Tag: writing practice

Unpacking a Blush

Suzanne Biro

Let’s begin with these lines from a poem by Carol Ann Duffy, “Prayer”.[1]

So, a woman will lift/her head from the sieve of her hands and stare/ at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

A friend calls these massive blooms the floozies of the garden. They are taller than me and have overtaken the tomatoes this year, which means fewer tomatoes to process (a small blessing, one I’ll curse in Feb).

I went to listen to a friend play in a band (he plays guitar). It was an afternoon event and the day was gorgeous, hot blue sky, tree leaves colouring up red and yellow. There were lots of friends there and many people who I hadn’t connected with in some time (since pre-pandemic). In one conversation, a former colleague announced his recent retirement and our talk rounded to creative writing. I admit that anecdote, erroneously attributed to Margaret Atwood, about the brain surgeon who says to a writer that when they retire, they’ll take up writing, to which the writer quips that, when they retire, they’ll take up brain surgery, popped into my mind. The guy is (well, was) a physician. But it’s important writers lift one another up.  Writing is hard enough without tearing each other down. So, I offered up some writing (and reading) resources I’ve found helpful and then we landed on the topic of workshopping. He leaned back in his chair and said he’d tried workshopping—his tone was unmistakable; the exercise was beneath him—and he’d been disappointed to discover that (his words) “99.95% of workshop participants are women”. Long pause of silence. I began to form a response, but not before he buried himself further by saying his writing needed…here, he finally noticed he was speaking to a woman and corrected the wording I could see so clearly in the thought bubble hovering atop his (inflated) head (his writing is far more important and serious – intelligent! than what women write about), to say the workshops could never sufficiently improve his writing. I turned to his wife (also a physician. Does this matter? It does. I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to physicians…story for another time, but I acknowledge my bias) and I agreed, it’s true, the workshops and writing classes I have attended are comprised, mostly, of women. I think it must have to do with women not feeling they have a voice in other aspects of their lives. Great swaths of generalizations painted here, but this was party small talk. The physician’s unblinking wife encouraged her husband, explaining he ought to think more about the issue because women read and buy books more often, and if he hoped to publish, it’s an issue worthy of his consideration. I downed the glass of shit wine I was drinking and flitted off. But the conversation and the question (why mostly women?) gnawed at me.

Last of the summer flowers maybe, before a killing frost.

Here is where I’d like to insert paragraphs of stats and research about sex differences in literary publishing, book reading and purchasing. Also, about how men more often read books written by men. Also, about the slanted sex ratios (toward women) of students enrolling in post-secondary arts and humanities courses. And how work by female artists is still valued less than male artists, and how museums and galleries around the world are filled with far more works by men compared with women. But that would be glossing the real issue. I’d be repeating my pattern, the one I’m trying to break from, marching behind a parade of research and statistics to keep the vulnerable aspects of myself invisible.

The conversation with the physicians continued to grate because it poked (stabbed?) a few of my deepest insecurities. How I’d turned my back on pursuing an arts career in favour of science because I thought I’d be taken more seriously (as a woman) and, let’s be honest, because it paid better.  But the deeper wound is that I find myself actively resisting the writing that bubbles forth most naturally in my creative writing practice: marriage and motherhood.

This is hard to write: I silence my own voice because I don’t believe it’s valuable enough.

It’s frustrating to know I’ve allowed myself to be shaped (so effortlessly) by cultural and social norms related to traditional gender roles. It’s an embarrassment.  It begs the question: who from (and why?) am I seeking validation?  The easy answer is “the system” – but it’s a system that continues to devalue the importance (skill, patience, persistence, compassion) of raising children, a system that reduces love and relationships to sex (and shout out to my more marginalized peeps of the LGBTQ2S+, most often heteronormative sex). As part of the system—as a woman I am—we don’t do enough to support each other to write about domestic subjects or write about our friendships. Is writing about friendship without the tension of sex or attraction a downgrade?  Too boring?  A lot of cognitive dissonance here. The harder answer is that yes, I do need to push through the noise and systemic pressures to value my own writing and anchor validation from within as opposed to without. It’s hard. And I know, a harried summary of such a complex issue is short on explanations. I could sing this pearl of an offering[2], but in the spirit of bare sincerity, I’m often afraid the conversations are out of my league. I’m working on bravery. Another work in progress…

This week I wrote a poemy piece in workshop (yes, a workshop comprised of mostly women) about what it feels like to walk up to the podium to read one’s poetry. My writing inspired one of the other women in the workshop to create a collaged art piece in response to a particular phrase I had written. I won’t share it here because she would like us to try publishing our two pieces together, but the art work is beguiling and unique, and the gesture made me teary. Really, it’s the ultimate compliment.

I think this must be the goal for creating art: to make something so beautiful it inspires further beauty in the world.

So, I lift my burned gaze from the sieve of my hands to tend the lyrics of my heart.  

[1] This stunning image (that word ‘sieve’ does so much work) are lines from the poem “Prayer” by Dame Carol Ann Duffy. She is the first (and only!!) woman to hold the post of British Poet Laureate in its 400 plus-year history and was appointed in 2009 for a ten-year fixed term. You can listen to her read this poem here. Interestingly, when I read the poem for myself it sounded very different from her reading. Perhaps I interpret it differently too. Regardless, it’s a gorgeous poem. I love how the image embodies this post better than my own words could ever do.  

[2]“One Heart” is from the Leftover Cuties 2013 album “The Spark & the Fire” – http://www.leftovercuties.com – also, a striking album cover.

Super spicy Habaneros
harvested
need to be handled with care (the mask and gloves and slicing outdoors depicted in the drawing above) when preserving.

Sounds Off

Suzanne Biro2 Comments

I very nearly botched the possibility of any relationship with my now husband the first time he asked me out, replying to his tentative request to take me to dinner with an audible exasperation—I’m embarrassed to say it, but an almost-admonishment— “What took you so long?!”

Much later he told me how, in the dead seconds of silence that followed my blurt, he very nearly turned heel and walked away (a fuck that, if there ever was one). My reaction stopped him cold.  I can only think he must have caught the note of elation in my voice, noticed the sparkle of mischief in my eyes, the play blossoming my grin.

Some context for my blunder: Months earlier he’d attempted to ask me out but our conversation was interrupted, and, despite an alluring notoriety with women, he was timid with me. His notoriety prevented me from asking him out. Not only that, but his notoriety also made me mistrust him…he was too attractive, too confident. I resorted to using a tactic I’ve come to refer to as ‘the mixed barb’, an unexpected, lightly teasing, droll divulgence, testing him against himself.  Communicating this way—a skill sharpened in a childhood home where moods shifted precipitously from rainbows to menace—has served me well, personally and professionally. Quick jabs shaded with humour fast reveal the contours of people’s personalities, offer a glimpse of their shadow selves, delineate boundaries, expose what they’re willing to put up with – and what I really mean when I say that is, testing whether they’ll put up with me.

Though this works well face-to-face where intonation and gesture, pitch, and facial expressions shoulder the palanquin carrying my royal intentions, I’ve discovered the strategy collapses in my writing. For example, my royal intentions from that last sentence was meant to be read with layered notes of self-deprecation, irony and superciliousness. Did I fail there?  Likely.

George Orwell suggested, “A thing is funny when—in some way that is not actually offensive or frightening—it upsets the established order. Every joke is a tiny revolution.”[1] For speaking and writing more information is needed to furnish a joke, but also, words in general. “An alteration in tone or pitch can be the difference between …fighting words and a statement of love, using the identical phrase, such as “You’re really something,” a completely meaningless statement without a tone or context to support it.”[2]

Peter Elbow explains vocal variety thoroughly when asking us to “Consider how many musical resources of intonation or prosody we can use when we talk. There is pitch (low to high); volume (soft to loud); speed (slow to fast); accent (yes or no); intensity (relaxed to tense); timbre (breathy, shrill, nasal, and many more); pausing (long and short). Note that these are not binary items, for in each case there is a full continuum between extremes (e.g., between low and height, slow and fast). There are glides and jumps. Also, there are patterned sequences. For example, tune is a pattern of pitches; rhythm is a pattern of slow and fast and accent. We change meanings by using subtle or not so subtle pauses or small intensifications or lengthenings of a syllable. Combinations of all of these make a rich palate we all use to paint meaning.”[3]

Robert Pinsky simplifies this beautifully: “It is almost as if we sing to each other all day.”[4]

But how to get the audible features of speech to the written page?  I suspect the answer to this question requires a lifetime of exploration. Perhaps it’s even THE ANSWER to writing well (musically, entertainingly, clearly, compassionately, provocatively, etc.). Robert Frost thought so, “The tone-of-voice element is the unbroken flow on which the others are carried along like sticks and leaves and flowers.”[5] So, today’s post is simply this quest’s beginning.   

More Frost: “What we do get in life and miss so often in literature is the sentence sounds that underlie the words. Words in themselves do not convey meaning, and to [prove] this… take the example of two people who are talking on the other side of a closed door, whose voices can be heard but whose words cannot be distinguished. Even though the words do not carry, the sound of them does, and the listener can catch the meaning of the conversation. This is because every meaning has a particular sound-posture; or, to put it in another way, the sense of every meaning has a particular sound which each individual is instinctively familiar with and without at all being conscious of the exact words that are being used is able to understand the thought, idea, or emotion that is being conveyed.”[5]

One way to get audible intonations to the page is to write in directions for how the reader ought interpret the words. 

In Longshore Drift, a short story published in Granta, Julia Armfield employs this directing technique two ways: in text direction and by cueing the reader using italics. Here are three examples excerpted from the story (colour coding mine):  

  1. “There are warning flags along the wrack line: sharks – swim at your own risk. The threat is actually minimal, basking sharks being liable to give you little more than a bump on the knee, but the effect of the signs is still an odd one. There are no barriers, the water is open, creating the sense of a curiously lackadaisical approach to public safety. Danger, but do what you want, we’re not the police.”
  2. ‘Fair enough,’ she nods, and while her tone is light Alice feels she can detect the faintest note of mockery. ‘Mustn’t be bitter with my litter.’ ‘Fair enough’, this stock phrase, its cringing detachment. The sudden removal of camaraderie and Alice clawing after it.”
  3. “The boys cluster like geese. One of them, wet-lipped with a tongue piercing, asks Min what she’s doing selling ice cream on such a chilly day. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a truck like this.“

A whole story might revolve around the differences between what is said and what is meant. Here’s the first paragraph of a micro story written by SJ Sindum, Mother, published in The Cincinnati Review (again, colour coding mine):

“My mother tells me to be careful. I’m twelve years old, and we’ve just moved to a city outside of Boston. We live in an apartment complex that my white fiancé, twenty years later when we visit, will call “shit housing.” I walk to school every day, a two-mile stroll along a busy road, and my mother tells me to be careful. What she means is, keep your head down, keep walking, don’t talk to anyone, I’m sorry.”

Each paragraph of Sindum’s story ends with similarly directed subtext, stretching implied intonation with deeper emotional resonance. A good example of Charles Baxter’s comparison of subtext to “the ghosts moaning from beneath the floor.”

“Reading is telepathy (literally “feeling from afar”). A writer’s magical transference of thoughts, ideas, and emotions—the context, text, and subtext— to the reader across space and time.”[6]

And I want to slide that observation (riffed from a more beautifully written version by Terrance Hayes (see the footnote)), alongside another stunner: “Meanings are not in words, they are in people.”[7]

So, another (ongoing) lesson for me: lavish sprinkling of humour in my writing, without judicious written expansion to convey my specific thoughts, ideas or emotions, fails to cue and direct the reader to my intended meaning, whether a playful poke in the ribs, the softening of a chiding remark, or taking the piss out (as my mum used to say, meaning, to bring someone down from their [self-perceived] lofty position). Unless the reader is intimately familiar with my quirky (snarky, often cynical, occasionally lewd) sense of humour voiced in person, my written inflection is flipped on its back. Wrestler style.

[1] George Orwell: ‘Funny, but not Vulgar’ First published: Leader. — GB, London. — July 28, 1945.

[2] Baxter, Charles. The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot. Graywolf Press, 2007.

[3] Elbow, Peter, “5. Intonation: A Virtue for Writing Found at the Root of Everyday Speech” (2010). Emeritus Faculty Author Gallery. 34. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.umass.edu/emeritus_sw/34

[4] Pinsky, Robert. The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

[5] Robert Frost on ‘The Sound of Sense’ and on ‘Sentence Sounds’ https://udallasclassics.org/wp-content/uploads/maurer_files/Frost.pdf

[6] I love these beautiful lines by Terrance Hayes from the preface of his book, Watch Your Language, “Reading is a mix of telepathy and time travel. It’s a magical transference of information, knowledge, and mystery: the context, text, and subtext of a reader’s life.”  But I’ve stolen those sentences, fiddled the words and ideas and repurposed them to my own ends here. Not as elegant as Haye’s sentences, to be sure, but landing a slightly different meaning.

Hayes, Terrance. Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry. Penguin Books, an Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2023. 

[7] Elbow, Peter, ‘Intonation: A Virtue for Writing at the Root of Everyday Speech’, Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing. New York, 2012.

Challenges Squared

Suzanne Biro

Do we have a choice about the subject of our creative work? In a recent interview with Francesca Steele of Write-Off podcast, Tessa Hadley said, “There is no choice about what you write…an interesting discovery…no, it isn’t a choice, you just have to find the thing that is yours.” They were discussing the writing of domestic fiction, of which Tessa Hadley is considered a modern master. For some thoughts about domestic fiction as a genre, read this reflection by Soledad Fox Maura at Lit Hub. Also, must mention Tessa Hadley’s stunner of a short story in a recent (July 24, 2023) The New Yorker.  You can listen to her read it here too, “The Maths Tutor”.  

A few years ago, I would have disagreed with Tessa Hadley, believing that of course a writer could choose their subject. But now, after years and drafts attempting to write something with Meaning (capital M) about Big Important Issues (climate change, poverty, the impacts of war, attachment theory, to name a few), I do agree with her.

It doesn’t matter what I try to write, the stories of my family—growing up, as well as my experiences in a long-term relationship and raising my own children—bubble to the surface. I’ve wasted a lot of time and energy resisting this writing, or at least trying to hide it behind a Big Meaning facade. But I’m starting to make peace with the themes my writing presents: raising kids, marriage, cooking, being raised by parents with mental illness and addictions. It is who I am, how I have become the person I am, and, importantly, provided my foundation and lenses for my viewing of the world. It’s this inner voice—unique for every person—that readers will connect to if I can get it to the page.  I’m only beginning to trust my own voice (that it’s good enough).

Coupled with this challenge is another: when I choose to centre my family life in my creative writing, the refrain from trusted readers is often that it’s too much all at once (I’m paraphrasing, but this is the gist of it). One dear friend explained reading my stories or poems feels almost like an assault to her senses. She really means this kindly, and I accept it that way too, but I’ve struggled to understand what I might do differently. There’s so much strangled emotion waiting and wanting to spring out. I don’t know how to tell these stories in a way a reader might absorb them with any pleasure or entertainment at a pace that engenders empathy as opposed to shock, or worse, pity.

The last few months of writing flash pieces, narratives that follow a “story arc” but are less than 1000 words, have been generative and instructive. Flash, as a form, focuses an emotional moment. There isn’t room for much else. In some of the pieces I’ve generated—over 26 unique story drafts since the beginning of May (woohoo!)—I’ve practiced approaching some of my family stories using different perspectives, angles, and styles. I’ve discovered the flash form might be a method for me to “break up” the emotions and the moments in a way that is softer on readers, easier to digest, provide some white space and pause for breath. That way, several flash pieces assembled could become a kaleidoscope (of different focal points, different angles, etc.) of “what happened”, layering texture and meaning by using not just simply concentrated content, but a strategic sequencing too. An arrangement where the spaces in between could provide much-needed rests and pauses for recovery.  A working theory anyway, I’m now trying.

Casting Call for My Narrator Plus a Kick in the Bum to My Statistician

Suzanne Biro1 Comment

It’s been a slow dawning, learning that my narrator—even when I’m writing my own memories, writing about my self, my thoughts, my feelings—needs to be someone playing a role, a dramatic one. Who my narrator will be (because, yes, this is very future, I haven’t figured it out yet) is distinct from point of view (how the memories are relayed to a reader using perspective, what the narrator’s relation to the story is) and distinct from the tenses of verbs (when, in time, the person of the verb is “doing” “verbing?”). Confusingly, the narrator may be what is referred to as “voice”. Perhaps the terms are interchangeable, I don’t know. Maybe something to unpack in a later post. But thinking of the narrator as the person who tells the story, helps frame many writing decisions within a larger composition, from the sentence level to the whole.   

An attempt to explain what I mean and where I want to go with this:

I’m five months into challenging myself to a “just get it down on paper!” exercise. For the first time, I tracked my progress, in number of words, and the time devoted to the task, in minutes.  I had wanted to get to 70, 000 words (book length). Surprise! I haven’t hit that target. These last few weeks, I’ve laboured emotionally to make peace with this and move on. See the graphical display of progress here:

Some observations from tracking:

  • Most important: quantity in number of words does not equal quality. Not even close. More on this shortly (and yes, a link back to who the narrator is for this work…I’ll get there).
  • The shape of the line for the time put in, for this specific progress snapshot, follows the same shape of progress for the number of words. This could lead one to conclude (repeating the religious mantra): time put in = productivity out (measured in number of words). This is a misleading conclusion for creative writing because again, it ignores the quality of the writing (and all the measures of quality we can come up with, things like comprehension, emotional resonance with a reader, use of imagery, compositional techniques, sentence variability, word choice, structural approach, etc. The list is endless. Endless!).
  • There were stretches of time (weeks) showing zero output for both measures. Practically (qualitatively) this was because there were weeks I was away on vacation and didn’t work on the project and one week managing my grief after making the very difficult decision to have one of our pets put down. Gutted. But other weeks I did work on writing, just not this specific project. Instead, I wrote a short story and two flash pieces, plus a few posts to this blog. The chart doesn’t capture this. I recorded this separtely with notes and making myself reflect about the progress I made each week (with an intention to start fresh the following week).
  • Can’t ignore the downward trend depicted in the chart. I started off “well” in December – lots of time and words to begin with, then the lines gradually slide, tilting towards the x-axis to confirm my progress has slowed and stalled.
  • Another bit of context not captured in the chart: I started tracking for this project after writing just over 20, 000 words already. So, my actual word output for this project is just over 50, 000 words. Not bad. In quantity. At least the pages confirm I can create a book-length work (well, novella maybe).
  • If I focused on only these outcome measures, measures that confirm it takes me 5 months of creative writing time to reach an equivalent work week I put into my day job, I’d plunge into a depression too deep to climb out from. Instead, I learn what I can from this exercise and pivot.

What I’ve alluded to already with the differences between quantitative and qualitative measures, is that quality matters far more than quantity. I’ve also discovered the draft I’ve completed, chasing after the number of words down on paper, was written for myself. All 50, 000 plus words! I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help calling it my Vomit Draft. I’ve got the memories and (some) feelings and the cultural references I wanted to fold into the piece named and listed, but I haven’t packaged my writing in any shape or form a reader would be engaged with.  “I” am not my audience. I need to carve a narrator to reshape how the stories are told, a narrator who will engage an audience, a narrator who performs that work. In making this choice, I will change the quality of my writing.  My hope is to transform the raw emotions and memories into something funny, something entertaining. So, the work shifts now, with intention, towards understanding which part of my self I can call on to become that narrator. I want a narrator with the following qualities:

  • Someone who is funny
  • Someone who is humble
  • Someone with compassion
  • Someone who works to understand other people’s perspectives
  • Someone who isn’t whiney
  • Someone without a chip on their shoulder (ha, ha, better get my surgical tools)
  • Someone who forgives
  • Someone kind of cool (?) (I can see my kids cringing)
  • Someone with charisma
  • Someone with audacity (this is the hardest)

Note: all qualities impossible to measure with numbers.

I’m back to the beginning with this project…and will take the time needed to create this role, this persona. I foresee a lot more time sitting at the writing desk, puzzling to reveal this narrator in the rendering of every sentence. Kick in the bum to tracking words, I’m done with that.

Part Two of non-writing (ish) tools for a writer’s toolbox: Mind Maps

Suzanne Biro

Part One here.

It is always useful to try to trick my thinking out of usual habits and patterns of thought. My brain is lazy and too often follows the path of least resistance to finish a task. When writing, this laziness leads to cliches and shallow (one dimensional) observations that do nothing to pique the interest of a reader (or me, the writer, for that matter). Also, I prevent wider interpretations, deeper meanings, messages from the subconscious, before they have a chance to arise.  Mind maps are a quick and (relatively) easy way to provoke (and see) expansions of meaning and the connections between them.

It is best, when creating a mind map, to relax and clear your mind…think meditation or yoga practice here. Sometimes it is good to set a timer for these exercises – 10 minutes tops – otherwise it could keep unfolding. That’s okay too…just follow your intuition on this one.

On a blank piece of paper, in the middle of the page, write a word or phrase you are wrestling with (or select one at random from the middle of a book, a dictionary, a cereal box, it really doesn’t matter…sometimes the most banal source will yield the richest ideas). Circle the word or phrase. Relax (yes, I keep having to tell myself this). Look at that word/phrase and allow your mind to drift and dream.  Write down the images and associations as they come, anywhere on the page…as the associations are written down, they spark additional thoughts and images. Write these down too. Enjoy it. When the images start to wind down or the timer goes off, stop. It’s good to get up and walk away from the desk for a minute or two: make a cup of tea or gaze out the window. I’m usually too impatient though and dive into the next step, which is to look at what has been rendered on the page and start to draw lines of connections between them (often I do these steps simultaneously too). Very soon, the lines become tangled and cross each other.  This is okay. At this point I realise there’s a lot more to think about than I had originally thought but I can now see avenues of exploration I might move through.

Mind maps are good to use as a writing prompt when facing an intimidating blank page. But they are also great tools for deepening existing writing: maybe an interesting image, or a provocative object, or a weird description or phrase has surfaced in a draft…but it doesn’t feel right—it nags—it doesn’t quite hang together with the sentiments (paragraph) around it. Trust the nagging/curiosity feeling. Copy the image/object/phrase onto a blank piece of paper to use as the starting node in a mind map.

Mind maps might also be used as art making device, subbing in a sort of shorthand thinking for how a work of art might be built. Theo Anthony, an American film maker, uses mind maps to work through generating ideas and connections, but then takes this one step further by planning his shots (camera type, lighting, angle, sequencing etc.) according to the nodes on his developing, evolving, project-based mind maps.  In a way, this allows a lot of technical planning (to be on location, to select film equipment, etc.) without the creative constraint of a complete storyboard.  His process, using mind maps this way, retains a flexibility, and enables resonances and surprises to illuminate organically. In a way, it’s as if he provides the operational support for the art, image, and beauty to reveal itself through the making.   

Seeing my Writing Mistakes

Suzanne Biro1 Comment

Reading a book earlier this month, I failed to get past the third chapter. To me, the writing…well, sucked.  

The book, a national bestseller, nominated to a national “must read” list, was published by one of “the big three” publishers. A work of creative nonfiction, a memoir, I wanted to like the book, I wanted to learn from it. I was fascinated by the book’s subject. I wanted to follow the narrator’s journey, proclaimed and promised on the cover. I wanted to experience the narrator’s challenges surmounted, the accomplishments reached, but every time I tried to read the sentences, my mind lifted from the page. I couldn’t connect. 

Recognising I was going to give up on the book (always a sad moment of relinquishment, disappointment, even a sense of failure on my part, I know, dramatic, but true), instead of tossing it aside, I thought, why can’t I connect? What is it about the writing—specifically—that prevents me, the reader, from following the narrator on their journey?

Reading with these questions in mind I discovered a few issues:

  • The scenes were rendered swiftly – yes, with sensory details (check), but significant events were introduced but never elaborated, never opened or expanded.  As a reader, I craved knowing more. How could I relate without being given the opportunity to experience those events?
  • The story felt one-dimensional. The scenes, the events, the descriptions, the temporal and geographic aspects of the writing, were all there. The grammar was sound. The language was logical. Missing were the narrator’s thoughts and reflections.  I couldn’t feel or know the narrator on the page because they weren’t there.  It was as if the narrator stood off to the side and, like a zombie, or a robot, recounted the events without feelings or emotion.
  • The worst and best ah ha moment: I make these mistakes in my own writing.  

Reading bad (okay bad isn’t the right word – shallow? simple?) writing I recognized: 

  1. I summarise instead of expand action. This deprives a reader from moving through the experience with the writer. I realise too, that this type of writing is exactly the opposite of what I’m required to do in my day job. I’ve been trained to remove myself from reports, research papers, briefing notes, etc. to focus the scientific evidence and let “it” speak from a perspective of unquestioned authority. Note the disembodied sense of that approach to writing (objective, not subjective). 
  2. When I write “myself” onto the page, I’m like a paper cut-out of myself – my thoughts, reflections, ideas, interpretations are often omitted – there is a lot of action and description and even dialogue of others, but I am missing myself – why can’t I drag myself into my creative writing? Aside: – interestingly, I presented my thoughts and scathing reflections when I used to write an earlier blog complaining about marriage. So….I can do it, but, why don’t I?
  3. Answer: I’m trapped in the “seriousness” [mis] conception of art making. I’m working to develop confidence to express myself freely in “real” creative writing.

Serendipitously, I read a craft essay written by Karen Babine in Craft Literary Magazine this week that elegantly explains why some nonfiction writing fails to connect and how a writer might work to engage their reader better. I find books or essays or podcasts land in my lap exactly when I need them, or, as with Karen Babine’s essay, I can absorb them for the wisdom they convey. I recommend reading her whole essay (it is excellent!!), with fantastic links for further reading. Karen Babine also edits Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, another excellent learning resource.

Here is a sketch I made for myself, words copied from Karen Babine’s essay, to help me “see” and guide my own writing. 

Do the work

Suzanne Biro

I submitted a piece for publication this month.  It was hard for me to press the submit button.  Sharing my writing has become harder in the last few years. It could be because a lot of the works are fragmented and unfinished but I’m discovering it has more to do with a fear of revealing myself on the page.  If I’m really letting myself sit with this truth, it goes deeper: I’m afraid of discovering my self, or a part of my self, that maybe I don’t like so much or that doesn’t align with the idea of my self I have so carefully, painstakingly, curated. 

The piece I submitted met the word count and the publication style and pulled in some pretty good phrases and layered in some pretty good ideas.  It felt good while I composed it. I pulled from a number of earlier writings and wove them round a theme. The piece was born of intellectual exercise—my constant crutch—not a dreaming.  But when I read the piece over again, with the help of loved ones’ feedback gently opening my eyes to what I had placed on the page, the dreaming, the subconscious, was revealed there…blurry, almost like a feeling of being on the cusp of discovering…something.  And I balked at working more deeply with the piece. It was clear the writing was simply a door into another room, an unfamiliar room. I am stuck on the threshold. 

But I wanted to meet the submission window, so I fixed up the easy bits, wrote a cover letter, uploaded it, and hit the submit button.  

Now I’m actively ignoring the whole thing. I could say I’m just taking a break, but no, I’m actively ignoring that piece now.  The knowledge I am afraid is haunting me. 

Two writings pinned to my wall are helping me to turn toward the work:

A poem:

Our Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Copyright ©1983 by Wendell Berry, from Standing by Words. Counterpoint.

And a quote I can’t find the orginal source for but taken from Twitter (?) attributed to Claudia Rankine: “You do the work and in the end the world will need it or not.”

Do the work I will.

Be clear: what am I thinking?

Suzanne Biro1 Comment

It seems ridiculous I am only discovering now, closing in on 50 years of age, that my thoughts—how I am thinking/feeling, what I am thinking/feeling, speculating why I might think/feel this or that way—are not entirely well-defined, even to me, before I render them in words and sentences on the page.  What results are sentences that are unclear, and worse, the sentiments propping up the words are completely elusive for a reader.  

Let’s move from the abstract to the concrete…a place I am wholly uncomfortable in, it seems, given the frequency I dwell and wallow in the abstract.   

Here’s a short paragraph I wrote recently in response to a writing prompt: 

The promise of bread. All the flour and nuts and seeds were dumped in while the cries and thuds of my siblings wrestling for the swing floated from the back yard. The honeyed water splashed my chin. And then we added time. That most crucial ingredient for growth. 

When I wrote these sentences, I let my mind wander freely and captured the thoughts that bubbled up and, loyally, doggedly, transcribed them to the page, moving swiftly from one sentence to the next.  

And I think this is a good way to generate material. But it’s not enough. 

There are too many ideas or emotions crammed into the same space, tangled into the same sentence, instead of a deliberate, focused rendering of singular ideas or emotions, one after the other to guide myself and a reader along a path of discovery through my mind.  

My mistake with that paragraph, well, mistakes, there are a few:

  • that I thought the paragraph was finished 
  • that I imagined the paragraph communicated my thoughts, when really, my words simply list the images and actions, presenting them as some dreamlike sequence without attaching my thoughts and feelings
  • that I didn’t question what I mean by “time being the most crucial ingredient for growth”…that sounds really interesting but I just kind of plop it there on the page as if I’m tossing scraps over my should to a begging dog. What do I really mean when I write that?  Am I so condescending/inconsiderate of my readers that I just leave that hanging there, a completely ambiguous, no, amorphous phrase? Ugh abstraction again.  What I mean is, am I treating readers like a begging dog with these half-assed declarations, expecting them to “get it” and hang on my every word?
  • I haven’t worked through this paragraph to even know what it is I mean, what there is “to get”, let alone communicate that “idea/sentiment/feeling” clearly and effectively to readers  
  • Too often I believe beauty is sufficient in creative writing and understanding only secondary …except, shit, that’s not what I believe at all.  Understanding, a shared understanding between writer and reader is paramount, it’s the whole point. 

This is where revision starts. Re vision. Writing a first draft, I’ve cast out into the ocean of my subconscious, and I’ve hooked something, these sentences, these words, but I can’t land them as they are.  They must be studied, queried, and then, once I have a sense of what it is I am trying to say, I need to craft a sentence that is true and clear, in addition to beautiful, to communicate that thought to a reader.  

I’ve been studying sentences.  Not so much the grammatical construction of sentences, though syntax is definitely part of it, but more the conceptual constructions, how thoughts are layered, one after the other, using the form of a sentence, to communicate ideas or emotions to a reader.  

Take the first part of that second sentence above: 

All the flour and nuts and seeds were dumped in…

Some questions and additions for clarification: 

All the flour?  All the flour for the bread or all the flour in the house, and does it matter? It does, depending on the effect I want to create.  In this writing piece I don’t want to imply it was the last of the flour in the house, this is not a story about want…well, maybe it is, but it is not about hunger in that sense. Be specific:

My mother fisted whole wheat flour into a yellow plastic bowl big enough to bathe a new baby in. She added a small handful of white flour—to make sure the loaves would rise above the status of a brick in the oven—walnut,  sunflower and poppy seeds were dumped in…

Taking the time to add these clarifying details, I’m both delighted and horrified to discover more subconscious imagery bubbling to the surface.  Where did that new baby come from? And what about that riff, obviously related, that riff on “a bun in the oven” with the addition of brick in the oven (a word that won’t make the final cut but has surfaced to provide more here, in the discovery and writing process). And what the hell is the word “status” doing there? 

And that was the easy part of one sentence in that paragraph.    

What do I mean when I state, The promise of bread?  How do bread and promises come together?  Or, why have I put them together here?  Do I mean that baking always holds a promise?  I like how the sentence (or is it a fragment?) sounds, but what the hell do I mean? 

This blog post is too long already, but I hope you get the idea of how I’m working to make my writing…well, my thinking (my sloppy thinking!!!)  better. And my writing too.   

Here are some images of my completed sculpture right before the form was destroyed, the clay pulled from the support and returned to the plastic bag to be used to make something entirely different another day. It was a good lesson and a lot of fun. Thank you and credit to my good friend and colleague, JB, for the photographs.

Creating Observations

Suzanne Biro

I’m in the middle of a 4-week human figure sculpture class. I love the way the cool clay yields to my fingers, the weight of it.  I love the way it feels wet, but dries to a chalky powder on my hands, leaving prints against my thighs when I accidentally wipe them there. I like to challenge my creativity using different mediums; I always discover deeper awareness for my writing practice this way. 

This is a class in observation.  We are creating “a study” of the human figure, in clay, using an armature (a stick like human figure made of bendy wires). There is a nude model instructed to maintain the “study posture”, but to rotate every 7-10 minutes.  The study pose is a contrapposto, or counterpose, where the body appears to be in mid-step with a slight twist of the torso that signals a certain vitality to a finished sculpture. The model’s timed rotations mean students never stick to rendering one view but must rotate armatures to match the model’s stance, building out only the three-dimensional form from their unique viewpoint in the room.  

At the end of this class (which, due to covid-19 has been a bit bumpy with some classes cancelled and rescheduled), we will destroy our works by pulling the clay from the armature to be stored in a plastic bagged blob. The forced breaks, shifting viewpoints, and the fact that the finished product is nothing more than the end of a “study” process, has made me feel a light creative freedom.  

I’m delighted working in the small class, listening to the murmurings of conversation, the shushing hiss of spray bottles and overplayed classical tunes.  To be in the moment of “trying” for no other joy but to try. It is a focused peace.    

In sculpting, I’m working to render gesture, observing the live, three-dimensional form, and attempting to replicate a scaled down version with my hands. I’m assessing volume and shape, curves and hollows, the points of bones and how the softness of body, muscles, skin, drapes over them. Expression is captured in the stance and gesture of how the body stands in place. 

In drawings, gesture is captured in the line. A move from rendering “the study” from three-dimensions to two. A line can capture energy, a subject’s vitality, by how it is it rendered on paper – thin and fast, thick and slow, etc. 

But the experience of observation captured on the page through writing transfers the three-dimensional world (even four or five dimensional if we start to add things like emotion and interior thoughts) into flat words on a blank page. Words are abstract symbols of representation.  Each word sparks connotations and connections unique to our own experiences and interpretations.  I guess this is why reading another’s words can feel so magically transportive. Just as my viewpoint of the art class model rotates on a platform in the middle of the sculpture class, my experiential viewpoint alters the interpretation of words. I witness – eyewitness – the object or the sensory experience – I interpret it (my own way) and render it into words to be able to convey my interpretative experience through writing.  And if that sensory experience, imagery, or idea is understood and resonates with the reader, there is a frisson of recognition and pleasure in sharing these experiences and thoughts across time and space. 

But getting the words to come through…not so easy.

Some observations from the last week:

I saw a porcupine. I thought it was a beaver at first because the animal was so round with a paddle like tail but as I passed (quickly – I was road cycling) – I realised the tail was not so big but rather narrow and flat– the animal was approaching the base of a large old oak with, I believed, an intention to climb it.  It was mid-day. The sun was high and bright but the wind, blowing east, blew strong against my direction of travel, stole the warm huffing of my exhalations fast past my ears. But how to describe the porcupine’s unrushed perambulation?  Its roly-poly demeanor? The animal wobbled. 

And a swan, bending its neck, s-like, to its back, its wings, still folded, raised and what?  Trembling? Quivering?  Shivering…yes, shivered and fluffed. 

A friend’s high-pitched reaction to one of my questions. A squeak. 

The dairy farm’s manure and powdered milk smell that makes me want to gag. 

The scent of pine sap needling the shade when I passed beneath their feathery boughs. 

The friendly waves from motorcyclists as they passed me cycling.  Is this a thing?  Are we in solidarity somehow, riding through the fresh air with bodies exposed to the spring? Not just one, but three different motorcyclists at different points along my route. One even when they must have seen me gagging for breath on a long uphill. Maybe that is why they waved.  For encouragement?  I waved back regardless.

This is the process of art making: observing the world with loving attention, transferring that loving view as a gift for the viewer/reader to share in that joy and delight.   

Facts into Fiction

Suzanne Biro

In the fall, I was writing personal essays.  Well…they were less essays and more fragments of thought, ideas, fits and starts recorded on paper.  But I strung them together. Discordantly. I forced the paragraphs to conform. To what?  I wasn’t sure.  Never a good sign.

The deep questioning I was trying to work through (thought I was working through?)…the essaying…wasn’t working.  The process was deeply frustrating. I forced myself to the writing and it resisted by clenching up. I couldn’t figure out what lay at the heart of my exploration.  Again, I’d fallen into my habit of going at the writing with my head instead of my heart. I thought…instead of felt. 

Then the holidays and the requisite relaxing of routine, reinforced with another public health lockdown as Omicron rapidly spread.  And New Year’s Eve I became symptomatic. It was two days before my scheduled booster (which I cancelled) and 6 months post vaccine number two when immunity wanes. It hit me hard.  Not dire, but unpleasant and uncomfortable. I released the writing routine to reading. And healing. And then, after stumbling across Douglas Glover’s (DG) essays (I write about that here), I worked through some intense studying of the craft of writing mirroring his methods. This was healing too. 

DG posted an exercise on writing emotions, and I challenged myself to write a fictional scene following his prompt. It flowed easily and felt fun.  And here’s the weird part…when I studied what I had written in those 1-2 paragraphs, I recognised the seeds of exploration I had wrestled with in the fall.  I still didn’t understand them…but I could see the concepts there. 

I flipped back to writing fiction.    

The writing progresses differently compared with how I have written in the past. Instead of sitting down to a timed write (30 minutes is my usual go to), and writing scenes from beginning to end, I’m writing in fragments untethered from a narrative timeline. 

I’ll try to explain how these arise.  I seem to be toggling through two different approaches. And they complement one another. 

First, as inspiration, I read other writers – stories, novels, poems or essays – I choose a book from my shelf almost randomly and thumb through the pages letting my eyes rest where they get caught. I pay close attention to how the words pile up there on the page and then I work to copy the syntax or concept or the work a line or paragraph is doing (techniques) for myself, using my own words for my own emerging story. This gets the engine of writing going.

Second, I let myself sit and relax and try to let my mind go blank…and the images that move with the story appear. I write them down.  Sometimes it’s a phrase or a word, often it is a picture. Sometimes it is a mood or feeling…these are harder to write down.  Sometimes I write most of a scene and what I think I’m going to write about I never get to.  Instead, it’s something related but tangential. 

I toggle back and forth between these methods (I stop to wonder here…perhaps this is how other writers write and I’m only discovering this now because I’m so dogmatic and literal I’ve never relaxed enough to do this? Maybe. Probably. Ugh. But the ability to do this relies on gaining an understanding of how to read for specific craft techniques instead of reading for meaning (symbolism) and I have DG to thank for pointing this path in way I can finally understand).   

There is a lot less knowing about how it will unfold (gasp! I have to release control!)…and I flip back and forth between liking what I have written and extreme anxiety about whether it’s working. Sigh. But fragments and phrases float to me throughout the day and I jot them down in my notebook, feeling them, receiving them as the precious gifts they are. 

And here’s the thing, writing through fiction this way I have come to understand what I was exploring through essay in the fall—but didn’t quite get there—coming at it slant has illuminated meaning and a story line to tell it. For the first time I feel how it ought to come together to share the experience with a reader.  This is a huge step forward for me.   

Once the material and the order of it is fully drafted, I’ll shift into a similar but third approach, which is to study what I have written, try to understand the work each paragraph/section is doing for a reader ( in service of the story), then turn back to my bookshelf to study techniques again for how to do it better. Feels good to follow a path.