Practice Makes Perfect
Since we wrapped our Steering the Craft (Le Guin) series, I thought it would be appropriate to share a few of the things I wrote, as prompted by the writing exercises included in each chapter. I won’t include everything because that would simply be too much. I mean, one exercise alone had four parts. So, some highlights are hit on here, along with some reflections on what was challenging or what I appreciated getting to practice.
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EXERCISE ONE: BEING GORGEOUS (PART I)
Instructions: Write a paragraph to a page of narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect—any kind of sound effect you like—but not rhyme or meter.
What is June in Germany?
June was surprisingly bountiful of blooms. The flowers here have been staggered since spring; always some burst of color, even as the warm days march on. My walks about the neighborhood are never without some blooming beauty, and I relish the gems growing right along our front walk.
The summer is also for strawberries, and this June found both my plants producing the sweetest, reddest fruits. So small yet bursting bright and delicious. Reminded me of girlhood, how berry picking was a staple to our summers because we had a strawberry patch in one corner of the garden, had a treasure trove of raspberries by the bunnies.
I struggle with summer, always have. Probably always will. Enjoying all this sunshine and the need for sunscreen and the sheer amount of sweat from a simple stroll down the street doesn’t come with ease. Give me winter any day, every day. Here in Germany, winter brought flurries and frozen sidewalks—and also the Cloud, the sky dropping down to cocoon our home in cozy comfort. We have not seen the Cloud in months. What we see, what we have, what we must embrace is this June bleeding into July.
The summer will pass, as it inevitably does, but I’m forever at-risk of wishing it away with great haste. The blooms will retreat just as the Cloud will convene its hazy council in our backyard. Such is the seasonal exchange.
Reflection: Perhaps what I enjoyed most about kicking off the exercises with this one is that it was straight-forward and pleasing to think over what words and sounds would make the best sentences. Le Guin had parameters for the exercises, one of which was that you shouldn’t write for more than 30 minutes. So, while I had to take it slow to think over the ways to make my writing gorgeous, I couldn’t drag the thinking out. I like that bit of added challenge because it demands you make decisions., which has to happen at the end of the day if you’re ever going to finish a piece. If you’re interested in context for the chapter that led up to this exercise, check out my earlier post, “Setting Our Course.”
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EXERCISE THREE: SHORT AND LONG (PART I)
Instructions: Write a paragraph of narrative, 100-150 words, in sentences of seven or fewer words. No sentence fragments! Each must have a subject and a verb.
He slips in when all is quiet. No one stirs. All is dark, except one window. The curtains aren’t fully closed. Moonlight filters through a small gap. He stands still a moment longer. Still, no one moves. Snoring confirms deep slumber. Not all quiet then, but enough. Enough for him to find the jewel. They said it’d be in here. Where, hopefully the box on the bureau. A box adorned with swans. A box edged in gold filigree. And there—he spies it. Five strides will bring him to it. Only, he doesn’t get there first.
Reflection: Wow, was this more difficult than I expected. Maybe that was a silly expectation of mine? I felt like I did more counting than writing, when I was working on this one. What’s good, though it’s challenging, is having an unnatural, contrived restriction placed on your writing. It makes you think about what you know about crafting sentences, mood, and momentum. Limiting what you can work with really puts you to the test of figuring out: Can I even make anything? Or maybe more than that: Can I make anything that conveys coherency and threads of a story?
Go more in depth on this one (and check out Part II of the exercise!) in my blog post, “The Sentence.”
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EXERCISE SIX: THE OLD WOMAN
Instructions: This should run to a page or so; keep it short and not too ambitious because you’re going to write the same story twice. The subject is: An old woman is busy doing something—washing the dishes, or gardening, or editing a PhD dissertation in mathematics, whatever you like—as she thinks about an event that happened in her youth. You’re going to intercut between the two times. “Now” is where she is and what she’s doing; “then” is her memory of something that happened when she was young. Your narration will move back and forth between “now” and “then.”
Version One: Choose either first person (I) or third person (She). Tense: Tell it all in the past tense or all in the present tense. Make the shifts between “now” and “then” in her mind clear to the reader, but be subtle about it if you can.
She knew the recipe by heart, though it hadn’t always been that way. She’d had to learn, with her fair share of mishaps and failures along the way, but now, as a seventy-year-old woman, she could make this dish in her sleep. Each step of the process as imprinted on her mind as the date of her birthday or her telephone number. This food, passed down through the women in her family, was a piece of her now, and she started in on the recipe with gladness and an old familiarity.
When she’d first been invited into this heritage, her mother had not made it a choice. One didn’t pick and choose what was handed down; they simply received it and accepted it with open, grateful hands. Her hands then, youthful and fifteen, hadn’t understood what they’d then held. Wrinkled now and worn, she understood—with a gravity that made her miss her mother fiercely, Youthful scorn, aged wisdom, this recipe had seen it all from her. And every year she kept on making it, she would have sworn it tasted better and better.
Version Two: Write the same story. Person: Use the person of the verb you didn’t use in Version One. Tense: Choose a.) present tense for “Now,” past tense for “Then,” or b.) past tense for “now,” present tense for “then.”
When one is seventy years old, you’d expect them to know by heart a recipe they’d been taught at fifteen and made with regularity—at request of her family, for holiday traditions—and, what’s more, to make it well. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve come to expect of myself. I hadn’t known when my mother told me I’d be helping her in the kitchen that fateful day that I was being invited into a deep and delicious culinary heritage. At the time, I’d had little patience for my mother, that generous and kind figure, though now I look back and wish I had. She’d only been trying to teach me, love me, pass along what her mother had given to her. This dish, which I make now out of personal preference and nostalgia—is it just me or does it taste like warmth and girlhood?—is a legacy of sorts. Funny how what I couldn’t see then stands out so clearly to me now.
Reflection: What stuck out to me the most, when I finished both parts of this exercise and looked them over, was how the voice differed between the two. I’d thought I’d done a fair job with Version One and finished it thinking, “Okay, I like that. That wasn’t bad.” But then I switched things up, finished Version Two, and thought, “Wow, I like this one better. What a difference of vitality there is shifting from third-person to first.” This is a great exercise for playing around with the various tones and perspectives you can take on the same general story, and it can be helpful in showing you what tense or POV is a better fit for the narrative.
“Past, Present, Action!” is my post covering the chapter this exercise is from.
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EXERCISE SEVEN: POINTS OF VIEW
Instructions: Think up a situation for a narrative sketch of 200-300 words. It can be anything you like but should involve several people doing something…It doesn’t have to be a big, important event, though it can be, but something should happen…Please use little or no dialogue in these POV exercises.
Part I: Tell your story from a single POV, that of a participant in the event—an old man, a child, a cat, whatever you like. Use limited third person.
She’d seen the stop sign. She knew that for a fact because she’d fully come to a stop at the command of that red shape. Then, seeing what she’d thought had been a clear coast, she’d pressed lightly on the gas pedal to carry on with her commute home. Not too fast; she was passing through the first residential streets of her cozy, quiet neighborhood. Apparently, she was the only vehicle minding that common courtesy, though she only realized it belatedly. After entering the intersection, catching the blur of movement in her periphery, and, in one great hurry, watching the view out her windshield change from her usual route home to an up close and personal view of some neatly-trimmed hedges. A second later the air bag deployed, an absolute shock to her system. What on earth had just happened to her?
Part II: Tell the same story using the detached author or “fly on the wall” POV.
All was quiet in the neighborhood on the west side of town. Those residents out in their yards puttering around their flowerbeds or trimming the grass or putting away the shears they’d used to prune the hedge made no great noise. Peaceful activity was the afternoon’s agenda. Until a blue Kia Sportage rolled down the street and slowed to a stop at the four-way intersection. A stop sign was posted for all approaches, and she observed the direction of hers. If only she’d waited a second longer, taken a closer look to her left, the accident might have been avoided. But she didn’t, and all was no longer quiet, as a speedy, black sports car blew through their sign.
Part III: If there wasn’t a character in the original version who was there but was not a participant, only an onlooker, add such a character now. Tell the same story in that character’s voice, in first or third person.
Henry loved his home, his yard, the effort it required to keep both things in tip-top shape. His kids teased him about being too much of a perfectionist when it came to how he kept his grass, his shrubs, his manicured hedges, and he was sure his wife would have joined in the heckling, if she wasn’t overjoyed by the fact that he’d found a healthy hobby in his retirement. There were worse things a man could get himself into than mulching and transplanting hostas. He could have blown a chunk of their nest egg on a fancy car, like that sporty thing that’d whizzed by earlier. Instead, he had this piece of property, his own little corner of earth, to care for. Today, it’d been the hedges in need of his attention, and he was just turning away to return the shears to the gardening shed around back when he heard the rumble of an engine. Looking out toward the street, he spied a mid-sized SUV. No, that wouldn’t make that sound. Motion further ahead drew his attention, and Henry shook his head. That black sports car, again. Someone needed to tell that punk to slow down. Slow down, before it was too la—
Reflection: Similarly to the last exercise, I appreciate how this had me thinking of all the different angles and takes you can get from one, general situation. One story can be told in many ways, and sometimes you have to search for the focal character(s). It might make sense, in certain scenarios, to have only one character as the narrator/focal point, or it might make sense for your story to be multi-POV. Sticking with the same situation, like this exercise is asking us to do, can be tedious, at a certain point (there’s a Part IV I didn’t include here), but it allows for a lot of exploration on what’s all happening, who’s all around to see it, and the options you have for conveying the events/details. For this one, you can find more thoughts in my post, “Who’s Talking Now?”
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As I mentioned at the top, there were quite a few exercises Le Guin gave us in her book (though the book itself is a little, bitty thing!), so, if there was a different exercise that was more impactful to you than these were to me, I’d love to know. We’ve all got different focus areas for the skills we’re trying to develop, and I’m sure the next time I pick up Steering the Craft it will find me in a new season when I’m looking to grow in new ways.
Aside from the specific exercises, if there was anything, in general, from this series that you’re taking away, I’d love to hear about that, too. Writing, as much as it is a solitary endeavor, is made better by the connection of one creative to another. I hope diving into Le Guin’s book has been as beneficial to you as it was to me, and I’m already scoping out which great author I can learn from next. I’ll keep ya posted on whoever I land on next, and, until then, happy writing, friends.