Creativity is Paramount

Beginning today, I am returning to my habit of writing every Friday, and because I like to hear what you're thinking, I'm calling it the Friday Forum. I knew you would like it.

 

As a nurse, I knew it was always important to follow the rules when administering medications: right medication, right dose, right time. To deviate from that could put your patient at risk. Of course, there were lists of rules for everything we did, commonly called policies and procedures. Need to give a bed bath, follow this one. Need to start and IV, follow this one and so forth. So when I turned my attention to writing fiction, it was no surprise that I looked for the rules, and to you writers, it is no surprise that I found rules and then more rules.

I learned quickly that writing had so many rules, I couldn’t let go and get what I wanted to say on the page. This new list of rules didn’t even take into consideration the basic grammar, structure, and punctuation learned from the first grade through college. I dived in, reading and highlighting and taking classes. I wrote very little.

Thankfully, one of the books I read was If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland, and it showed me a new way of thinking. Nursing is science. Writing is art.  

I had to force myself to write around the rules to get my story on paper or give up. I began to transcribe the stacks of notebooks I had written stories in for years, and the light turned on.

I wrote and wrote and wrote some more. An editor in both the nursing world and the writing world, it drove me nuts at first. At times, I found myself editing more than writing and had to have what I call ‘a come to Jesus meeting’ with myself. It wasn’t long before I was writing repetitiously, piling adjectives and adverbs on top of each other, and telling more than showing. The words and my imagination soared.

Always a dutiful rule follower and a bit on the task-oriented side, an amazing thing happened during my transition, I began to question the rules of writing, really look at them seriously. About this same time, I realized that the debut novels I read were taking bold steps in structure, grammar, punctuation, POV, and telling a lot.

So, for twelve consecutive months, I read debut novels to see what was selling and why. My findings may be no surprise to you avid readers. The books hitting the bestseller lists, winning the national and international awards, winding their way into well-known book reviews predominantly broke all of the rules of writing and elements of grammar and punctuation. Most telling, readers loved them.

Those writers are the visionaries among us, those who take artistic license to dare the impossible, those who (shudder) break the rules. Before you delete this with the idea that I’m a tad too avant garde, read on.

I once worked with a hospital chief of finance who shattered everyone’s illusions that the money man was a stickler for the rules. His philosophy was the budget was a guideline. When unexpected issues arose, the prudent move was to rearrange the budget to solve the problem, the ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ rule many people use in personal budgets. Obviously, this principle has limits or both Peter and Paul will come looking for you.

After I applied our CFOs logic to my writing, my eyes opened to the possibilities.

1.     Sentences are not all equal.

2.     Exposition does not have to be laborious.

3.     Telling is sometimes more expeditious.

4.     Backstory has a purpose.

5.     Editing as I write isn’t necessary.

6.     Revision is about the rules.

7.     Rules are important to clarity.

Don’t throw out the English and writing reference books. They are the tie breakers when you’re beating your head against the wall trying to figure out why a sentence, paragraph, or scene isn’t making sense.

Takeaway: Rules are important. Creativity is paramount.

Do  you break the rules? Do you get bogged down in the minutiae?      Mahala

 

Time is the Great Thief

This summer I put on a bathing suit to take my granddaughter swimming. When I looked in the mirror I was astonished at what a few months had done to my body. First, if you look at my picture, you know I like to eat, but what you don't know is I have a few metal parts and am working on being the next bionic woman. The scar from my hip replacement has healed nicely, but what I hadn't figured on was the cleavage the replacement left. It took about a second last May with a hand mirror to realize that my left and right sides no longer matched, and my bathing suit from the year before was hanging loosely where my derriere had filled it in the year before. So here's the dilemma - do I have the other hip done or figure out some way to fill in the space on the other side? In my aggravation I also noticed that my buttocks, which have never been very large compared to other parts of me, had shifted in a most distinctive way to the top of my thighs and now looked exactly like my mother's the last twenty years or so of her life. I wasn't sure whether to cry or laugh, but being an Erma Bombeck fan, I opted for laughter. My granddaughter came to find out why I was laughing hysterically, and, of course, at ten, she thought I was totally crazy. "But why is that funny?" she kept asking. "Well, just take a look," I giggled. And finally we were both cracking up. The moral of this story is don't wait too long to go swimming between operations or your body parts may shift and leave your bathing suit limp in places.

No seriously, the reason I tell this compelling story {I'm sure you agree} is that life and your buttocks will get away from you if you don't stay on top of it. I'm supposed to be revising my novel, and yet, I've been so busy assisting to edit a new Christmas anthology and editing several mss for others, making holiday gifts, and doing yard work, painting the house, etc. etc. etc. that I've almost stayed away from my novel too long. But as it turned out in this case, I think that's been a truly good thing. As I'm re-reading it now, I'm amazed at how I can see the bulging spots and the gaping holes. I'm amazed at what I wrote in places. Amazed at how well some of the words flowed to the page, amazed at how MANY adjectives I used to try and make a point, and amazed at how many empty spaces I now see. Sometimes, a break is just what we need to spur us onward and develop our creativity. I've spent these few months reading books on writing, which is what Darnell Arnoult, a good Southern author, and my friend, Linda Busby-Parker, also a good Southern author and editor, keep telling me and other writers to do after we finish our masterpiece and before we start to dissect it. And guess what, Darnell and Linda, I think it's working!

A few suggestions on books of craft that I've found especially helpful are:
Writing Fiction: the touchstone for MFA programs around the country and dreadfully boring in some sections, but on how-to-structure basics, can't be beat

Creating Fiction: with insights from a large number of writers that I admire, including Richard Russo, Jane Smiley, John Barth (whose article on incremental perturbations perturbed the h- e- double hockey sticks out of me at first, but now I get it!, Alyce Miller on first person narrative which is what my novel is.

How I write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author: straight forward and simple to understand. While I adore literary style and read it often, I absolutely! absolutely! want to sell my book.

I wonder if I could use one of those baster kits you can buy at the grocery store for turkeys to stuff my hip? Nah! I like my whopsided look. It gives me that eclectic character I've always admired in others.

Never commit to memory what you can find in a book. Albert Einstein