Method Monday: More, More, More!

“It’s easier to cut words than add them.”

I don’t recall which high school English teacher uttered this mantra, but I do remember that we were working on term papers that my classmates and I thought were soooooo long. Most of us had a common goal: do the least work possible to earn a decent grade. If the assignment called for 3-5 pages, many would turn in 3 pages. I did. Several times I found myself sitting in front of a glowing computer screen on due date eve needing half a page. If only I’d listened to my wise English teacher, because cutting is indeed much easier than adding, especially when one feels like everything to be said has been said.

This adage applies beyond academic papers that often have imposed length requirements. I’ve had similar experiences while writing poetry and fiction, knowing I need to add more but lacking new words and ideas. These writing experiences reign among my most frustrating, knowing I have a work so near completion and feeling unable to fill in blank space. It isn’t always long writing exercises, either. I’ve had 16 syllables that belong to a haiku and agonized over that final one. That’s when I’m tempted to use filler like unnecessary articles or cheap adverbs.

The best solution sounds simple, the one my English teacher implied: write more than you need. It sounds simple, but think about everything that keeps you from following this advice. My temptations include editing as I type, quitting when my requirements are met, and attention to poetic form. I imagine the first is common among writers who grew up using computers. How many times have you deleted what you just wrote because you weren’t sure if it was worth keeping? Sure, maybe it wasn’t worth keeping that way, but did you lose an important idea or image that could’ve been fixed during editing? Quitting when requirements are met is a classic academic mistake and incredibly lazy. Well, I’ve written 10 pages for my 10-12 page paper, time to tack on a conclusion. The final temptation arises when I’m trying to write a particular form (haiku, sonnet, etc,). I try to overcome this by ignoring, to some extent, my desired form while writing the first draft. If you write everything that you might want to say, it’s easier to meld it into iambic pentameter later than as you go.

So write. Write a lot. Write more than you think you need. It will save you from staring at a blank page the day before your term paper is due or on the last day of NaNoWriMo. It will save you from 16 syllable haiku and 13 1/2 line sonnets. It will help your ideas flow, so that after you edit (cutting the clutter and shaping the gems), you’ll possess the best finished product.

Cheers,

Randall

Method Monday: Go Back in Time

Before you get too excited, I’m not writing about actual time travel today. Until someone gets the physics figured out, your best chance for time travel is finding a spacial anomaly. Of course that’s risky. You may not end up at your desired point in time, and it may cause a dimensional shift instead of, or in addition to, time travel.

"The Time Tunnel" 20th Century Fox

The time travel I propose involves looking back at your previous writing. I do this most often when I’m having trouble writing new material. I get out my old notebooks (even the ones from back in high school) and flip through the pages. I don’t think my writing was as good back then (at least I hope I’ve improved), but sometimes I stumble across something I can use now.

I’ve written before about my slush pile of lines that don’t yet have poems in which they belong. That’s often how these old poems work. Even if I’m embarrassed by the work of young Randall, I find individual lines that work well. I then use these lines as a prompt for a new poem. Sometimes it isn’t a line but an idea. I may find that I inadequately approached a theme 10 years ago that I’m now ready to try again.

You don’t always need such a utilitarian approach. Sometimes I just look through my old notebooks to remember. It takes me back to that time but with the knowledge and experience I now have. It can be fun to relive those times. It can be frightening. No matter what emotion(s) arise, sometimes one just needs to remember from whence he/she came.

At 28, I’m not the same writer, I’m not the same person, I was at 18. At 38, I’ll be yet again a different person. Life is a journey, and there are moments when interrupting the linear flow of time is exactly what we need.

Method Monday–Ruthless Editing

Red ink is a good thing

Method Monday is a weekly entry about my writing process. Maybe you’ll find something in my process that’s worth adopting. Maybe you have ideas for me. This week, I discuss editing my work ruthlessly. Enjoy.

In my opinion, editing is the most important part of the writing process. No matter how inspired a first draft feels, I know it cannot be my final draft. When I write a first draft, I try to let it flow as freely as possible. It’s more important to me that I get the imagery or ideas on paper than form or mechanics. Those arrive during editing. Something I’ve been working on when editing, and feel may be more important than the editing methodology I use, is ruthlessness.

Being ruthless with one’s own work isn’t always easy. Sometimes I become emotionally attached to specific words, phrases, or lines. I’ve learned the hard way that hanging on to these favorite bits can be fatal to the poem as a whole. Those lines may be great, but insisting that they remain in a poem in which they don’t belong is foolish. Consciously knowing this doesn’t make them easy to cut, but I’m learning. One thing I’ve done to help myself cut more efficiently is create a slush pile, if you will. In this way, I can focus on bettering the current poem without abandoning these lines completely; they may be appropriate for other works.

You may wonder, how do I know what to cut? The easiest answer I can offer is when in doubt, cut. If you read a poetry anthology (what we may loosely refer to as “great poetry”), notice that great poets do not waste words. Everything serves the greater purpose of the poem. That’s what I want for my poetry. Every word should be the exact word it needs to be, and accomplishing this goal requires ruthless cutting.

In addition to cutting what doesn’t belong, I must make what remains the best version of itself. Young Randall thought only weak writers used thesauruses. Now I know realize that I don’t know every synonym, and I know longer see using this resource as an attack on my creativity or originality. Whether or not I use a thesaurus, the first word I choose to express an idea may not be the best word.

Though it may deviate from the practical advice presented to cut and replace when appropriate, it’s also important psychologically that I edit with a red ink pen. Public schools may frown on red ink and its supposed impact on student self-esteem, but I’m talking about ruthless self-examination. I need to see it. If there isn’t enough red on my draft copy to induce temporary shock, then I know I’m being easy on myself. If I’m easy on myself, then I’m going to present a lesser poem as the finished product. That is unacceptable.

It’s time to become ruthless, time to break out the scissors and red ink.

By the way, if you’re curious about the poem in the image, it’s here.

Method Monday–Building Character, with a little help from Star Trek

My wife and I have been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix. I saw most episodes during the original run, but it’s nice to visit old friends. My friends, mostly StarFleet officers serving aboard the Enterprise, are the crux of the show. If you watch the show often enough, you’ll notice that there are only about a dozen different mission types. If the missions were the primary pull, the show would not have lasted seven seasons.

I mention Star Trek when discussing character building, because the methods it uses for this purpose are transferable to writing. Star Trek characters emerge throughout the series based on how they react in a variety of circumstances. When writing, that is how we create/showcase/explore characters.

Unfortunately, I often see authors take a different approach–painful explanations about who the characters are. Few things bore me as much. Let your characters experience their world. Your readers (or viewers) will appreciate getting to know your characters for themselves.

Make it so.

Method Monday–Breaking it Down

I’m back from my long blogging break. Surely at least a couple of you missed me. I took a break from other writing, too, though that break ended sooner.

A lot has been said about the importance of writing every day, about making writing a habit. There’s truth to that. If one waits around for a muse to show up or for perfect writing conditions, one will never write anything. Many also suggest setting aside a specified writing time. Write each morning. Write each evening. Whatever works best for your mind. My work schedule and family demands make writing at the same time each day difficult, but I do try to write daily.

Except during this break. I needed these three weeks away from the blog and about a week and half away from poetry to prepare myself for better writing. I felt that I was in a rut, and my previous attempts to write through the rut failed. My writing became both sloppy and predictable. It was like I had a terrible poem in my head and each attempt to write something new returned me to that same awful idea.

In addition to taking a break from writing, I took a break from other aspects of life. August 5-7 was spent on a roadtrip with two photographer friends. We left Tulsa early that Friday morning, heading west. We visited the Great Salt Plains, then continued west through the Oklahoma panhandle and into northeastern New Mexico. We camped the first day near Las Vegas, NM. Day 2 covered much less distance but had many more photography stops as went drove through the mountainous Santa Fe National Forest. We went northwest toward Taos then took the high road from Taos to Santa Fe, where we camped. Day 3 was mostly concerned with just getting back to Tulsa in a timely manner, so we hopped on I-40 through Amarillo and Oklahoma City. The roadtrip inspired me as much by taking me away from my daily demands than it did by providing beautiful scenery. Not that I didn’t enjoy the scenery.

Taking a writing break has risks, primarily that one will not easily return to good writing habits. I’ve definitely taken too many breaks like that, intentional one or two weeks breaks that stretched into months of barely writing. I weighed the risks and vowed to return promptly to writing after this break. And I have. I’m back, and I’m refreshed.

Method Monday–Metaphor

Method Monday is my weekly exploration of my writing process. Take what works for you; ignore the rest. This week, I’m discussing metaphor.

I guess I should begin with a definition of metaphor. Wikipedia’s definition is clear and concise and should suit our purposes: “A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story, or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea.” There are several types of metaphor, but I won’t get into specifics for this post. My goal here is to show how I develop metaphor in writing.

As described in the given definition, metaphor has two basic parts. The “image, story, of tangible thing” is what readers can relate to, what they already understand. The “less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea” is what we hope the reader understands better after we’ve related it to the first part. This is not to say that metaphor is easy to understand. Sometimes writers are vague about what the metaphor represents. If metaphor were always easy, we wouldn’t have much use for university English departments, but even if a metaphor is difficult to interpret, it provides a starting point for the reader to gain intended understanding.

Why use metaphor? Metaphor makes writing more powerful. If I want to write a poem that talks about loss of a family member, I could be literal. I could say what you already know, that losing someone you love hurts. Readers don’t just want truths laid plainly before them; they want images that they can relate to that lead them to those truths. Metaphor, even though it pulls away from the literal in a way, makes certain concepts more “real.” The following metaphor is an except from a poem I wrote after my great-grandmother passed away:
“And he denies,
even more, time’s persistent current
as it carries, too swiftly, her
humble craft toward
a hazy horizon.

He grows into a man, still resisting,
still hoping
she will paddle back to him.
As her ship’s mast
fades from sight, and as the
setting sun spills its spectrum on the sea,
he misses Lucy—whom he never knew.” -from “Missing Lucy” by Randall Weiss
This metaphor isn’t difficult to understand. Lucy, the grandmother, is a ship that is leaving the boy/man behind. The metaphor works (at least I think this one works) because you can imagine, even if you’ve not done it, standing at the dock watching a ship slowly fade from site and wishing that you could bring it back. I think this conveys the emotion more effectively than just saying, “I miss my grandma.” It also helps relate to readers; they may or may not care about my grief, but if the metaphor can relate to grief they’ve experienced, then it’s successful.

Writing good metaphor takes practice. I’ve written more duds than successful metaphors. Determining the difference between successful and unsuccessful metaphor also takes practice. Read your own work critically. Does your metaphor affect you in the way you hope it affects your readers? Get additional opinions from your peer writing group. The more I write, the easier it becomes both to write metaphor and to know if that metaphor works.

I’ve talked a lot about what metaphor is and how to use it, I guess I should talk about how I write them. I always start with one side of the metaphor equation, usually the tangible image side. I may see or imagine a particular image that I find intriguing, then I think about what that image means to me. Starting with the vague idea then searching for an appropriate image may work better for you, but I rarely work that way. For example, in my poem “Magnolia Blossom,” I started with the image of a magnolia tree (I have one in my front yard). The image didn’t become metaphor immediately, but I knew that it had something to offer. It clicked, if you will, as I sat on the porch watching the blossoms bloom then wither.

What are your thoughts on metaphor?

Method Monday–Practice Makes More Better

Method Monday is a weekly feature in which I talk about various aspects of my writing process. Feel free to adopt any practices you think may benefit you, and ignore the rest. This week, I’m talking about writing practice poems.

Not every poem I write is intended for publication or feature on this blog. Sometimes I just write practice poems.

If I intend to write a practice poem, then I approach it with that mindset. It’s not that I give it less effort than any other poem, but instead of focusing on the content and themes that make a poem excel, I focus on construction aspects. I may try to make the poem mathematically perfect, perhaps, even if it doesn’t suit me in other ways.

I see practice poems as a way to learn writing mechanics. For example, if I write a few dozen iambs that don’t matter, then I have learned something about iambs that I can transfer to “real” poems.

Practice poems help me approach different forms. As someone who usually writes free verse, I must employ different mental processes to write in a form. Let’s say I have an idea for a sonnet. I may write several practice sonnets about different topics before I approach the inspired sonnet. I don’t always approach forms this way, but if I find problems after trying to write the inspired poem, then writing practice poems may help my mind fix those problems.

Writing practice poems improves my narrative and imagery. I’m writing this post while sitting in a cafe. I’ve written many “real” poems based on activities and people I’ve seen in cafes and other public places, but not every people watching poem is significant. I may use the available inspiration to practice creating images or telling stories. My challenge in this cafe might be: can I describe the girl sitting next to me well enough that my readers would be able to see her?

Any poem I write based on a writing prompt goes into the practice category. One reason for this is that I feel like a prompted poem isn’t completely mine. But prompts are a useful challenge. I read a prompt a few days ago (sorry I don’t recall the source) that suggested writing a poem about gaining a superpower of your choice. I doubt a poem about super vision would score me a nomination for Poet Laureate, but it was fun and useful for developing my craft.

Do you ever write practice poems? If so, how does it affect your writing?

Method Monday–Writing Venues

There’s something about where I choose to write that sets the mood of my writing. My most frequent writing venues are coffee shops, my front porch, and anywhere outside.

Shades of Brown Coffee and Art in Tulsa, OK

Coffee shops give me great noise. I like to watch people, listen to them, see if I can find out something about humanity. The challenge when writing at the coffee shop, or any other public place, is to not allow the noise that offers me so much fodder to distract me.

I am blessed to have a large, covered front porch. I like to sit out there (usually after my kids are in bed) with my friends, tobacco and alcohol. There’s something incredibly relaxing about ending my day in this writing locale. This is also where I do most of my editing.

Tulsa Skyline across the Arkansas River

There are many great places to sit outside and write. In Tulsa, the local parks and the river are great venues. This is where I usually write about nature. I observe the plants and animals around me and try to become one with them.

Where do you like to write?

That Song in My Head

This is the first post in a new series I’m calling Method Monday, in which I will discuss aspects of my writing process. The posts won’t necessarily be instructive, as I’m only sharing how I do things, but feel free to adopt any methods that may benefit your writing. Today, I’ll be talking a bit about a particular type of inspiration.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been getting this song stuck in my head.

Good thing I like the song. It’s torture to get a bad song in your head.

The same sort of thing often happens when I’m working on a new poem. A line or two comes to me and sticks. Sometimes I write it down and find the rest of the poem. Sometimes the process isn’t so easy. I write the line down in my notebook, then I keep coming back to it over a week or two. Or a month. Or a year.

Sometimes, just like those songs in my head, I have the line(s), but I just can’t seem to find the rhythm. That’s when frustration hits. If I could just get the right beat, I could finally sing this song out of my head becomes if I could just get the right beat, I could finally write this poem out of my head. Those latter poems, the ones that replay a thousand times and won’t seem to leave me alone, become my better poems. As well they should after all that trouble.

Poetry doesn’t always come to me this way, and it may not for you, but when/if it does, don’t let that line get away from you. It may be just what you need.