have an organized rhyme scheme or metrical pattern, most good poetry incorporates devices of sound and rhythm in a way that enhances the meaning of the words. When I write, I want to try to think more consciously about incorporating some of these elements into my own poetry and prose.

One of Olstein’s sentences that I found particularly beautiful is on page 65 when she writes, “A chance freeze has belled the fence posts, glassed the grass into a still museum.” I enjoyed the alliteration in words such as “freeze” and “fence,” “glassed” and “grass,” and the assonance in “belled the fence” and “glassed the grass.” I also love the rhythm she creates with her alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables even though the sentence doesn’t conform to any regular metrical patterns. Another phrase I love is on page 84 when Olstein describes the sound of the moth’s wings as “papery whispers.” The slant rhyme in the sounds “paper” and “whisper” and the repetition of the “s” sound in the word whisper make the phrase sound just like the fluttering wings. I also love Olstein’s description in “Gossamer Wings” on page 85 when she says “This morning, returning with our weeping parcels, we stepped into a hut of wilted flowers, everywhere, wings loosening, falling like sails.” I love the way that she uses several words such as “weeping,” “wilted,” “loosening,” and “falling”  that are trochees and dactyls. Her repetition of the stressed-unstressed pattern makes the words themselves seem to droop and fall like the wilting wings of the moths.

In her piece titled “Instar” Olstein writes “Each specimen is scented. It’s difficult to believe I was so unaware” (56). In the same way in which Olstein became more aware of the minute differences in scent among the different specimens, I want to become more aware of the subtle nuances created by the sounds of words in what I read and in my own writing.

Meditation on a Color: Silver

Summer rain is warm and yet refreshing, savory with the scents of salt and sand, of mountains and of oceans. The silver drops crackle as they fall on leaves so dry their emerald skin has faded into celadon with the heat. The colors of the land dissolve like dust into the rain along with hopscotch lines from sidewalk chalk erased by summer thunderstorms. The geese are restless, waiting, watching for the signs that tell them when the time has come to leave in autumn.

Autumn rain is melancholy and reflective, pungent with aromas of cinnamon and smoke from wood stoves. The silver drops stain the trunks of maple trees from brown to black and wash the red and yellow leaves until they gleam like the sequins on child’s costume on the night of Halloween. Rain drops ripple down the wrinkled skins of rotted pumpkins left behind at farm-stands already closed for winter.

Winter rain is harsh and bitter, sharp with the silence of the empty trees that birds have all abandoned and of December clouds, dark and bleak and heavy because they should be holding snow. The silver drops freeze on branches stripped raw by winter winds and on the skin of bright red berries growing by a stream frozen in time until the sun comes out to thaw it in the spring.

Spring rain is clean and sweet, smelling of earth and life and freshly-washed laundry hung out to dry in sunshine and then forgotten. The silver drops dye each blade of grass a deep green as bright as strands of plastic grass that line a child’s pastel-painted Easter basket. The wind is more refreshing and not as bitter as in winter, tinged with the promises of warmth and color from the crocuses and forsythia blooms, of shadows and of sunshine and of summer.

Verses on Bird ~ Reflection

As I read through Er’s poems, I found myself wishing that I knew how to read Chinese so that I could experience the poems in their original language. I imagine that there must be a great deal of beauty in the original forms and sounds and rhythms, and I know that much of that must have been lost in their translation. Though the English translations still have some elements of beauty and some moments of striking imagery and comparisons, for the most part, these poems didn’t quite resonate with me as much as some other poems I’ve read. At times, I found myself almost getting lost in Er’s poems. There were moments when I was delighted by the beauty of the images she describes, but I struggled a bit with the ambiguity of some of the poems. With many of the poems, I felt as if there were something I was missing, something I wasn’t quite able to grasp. Maybe the poems are more clear in the original language, or maybe the author intended them to be a bit vague for a reason. Or maybe it’s just the way I read.

 Despite some of the confusion I had with the meaning of some of the poems, however, I was struck by Er’s ability to create places and images with such depth and immediacy. One technique from this book of poems that I would especially like to emulate in my own writing is the technique of taking an ordinary object or place and looking at it from different perspectives, giving it more depth and shades of meaning. I like the way that Er is able to create a story in some of her poems out of just a simple place or object, making observations, meditating, and commenting on human nature and life in general. Two poems in particular that stood out to me as examples of this technique were “The Hardware Store” and “Watermelon Juice.” I enjoyed experiencing the worlds she created and the stories she told with her images in those poems.

One element of my own writing that I would like to work on is incorporating imagery in a more meaningful way. Sometimes when I use imagery, my focus is mainly on making the setting more detailed or using the five senses so that my writing is more vivid, but I realize that it is also important for me to think about why I am adding a certain image. Some images may contribute more fully to the topic of my writing than others, and I need to put more thought into the reasons for the images that I choose to use. Reading Er’s poems has reminded me that imagery can be an important element of tone and meaning and not just of the setting and that I can use it to add depth and a sense of immediacy to my writing.

A River Dies of Thirst ~ Reflection

Though Darwish writes about a part of the world that is unfamiliar to me and though many of his experiences are so different than my own, his use of aptly chosen metaphors and similes allowed me to understand his perspective and make a connection with his writing. I think that the idea of using metaphor and simile to help make writing more accessible for readers is an important technique for writers. Readers who have shared similar experience with Darwish may understand exactly what he is talking about, but for someone like me who knows almost nothing about his world, metaphor is a technique that helps me to understand.

The technique from this book that I would like to emulate in my own writing is Darwish’s use of metaphor and simile. I often avoid using those techniques when I write because I’m afraid that they might seem too contrived, but after seeing how effective they can be when it is used well, I am inspired to experiment more with metaphors and similes in my own writing. Some of my favorite examples of Darwish’s use of metaphor and simile are: “yellow is the color of the hoarse voice that only the sixth sense can hear” (21), “waiting is like sitting on a hot tin roof” (44), “the small clouds are towels drying the drizzle off the mountain tops” (111), “a clear sky is a thought without an idea, like a garden that is completely green” (117), and “cooking is the poetry of the senses when they are combined in the hand, an edible poem which cannot tolerate mistakes in the balance of the ingredients” (134). I love how concise yet full of meaning these phrases are and how rich they are with vivid details and imagery.

Blueberries Three Ways

I am sitting outside at a picnic table on a summer Saturday morning after a friend’s sleepover birthday party the night before. Beautiful shade on my face from the oak tree, beautiful  sunshine on my back, beautiful, round pancakes marred by dark spots like the marks of a person with leprosy or maybe the Bubonic Plague. My friend’s mother has mixed blueberries in with the batter. There are so many of them. I can’t get even the smallest forkful of pancake without puncturing at least one of the squishy globs, dark purple juice oozing out all over my plate, spoiling even the sweet taste of the syrup. With every bite, the juice explodes in my mouth, curling my tongue, making my taste buds shrink away from the offending flavor. My lips, my tongue, my teeth, my entire mouth protests with every bite I dutifully eat. And I force a stiff smile as I swallow the berries, hoping my friend’s mother will think I like them, hoping she won’t notice the way my nose crinkles and my eyes narrow as I try to endure the sharp tang of their taste.

Nineteen years old:

The sun is hot on my shoulders and on the top of my head, so hot that my hair feels as if it is on fire, but these sensations enter my mind only vaguely, eclipsed by the coolness of the dark green leaves of the blueberry bushes, the smooth skin of the berries, the largest ones shimmering with white that looks like a dusting of snow in the sunlight. I put my hand into the bush, and the ripest ones fall into my fingers effortlessly, heavy and firm and the size of small grapes. And as the sweet ambrosia of their juice electrifies my mouth, I don’t ponder how it is that I have come to change my mind about their taste or how my childhood hate has turned to love. I only eat and taste the sunshine and smell the long grass from the field nearby and hear the rushing of the wind through all the leaves.

Last year:

The mist on the grass feels cool on my feet as I walk outside on a summer morning to the berry bush in my back yard. Birds are chirping and June bugs are already complaining about the heat and the sun is just beginning to seep through the leaves of the maple trees. I check the berries right before I leave for work, give them water, find the ripe ones that will be ready for picking later on to have with supper. And I return that afternoon to the bush in my backyard to find it empty, stripped of berries except for ten or twelve hard, green ones that won’t be ready until summer’s almost done. And I look up at the trees to see the birds, blue jays and crows and sparrows, and I wonder which one of them it was who ate my berries or if they all conspired together against me to spoil my evening and steal the ripest ones.

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

This book is probably my favorite of the books we’ve read so far this semester. I loved Amy’s eclectic compilation of information and memories and the way that she organized everything as if it were part of an encyclopedia. I also really liked her use of tables and charts to present memories from her childhood such as what her childhood tasted like and a list of some of the things that used to confuse her when she was a child. Her unconventional way of organizing information and her use of illustrations throughout the book captured my interest and made me look at objects and places and situations in my own everyday life in a fresh way. I enjoyed Amy’s observations about even the simplest and seemingly the most trivial aspects of life, and I was amazed at how many times throughout my reading of the book that I found myself remembering some event from my own childhood that I had completely forgotten.

From this book, I would like to take away Amy’s technique of using everyday objects and events in a meaningful way. Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life looks at the world through a heightened perspective, drawing attention to details that most of us don’t even notice in our usual routines. I found Amy’s use of sensory details in her telling of childhood memories to be inspiring since so many memories are strongly connected to at least one of the five senses. I also like the way that this book takes even the most mundane aspects of life and comments on them in such a way that appeals to the reader and allows readers to make connections with their own lives.

King of Shadows Reflection

I think that Shurin’s book is a good example of the fact that nonfiction writing can still be creative. A lot of people (myself included sometimes) tend to associate nonfiction with dull textbooks or tedious instructional manuals, but nonfiction doesn’t have to be full of vague, abstract words or scientific terms. Shurin’s work illustrates the fact that nonfiction writing can be just as imaginative and as beautiful as fiction or poetry.

One passage that I really enjoyed occurs at the beginning of the book on page 18 when Shurin describes the flower garden he rescues from the July sun. Besides using vivid imagery and concrete details such as the names and colors of individual flowers and the scent of chocolate from the cocoa mulch, Shurin also adds depth to the passage with his use of personification, making the plants seem to actually perform for him and to respond to his care of them. I really enjoyed the passages that show Shurin’s connection with nature and give the reader a glimpse into that experience.

Though some of Shurin’s descriptive passages border on being a bit too flowery and though some of the stream-of-consciousness passages seem a bit disjointed, I enjoyed the overall poetic quality of Shurin’s book. One thing that I would like to take away from my reading of this book is the importance of using literary techniques in nonfiction. Even if I’m not writing a story or a poem, my writing will be more effective if I include literary devices such as metaphor, simile, imagery etc. Though some devices apply more to certain types of writing, Shurin’s book showed me that good writing in every genre shares some of the same techniques, inspiring me to be more conscious of adding literary qualities to my own nonfiction.  

Response for The Writing Life

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Annie Dillard’s book about writing. She described her experience of the writing process with such a depth of detail and striking comparisons, and many of her passages, especially her description of the little sparrow mirroring the patterns of the stunt pilot, were constructed with rich imagery and beautiful diction that they seemed almost poetic.

There were so many insightful bits of wisdom about the writing process throughout the entire book, but the two passages that resonated with me the most were in the fifth chapter. On page 72, Dillard asks the question “Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?” I really enjoyed the way that this quotation addresses the motivations and goals of both the reader and the writer. It was a good reminder for me to think about some of the reasons why people read and to keep some of those reasons in mind when I write my own fiction.

Another passage that was really helpful to me was the quotation on page 78. Dillard says, “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.” That piece of advice is one I would really like to mirror in my own writing process. I often feel that impulse to save an idea, an image, a piece of dialogue etc. for later on in case I need it somewhere else or in case I can’t think of any better ideas later. I really like Dillard’s advice about using everything you have when you have it instead of saving it, trusting that something even better will come along later when you need it. It’s hard to do that, but I know that if I try to follow that pattern, it will help to make my writing stronger.

Writer's Series 2/24 Response

I really enjoyed hearing Matt Bell, Steve Himmer, and Robert Kloss read from their work last week at the writer’s series. All three readings were excellent examples of fiction that is rich with vivid, sensory details and concrete imagery. My favorite part of the night, though, was the question and answer period at the end of the reading. It was so helpful to hear the writers talk about their own experience with the writing process (which fit in really well with this week’s assigned reading) and to hear their suggestions and advice about drafting and revising.

I really enjoyed the writers’ comments about being aware of the sounds in writing. Sound always receives such a big emphasis in discussions about poetry, but it was nice to hear sound being applied to fiction as well since it seems to me like it should be equally important for the words to sound right in fiction as for poetry. It was interesting to hear that some of the writers will even add an extra word or syllable to a sentence just to make sure it sounds right. I’ve done that before myself almost unconsciously if there’s something about the sound of a sentence I’ve written that bothers me, and it was interesting to hear an author talk about the sounds of words as being as important of an element of fiction as character or plot.

Of all of the good suggestions the three writers offered, the one that I think will be the most helpful to me is the goal of finishing one project first before starting another. So often, I get so excited about a new idea that I’ll get side-traced and drop whatever project I’m currently working on. And then, of course, a little while later, a new, exciting idea will come along, and I’ll get side-tracked again. Even though it’s fun to explore new ideas, it also means that I rarely finish a complete draft of a story before starting a new one. Rather than switching projects every time I have a new idea, I should start a notebook to write down ideas to come back to later when I’m ready to write about them. I also like Robert Kloss’s suggestion (I think it was his) to just put any new ideas into the book you’re currently writing while they are still fresh in your mind and then go back later on during the revising stage and take out the ones that aren’t working well.

Overall, a very inspirational evening!

Diction and Tone: Reflection on The Mixquiahula Letters

As I read through The Mixquiahuala Letters, the element that struck me the most was Ana Castillo’s use of diction. Throughout the book, the author chooses words that create a casual, informal tone that gives the effect of a handwritten letter from one friend to another. Though the content and style of the letters is a bit more poetic than the typical “how are you?” type of letters, the letters fit what the reader already knows about Teresa. Because the reader knows that Teresa is a writer, the eloquent yet informal style of the letters seems appropriate to fit her personality.

One of the elements that contributes to the casual mood of Castillo’s book is her use of capitalization. I was distracted at first by her use of the lowercase “i” for the first person pronoun. My eyes are so accustomed to seeing the capital letter that I had to get used to the unusual technique, but the more I thought about her use of capitalization, the more I began to wonder why she had chosen that form. It certainly added to the casual tone of the letters, giving them a similar informality to an email or a text message. I also noticed that she always used a lower case “i” when referring to herself, even when she was starting a sentence, but when the pronoun “you” was at the beginning of a sentence, she capitalized it as usual. It seemed as if, by using the lower case “i”, she might have been trying to take the focus off of herself and put it on Alicia, the subject of her letters.

Whatever the author’s reasons for the lack of capitalization, I find it intriguing that such a small thing as capitalization can contribute to the overall tone of a book. Castillo’s use of capitalization seems appropriate for the mood of a friend writing to another friend. If she had rigidly adhered to standard rules of capitalization and punctuation, the book might have seemed more like a collection of business letters than a communication between two very close friends.

The technique that I think would be the most applicable to my own writing is Castillo’s use of words that mirror the tone she wants to create. The sounds, rhythms, and connotations of words can have a strong influence on the tone of a piece. When I write, I need to make sure that my diction is appropriate to the tone I want to convey so that I don’t unintentionally suggest something else by the words that I choose. Another good exercise I can try is to write something with a more informal tone. I usually tend to write in the third person, but it would be good for me to experiment with doing more writing in the first person with a more casual tone.

The Apple Tree Magnet

Matt looked up from his place at the kitchen table. Kelly was staggering down the stairs, her yellow flip-flops smacking against the wood, her arms circled around a cardboard box.

“Found another one,” she said. She stepped into the kitchen and set the box down with a thud in front of him. All morning long she had been bringing down boxes from the attic, some the size of a shoe box and some so large she looked like an ant struggling to carry a crumb twice its size back to the ant hill. Early that morning, before the sun had even had a chance to rise, she had announced that it was time for spring cleaning. She had suggested they finally tackle the project Matt had been avoiding for years: going through all of his mother’s things up in the attic.

Matt’s mother had kept everything: empty coffee cans, bits of string rolled into a ball, stubs of pencils and pens with dried up ink, even used wrapping paper carefully folded so it could be recycled again for another present. “Never throw away anything that could be useful,” she had always told him. “That’s what you learn when you grow up during the Depression. You never know when something might just come in handy.”

“Most of this stuff can probably go right into the ‘throw away’ pile,” Kelly said, peering into the box. “If we can’t use it for anything and if we can’t get any money for it, there’s no use having it lie around the house gathering dust and taking up space.” She turned and left the kitchen without waiting for a response.

Matt sighed and delved into the contents of the box. Dish towels, aprons, olive green measuring cups with broken handles, and a bag filled with enough magnets to cover the fridge from top to bottom. Matt emptied the bag out onto the table. His mother had collected magnets from every gift shop she had ever gone to. There was the one from the Grand Canyon. Right next to it was the one from Niagara Falls. And there at the bottom of the pile, half buried beneath the Statue of Liberty was the one shaped like an apple tree.

Matt had gotten this magnet himself back in the fall when he was five years old on an apple-picking excursion with his parents. He couldn’t remember the name of the orchard, but the day had been glorious with a sharp blue sky and warm, dry grass so faded it looked like painting that had been left out in the sun for too long. They had gathered a peck of apples, filling the bag with only the Cortlands and Macs. Those ones were the best, his mother had said.

That day, Matt’s father had let him do all of the picking, hoisting Matt up onto his shoulders to reach the higher branches with the reddest, most sun-drenched apples. And then, just like his father, Matt had shined the apple with the front of his plaid shirt, rubbing it in a circle until gleamed. And then there was the crunch of the very first bite, the juice exploding from the crisp white centers, soaking the clean air with the aroma of cinnamon and sunshine and summer rain.

“That stuff’s all just junk, right?” Kelly said.

Matt looked up. He hadn’t even heard her come back into the kitchen. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. Most of it’s just junk.”

Once Kelly had left to go back up to the attic for another box, Matt put the aprons and dish towels and broken measuring cups into the junk pile. Then he brought the bag of magnets over to the fridge, placing the memories one by one onto the stainless steel, putting the apple tree magnet in the center, right at eye level where he could see it every day.

Snapshot, Coney Island: August 29th 1929

The world that August morning is almost completely drained of color. My mother’s gray eyes are nearly lost in the deep shadow cast over her forehead by her cloche hat, the one with the white band that matches her gray dress. Gray dress, black hair, white face – everything in somber shades of white and black and gray. My father, standing to her right, still hasn’t forgiven her for leaving the house yesterday morning with a head full of waist-length curls and coming back in the afternoon with her hair bobbed short in the new shingle style.

 Behind my parents, a group gathers near a popcorn stand, some rummaging through pockets and wallets for loose change, others cramming huge fistfuls of the white kernels into their mouths as if it were the last day before a famine. Off to the right, a roller coaster looms, a giant silver spider web, etching sharp shadows onto the ground.

My father isn’t looking straight at the camera. His smile is stiff. Maybe he’s checking to make sure my sister and I are still all right – we’re too busy riding the merry-go-round for the fifteenth time to come pose for the picture. Or maybe he’s still angry with Mother for ruining her hair. Or maybe, somehow, he knows already that the stock market will crash in two short months, knows that he will lose his job at the Ford factory, knows that we will have to leave our two-story house and move to a place outside of town that is little more than a shack. Maybe he already knows that a pot of chicken soup will have to last us for three nights or even more and that my sister and I will have to take turns bringing  food to school because there won’t be enough money for us both to have lunch on the same day. Maybe he knows that every day he’ll have to tell one of us, “I’m sorry, baby, I know you’ll be hungry, but you can’t have lunch today. It’s your sister’s turn.” And maybe he even knows that over and over again he will have to say, with aching eyes and a throat that burns as fiercely as if he had just swallowed acid, the three words he’s come to hate most in the world: “we can’t afford it. We can’t afford it. Oh, please forgive me, but we just can’t afford it!”  

Word Painting: Birds of America Reflection

As I read through Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America, the element of writing that struck me the most strongly was her use of details and imagery. Though her stories, for the most part, involve rather ordinary people in ordinary settings, Moore incorporates details in an unusual, often surprising, way, making her descriptions seem fresh and vivid and adding even more depth and realism to the everyday world she portrays.

Throughout the novel, Moore uses very specific, concrete words that leave strong images in the reader’s mind. Moore’s use of imagery includes descriptions of a baby’s abdomen being “stitched all the way across like a baseball” (240), a “tennis-in-Bermuda tan” (214), and a man’s face being “poppy-seeded with whiskers” (286). With these vivid images, Moore is able to convey a much stronger picture than abstract, general words would allow.

Moore also uses images in a fresh way that makes her comparisons even more striking. In one story, she talks about a “daughter’s frustrated artistic temperament bleeding daily on the carpet of their brains” (188). In another story, she compares Ireland to “a trip into the past of America,” reminiscing about “cow-country car trips through New England of Virginia – in those days before there were interstates, or plastic cups, or a populace depressed by asphalt and french fries” (30). With just a few well-placed, precise words, Moore is able to capture the essences of America’s past and present culture. Her images appeal to the reader’s senses, suggesting the sounds of cars speeding down the interstate and the crinkle of plastic cups, the salty smell and taste of french fries, and the sight of asphalt covering the ground, crowding out the dirt and the grass.  

Moore’s stories have reinforced in my mind the need for concrete imagery and details. Moore’s work has shown me examples of how one specific word can paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. Whenever I write, whether I’m writing fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, I need to remember the old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” As Birds of America has shown me, one well-placed image can leave a more lasting impression on the reader’s mind than a thousand abstract words ever could.

My Creative Autobiography

The first creative moment I can remember happened when I was three years old. My father was at work and my mother was outside, and I was bored. I decided it would be a fun idea to play with food coloring and “bake” something pretty. I took out a tray and proceeded to decorate it with bright (and extremely messy) swirls of red, yellow, green, and blue dye. The creative endeavor that had seemed so beautiful to me was somewhat less appreciated by my mother when she came inside and saw the mess I had made of her clean kitchen.

The first successful creative act that I can remember happened in my second grade class. I wrote a story about going to the beach with my family. I drew pictures to illustrate my story, and then my teacher bound all of the pages into a little book. Then she told the class that our books would be displayed at the parent-teacher night, and I felt just like a real author. This success inspired me to continue writing, and I decided to start writing a series of mystery novels. I never got past the first few chapters of book one in the series because I got distracted by other ideas for stories to write, but my interest in writing was piqued by those first successful creative acts.

My creative ambition is to be a published novelist and, someday, maybe even make it onto the New York Times Bestseller list. Time is one of the major obstacles to my ambition. There always seems to be something to keep me from spending as much time on my writing as I would like to. With such a busy schedule, I’m often left with just small pieces of time in which to write. It’s hard sometimes for me to get much accomplished because it seems that just when I start to get a good flow going, I have to stop and move onto something else. Another obstacle would be my own inability to accept the quality of my work as it is. I have a tendency to revise my writing to death, spending so much time on revision that I’m not as productive as I perhaps could be. Some vital steps to achieving my creative ambition would be to learn to make the most of small gaps of time by jotting down ideas or lines of dialogue to develop later when I have more time and to focus on finishing a complete draft before I allow myself to do a lot of revision.

My ideal creative activity would be writing a piece of historical fiction in a peaceful place while listening to beautiful music. When I’m writing, I love both the process and the result. I love the excitement of the search to find just the right word to convey what I’m imagining, but I also love seeing the end result of my labor in the finished product.

My Creative Process

Usually, the first thing I do before I begin any creative work is to engage in some type of warm-up activity as inspiration. Reading, looking at, or listening to something beautiful often puts me in a more creative frame of mind. Sometimes I will listen to music or play a song or two on the piano, especially if I’m planning to write poetry. I find that music often helps me be more attuned to the sounds and rhythms of poetry when I begin to write. If I’m planning to write fiction, I often start by reading a few pages of a novel or by reading a bit of whatever I wrote the previous day. If I’m working on a period piece, as I often do, researching historical facts and details usually helps to spark my creativity.

Different methods seem to work best for me depending on what I’m writing. If I’m writing fiction, I prefer to work on my computer, enjoying the convenience and speed of editing and revising with a word processor. If I’m writing poetry, though, I prefer to use pencil and paper, covering each sheet with scribbles of lines and phrases and endless lists of words and rhymes.

Once I have completed my initial draft of a piece of writing, I usually do a quick surface edit of minor changes that I would like to make. Then, I put the piece aside for at least a day, longer if possible. I find that the more time I allow to elapse before I re-read something I’ve written, the more objectively I’m able to read my writing and the more I am able to notice errors and sentences that are not working as well as they could work. Before I consider a piece finished, I also like to read my work aloud to myself. This process allows me to catch more mistakes and typos and helps me to evaluate the sound, rhythm, and pacing of my writing.