Shut Up & Write!

by Judy Bridges

  Showering the Carny’s tattoos He took out the tiger, then the __lion________, then the ______American Eagle “What the hell, are you crazy man? He ground the lever & pushed Gordon off of him & ground the lever, spinning Evelyn off, away from them both, spinning crazily, around & around, on the Tilt O Whirl.

  —Carnival writing exercise by Sara Rattan

  Here are the opening paragraphs of the short story that evolved from Sara’s carnival writing exercise.

  The Carny ducked his head each time he leaned in to give the safety bar a yank. And with each yank, the tattoos on his upper arm started, like runners making a false move before the gun fires. He slapped the top of each car as he sent it off and then he ground the lever that brought a new bright red saucer forward, one at a time, lurching and rolling crazily—in smaller and smaller half moons—until it finally came to a rest.

  It was almost noon. The crowd had begun to disperse to the Farm Bureau stands that lined the Midway. Some went in search of spit-roasted chicken and mashed potatoes served up by middle-aged women in hair nets. Others sought out corn dogs and fries at the 4-H Quonset, but it was the last day of the carnival’s run and just as many clung to their place in line. Young girls hung on boys with bad skin. Army recruits, in tee-shirts meant to camouflage them, shifted their weight from side to side, watching the occasional exchange of chewed gum between the teenage couples. Fathers, unevenly anchored by a child on either side, pretended not to notice.

  Gordon had plenty of time to watch Evelyn watch the Carny.

  The closer they got to the Tilt O’ Whirl, the softer the folded up strip of tickets grew in the dampness of Gordon’s clenched hand. He could feel the dark, wet circles spreading under his arms. Damn Banlon shirt. Why had he worn it? He pulled at his collar, but the moist material stuck to his chest. He looked at Evelyn to see whether she had noticed, but she was gazing at the Carny—watching him slap the cars and grind the lever.

  The tattooed leopard tensed and the tiger rose off its haunches, but the eagle didn’t move. It was watching Gordon.

  “Whyyy . . . Gordon.” Evelyn was startled by the weight of his look. She pushed her hand right into his trouser pocket and found his fingers. That cooled him off, but just for a minute. They had come to the front of the line and the Carny’s voice spattered all over him.

  “Hey, Freshness, you ever been on a Tilt O’ Whirl before? Watch your step.” The Carny had Evelyn’s hand in his, pulling her up the hammered metal steps and she let go of Gordon’s fingers. Her hand came out of his pocket, just like that. And just like that he felt the damp circles under his arms go completely wet. His face and forehead, too. Beads of sweat stung his upper lip. He could taste the salt. He was broiling.

  “This your old man? Got a couple of tickets for me fella’?”

  Gordon didn’t answer. He stared. The tiger fixed its eye on him.

  And just like that, he felt the fist with the soggy tickets come right out of his pocket and land on the Carny’s upper arm. He took out the tiger. Then the leopard. Then the American eagle.

  “What the hell? Are you crazy, man?”

  The Carny pushed Gordon off of him and ground the lever, sending Evelyn spinning off away from them both, sliding crazily, around and around, on the Tilt O’ Whirl.

  —From “The Carnival” by Sara Rattan

  Make “Showing” a Part of Your Life

  Like Al Martinez, you have the opportunity to make showing a part of your life. This isn’t something you do only when you are writing. You learn to pay attention more acutely, and do it all the time.

  One of my favorite memories is of my dad driving a front-end loader around the yard. The bucket is lifted, and in it, my nephew Brian sits, proudly surveying the world. Dad lifts the bucket higher so Brian can touch the pine tree, the birdhouse, the top of my kid sisters’ playhouse. Brian’s job is to tell Grandpa what things are like “up there.” Sharp needles. Rough bark. It smells like Christmas.

  When I take young writers for a walk through the woods or an old cemetery, I stop them every few minutes and ask: What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? What do you taste? What do you smell? They taste flowers, sniff apple blossoms, and feel the smooth cold granite of a gravestone. This is ammunition for writing. This is a habit I hope they carry with them through their lives.

  Whatever your age, you make your writing better, and your life richer, when you make “showing” a part of your everyday, walk-around life. Pretend Miss Monlux is walking with you. She stops you every once in a while and reminds you to:

  Pay attention: Look closely. Notice the details.

  Use your senses: Stand still. See, hear, feel, taste, smell.

  Use your imagination: Daydream. Make up stories. Visualize.

  Practice writing: “Show” your characters, the setting, the action.

  The sun is warm. The breeze touches you.

  See the yellow daffodils.

  And write what you see in your heart.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WRITING FROM THE INSIDE

  Maybe we’re here only to say: house, bridge, well, gate, jug, olive-tree, window—at most, pillar, tower—but to say them, remember, oh! to say them in a way that the things themselves never dreamed of so intensely.

  —Rainer Maria Rilke, poet

  My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how the holy Baal Shem used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke, and he was so swept away by his story that he himself began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour on he was cured of his lameness. That’s the way to tell a story!

  —Martin Buber, philosopher

  This is where you put it all together—your ideas, the characters and scenes you created, your decisions about point of view, and how you show what you see. It’s all inside of you, waiting to come out. You have the skills, plus the story, plus a lifetime of memories, plus the passion to write. It is time to tap that well, to write from the inside.

  When you write from the inside, you draw out your best natural qualities—empathy, imagination, love of language, a desire to communicate—and craft them into heartfelt paragraphs and pages.

  The phrase “writing from the inside,” has two meanings. You write from inside yourself and from inside the scene.

  Writing from Inside Yourself

  The story you want to write is inside of you, not on the sheaf of papers you hold in your hand. The story on paper is only the current representation of the one you have inside. You could lose the paper version and still have the real one, the one that matters. It might take some time and trouble to reconstruct and you might forget parts of it, but it’s still yours, still in your heart. All the stuff you collect over a lifetime, all the memories and research and bits of learning and imagination are yours to use. Add the plan for the current writing—the story idea, the article assignment—and you have everything you need inside you. All you need to do now is let it out.

  Writing from Inside the Scene

  Rather than trying to write the whole story, begin with a specific scene—a particular moment in the story when something interesting is happening. Pick a scene that calls to you, scratches at you. Your scene might be one of the bubbles you brainstormed, or it might be one that’s been twirling around in your mind, begging to be written.

  Example

  This is the opening scene of a story that won first place in the Wisconsin People & Ideas/Wisconsin Book Festival Annual Short Story Contest. In “Anything that Sticks,” the author writes from inside the scene, sharing the experience of a fifth-grade boy who has Asperger’s syndrome.

  Carter Conway presses the tip of his index finger against the point of his pencil. He lifts his desk lid to check his other pencils. “Fifth graders,” he says sharply, like a teacher. “I hear chattering in this classroom. Too much chattering.”

  Cutting through all of the babble, however, Carter also hears that someone is
using the manual pencil sharpener. He likes the grinding sound the sharpener makes when the handle is turned, and the way the wheel can be adjusted to accommodate different-sized pencils. He also loves the smell of the shavings in the canister, and is always quick to volunteer to take them to the garbage pail so that he can watch the tan flakes that smell like his grandfather’s workshop fall slowly into the can. The electric sharpener, he always says, makes the shavings too dusty, and they don’t smell good. No thank you, he would rather not empty that canister.

  —From “Anything that Sticks” by Sheila Hanrahan, Wisconsin People & Ideas

  A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing from the Inside

  The story is inside you. By following these steps, you can move the story from your mind onto the page:

  Focus on a scene

  Select a point of view

  Position your adoring reader

  Arrange your tools

  “Walk” into the scene

  Write the first draft quickly

  1. Focus on a Scene

  You can write only one scene at a time, so forget all the rest and focus on the one you want or need to write now. Draw a circle. Inside, jot down the three main elements of the scene: Characters + Setting + Action.

  Characters: Which characters are in the scene?

  Setting: Where, exactly, is this happening?

  Action: What is happening, right now?

  For the scene “Two Guys Get in a Fight at a Carnival” (Chapter 6), the circle contains:

  Two guys

  Carnival

  A fight

  For the opening scene in “Anything that Sticks” (Chapter 7), the circle contains:

  Carter Conway

  Classroom

  Fingering pencils

  2. Select a Point of View

  Remember that the point of view is the position of the narrator—the point from which the narrator tells the story. Attach yourself to a main character in the story or to an observer—a dog, child, girlfriend, or person in the crowd. (For a review of “point of view,” see Chapter Five.) Select one:

  First Person: “I”—Sees through eyes of one character.

  An excellent choice.

  Second Person: “You”—Useful for marketing, otherwise awkward

  Third Person Limited: “He/She”—Rides with one character

  An excellent choice.

  Third Person Unlimited (Omniscient): “He/She”—The “eye in the sky.”

  Sounds a lot easier than it is.

  3. Position Your Adoring Reader

  This is the cure for the teacher who didn’t like you, the one you see scowling when you get it wrong, the one who still makes you too nervous to write. Look around your home or a garage sale or a toy shop for a truly accepting friend, such as my stuffed gorilla Alfred. Other writers have adopted rocks, ceramic gnomes, bits of birch bark. If it keeps you writing and doesn’t censor what you say, it’s the right thing for you. You’ll find an editor or get a critique later. For now, let your heart be free.

  4. Arrange Your Tools

  Pen. Paper. Keyboard. Cup of coffee. Cowboy hat. Glasses. Box of chocolates. Whatever you need plus whatever makes you feel good. Several years ago I quit smoking and found I absolutely could not write without a haze between me and the screen. I had to burn smoky incense in order to get any work done.

  Some writers prefer having a writing place that’s all set for them; I prefer to move around—studio, coffee shop, living room, park bench. As I write this chapter, I’m at the home of an elderly aunt, sitting in a breezy gazebo watching a herd of chickadees swarm the feeder. To save myself the hassle of collecting what I might need or want when I’m working, I fill a basket with cell phone, water bottle, tissues, small bag of almonds, notebook and pen, and treats for the dog. If I didn’t wear my glasses on a granny-string, I’d have a pair in the basket. The basket has a handle so I can grab-and-go. I use a daypack if I’m seriously hitting the trail. (I sometimes hike and scribble along the way.)

  The point is to make things easy for yourself. Get the little things out of the way so you can focus on what you really want to do.

  5. “Walk” into the Scene

  Use Your Imagination

  Start visualizing the scene. Don’t worry about research, grammar, rules, or getting published. For now, all of that is beside the point. Let yourself sink into your imagination, into your belly, into your memories.

  Close Your Eyes

  Focus on your scene. If you are in a coffee shop and think someone might stare at you, smile to yourself and let them wonder what’s up. The point is to close out the world and go to your place, to the scene you want to see.

  Picture the Scene

  See the characters, setting, and action. Who’s there? Where are they? What are they doing? Stay with it. Don’t wonder what happened before or what might happen after—stay in the moment and imagine that it’s happening right now. Give yourself a few seconds to get focused on it. Let it come to life.

  Take a Deep Breath

  I know, it’s starting to sound like yoga. It’s not, but writing does call upon your ability to relax. Breathe. One, two, three deep breaths. Let the air slide all the way down to your toes. All the way in and all the way out, so far out you feel your belly crunch. Exhale through pursed lips so you have to push the air a little. A little resistance is good for the soul. Slowly. One . . . two . . . three. . . .

  Position the Narrator

  Position yourself as the narrator; you are located either within one of the characters in your scene—looking out through that character’s eyes—or you are looking over the shoulder of one of the characters, or you are looking down from your seat in the sky. Settle in so you can see the place, people, and action from your chosen point of view.

  Use Your Senses

  With your eyes closed, pay closer attention to the scene.

  What do you see?

  What do you hear?

  What do you feel?

  What do you taste?

  What do you smell?

  Don’t worry if you don’t connect the first time you go through the list of senses. Go through it again, one sense at a time, until you become aware. Then just relax and go with whatever you have.

  6. Write the First Draft Quickly

  Write as fast as you can. Do not stop to think. Do not correct. If you are feeling stymied, just keep writing. The only thing you need to do is make words. It doesn’t matter whether or not they are good words; just make words and do it as fast as you can.

  Keep pressing forward until you have at least one page full of writing. Neatness does not count. Be sloppy. If you are using a pen, write big and wild. Turn the paper upside down if it makes you feel more creative. If you work on a computer and are an edit freak, close your eyes while you write. Or reset the font color to palest gray so you can hardly see the words. Or try writing with a pencil. For a while, I was lucky enough to have an assistant who could read my writing even when I couldn’t. When my inner editor drove me nuts, I switched from computer to dull pencil and turned the scribbled mess over to her, and when she handed it back, it wasn’t all that bad!

  If you are writing by hand and the sight of the mess makes you nervous, cover it. Play whatever trick you must play on yourself to kill your inner editor and fill at least one page.

  A Field of Daffodils

  When we “write from inside the scene” in a workshop, I always ask who did the worst writing and if they are willing to share. Several hands go up, “Me. I did the worst.”

  Of course, it’s never the worst. There isn’t any such thing as worst and best when you write like this. What there is—and this I guarantee—is amazement at how well everyone does at making readers feel the scene. When the readings are finished, I go back around the group asking people to recall something from each writer’s work. It never fails that everyone remembers at least one thing from each of the writings—a bright color, a pungent odor, the warm wind in a field of daffodils.<
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