How To Write Magical Words: A Writer's Companion

by Unknown

  But there’s a larger reason, too. We might not be Shakespeare, but we’re not completely divorced from him either. Like him, we are storytellers. We are part of a tradition that is as old as humanity itself. I’ve been reading Shakespeare for years. I’ve been reading Poe, Hawthorne, and Dickens; Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Steinbeck; Stegner, Proulx, and Winton. I’ve also been reading Tolkien and Card and Kay. All of them have shaped my work, my style, my process. I don’t think that anyone will be reading my books four hundred and fifteen years from now (although it would be cool if they were). I’m not even sure anyone will be reading them a century from now. But people are reading them now, and will be for years to come.

  And maybe some of them will wind up writing, too. Just as I have had stories handed to me over the years that I have then folded into my creative process, maybe they will add my stories to their imaginative mix. And so that narrative tradition will flow on, in part through my work, and through yours, too. We are part of something much larger than the one book with which we happen to be struggling right now. Without thinking ourselves the equal of Shakespeare, or of Hawthorne or Faulkner or Proulx, we can still feel a connection to them.

  That’s what I felt last night as I listened to the last lines of Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’d struggled much of the day with rewrites and proofs. When I went to the play I was angry and frustrated and exhausted. I left exhilarated, even proud.

  I’m a writer. And that’s why I bother.

  And as imagination bodies forth

  The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

  Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

  A local habitation and a name.

  — Act V, scene i

  §§§

  A.J. Hartley

  I wondered if some part of that quotation was coming :-) I thought you would go with the slightly more back-handed "The lunatic, the lover and the poet/Are of imagination all compact." Great post, David. You’re absolutely right. It’s not just about the need to make up stories: it’s about the need to share them. However solitary, writing is finally a communal act. In the context of your theme we might add the closing couplet from sonnet 18: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/So long lives this [my writing] and this gives life to thee."

  And thanks for (almost) not mentioning the human condition . . .

  John Rea-Hedrick

  David, I always appreciate your posts and have been particularly encouraged by this recent series on writers and their writing. I work a full-time day job, but writing has always been my first love—crafting stories in my head during the day then scavenging for time to write them down in the late evenings. I’m not a part of any writing community so your posts (and this blog) have helped me understand I’m not alone in the way I feel about writing or in the frustrations that come with it.

  Thanks for helping to keep me inspired!

  David B. Coe

  John, thanks so much for the kind comment. Writing is a strange endeavor—like painting or sculpture—in that we do it in isolation so that the product of our labor can be enjoyed by (we hope) tens or hundreds of thousands. I’m not part of a writing community where I live, either. But I’ve come to feel that Magical Words is my writing community, and I’m glad to hear that it serves a similar function for you. I admire you for keeping at the writing even while dealing with the demands of your full-time work. I wish you every success with your book and we’re all glad to have you as part of the Magical Words community.

  Balancing the Tribal

  Faith Hunter

  This essay is about . . .

  Gardening.

  Not really. But it is an essay about balance—the balance of living a life that is comfortable, fulfilling, healthy, full of creativity, full of wonderful words, activities away from the job—or in my case, jobs—and deadlines.

  I wrote not too long ago about cutting harmful things and toxic people out of our lives. Yeah, I know, some of those toxic people are family, and may not be cut-able, but most of us can limit the amount of time we spend with toxic people, even family, to improve our lives’ balance.

  And most of us make time for the good-for-us (non-toxic) family and friends, and make time to go out into the world in social situations like parties, lunch out, tea or coffee with special people. We remember to exercise (some-times), pray or meditate, and learn new things (which can be read as research, too). But sometimes we forget to do the things that feed our souls, things that are spiritually renewing. Which is where, for me, gardening comes in.

  Many people, myself included, go to mosque, synagogue, or church for spiritual renewal, but there are other ways, places, events and experiences that call out to deeper, and far more human, parts of our spiritual natures. And that human, tribal, part of our spiritually often gets left in the dust. All people were once tribal, whether our ancestors were African, AmIn, Celts, people of the steppes, Mongol, South Pacific, whatever, we were tribal long before we settled into cities. And tribal people had rituals to celebrate, recognize, and denote all the different landmarks of human life. As writers, I think we are closer to the ritualistic parts of our human natures than lots of others, and I think we depend on the deeper, mystical, parts of our psyches more than most—which is where those amazing story endings come from that we’ve spoken of here several times. But we also often forget to nurture those parts of our natures that we depend upon so much. And I am not talking about other creative endeavors, though that may be part of our personal rituals.

  For me, those mystical moments come when my hands are in the soil, or my hardboat is moving with the current down a river or rocky creek. I deeply need to get my hands in the soil of mother earth. To paddle down her lifeblood is essential. When I don’t do both I feel the ache deep inside, and there is a fractured anger that splinters through me, making me the toxic person in my own life. For five years I gave up gardening in favor of two books a year, and my soul—though nurtured by kayaking plenty of rivers—missed it deeply.

  So, I’ve begun to terrace the hill in front of my house, and will bring in soil for the garden I’ve missed so much. It’s backbreaking work, hauling stone for retaining walls, shoveling, making level foundations. And yeah, I’m doing it myself, with the help of the hubby. (He got drafted, but he’s agreeable.) Gardening is one thing I desperately need—as both writer and human—that I’ve neglected. I’ve starved my own creative, human, tribal soul and getting my hands back into the body of the earth is already so fulfilling that I’ve been able to craft a book proposal in about half the time it usually takes me.

  §§§

  Amy Sanderson

  For me, it’s always been hiking. I’ve realized this a lot more fully now that I’m living in a city. Every couple of weeks, I just have to get out into open countryside, away from traffic, noise, crowds, and technology. When I don’t do this, I start to go a little bit crazy very quickly! And, of course, as soon as I get away from the keyboard/pen and paper, my head fills up with dozens of story ideas that I can’t write down . . .

  Misty Massey

  Mine is dance. Not just belly dance, but all sorts of musical movement. It reaches me on a deeper, ancient level, the place where my body doesn’t hear lyrics or instruments, but recognizes the beat and responds without any prior thought. Doesn’t matter if I’m any good to look at. When I’m sweaty and my heart is slamming and my breath is rushing because I’ve just thrown myself around the room for a while, I feel clean inside.

  Stuart Jaffe

  I love hiking for a "back to nature" moment. But nothing rejuvenates me more than the Blues. I sit down with my guitar and can just get lost in playing. And if I’m nowhere near my guitar, I’ll listen to the Blues greats on my mp3 player.

  Changes in the Light

  David B. Coe

  This morning, instead of my usual workout, I hiked out to one of my favorite viewpoints here in my home town (we sit atop the Cumberland Plateau) and I spent an hour taking pictures. The viewpoin
t overlooks a narrow valley which opens out into some farmland. The opposite slope is completely undeveloped and covered with white and red oaks, red and sugar maples, tulip poplars, shagbark hickories, and a host of other species of trees that I can’t name. In the spring I come here and take pictures of the forest as the trees leaf out in myriad shades of green. Today I was after fall colors, and they were wonderfully intense.

  Visual artists do this quite often—return again and again to a spot they’ve painted or photographed, looking for different patterns, different tones of color, different qualities of light. My brother is a professional artist and he has countless paintings of the same farm or the same streambed which he’s painted at different times of day and different times of year. Paul Cezanne painted the Sainte-Victoire in Provence hundreds of times. My favorite works by Claude Monet are his paintings of the Cathedral at Rouen, which he painted under every conceivable lighting condition.

  At first blush it would seem that this aspect of visual art has nothing at all to do with writing. But as I embark on a new fiction project I realize that with every new plot line, with every new character, I explore familiar ground from a slightly different perspective. When we try to put names to the spectrum of human emotion—joy, sorrow, anger, contentment, jealousy, indignation, fear—we eventually run out of words. When we think of the conflicts and life events that make for good stories—romance, intrigue, rivalry, betrayal—we soon find ourselves turning back to story points that we’ve used in past works.

  It would be very easy to throw up one’s hands in frustration. This has all been done before. I’ve done all of this before! Except that of course I haven’t. Just as the facade of Rouen’s marvelous cathedral looks one way at dusk on an autumn day and utterly different at dawn in the spring, anger and love and fear change greatly when experienced by different characters. Romance and rivalry are nothing more than the inadequate words we have at our disposal to describe interactions that are as varied as the people they involve.

  In fantasy, we have the added bonus of being able to move our stories to different worlds. A story of romance and intrigue set in the Forelands would look nothing like a story with the same elements set in Islevale, the world I’ve created for my new series. I could take a character I’ve created for the LonTobyn books and move her to a city in the Southlands, and her life would be unrecognizable.

  But for me, the great variable is character. No two people will ever see the world in exactly the same way. And as I step into the mind of a new lead character, I feel my world view shifting to match what I know about him and his past life. Romance has a different meaning for this man, because choices he made decades ago have denied him the one person he ever truly loved. Hardship has a different meaning for him because the sixteen years he spent in prison have left him both calloused and appreciative of small pleasures. I could go on, but I think you probably understand my point.

  Part of what makes writing so much fun is that it enables us to find something fresh and exciting in emotions and experiences that might otherwise seem terribly commonplace. When we see the world through the eyes of a new character, the mundane comes alive, the familiar becomes exotic. The light shifts, the colors become more vibrant, patterns emerge that we hadn’t seen before. Characters, setting, plot—the variations are endless; there is no such thing as "ordinary."

  §§§

  Misty Massey

  David said, "No two people will ever see the world in exactly the same way . . . When we see the world through the eyes of a new character, the mundane comes alive, the familiar becomes exotic."

  My dance teacher pointed out once that ten dancers could choreograph their performances to the same piece of recorded music and you’d still be watching ten completely different dances. It’s all about the individual interpretation. Writing is the same—the plot may have been done by another writer, but the uniqueness comes from the living, breathing characters the writer creates. Good post, David!

  Five Things You Ought To Know About Writers

  Misty Massey

  The other day, a student came in to my library and looked at me quizzically.

  "You wrote a book?" she asked.

  "Yes," I said, smiling.

  "You don’t look like a writer," she said.

  "What does a writer look like?" I asked.

  "They wear glasses, and they pull their hair back in a knot, and they stare at everyone. Creepy."

  I don’t know how many writers this child has seen before, but her description made me wonder about how nonwriting people see us. I know most of our readers here are writers themselves, but I thought it might be fun to explain some of the traits nonwriters should know about us.

  1. We’re watching.

  Characters in the most successful stories move and talk and behave in a believable way. So yes, we’re watching you. We’re looking at the way you walk, and the clothes you chose this morning, and what’s in your cup. We’re interested in what kind of car you drive, your favorite color, and whether you wanted to be a cowboy or an astronaut when you were a kid. We’re not stalking you, really. Don’t run away. We’re just trying to get the details right.

  2. We’re listening.

  Not long ago I was sitting in a Starbucks waiting on a friend to arrive, and I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation between a young woman who was writing a novel, and the young man who was coaching her. She was starry-eyed; he was pretentious, and together they were practically a comedy team. Not that they knew it. I kept my face deadpan and my head down, but I heard almost every word. It’s a great way to learn how to write dialogue, after all. Hearing the give and take, the breaths and pauses that happen in between, is vital. And sometimes I hear a sentence that’s so individual, so perfect, I rush to scribble it in my notebook, in case one of my characters might say something like that. If you’re ever reading along and you run across a familiar turn of phrase, don’t be surprised to find that a writer was listening to you.

  3. We’re not talking about you.

  With all that listening and watching, you might worry that our characters are based on real people . . . maybe even you. Most likely not. With all the listening and watching we do, we still prefer to create our own characters. Just because the protag in the novel has brown hair and drives a Santa Fe doesn’t make her me. So relax . . . your soul isn’t stolen, nor is your secret identity revealed.

  4. We occasionally wander in another world.

  Sometimes in the middle of a conversation, the writer will seem to drift away. We don’t mean to be rude. We can’t help it—something pinged a thought and sent us wandering into the world of our imagination. Writers become skillful at pretending to know what they missed in a real-life conversation, because we do this so often. It’s easier face to face than on the phone though . . . as my best friend and my sister could tell you. I’ve done it to them more than once, and felt terrible about it.

  5. We’re not vampires.

  Most of us have day jobs to pay the bills, and have to do our writing at night or on weekends. Time is at a premium. I have to plan my time carefully, to make sure I’m not throwing it away. Sometimes friends will call on the spur of the moment and invite me to some great event, and I have to turn them down because I’d already planned to spend the day with the keyboard. I’d love to go out to the mall or have tea, but if it’s between that and getting the writing done, the writing takes precedence. That’s just how it has to work. Do you want the next book or not?

  §§§

  David B. Coe

  "We’re not vampires."

  Speak for yourself . . .

  I think #4 is key, and I’d add that we’re constantly writing in our heads. At least I am. Everything I see, hear, taste, or experience in any other way is grist for the creative mill. And I always find myself searching for the right words to describe whatever it is I’m living at that moment.

  C.E. Murphy

  "She was starry-eyed; he was pretentious and together they were
practically a comedy team." *laughs out loud*

  Ted (my husband) always knows when, during a brainstorming session, he’s hit on a particularly good idea, because I do that drift thing. I stop talking and go slack jawed and stare into the distance, and then he’s invariably pleased with himself. :-)

  Writing On Instinct

  A.J. Hartley

  I was always a bit of a music head. My tastes have shifted over the years, but I still have the same passion for listening, the same appreciation for clever or emotive songs well-executed. I love virtuoso instrumental work almost as much as I love lyrical complexity and wit, and I always wanted to be able to reproduce those sounds with the kind of casual abandon my idols seemed to manage. So I took lessons in piano and guitar as a kid, formed a band as a teenager, and to this day love to noodle around on my Les Paul. But I learned long ago that I was never going to be a musician.

  Sometimes I read about someone like Paul McCartney whose musical gift seems innate, the kind of talent who can get comfortable with almost any instrument in no time and for whom melodies just materialize. But I also know that even for the most gifted musician, technical mastery takes time and work.