Healing through story
My Lord, our mannequin drives a flatbed Ford this week. Ride along as words dress her story.
“Stuff your eyes with wonder… live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds.” Words from Ray Bradbury. Today’s Mannequin Monday is a mashup of song lyrics, a real-life memory, and Ray Bradbury quotes.
And then I present “Hollywood and Highland,” a short story I wrote using all these pieces.
Continue readingIn our creative work we give form to feelings. In writing, music, sculpting, painting, photography, film. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” Anaïs Nin.
This week Mannequin Monday looks at the wonder of re-reading a novel. I re-visit authors Louise Penny and John Steinbeck to help us with that.
The Wonder of Re-reading a Novel
I am not a fan of re-reading novels. In my lifetime I have read hundreds, perhaps thousands of novels. They span a wide range of styles and genres. Most of them have been mysteries, police procedurals, thrillers, international espionage. I love a good mystery. In the mystery genre, my favorite authors include Michael Connelly, Daniel Silva, Louise Penny, William Kent Krueger, Frederick Forsyth. All excellent authors, with exciting, well-crafted novels. I admire Connelly’s detective Harry Bosch. His driving force: everybody counts, or nobody counts. And Silva’s latest novel, The Order, exemplifies hope in a troubled world, more so than many of his previous books.
Few of these, however, inspire a re-read.
Continue reading“How does your work affect the world?” Writer and marketing coach Dan Blank asks us to consider on this Mannequin Monday: “What will people remember of your writing?”
And I suggest that one lyric of songwriter Leonard Cohen offers a perspective on a writer’s impact.
Finally, I share an excerpt from an article I wrote for educators on the enduring work of journalists in combat and civil unrest zones .
For a number of years, I have been following Dan Blank’s inspiring body of work on helping writers/creatives connect with their readers and find an audience. In one of his blog posts from 2012, Blank invited us to think about the true impact of our creative work. His comments are just as fresh today.
Blank said, “I work with writers, and my particular focus is on developing a long-term writing career. Sure, I focus on marketing tactics that people can use today, and on book launches, social media, audience growth, etc. But what will people remember of your writing… years from now?”
Continue readingA defining characteristic of Ernest Hemingway’s writing style: “His decision to let his characters speak.” So says writer Justin Rice on Hemingway’s use of dialogue.
This week I also look at Elmore Leonard. He writes dialogue rich in action and light on description.
And I offer another sample of my own writing, my own attempt at writing decent dialogue.
Continue readingRobert Frost once said about writing: “a poem is never a put-up job—it begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” Mannequin Monday this week looks at the brokenness at the heart of any impactful poem or story.
I include a sample from my upcoming book Surfrider, the second in the Film Crew series.
“Show us a world we’ve never seen before.” A sense of place in writing. Not simply setting. A place. A world. Almost a character in itself. This Mannequin Monday finds us working on creating worlds with our words. I visit one of Louise Penny’s novels, The Long Way Home, for descriptors of a unique world.
I include a piece of my own writing. “The Rain is a Thief.” A short story of tragedy – and release – set in a black night of rain.
I am participating in a writing course from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. This week’s lesson centers on setting.
One of the instructors tells us, “Show us a world we’ve never seen before and we’ll never see again.” She continues. “You can create that kind of singularity simply by overlaying an emotional reality over that physical reality in a way that’s never been done before in quite that sense.”
Elsewhere in the course, “You’re not just setting into place pieces of landscape in which your characters are moving around. You’re also getting a chance to do some major work to show the gears that are turning inside of those characters, show what’s important to them, show what’s haunting them so fully that nothing in their gaze, nothing in their perspective is like escaping the sway of whatever that emotional situation is.”
Continue readingA tiny yellow flower in a sidewalk crack brings hope to a boy and an old man. The story “City of Silence” comes from Teen Ink to open another week of Mannequin Monday. In the ashes of a devastated city, “one day there will be life and love and laughter again.”
A joy-filled story of hope rising out of the ashes. Today we dress the blank form with a flower, with hope.
And – Cabe Wray walks away from his lucrative sales job to follow his obsessive search for his long-lost twin sister. I offer chapter one of my novel Apart for your reading enjoyment.
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