mini lesson – The Writers in Residence

Teach A Writing Class?

by Jill Amadio

Teach a writing class? I have enough trouble getting myself to work on my next mystery, of which I only have one-third finished. However, I am working full-speed on my new career as a writing coach.

Westport, CT has more than its share of elderly, I was told at the town’s country-club-style senior center where I use their gym. The executive director figured many of the members would love to write their life story if only they knew how.

Interesting, I thought, because I have been looking for a paying job. I’ve written four biographies under my own name and a few as co-author. My greatest contribution to assist another person’s attempt to get their autobiography on the page has been as a ghostwriter. I’ve written 15 for clients. This is the kind of book you can write with no repercussions tied your own fragile persona. No one can take pot shots at you for you putting on the published page swipes or dislike for certain relatives, remembered experiences that showed others as fools, or perhaps an opportunity to lay bare your absolute hatred of your cousin’s prize poodle. I do, however, urge a client’s caution and I try to appeal to their good nature, if they have one.

So, did I want to take up the challenge of teaching some old fogies like myself how to write their memoir? The idea appealed to me. I had never taught anyone anything in my whole life. Well, maybe a few table manners to my kids. So, yes, I accepted the challenge to help anyone over 65 jot down their life story in presentable and publishable form.

Creating a curriculum was my first worry. What would I teach? The elements of style came immediately to mind. I’d want to know how to structure a book, create my personal style, and how to write down my thoughts and feelings. I’d want to know how to describe places and people, events and experiences that had made up my world since birth, and was still occupying my psyche both physically and mentally.

For the first class I asked my students to create a Timeline, a list of each year of their life with a significant note, a few words, to mark why it was memorable.

I decided that handouts were important because I had always loved receiving them at writers conferences, so I found Rudy Vallee’s timeline I’d created back in 1989, as well as a champion cowboy’s timeline that chronicled his trek across America from coast to coast on horseback. One handout was a list of 106 descriptive verbs I’ve used for years.

In addition to the Timeline, I also mapped out writing techniques and elements for the following classes. In addition to Structure, Style, and Context I added how to write Characters, Flashbacks, Settings, Cliffhangers, Editing, Beginnings and Endings, Publishing, and Marketing. I became so enamored of my advice I began to inspect my own WIP and made changes. I dredged up a few tips and notes I’d taken at various conferences and thus was able to flesh out my curriculum.

An observation about the students. They were exreremely keen to learn how to write their memoirs. It was clear some of them had been thinking about writing such a tome for a few years but had no idea how to go about it. By the homework I gave them, i.e. the Timeline, they returned to class time and time again more enthusiastic than ever. I told them to always interrupt me any time with questions, hoping that my fear they’d forget them before the end of class was not apparent.

Among these senior students, limited to 12, were a school bus driver, a poet, an attorney, an ad saleswoman, a lady from Germany who escaped the Nazis, a couple of teachers, a financier, and an accountant. One gentleman dropped out after lesson #2 because he said now that he was about to describe his life he found it too painful to do so. Another gentleman said he doubted he would continue because as a reporter he was trained to write lean, and that was the antithesis of writing a book. I told him I’d initially experienced the same hesitation when I was first approached about ghostwriting. My editor at the magazine I wrote for said that a CEO had called asking for a referral to a writer for his business book. Before calling him back with a recommendation she sked me if I’d be interested.

“A book? A whole book? No way!” I said. “I enjoy writing the 3,000-word articles for the magazine but 70,000 words? Forget it.”

“Think of it this way,” the editor said. “Approach each chapter is an article. And the pay is really good.”

“Oh. Okay, I’ll do it.”

After that first book I received many referrals and became a ghostwriter, a few people contacting me through my website, www.ghostwritingpro.com. One client, a banker, asked me to ghostwrite her novel about a financial fraud.

“Hmm,” I said. “Sounds a bit boring. How about we add a murder to spice it up?”

“Yes! How many murders can we have?”

The publishing of that book inspired me to create my own Tosca Trevant mystery series while I continued to ghostwrite as my main source of income.

Back to my seniors’ class. The atmosphere was informal, friendly, and focused. I showed them several of my memoirs, and said that although we only had eight hours in total with which to cover the subject, at least it would get them started thinking and planning.

By lesson #4 we all felt comfortable with each other reading aloud the homework. One lady was writing her memoir only for her grandchildren and refused to share with us but everyone else was eager for everyone’s critique. The lawyer fella incorporated funny poems into his memoir, and someone else brought us to chuckles with her descriptions of working in a donut shop as a teenager. The German lady brought us to tears with her childhood memories of fleeing the Nazis

That first 8-hour course was popular enough to be repeated, and later in the spring I shall be teaching How to Write a Short Story or Essay. Luckily, when I lived in Laguna Woods, California, several of my stories were published in the community’s anthologies over the years although I can’t remember ever writing an essay. Tips for my seniors, anyone?

Me? Write a Memoir? But…!

by Gail Kittleson

Decades ago, some friends invited us to go rafting on a local stream. I thought our son, three years old at the time, would be excited, but he said,

“I’m scared of those rabbits, Mommy.”

“Rabbits?”

“Yeah. Evelyn said we’re going to come to some rabbits…”

Those rapids would’ve scared me, too, if I thought they might hop into our raft. After a bit of explanation about the mild rapids, our son loved rafting.

Misunderstandings often ground our fears, and this proves true with writing. Being afraid to express our anxieties in black and white originates in false assumptions:

What we write may be used against us.
There’s a ‘right’ way to write, and we haven’t learned how.
Once we write something down, we’re bound to the perspective we embraced at the time.
Once written, our words will be “golden,” and therefore, we can’t destroy them.

First of all, what we write may be used against us. But this is no reason to forego all the benefits of the process. Writing in a safe place that no one ever sees has done wonders for many people experiencing trials.

The feeling that we have no control over who might see what we write can keep us bound by the tide of emotions swirling inside us. Launching out to safely journal our thoughts, tied irrevocably to those emotions, may seem beyond our power.

In order to take this tentative step, we must unlearn the second misconception, that there’s a ‘right’ way to write. Nothing could be farther from the truth. No perfect method for expressing what we feel exists.

In fact, the ‘perfect way’ will be the way our words come out. Each person’s story contains unique content, since it comes from our one-of-a-kind inner being. Each of us perceives even the identical situation with variations.

A family outsider, my sister, or my brother will see what I remember differently than I do. But my first feeble step—even if that amounts to writing one short paragraph about what’s transpiring inside me—unleashes immense healing power.

Now to the third misnomer: we are not bound by our viewpoint at any given time. A glance around us reveals that everything changes constantly. The only constant is change, as they say.

If I still looked at what I experienced fifteen years ago with the same eyes, I would be in big trouble. But the thing is, I would never have arrived at my present perspective if I hadn’t started writing down my thoughts and feelings.

At the time, my journal pages seemed somehow sacred, and they were. But as the years have passed, I’ve grown, and at certain points, I let go of certain writings from the pasts. Burned them, because they no longer seemed ‘golden.’ Some of them, I kept and edited. And re-edited, and re-re-edited into a memoir. That’s not the route for everyone, but proved to be an important part of my journey.

The point is, your writings are your writings. You have the right to choose what to do with them, including chucking them down a sinkhole never to be seen again.

And the broader point is that in the darkness of an emotional avalanche, we cannot even know what we think. By allowing words to flow from us, we invite clarity, and through this process, discover truths we would never have imagined.

Words equal an enormous gift—penned quietly in secret places, they blossom like hidden desert plants that bloom in darkness, where no one observes. But their flowers bear perfume, attracting the necessary insects for pollination. It may be that we will rework and launch our writings into a published memoir, but either way, this practice can become a powerful experience.

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than You.”

Dr. Seuss

When Gail’s not steeped in World War II historical research, writing, or editing, you’ll find her reading for fun, gardening, or enjoying her grandchildren in Northern Iowa. She delights in interacting with readers who fall in love with her characters.

Gail Kittleson taught college expository writing and ESL before writing women’s historical fiction. From northern Iowa, she facilitates writing workshops and women’s retreats, and enjoys the Arizona Ponderosa forest in winter.

Catching Up With Daylight; a Journey to Wholeness, is Gail’s own memoir. She and her husband began renovating an old house after he returned from a deployment in Iraq. The book is “a gorgeous tapestry of non-fictional thoughts. This very gifted author knows how to weave her thoughts, memories, and the history of the old house she is refurbishing into a journey of emotional and spiritual wholeness.”

Women of the Heartland, Gail’s World War II series, highlights women of The Greatest Generation: In Times Like These, April 2016, With Each New Dawn, February, 2017 A True Purpose (Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, and Word Crafts Press, December, 2017.)

Visit her at the following social media sites:

Gail’s website: Dare To Bloom

Gail’s Facebook page

Gail’s Twitter page

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NOTE: This article was posted for Gail Kittleson by The Writers In Residence member, Jackie Houchin

Writing Short Stories: A Mini Course by Kate Thornton Part I

Kate Thornton is a retired US Army officer who enjoys writing both mysteries and science fiction. With over 100 short stories in print, she teaches a short story class and is currently working on a series of romantic suspense novels. She divides her time between Southern California and Tucson, Arizona.

Today, Kate presents the first part of a mini course, in a question and answer format, on writing short fiction.

WRITING SHORT STORIES: A MINI COURSE PART I by Kate Thornton

How long is a short story?

Here are the official lengths from the Short Mystery Fiction Society (the folks who award the Derringer prizes each year)

Flash Story Up to 500 words
Short-short Story 501 to 2000 words
Mid-length Short Story 2001 to 6000 words
Longer Short Story 6001 to 15,000 words

Remember: every venue in which you wish to publish will have their own idea of what lengths they will accept.

What makes it different from a chapter of a novel?

A short story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is limited to one main plot point and the cast of characters is of necessity short. It tells a complete story with a resolution or revelation of some sort at the end.

A written scene without these completing elements is a snapshot or vignette, not a short story.

You may certainly use characters, settings, chapters or scenes from your novel in a short story, but your short story must stand alone as a complete story all by itself. It must have an ending, even if you – or the reader! – do not agree with the denouement or ending.

What’s more important, setting, plot or characters?

They are all important. But while you may have the luxury of exploring settings in great detail in a novel, using multiple plot twists and turns, and an array of characters right out of Cecil B. DeMille, in a short story you must narrow your focus. The shorter your story, the more important it is to write concisely and to keep the telling of your tale simple while retaining its color, premise, style and voice.

First person? Third person? Omniscient Narrator?

Whatever works for your story. I have read beautifully-written short stories comprised entirely of dialogue. Beware when using a narration technique that you do not just dump the story on the reader by telling, not showing. Even a very short story must be interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention. I like the way first person makes the reader an immediate part of the story. But I like the way third person omniscient can make the reader privy to every secret, every action as it unfolds.

I want to write a short story. Where do I get ideas?

Good – let’s try writing a short story. Ideas come from everywhere, but I find that themed contests and exercises (“Write a story based on this picture!” or “Write a story about sheep!” or “Write a story with a lemon, a goat and an alien princess in it!”) can be very good jump-starters.

Other ideas can be a childhood incident or other real-life event. Remember you are writing a piece of fiction, not a memoir, so make sure you have that old beginning, middle and end.

One of the best exercises you can do if you want to write short stories is read them. Read in the genres in which you want to write – and the ones you don’t. Read the masters: O. Henry, Saki, Sommerset Maugham, Edgar Allen Poe. Read Guy de Maupassant, Ambrose Bierce, Shirley Jackson. Go here for some great classics

You will not only get ideas, you will get a feel for the short story form. You will also see how language has changed over the last hundred years or so.

Now read some contemporary shorts: Ed Hoch, Stephen King, Raymond Carver, (here’s a link to one of his, “Vitamins” in Granta) Jhumpa Lahiri, Alice Munro, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Michael Chabon, Annie Proulx, Lorrie Moore.

Look at the differences, but more importantly, look at what is the same. Look at the “bones” of the story, the structure as well as the sheer reader’s delight of total immersion in a good story.

Now, try to write a short story of your own. Don’t hesitate – start writing now. Write until you have all three elements (beginning, middle, end.)

Tinker with that first sentence until it makes you want to read more. This is your “hook” – hook those readers up front. Remember those classic stories?

Help! I wrote a story, but…

Congratulations on writing a story – now let’s tighten it up. Every first draft of a story can use some improvement. Take your newly-finished work and put it away for a few days. Write something else in the meantime. Remember – there is no limit to what you can write.

Some time later, take it out and read it aloud. You’ll probably find a few things you need to fix right away.

Here’s how I tighten a story – I have been known to successfully reduce a rambling 2,000 word story to a succinct 500 word short-short – without losing the essence of the story. I go through it and take out all the -ly words first. Adverbs are not your friends. (Okay, maybe I leave in one or two. But what do they contribute to the story?) Next, I look at the dialogue tags – the “he said, she saids.” Do they make sense? Are they monotonous? Too colorful? Confusing?

Next, I read for extraneous phrases which do not advance the story. They may be beautifully-written pieces of deathless prose, but if they do not advance the story, out they go.

Finally, I read for pacing and continuity. Does the story unfold smoothly and at the right pace? Does stuff happen in the right order? Did I forget a name, change a hair color by mistake, forget that it was night in one part and day in the other? Do I need to change a few sentences around to make them clearer, smoother, more readable? Do I need to ditch a sentence or two entirely? And why did I name the heroine Gypsophylla when Lisa is a better fit? (Yippee for find-and-replace!)

With any luck, skill & effort, your story is now a better one.

Tune in on February 10 for the rest of the Mini Course, beginning with Marketing!