Enhancing Writing Skills [1 ed.] 9781681233581, 9781681233567

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Enhancing Writing Skills

A Volume in: Adult Learning in Professional, Organizational, and Community Settings Series Editor Carrie J. Boden-McGill

Adult Learning in Professional, Organizational, and Community Settings Series Editor Carrie J. Boden-McGill Texas State University Building Sustainable Futures for Adult Learners (2014) Jennifer K. Holtz, Stephen B. Springer, and Carrie J. Boden McGill

Enhancing Writing Skills

Edited by

Oluwakemi Elufiede Tina Murray Carrie J. Boden-McGill

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC. Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The CIP data for this book can be found on the Library of Congress website (loc.gov). Paperback: 978-1-68123-356-7 Hardcover: 978-1-68123-357-4 E-Book: 978-1-68123-358-1

Copyright © 2016 Information Age Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments .......................................................................... ix Foreword: Creative Upwelling ....................................................... xi Mary Buckner Preface ...........................................................................................xv Introduction ............................................................................... xvii Oluwakemi Elufiede, Tina Murray, and Carrie J. Boden-McGill S E C T I O N

1

GENRE-BASED WRITING 1.

Some Essentials of Poetry—In No Particular Order ..................... 3 David M. Harris

2.

How Poetry and Lyrics Are Different ............................................17 Lisa Aschmann

3.

Writing Historical Fiction ............................................................. 23 George Spain v

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CONTENTS

Researching the Novel ...................................................................31 Patricia H. Quinlan S E C T I O N

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CREATIVITY IN WRITING 5.

The Connection between Brain Science and Written Expression ....................................................................... 39 Oluwakemi Elufiede

6.

A Transcultural Perspective of Creativity in Academic Writing .......................................................................................... 45 Emmanuel Jean Francois and Carrie J. Boden-McGill

7.

A Sense of Wonder: Why Every Creative Writer Needs One..........59 Tina Murray S E C T I O N

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ACADEMIC WRITING 8.

Academic Literacy and the Creative Writer: Why Should Anyone Care What Theorists Have to say About Creativity and Literature? ..............................................................................67 Joseph Ballantyne

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Academic Writing: Expanding Your Creative Writing Through Use of the Library...........................................................77 Janet Walsh S E C T I O N

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WRITING AS A BUSINESS 10.

Speaking Your Truth: Freedom and Authority in an Era of Independent Publishing .................................................... 85 Candy Paull

11.

In the Eye of the Beholder ............................................................ 95 Carissa Barker-Stucky

Contents S E C T I O N

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MECHANICS OF WRITING 12.

Lightning and the Lightning Bug: Why Language Matters and How to Make It Work for You................................................103 Beth Terrell

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As Clear as Mud: The Correct Usage of Metaphors, Similes, and Idioms ..................................................115 Jamie Hughes Conclusion ...................................................................................123 Oluwakemi Elufiede, Tina Murray, and Carrie Boden-McGill Contributor Biographies..............................................................125

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To editors and contributors, thank you for sharing your time, expertise, and dedication. To Dr. Carrie Boden-McGill, series editor for Adult Learning in Professional, Organizational and Community Settings with Information Age Publishing (IAP) for taking on the book project. In addition to George Johnson, the founder and publisher of IAP. Along with formal and current Executive Director at Nashville Community Education, Lovette Curry and Mary Beth Harding for partnering with CW to host the first writing conference in the Nashville Community. To CW publication committee, thank you for your time and effort for the completion of the book cover illustration. —Oluwakemi Elufiede

FOREWORD

CREATIVE UPWELLING Mary Buckner

Creativity. Where does it come from? From what source does creativity spring? The unconscious mind? The universal soul? The zeitgeist spirit of our shared culture? Whatever its source, creativity is flowing inside each one of us, ready to be tapped at any moment. We writers are like the old-time water witches who wave divining rods over the earth to find hidden currents. Without the generative waters of creativity, we thirst and wither. And so we dig, with every tool at hand, every stick and spade, and when the fountain gushes forth, there is joy. Creativity is playful and free, open to anything, unafraid of mistakes and failure. It’s reckless, unpredictable, and it seems to come out of nowhere, like a gift from heaven. For all these reasons, we might think creativity is the antithesis of discipline and hard work, yet only through steady methodical work can we channel and harness it. That means, when the impulse of creativity bursts forth, we have to be at the right place and time, and that place and time is wherever and whenever we write or think about writing. If our minds are freshest in the morning, that’s when we write. If our brains are more energized in the evening, that’s when we write. When we’re showering, or taking a walk, or doing our laundry, or waiting in line for a show, that’s when we think about writing. And that’s when and where creativity will find us. Enhancing Writing Skills, pages xi–xiv. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Creativity is our bliss. And yet we know that raw creativity is not the same as good writing. Creativity is the substance. Only skill transforms it into art. So we work. We study writing craft all our lives because there is no end to learning. We read articles and books and blogs. We take classes and workshops. We join writing critique groups. We analyze the works of authors we admire, and we mull over every piece of advice we receive. We reach out in every direction to improve our skill—so that when our creativity surges, we are ready. Of course, it isn’t easy to be a writer. Ernest Hemingway said, “Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge, and it is most difficult.” Every writer here knows that feeling, don’t we? And not only is perfection beyond our reach. There are also many voices urging us not even to try. They’ll say we’re too young and inexperienced, or too old and used up, or that we don’t have the time or the talent, that it’s hopeless. They’ll warn us about the stiff competition, the volatile publishing business, the dwindling readership – and all these warnings are true. It takes a strong passion to block these voices out and carry on. But as the renowned writer Maya Angelou has said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” You may know about her journey. It’s worth considering again. Angelou was born in St. Louis in 1928, and soon after her birth, her parents broke up. At the age of seven, she was raped, and her uncles killed the rapist. In utter shock, Angelou didn’t speak a word for years. At the age of sixteen, she gave birth to a son, whom she had to support alone, working at any job she could find. As an African-American woman, she suffered all the usual prejudices, both racial and sexual that were prevalent at that time. Still, she studied acting and dancing, and a decade after her son’s birth, she got a role in a touring production of Porgy and Bess. Other roles followed, and in 1961, she appeared with James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson in Jean Genet’s, The Blacks. After that, her acting career took off. When her son was grown, she began to travel and live abroad, and her novelist friend James Baldwin advised her to write about her experiences. The result was her poignant memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This book became the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman. And Angelou gained international fame. Later, she became the first African-American woman to have her screenplay produced, and she won an Emmy nomination for her acting in the TV mini-series, Roots. Among many other honors, she also won a Pulitzer nomination for her poetry collection, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die. President Bill Clinton asked her to compose a poem for his inaugural ceremony, and President Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom. “We may encounter many defeats,” she wrote, “but we must not be defeated.” The entire world mourned when she died last year, yet her life remains a stirring example of the power of perseverance against all odds. Many writers have stories like this, stories of labor and struggle against tremendous barriers that, by dent of perseverance, still end in success. Maybe the

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effort to face and overcome failure actually strengthens our writing by giving us deeper insights into the human condition. Kurt Vonnegut once said, “Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being?” Let’s consider another inspiring story that you may have heard before – the case of Thomas Lanier Williams III, better known as Tennessee Williams. Williams wrote, “Success is shy. It won’t come out while you’re watching.” He wrote that from the heart because he’d learned it in the school of failure. Born in 1911, also in Missouri, Williams grew up in an unhappy home where he suffered physical abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father. As a small child, he nearly died of diphtheria and had to spend a year recuperating in solitary confinement. The experience left him physically weak. As a young man, he came out as gay at a time when homosexuality was not only illegal, it was considered a moral sin. A shy loner, he studied writing and drama at various schools, yet he didn’t fit in well anywhere. Writing was his solace, and he wrote copiously. Yet for years, his work remained obscure, and he earned his living at monotonous menial jobs which left him depressed and nervous. But in 1945, his long labor paid off. His play, The Glass Menagerie, seemed to come out of nowhere as a break-out hit in New York City, and two years later, A Streetcar Named Desire solidified his success. He wrote numerous other celebrated works whose titles are now household names, and his many honors include two Pulitzers, three New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and a Tony. Well . . . I hope that few of us in this room ever face the trials and tribulations that these two writers had to overcome, but we all have our own hurdles. The work of becoming a writer is never easy. As Ernest Hemingway has famously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Those words resonate with my own writing experience. My process hasn’t been painless or free of stress. I wrote my first novel in third grade. It was pretty short and pretty juvenile, and so was most of the poetry I wrote as a child. But from that time on, I wanted to be a novelist. I had no money, though, and needed to earn a living, so I spent decades working in ad agencies and corporate marketing departments as a copy-writer and creative director. I wrote annual reports, newsletters, TV and radio commercials, web sites, blogs, packaging copy, on-hold phone messages, you name it. Finally, by the age of forty-five, I’d socked away enough money to quit my full-time job and start writing novels. It wasn’t easy to leave a safe, productive career behind, and I was scared. I studied, took workshops, read dozens of books and wrote for hours every day. I wrote three novels that were all rejected before finally one was published. My third novel won a national award. My work has now been published in five languages on three continents, but it’s still a struggle. Yet I love to do it. I love to try always to get better, and I feel the most exquisite pleasure when something turns out well. I never want to stop writing. When people ask me for advice, one of the first things I say is, give yourself time. Writing takes TIME. As Adam Gopnik said, “Writing is turning time into

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language.” So put writing first on your schedule. Choose the time of day or night when you are most energetic and clear-minded, close your door, and just do it. Write a journal. Write your life story. Write about what you love – or hate – or fear. Writing is like playing piano. It takes lots of practice, so write as much as you can. Write till your fingers know the words before your conscious mind decides. Second, don’t force yourself to be brilliant in your first draft. Give yourself permission to write freely, and don’t worry about mistakes. You can fix them later. Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” So go off on tangents. Follow strange paths. Allow yourself time to PLAY. Allow yourself time to THINK. Promise yourself in advance that you won’t show your work to anyone until you feel ready. Third, believe in yourself. If you feel earnest passion to be a writer, you already are one. Stay with it, and believe. But also remain humble. There is no end to learning about writing. So keep reading and studying and practicing. Keep reaching out in every direction to learn more. Even though perfection is beyond reach, never settle. Keep moving toward it. I applaud you for reading this book. It’s a mark of your sincere desire to invest your time and effort. Another line from Maya Angelou that I love is, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” So tap into your creativity, and let it flow. Write for yourself and for the people you love. Write for fun. For solace. For a deeper understanding of existence. Write for the sheer joy of creativity. Now I’ll close with the wise words of another brilliant writer, Benjamin Franklin. He said, “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” So I wish you good diligence—and good luck!

PREFACE

The Carnegie Writers, Inc. (CW) is pleased to present its 2nd publication, Enhancing Writing Skills. Since August 2013, CW has provided community education to adult learners who have interest in various writing endeavors. The need for the enhancement of writing skills is apparent in all aspects of daily life. Writing itself enhances personal growth, encourages self-awareness, self-expression, and confidence. When writers improve their writing skills, they are able to meet challenges they would not be able to meet otherwise. They are able to access meaning resources, both in the world and within themselves. This anthology is intended to help writers learn from other writers and to encourage networking relationship among writers. It is intended to foster professional development by helping writers to use and develop their writing talents. Furthermore, it is intended to provide publishing resources related to both nontraditional and traditional publishing. Another goal of publication is to enhance writers understanding of marketing strategies in the 21st century and to evaluate learned skills that reinforce critical thinking skills in writers. The themes of the book focus on genre-based writing, creativity in writing, mechanics of writing, academic writing, and writing as a business.

Enhancing Writing Skills, page xv. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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INTRODUCTION Oluwakemi Elufiede, Tina Murray, and Carrie Boden-McGill

Enhancing Writing Skills is comprised of 13 chapters based on 5 themes; genrebased writing, academic writing, mechanics of writing, creativity in writing, and writing as business. The themes of this book are based on those from the inaugural conference of The Carnegie Writers, Inc., held November 14, 2015 in Nashville, TN. The purpose of the conference was to provide diverse adult writers with various writing resources that can provide a benefit to their daily lives along with their individual writing goals. Contributors of this book range from authors, editors, publishers, educators, to writing professionals. The Carnegie Writers, Inc, is a community-based non-profit organization for diverse writers and was inspired by The Carnegie Writers’ Group, founded in August of 2013 by Oluwakemi Elufiede. The mission is to advance education, encourage collaboration, and provide resources for writers. The vision is to encourage writers by providing positive and productive support for a successful writing experience based on writing goals. The organization’s motto is to educate, write, and collaborate. In “Creative Upwelling,” author M. M. Buckner introduces Enhancing Writing Skills with us an insight into the dynamic mind of a contemporary creative writer. The title alone suggests the passionate fervor with which she approaches writing. However, as a dedicated teacher of writing, she has emphasized for us, also, the importance of craft, hard work, persistence, and dedication. We thank her, espeEnhancing Writing Skills, pages xvii–xiv. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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cially, for participating as the keynote speaker at our first conference. She has provided a basis for the chapters that follow. The first section of this collection addresses genre-based writing in areas such as poetry, songwriting, and historical fiction. This section provides tips for understanding and researching within a specific genre. Poet and publishing-industry veteran David M. Harris, gives a clarifying overview of poetry and its attributes. His chapter, “The Essentials of Poetry,” will be edifying for anyone who seeks to learn about the nature and scope of writing poetry. Prolific, professional songwriter Lisa Aschmann’s chapter, “How poetry and lyrics are different,” provides writers with an explanation of the difference between writing poetry and writing song lyrics. Writers who are interested in poetry and/or lyrics will be enlightened by these two illuminating articles. The second section, creativity in writing, focuses on bridging the gap between theory and “real world” writing, including the areas such as literary theory and the library, including brain-based strategies, imagination, and writing activities that are geared towards blending knowledge, recall of information, self-expression through writing, and the how the creative process is utilized in the academic process of writing with identity, vision, intent, and insight. Creative writing serves the purposes to entertain, educate, pr spread awareness about something or someone (Read Me First, 2003). Oluwakemi Elufiede suggests that writers may benefit by unleashing unconscious thoughts through experience, exploration, and engagement that in return will improve their writing. Emmanuel Jean Francois and Carrie Boden-McGill elucidate “The Transcultural Perspective of Creativity in Academic Writing,” by addressing important issues in regards to diversity and inter-cultural understanding, as related to attitudes of academics and creative writing. Tina Murray suggests the possibility of an interactive participatory relationship between the writer and the forces of creative imagination in “The Sense of Wonder: Why Every Creative Writer Needs One.” Each of these authors has approached the subject of creativity in a unique and special way. The third section, academic writing, focuses on the mechanics of writing, which specifies and establishes the conventions used in documentation (Read Me First, date). Joseph Ballantyne gives insight into the world of literary criticism. His chapter, “Academic Literacy and the Creative Writer” is a compelling glimpse into the minds of academics and other arbiters of taste. Ballantyne discusses how and why writers’ works can be impacted by professional analyses of their merits. He allows a glimpse into halls of judgment by explaining how critical analyses are formulated. If writers want to know why bestsellers and classics do not always coincide, they will not want to miss this introduction to the topic. Janet Walsh presents the importance of the inclusion of library resources and space for the development of ideas, research, and writing skills in creativity. Both authors provide a diverse perspectives related to writing productivity in academia. In the fourth section introduces strategies for marketing, publishing, and editing that in return can provide a source of revenue to individuals or organizations.

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MacGregor (2013) explains that writers should treat their writing as a business. Candy Paull offers words of encouragement and delineates new opportunities for today’s writers as she describes recent changes in the world of publishing in her chapter, “Speaking Your Truth: Freedom and Authority in an Era of Independent Publishing.” In “The Eye of the Beholder,” Carissa Barker-Stucky charmingly points out the advantages of using an editor to improve the quality of finished work. She also discusses what to expect after hiring an editor. Both authors offer valuable information in regard to state-of-the-art practices. In the fifth section, mechanics of writing, Beth Terrell, who writes as Jaden Terrell, spells out the basics of grammar, punctuation, syntax, and usage in “Lightning and the Lightning Bug: Why Language Matters and How to Make it Work for You.” She gives valuable information every writer can use, regardless of age or stage. Poet Jamie Hughes gives a stellar explanation of imagery in writing in his article, “Clear as Mud: Correct Usage of Metaphors, Similes, and Idioms,” in addition to offering insights into the appropriateness of such usage. These two authors combine expert knowledge with practical experience to provide muchneeded information for writers who want to be at the top of their game. In closing, the anthology seeks to engage the reader by identifying the common areas of support for advancing and sustaining writing skills. The key to writing is learning to write critically along with acceptance of criticism (Reineke, 2015). REFERENCES MacGregor, C. (2013) Treating your writing as a business. Retrieved from www.chipmacgregor.com. Read me first! (2003). A style guide for the computer industry. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Retrieved from www.writerstreasure.com Reineke, M.(2015). Critical writing skills. Retrieved from www.uni.edu

SECTION 1 GENRE-BASED WRITING

CHAPTER 1

SOME ESSENTIALS OF POETRY— IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER David M. Harris

Many people decide—usually in the first two years of high school—that they are going to be poets. A small portion of them go on to write some poetry. Most of those never go on to write anything that is of any interest outside of a small circle of friends. These people dream of being poets in about the same way that I dreamed of being a pitcher for the New York Yankees: concentrating on the being, not the doing. Frankly, I’m not nearly as interested in people who want to be poets as I am in people who want to write poetry. Any working writer has had countless encounters of the “I’ve always wanted to write a novel/screenplay/poetry collection” variety. And I’ve always wanted to play for the Yankees, or litigate a case in the Supreme Court, except that I haven’t been prepared to do what is necessary to get there. There may be a gift for poetry which some people have and others do not, but great, or even good, poetry doesn’t come from just spilling your emotions onto the page as you did in high school. Part of the job of poetry is making the right decisions, and part of it is learning what you need to know before you can be a good artist. And part of it, of course, is just practice. Hemingway (who wrote poetry early in his career) is rumored to have said that everyone should burn their first novel. Malcolm Gladwell said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to make you an expert in anything (Gladwell, Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 3–15. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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2011). Hemingway may be right, but Gladwell is only right if your practice is directed intelligently. If you just keep practicing your scales for 10,000 hours, you still won’t be an expert pianist. You have to deal with other essential issues as well. So here, in no particular order, are some of the essential issues you have to deal with if you want to be a working poet. PURPOSE Decide why you are writing poetry. If it is for your own private purpose, such as therapy, then all the rest of this is irrelevant. All you need to do is go through the process of writing and get your work on paper. If you want other people to read it—that is, for it to be published—then you have to start worrying about craft. I’ll mention a few useful books as we go along. But if you are not interested in publishing, your job is finished when your last word is written. And if you want to get published, it helps if you have some good idea of why you want that and what you expect from it. If you expect wealth and fame, you can find the name of a therapist in the Yellow Pages. Fame and fortune are not part of poetry, unless you are a dying child, a movie star, or Billy Collins. My publisher told me that she would be thrilled if my book sold two hundred copies. So far, it has not. Do you just think it would be cool to see your name in print, or do you feel you have something to say, or are you going to write no matter what and you might as well try to share what you produce? This actually goes to the core of your relationship with writing. Before you can really produce what you want, you must know what you want. As obvious as this may sound, many new writers just start putting words on the page, or on the computer screen, without the slightest idea of their real intentions other than “to be a writer.” It may be true, as Red Smith is reported to have said, that “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed” but even that only works if you have some idea what you are trying to write, and some idea of how to manipulate the words to get there. Starting to write and hoping for inspiration is the fast road to bad poetry. If all you want is to see your name in print, you are fortunate to live in the age of self-publishing and blogs (which are, after all, online self-publishing). You can post your work and send links to your friends, or have a few copies printed and hand them to friends and families, without worrying about the intermediation of an editor. Other people, of course, want the validation that comes from an editor’s selection, and the somewhat greater visibility that goes with an established journal, whether in electronic or dead tree form. What you want will determine how you choose to present your work to the world.

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None of these choices is intrinsically better or worse than any other. They suit different people differently. But you should know what your choice is, so you can act on it. FORM Not all poems need to have rhyme or meter or a classical structure, but why not have these tools in your kit? You may come up with an idea that would benefit from being cast in sonnet form, or kyrielle, or sestina, and you cannot take advantage of that if you do not know those forms and what they’re good for. There are two arguments against knowing the forms. The first is that they are old-fashioned. This works only if the people in the argument have not read the New Formalists (Jarman et al., 1996) who are writing excellent formal poetry right now, as you read this. The second argument is that it is much harder to write formal poetry than free verse. This one is true. But it is valid only if you think poetry is supposed to be easy. Good poetry is only very rarely easy. The truth is that the traditional forms of poetry—or even new, invented ones— are not really all that hard. Mostly, all they take is work and practice, and the practice can be fun. I worked my way through Stephen Fry’s The Ode Less Traveled, which is informative and witty (this is the same Fry from Peter’s Friends or the BBC Jeeves & Wooster programs) and came out with a notebook of formally correct but mostly uninspired verse and a few ideas—and the skill to use meter, at least, when a poem needs it (Fry, 2005). I’m still weak on rhyme (I can make the lines rhyme, but not in an interesting way). But I can recognize most of the standard forms when I run into them, and I have at least a rough idea of when I might want to try one of them. For example, if you want to write a love poem, or something that plays against the idea of a love poem, a sonnet is an interesting form to try, since it began as a form dedicated to love poetry. Edna St. Vincent Millay made good use of this in sonnets such as “I, being born a woman and distressed” (many sonnets are known by their first lines) (Millay, 1892–1950). Forms with repetitions, such as villanelles and pantoums and, to some extent, sestinas, can echo how our minds return to ideas or phrases, sometimes transforming them through repetition. Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking” is a particularly fine example of the villanelle, in which he makes use of some slight variations on the form (Roethke, 1961). You can also make variations, but you must understand the form before you can play with it. Each form has a history and a function. They aren’t arbitrary, except for a few of the more recently invented ones. Forms call on you to respond to them, to stretch yourself into new skills and new ideas. Looking for the right word to fit the meter or rhyme of a formal poem can lead you off into an unexpected direction, and as a poet you should be open to accident.

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And you do not have to write every poem in a received form. You can write some free verse, some blank verse, and some strict forms. Most of my own work is free verse, but some of my best, and best-received, poems have been in forms. Now, there are some people who argue that any piece of text that does not have meter and rhyme is not poetry. They are just as mistaken as those who think that formal poetry is only for the fogies. The battle against free verse was lost long ago, arguably with the publication of Leaves of Grass and certainly no later than the Imagists, about a century ago (Whitman, 2007). A good reference book on formal poetry is The Book of Forms, by Lewis Turco (Turco, 2000). Miller Williams’s Patterns of Poetry is also fine (Williams, 1986). WORK At the beginning, I referred to the job of poetry. Like any art, and the sciences, it involves imagination and hard work. You remember what Edison said: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Don’t lose track of that ratio. Over my desk, I have a quotation from the painter Chuck Close: “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up for work” (Pinora, 2013). Under that I have a portrait of Anthony Trollope (2006), who wrote most of his 47 novels while working for the Royal Post (where he invented the pillar-box). Trollope got up early every morning to write, and wrote 250 words every fifteen minutes until it was time to go to the office. If you want to be a writer, the minimal necessary step is writing. And if you wait for inspiration, you are not writing. If I wait for inspiration to strike, I’m likely to be out on the golf course when it does, in a foursome that will not stop and wait for me to write an ode. Inspiration does sometimes strike, of course. That is why I usually carry a notebook (see Tools, below). And if an idea comes to me while playing golf, I can make a note in my notebook or on my scorecard and save it. But ideas are plentiful, once you get into the habit of noticing them. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told by non-writers, “I have an idea for a poem/novel/movie, but I don’t know what to do about it.” A writer is different from other people in sitting down and writing when those ideas come along. A writer is also distinguished by not just noting those ideas, but developing them. And development does not come along on the wings of an angel; it is created (“creative” writing; get it?) through hard, concentrated work. Sometimes that work looks a lot like staring blankly at the page, or even like taking a long walk with the dog (this is why so many writers have dogs; that, and dogs are not judgmental), but it is still work, and you have to do it to make progress as a poet. None of this work is easy, but why should it be? Without hard work you will never be a good tennis player or mechanic or painter or teacher; why should poetry be different? Now, not all of a writer’s work is sitting at a desk and putting words on paper (or on a computer). Some of the work is going out and walking with the dog,

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clearing the mind so that the new words (or the solutions to other problems) can have room. Some of the work is reading (see below) or research. (Yes, there can be a lot of research in poetry. You do not want to have an accidental reference to something that some readers will recognize as bogus, such as having wolves in Tennessee. I almost said badgers, but there are reports of badgers in Tennessee—see?) Sometimes you just follow a series of links in Wikipedia to see where you end up. And sometimes you do just sit and stare at the page and, every ten or fifteen minutes, write down a few more words. That may be how your process works. When I was at Goddard College, there was a lot of emphasis on learning and embracing your own process. Your process probably is not the same as Trollope’s, or Billy Collins’s (he writes a poem in the morning, polishes it, and never touches it again), or David Kirby’s (he thinks about a poem for a couple of years, then writes it down, sometimes in as little as fifteen minutes), but it works for you, and part of your work is understanding how to get the work done. READING I do not get specific ideas from other poets, but I get ideas about what can be done with language, or with poetry, or with ideas. I look at a poem sometimes to see how the poet got an effect, or how the images are put together, or how the poet has played variations and evolutions on a single complex image (Go back to Shakespeare’s sonnets for a lot of this, especially #18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Shakespeare, 1564–1616). Sometimes I just get a particular inspiration (or reminder), such as that great poetry does not have to sound elevated, or that ordinary language can sound elevated if the poet is talented enough (and, of course, I’m always trying to figure out how it was done). I read poetry on my radio show Difficult Listening, WRFN-LPFM, every Sunday morning, so I am constantly getting new influences and new ideas. But it is also useful to know what has been done; the converse is to have an idea of what has not been done. Ezra Pound urged us to “make it new,” and we cannot do that without knowing the old (And ‘new’ does not have to mean a subject that no one has considered before; it means expressing yourself in a way that no one else can, since they are not you.). Besides, if you are interested enough in poetry to write it, you should be reading it for pleasure. Could you like only your own poetry, and not that of Shakespeare, or Auden, or Donald Hall (to mention just three of the poets whose work I am likely to pick up for fun)? If you do not get any pleasure from reading great poets, maybe you need a new hobby (Unless, of course, you are only writing to express your inner soul and, maybe, to impress that cute guy in your English class. Then it does not matter if your poetry is any good—unless he is actually interested in poetry.). And you should not limit yourself to recent poetry. The genre was not invented when you were born, after all. Knowing what has been done in poetry means knowing Homer and Chaucer and Dante. Even knowing American poetry means

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knowing Phillis Wheatley and Anne Bradstreet, Poe and Longfellow, Whitman and Dickinson, and so on. Art exists in a context, and part of that context is history. Poems refer to each other directly and indirectly, a process called intertextuality, and you should want to be part of that conversation. One of the great advantages you gain from reading the work of other people is that it gives you permission. If Maya Angelou tried something, you can try it, too. If, after learning how to write a conventional sonnet, Shakespeare could write sonnets that were thirteen or fifteen lines, so can you. You can experiment and expand your horizons, once you have learned where those horizons are. MEANING If I write a poem that is only about how bad I feel about my tight shoes, all anyone will get out of it is that I do not like tight shoes. That will not mean anything to the readers. If I use tight shoes as an image representing overcrowding in the schools, or the restrictions on our behavior imposed by social expectations (or both), then the poem has some real meaning. The trick is to take the triggering idea (the idea that gets you started writing; if you have not read Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town, you really should; it is about getting from the first idea to the best poem you can make from it) and the generated idea (the one you come up with in the writing) and connect them to something outside your own consciousness (Hugo, 2010). I think of it as universalizing, although I doubt it’s ever really universal. But it is larger than my preference for shoes of the proper size, and more likely to touch the lives of my potential readers—to mean something to them. This transition is not easy, but that goes back to what I said about work. And it is necessary. Even the best light verse reaches out to something larger than itself; read some Dorothy Parker to see what I mean. The concept of the generated idea implies that you do learn something while writing the poem. You are not writing to put pretty words together, you are exploring an idea and looking for a new idea. Poetry can just be pretty, right? No. There may be some people who will read poetry that is beautiful but meaningless language, but not many, and they will not really be touched by it. There was once a movement called “euphuism,” spearheaded by the Elizabethan writer John Lyly. Have you ever heard of him? But you have heard of his contemporaries who wrote poetry that manipulated ideas at least as much as words. If you want to make real contact with real people, you have to give them something that connects with their lives. That is what I mean by “meaning.” The purpose of any representational art, after all, is to provide meaning to life. Besides, most of the truly beautiful language you can point to, in poetry or in prose, is beautiful at least in part (and in many cases mostly) because of the ideas it conveys. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s (1963) “I Have a Dream” speech is not full of flowery language, but it is moving because it is full of evocative ideas, clearly and beautifully stated.

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INDIRECTION AND AMBIGUITY If all you do is write an essay and break it into lines, you can call it poetry if you like, but I usually will not call it poetry (there are exceptions, like Marianne Moore’s poem “Poetry”). We have to leave something for the reader to do, to find the meaning and make it personal. One of the ways we do that is by leaving something out, and also by alluding more than we state overtly. For example, in “Easter, 1916”, Yeats never mentions the Rising in Dublin other than the reference to the date, but it’s clear that’s what the poem is about. It is not right on the page; the reader has to get involved with the poem to see it, but it’s there for every Irish schoolchild. The date and the names mentioned in the poem are reference enough. We can also use ambiguity and surprise to make the reader think about interconnections between ideas and meanings. Words that have more than one meaning (most of them, after all), interruptions that suddenly lead in unexpected directions, and all sorts of ambiguities can get the reader involved in the ideas of the poem. Alicia Ostriker’s (1937) poem “psalm” for example, is a series of rejections, preparing us for the greatest of all rejections at the end. But the closing line, “unless you ask me,” is a potent affirmation. Another idea is drawn into the web of the poem without being stated overtly, and another layer of emotion is added to all of what came before (Interestingly, this is the same mechanism that works in telling a joke.). Imagery is a way of directing the indirection. Mary Oliver, in “The Black Walnut Tree,” starts with the question of a large, old tree in the yard and uses its image to lead us to a meditation on family and ancestry and deep values (Oliver, 2005). Look, for contrast, at what Joyce Kilmer did with a tree. Every image should mean something more than just the picture it conjures; ideally, all the images should work with and against each other, as in a collage. One of our goals in poetry is to get as much information as possible into as few words as possible. LINES The line is a unit of its own, and it does not have to match a grammatical structure. Try always to have a line break do some work for the poem (You won’t always succeed, but every success will make the poem better.). Do not be afraid of caesura (a pause in the middle of a line) or enjambement (a grammatical phrase that carries over from one line to the next) or any of those tricks; they are just tricks, and you can use them when you need to. A decent book of poetic jargon would not hurt, either; the best is the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics, but it is more than you need, and more than you need to pay (Preminger & Brogan, 1993). Edward Hirsch’s A Poet’s Glossary is more accessible (Hirsch, 2014). There are a lot of glossaries online, too, until you need something more elaborate. Poets.org is a good place to start for everything poetic.

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You can actually trace, in early modern English poetry, when people finished with end-stopped lines (lines whose grammatical structures end with the line) and started using enjambement and caesura. Today, some poems are spread out on the page in ways that it is hard to tell where a line begins or ends. No matter how we may feel about this technique, it gives a poet another tool for directing our attention to the relationships between ideas, between words, and between words and ideas. And that is what lines, at their best, do. Too many contemporary poems are written in sentences and then broken into lines. But lines are not just a way of organizing the words on the page so they do not look like prose. They are, or should be, units of meaning and of direction. They are part of the toolkit that a poet can use to teach the reader how to read each poem as it goes. A poem does not actually have to be written in sentences, but it does need to be in lines (except for prose poems, which we are not going to get into here). So we have to start thinking in lines as we write. One way to practice this is to take a good poem that you don’t know really well and type it into your computer without the line breaks. Then, a day or two later (when you have forgotten the original breaks) try to break it back into lines. Or have someone type it in for you. See if you can match the original lines, or see why the author broke them where she did. Then apply those rules, or those instincts, to your own work. Another way of manipulating lines is by making them longer and shorter. Most of the time, we use lines of consistent length throughout a poem, and long lines have a different effect than short ones. Consider the opening two lines of Longfellow’s “Evangeline:” “This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight . . .” (Longfellow, 1847) and how they have a different effect than the first two lines of Browning’s (2003–2006) “Porphyria’s Lover:” The rain set early in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake . . .

There are a number of differences, of course, but the effect of the longer lines in contrast to the shorter ones should be pretty clear. MUSIC Hold on! I just said, a little while ago, that making beautiful sounds had no place in poetry? Not exactly. What I said was that you should avoid beautiful language for its own sake. The music of the language can be harnessed in the service of the meaning; in fact, it should be whenever possible. What do I mean by music? Organizing the sounds of the words. Sometimes, even often, this means choosing words for their sounds as well as their meanings. If you want to write that the trees are quite beautiful this evening, but you are

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working in iambic pentameter (if you don’t know what that is, go to the glossary at Poets.org), you have to say “the trees are very beautiful tonight,” or it won’t fit the music you are trying to write. Even if you are not writing in a regular meter, you may want to have a section or a phrase that uses a rhythm or a sound for a particular effect. You can repeat a vowel sound (assonance) or a consonant sound (consonance) or start a string in a statement with the same sounds (alliteration). The sound of the words is another element you can manipulate to bring the reader closer to the experience you want to create in your poem. Poe is the great example of how to do this, sometimes even how to go too far. But his poetry begs to be read out loud, and rewards the effort. THE TURN This is just a technical term but worth bearing in mind. Any good poem should have a turn, a point where the meaning shifts or the new meaning emerges. Look at most of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and the turn is at the beginning of the last stanza, no matter which sonnet form he is using. In the works of Basho, the SeventeenthCentury haiku writer, it is often at the end of the second line. (He didn’t have as much room to work with as Shakespeare had.) But most good poems will have a turn, and it is one of the elements we need to look for in our own work. Here is an example from Shakespeare. All through Sonnet 18 he is comparing his beloved to larger and larger units of time, until he gets to “eternal lines of time.” Then, in the final couplet, the comparison turns back on itself, so he is talking about the very poem that he is writing, transforming the meaning of everything that has come before. The turn is like the punch line of a joke. Consider Henny Youngman’s oneliner: “Take my wife—please.” He starts off in one direction, and then reveals that what we thought was happening is not happening at all. You do not have to do this in every poem, but it is a very useful tool to keep in mind, if only because sometimes you need to change what you are writing about (Leslie, 1998). REVISE A first draft is just a starting point. I think it was Robert Lowell whose first draft was called “To Jean, on her Confirmation,” and who eventually revised the poem into “To a Whore at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.” My own “October 1979” ranged from six to two pages long at various points in the revision and was published at four (and went through five or six titles, and was a story for quite a while). Very often the only real function of the first draft is to tell us what we mean to be writing about. Then we need to make the poem be about that. I could never have learned to revise poetry on my own. I needed lots of help, and was lucky to get it (I did not do poetry in my MFA). I got a lot of guidance from my friend Michael Foran (who did do poetry at Goddard), and from my

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wife, Judy, and I also have two poetry groups that meet monthly here in Nashville. I cannot overemphasize how important a good writing group can be. And it is a lot better than showing one person your work, unless that one person is a superb editor—sometimes even if that person is a superb editor—because the different people will get ideas from each other about the poem under discussion. Finding a group can be pretty easy, depending, of course, on where you live. Start by putting “[town or county where you live] poetry group” into a search engine. If that does not help, expand it to include the nearest large town or city within reasonable distance, and I bet you will have quite a choice. I found one of mine through Meetup.com. Or you may have to start your own, through Meetup or the local library or bookstore. Look for workshops, too; one of my groups grew out of a weekend workshop that was only supposed to last two days, and we’ve been meeting now for a few years. Finding the right one for you is mostly a matter of trial and error, but you want writers who are at about the same level of craft that you are and who are looking to improve their craft rather than for a mutual admiration society. Those can be fun, but they won’t help you grow. And once you have got your critiques, of course, you have to do something about them. If you do not revise, you are skipping the real work of making the poem. But you need to start revising before you get to the group. Part of what you learn from the group is how to see the flaws in your own work, by seeing the flaws in theirs. One of the easiest aspects of revision, or easiest to learn, is deletion. Get rid of excess words. When I was working with Mary Jo Bang at Tin House Writers’ Conference, one of her catchphrases was “What work is this doing?” Sometimes that meant I had to take out a stanza, sometimes just a word. But everything in a poem must be taking its share of the work of the poem. No decoration. No decoration does not mean no beautiful language; beautiful language can be part of the work of the poem. It does mean no beautiful language for its own sake. Have I said that before? It bears repeating. Dr. Johnson said, “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” There is a kind of elaboration that distracts from the issue at hand, and that is the sort of decoration I ban from good poetry. One of the most common problems that beginning poets face is their inability to delete or change what they have written. They remember exactly what they meant when they wrote those words or those lines, and they treasure the feeling that writing gave them. And that feeling, after all, is a lot better than the feeling of deleting those words or lines. Writing feels like success, and deleting feels like failure. At first. But deleting, like all revising, is success. It is finding a better way to communicate your ideas, and sometimes we have to let the ideas stand in front, while

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we sit in the background like parents at a graduation. The poem should be more important than your ego; in the long run, a better poem will make you look better. You can also save all the wonderful phrases that you delete; maybe there will be places for them in some other poems. Another of Mary Jo’s suggestions was to save your deletions and look through them for the title of the poem. TOOLS I will not pretend that I carry my notebook everywhere, but almost everywhere. I have a plastic box with a clipboard instead of a handbag, and I have pens and a little notebook in there so if I get an idea I can write it down (and sometimes start drafting). In fact, I start all my drafts in the notebook. I also use only fountain pens because I like the way they feel and how I can switch colors just for fun as easily as loading a different color when the pen runs dry, or by carrying a few different colors. You do not have to use fountain pens. Some people prefer cheap ballpoints, or computers, or their smartphones. But it’s important to have tools that are convenient and that you like. If you like your tools, you are more likely to use them (And if you want to get into fountain pens, you can get a nice Mont Blanc or Pelikan, or you can go to eBay, spend about the same amount, and get a double fistful of nice Chinese pens. They will last basically forever, and even the best inks are not very expensive considering how long they last. When I teach poetry, I give each member of my class a cheap fountain pen and a cartridge to get them started.). There are some very elegant notebooks you can buy, or you can stay at the cheap end. It does not matter, as long as they come in a size that is convenient for you to carry. I know people who swear by the Field Notes or Moleskine notebooks that will fit in your pocket, and others by the Rhodia or Levenger versions. Use what pleases you, and if that turns out to be your phone, use it in good health. The main point is to use it. HONESTY All the rest of our craft is in service of trying to write the raw truth. I sometimes tell my students or workshoppers, “I want to see the blood on the page.” Readers can tell when you are not being honest, and you are cheating them and yourself. After all, none of us is going to get rich writing poetry. We might as well learn what we have to say in the process of saying it. And, in fact, your poetry does not have to be honest. This goes back to where we started, with your purpose in writing. I suppose not everyone wants to write honest and true poetry. But everything I have said here assumes that you want to write the best poetry you can, and that is honest poetry. What does that mean, “honest poetry”? What does it mean to have an honest relationship with your readers?

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This is not a question of not lying to them. Sometimes you need to diverge from the literal truth in a poem, as when you relate a real event and add rain where, through an oversight, it had not been raining, or when you combine words in unusual and possibly illogical ways, such as “enlightened shoes.” Those may be challenging, but they are not dishonest. When you write a poem, you are entering a contract with your readers, or potential readers. They agree that they will try their best to understand what you are saying and give you the opportunity to convince them of something. You agree that you will offer something that might be convincing, and that you will try your best to present it in the most meaningful and interesting way that you can. Fulfilling that contract is writing honest poetry. When you write about a subject that is controversial, or painful because it is deeply personal, and you find yourself turning away from the truth to protect yourself, you are not writing honest poetry. When you settle for the not-quiteright word, the lightning bug rather than the lightning, you are not writing honest poetry. I do not mean that all poetry should be painful, or that it should try to bring the readers to tears. Sometimes, after all, the emotion we are trying to evoke is laughter, or outrage, or horniness. Whatever we are trying to do with each poem, we should try our hardest to do that in the best possible way. Only then will be truly honest with our readers and ourselves. READING LIST The books I’ve recommended in this essay, all in one place, with a couple of additions: The Ode Less Traveled, by Stephen Fry A rhyming dictionary: there are plenty of good ones. The Book of Forms, by Lewis Turco, or Patterns of Poetry, by Miller Williams The Triggering Town, by Richard Hugo Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics or A Poet’s Glossary, by Edward Hirsch

REFERENCES Browning, R. (2003–2006). Porphyria’s lover. Retrieved from http://www.englishverse. com/poems/porphyrias_lover Fry, S. (2005). The ode less travelled. New York, NY. Gotham. Gladwell, M. (2011). Outliers: The story of success. Bay Back Books. Boston, MA. Bay Back Books. Hemingway, E. (2015). Ernest Hemingway biography. Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/ernest-heming-way-9334498 Hugo, R. (2010). The triggering town. New York, NY. W. W. Norton & Company. Jarman, M., & Mason, D. (1996). Rebel angels: 25 poets of the new formalism. Ashland, OK. Story Line Press.

Some Essentials of Poetry—In No Particular Order • 15 Kilmer, J. (2015). Joyce Kilmer biography. Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation. org/bio/joyce-kilmer King, M. L. (1963). “I have a dream” speech. Retrieved from http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm Leslie, K. (1998). Henny Youngman kept them until the end. Retrieved from http://www. jweekly.com/article/full/7721/henny-youngman-kept-them-laughing-until-the-end/ Longfellow, H. W. (1847). Evangeline. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/ ebooks/2039?msg=welcome_stranger Millay, E. (1892–1950). I, being born a woman and distressed (Sonnet XLI). Retrieved from http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-being-born-woman-anddistressed-sonnet-xli Oliver, M. (2005). New and selected poems (vol. I). New York, NY: Beacon Press. Ostriker, A. (2001). Psalm. Retrieved from http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/psalm-0 Pinola, M. (2013). Inspiration is for amateurs—The rest of us just show up and get to work. Retrieved from http://lifehacker.com/5972825/inspiration-is-for-amateurs— the-rest-of-us-just-show-up-and-get-to-work. Preminger, A., & Brogan, T. V. F. (1993). The New Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Roethke, T. (1961). Collected poems of Theodore Roethke. New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Shakespeare, W. (1564–1616). Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18). Retrieved from http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/shall-i-compare-thee-summersdaysonnet-18 Whitman, W. (2007). Leaves of grass: The original 1855 edition. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Williams, M. (1986). Patterns of poetry: An encyclopedia of forms. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press.

CHAPTER 2

HOW POETRY AND LYRICS ARE DIFFERENT Lisa Aschmann

What is poetry? Here is a dictionary definition: “A verbal art written in verse using a heightened sense of language to convey feeling experience, meaning, and consciousness” (Moustaki, 2001). Poetry serves to elevate and heighten the awareness of language. “Poetic speech is speech in a style more concentrated, imaginative and powerful than ordinary speech” (Lawrence, 2001). What does “lyric” mean? According to Webster’s dictionary, the adjective “lyric” roughly means: suitable for singing, as to the accompaniment of a lyre, song-like, specifically designating poetry expressing the poet’s personal emotion or sentiment, rather than the telling of actual events. Lyrics, by definition, are lyric or lyrical. There are similarities between poetry and lyrics, but I would argue that lyrics are not simply poems set to music, but a different sort of writing altogether, with different forms, aesthetics, uses, and agenda. Form, in poetry, is either verse (rhymed rhythmic patterns across groups of words), often using classic verse forms such as: sonnets (10 or 14 lines), couplets (2 lines), quatrains (4 lines), haiku (3 lines), sestinas (6 groups of 6 lines and 1 group of 3 lines), and free verse (unrhymed, of variable length). Forms of lyrics are dictated by accompanying music. Repetition of lines, sections, or phrase rhythms, or all of these, are crucial in establishing lyric form. Choruses and reEnhancing Writing Skills, pages 17–21. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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frains of song lyrics are identical to each other, musically and lyrically. The two principal forms of lyrics are either a verse–chorus–verse–chorus form or a verse– verse–bridge–verse form. The length of a lyric is most often two or three verse structures (conventionally, less variable in length than poetry). Poetry has occurred in pre-literate societies and languages, such as Homeric Greek, in which epics (long-form heroic and historic tales) were declaimed or perhaps sung. But ever since written language arrived on the human landscape, poems have been written down and remained part of literature. Poetry is expected to be more beautiful than other forms of verbal expression. A great deal of attention is paid to word choices by poets. Lyrics, on the other hand, are intended to be sung, and so their aesthetics meet vocal considerations apart from word choices. “The locksmith fashioned a key on his workbench” while descriptive, would never be written by a lyricist because it’s too hard to sing (and does not sound good accompanied by a lyre, either). Neither a poet nor a lyricist would write that line when he or she could say “He made a key on the table.” Regularity of rhythm, repetition of vocal sounds, and open vowels, not clustered consonants, as in that mouthful, “locksmith,” would allow a singer to breathe and to match rhythmic structures which have been already provided by music. “Fashioned” would throw phrase rhythm off the pattern established by accompanying music. A poet might insist on the specificity and exactitude of “locksmith” and “workbench” over “table,” but a lyricist would always sacrifice that descriptive power for the sake of singability. With few exceptions in the history of music, the length of the lyric verse is between two and sixteen lines long, 4 being the most common in modern songs with 2 lines of a pre-chorus preceding a chorus. Metric feet or rhythmic feet (i.e. groups of accented and unaccented syllables) are counted, in lyric forms across musical forms. So, how many “bars” a lyric covers is usually the measure that applies to a lyrical line of verse. Poetic line lengths and meter are handled differently. It’s not uncommon to have odd numbers of verse lines in modern poetry, and varying line lengths or verse lengths. It’s extremely rare for lyrics to have odd numbers of metric feet, bars, or lines. Repetition is prized in the aesthetics applied to lyric, less so in poetry. That is because being “catchy” (easily remembered after hearing it) is an aesthetic applied to lyrics, but not to poetry. A poem can have tremendous emotional impact and not be committed to memory. Usually poems are more cerebral and complex than lyrics. The nonsense syllables, “Da doo ron”, “Oo-de-lally”, or “Obla dee obla dah” are perfectly acceptable lyrics. Other than “The Hunting of the Snark” by Lewis Carroll, I can’t think of any entirely nonsensical poetry (Carroll, 1971). On the subject of relative complexity, I’d like to refer to an article regarding the decreasing vocabularies and reading levels appearing in hit songs of the last ten years: “Lyrics in Popular Music: A Ten Year Analysis”, by Andrew Powell-Morse (Powell-Morse, 2015). In this recent analysis, most popular (Billboard-charted)

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songs required listeners to employ a 2nd to 3rd grade vocabulary, down from an average of a 4th grade reading level ten years ago. Speculating on what has propelled this trend, we can observe that songs increasingly accompany visual media. Long sentences or even complete sentences distract the viewer from paying attention to the picture. Vocalists and musicians demonstrate their skill (and exaggerate dramatic impact) by playing or singing or stuttering increasingly elaborate mellismatic sounds over held vowels (e.g., Mariah Cary’s vocals). Advertisement and texting has created demand for as brief messages as possible to be sent and received. Increasingly, we live in a world dominated by visual media, not by literature. Photographs, films, and screens filled with slogans and short texts or captions are what we view most often. Frequently, only headlines and videos convey the news. Lyrics are typically encountered in bursts of three minutes or less. College and graduate literature courses span months and years, while people study and write commentary on the meanings of poems (by Donne, Pope, Yeats, Spencer, etc.). You can appreciate the relative intellectual rigor asked of readers compared to that asked of listeners. Listeners and viewers have a shorter attention span than readers just by virtue of the way semantic content is delivered to the brain. Lyrical aesthetics favor conversational style (no unusual uses of language or of vocabulary) or extremely simple vocal utterances. A wail or a moan that might go on for several bars of music and is not an articulated word in anybody’s vocabulary counts as a lyric. Poetry is a thoughtful, thought-provoking form of literature. Lyrics are chiefly an emotion-producing form of literature, and they fail in their aesthetic if listeners have to think too hard as they are going by. Lyrics occur in a limited time, across a listener’s attention span, as opposed to being read and re-read slowly, taking an arbitrary amount of time to be pondered. Gleaning more and more refreshed meaning intended by the author of a poem, similar to studying a puzzle, is an activity of readers. “Catchiness” or memorability, not philosophical or semantic depth, are prized aesthetics of lyrics. People speak of understanding poems, but they speak of feeling lyrics. People like to dance to lyrics, not to poems. What might a vocalist find easier to sing instead of reading, possibly silently reading a poem? Sammy Cahn, in the preface to his eponymous rhyming dictionary described how his co-writer, Jimmy Van Heusen objected to the lines: “There are those who’ll bet / Love comes but once and yet / I’m oh so glad we met / The second time around.” (Cahn & Heusen, 1958). Jimmy had written a lot of Bing Crosby’s songs, and this objection puzzled Sammy until he noticed that these lines made use of short vowels and closed with consonants instead of with long vowels. “Yet”, “bet”, etc., had a percussive, closed-mouth quality instead of an open-throated quality suitable for singing. Saying and holding a sound was easier for a vocalist. Sammy got his way in this debate with Van Heusen because he could point to a sing able, successful song by another lyricist, Alan Jay Lerner, from the musical My Fair Lady: “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”.

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“I was serenely independent and content before we met. Surely, I would always be that way again, and yet...” Young Sammy Cahn noticed that in Alan Jay Lerner’s use of “yet” it was in a ballad, not among crowded lines. The vocalist paused after more fluid and sibilant lyrics preceded the percussive consonant “t” and for Jimmy Van Heusen (a more senior writer to Sammy Cahn at the time) the rhyme the word “yet” was an exception that tended to prove the rule. The rule was to avoid ending lines with short vowels and consonants. In later lyrics, penned by Sammy Cahn, such as “Come Fly With Me” *1, sung by Frank Sinatra, broad, legato lines ending in “I” and “Eee” and “Ay” (“Fly awayyy”) were more singable. Consonants can be classified as: fricative (voiced: b, d, g, or unvoiced: p, t, k); plosive (voiced: v, th, z, zhj or unvoiced: f, th, s, sh, ch); or nasal (voiced: m, n, ng). The consonants tend to get lost in translation (are not audible) if they occur at the end of lines and notes are held over vowel sounds. This is especially true if they are unvoiced plosive or fricative. Sung, vowels in lyrics are exaggerated. Frequently, songwriters even use the technique of making vowel sounds while writing a tune prior to filling in meaningful words. After first establishing the vowel phrasing, the sense is added. Beth Nielsen Chapman and Paul McCartney have each described this as a writing technique on the way to generating lyrics. “The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye” worked for Oscar Hammerstein , whereas “The corn is as high as a giraffe’s eye” might have worked as a descriptive phrase in a poem, but would not scan in parallel to the previous line, necessary for verse structure of a lyric. It would not fit the melodic rhythmic pattern that a lyric “fits.” Both poetry and lyrics make use of poetic devices. The chief devices shared by poetry and lyrics are: the use of metaphor (verbal comparisons) and their variants (simile, synecdoche, symbolism, etc.), parallel grammatical construction (copying parts of speech or verb forms), assonance (same vowel sounds), consonance (same consonant sounds), alliteration (same vowel or consonant sounds), copying the pauses and stress and un-stress of syllables, rhythms, and rhymes. Poetic devices may be the same for both lyricists and poets, but their intended use or applications is not necessarily the same for a lyric as for a poem. For lyrics, sound is valued over sense. The lyrics must “marry” the music and be maximally singable. No such considerations exist in poetry. The song “I Will Always Love You,” and the poem “Pied Beauty” illustrate these differences. Is “Pied Beauty,” Gerard Manly Hopkins’ poem, emotionally evocative (Hopkins, 1877)? Certainly. Is it mellifluous? Yes. Easy to sing? No. Hardly! Fresh, descriptive language is admired vastly over a vocalist’s ability to open her throat and convey the lyric as was the case when Whitney Houston sang Dolly Parton’s simple, declarative lyrics. Few adjectives or adverbs appear in Dolly Parton’s lyric and no metaphors. The line, “I will always love you” is not particularly poetic. It occurs in the midst of a conversation. Who would ever say, “Glory be to dappled things” in conversation? The title, “I Will Always Love You,” oc-

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curs three time in a row in this lyrical form (a chorus). This is a repeated, utterly simple, direct, and emotional lyric. Note that the word “things” cannot be sung as loud and as long as “you” (the vowel, “ooo” is more beautiful-sounding by being less nasal and percussive than the word “things”). Ironically, the poem, “Pied Beauty,” is more musical than the song lyric, “I Will Always Love You” because “Pied Beauty” makes more use of poetic devices – alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, and parallel structure – to make the individual sounds of the work more beautiful. “I Will Always Love You” is, overall, more singable, personal, emotional, and easier to remember than “Pied Beauty.” Using long vowels and rhymes, it satisfies the aesthetics of lyrics. “Pied Beauty” satisfies the aesthetics of poetry: to be a concentrated, elevated use of language, heightening awareness. “I Will Always Love You” is perfectly matched to a beautiful melody. So, outside the sounds created by word choices, the sound of this lyric relies on music for its musicality and beauty. It seems to me that to ignore the differences in these art forms and their purposes is to make neither great poetry nor great lyrics and to misjudge their value. No, there is no beautiful stretching of the mind, thoughtful elevation of the language, unusual vocabulary, and profound observation in Dolly Parton’s lyrics. There is only an emotional impact from a lyric that relies largely on a melody to carry its impact. Nevertheless, each of these works of art are rightfully beloved and celebrated. They are models of poetry and lyrics of the highest order. May you generate more great lyrics and poetry for all of us to celebrate. REFERENCES Barry, J., Greenwich, E., & Spector, P. (1977). “Da doo ron ron”. The Crystals in 1963. Cahn, S. (1984). Sammy Cahn’s rhyming dictionary. New York, NY: Cherry Lane Music. Cahn, S., & Heusen J. (1958). Come fly with me. Frank Sinatra 1958 album. Carroll, L. (1971). Alice in wonderland and other favorites. Publisher Unknown. Hopkins, G. (1877). Pied beauty, poems of Gerald Manly Hopkins. New York, NY: Bartleby. Lawrence, S. M. (2001). Storybook lives. AuthorHouse. Lerner, A., Loewe, F. (1956). I’ve grown accustomed to her face, My Fair Lady. McCartney, P. (1968). Ob-la-di, ob-la-da. The Beatles, The White Album. Miller, R. (1973). Oo-de-lally, In Robin Hood. Disney Animation. Moustaki, N. (2001). The complete idiot’s guide to writing poetry. New York, NY: Penguin Group USA Inc. Parton, D, Ozcarkci,G, Menasi, L., & Yukseler, A (1974). I will always Love you, The bodyguard [Motion Picture]. United States: Warner Brothers Pictures. Powell-Morse, A. (2015). Lyric intelligence in popular music: A ten year analysis. Retrieved from http://seatsmart.com/blog/lyric-intelligence/

CHAPTER 3

WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION George Spain

In the spirit of full disclosure, which is all the rage nowadays, I have four—no five—disclosures to make: 1. 2. 3. 4.

I am not a professional writer and thank the good Lord, for my family would have starved to death. I am not a professional historian. I do not read books about how to write books and may not read this one. I hate beets.

Almost all of my stories are based on personal, family, and southern history. Most of the stories referenced here are mine. Proceed now at your own risk or go on to the next chapter. It will not hurt my feelings one little bit. IN THE BEGINNING I was raised on books and Classic Comics and began writing poetry in the midnineteen sixties. Early on one of my poems was published in a Russian magazine, another in a prestigious American poetry journal. Heady stuff. It fueled my fire. Kind people said kind things, which helped me persevere through the long dry years that followed. Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 23–30. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Let me stop here and say how important it is to support a want-to-be-writer. My early poetry was influenced by Dylan Thomas, James Dickey, and Walt Whitman. In hindsight, most of my poems were not that good, but one of my admired college English professors kindly agreed to read them. After doing so he said, “George, you can write, so keep at it and keep on reading lots of the best poets.” I was twenty-two. You cannot imagine how his words spurred me to keep going. My professor’s advice to, “READ—READ—READ,” was the best I could have received. If you aspire to write historical fiction, read good historians, biographers, and writers of historical fiction. Let them be your primary teachers, more than technical books on, “How to Write Historical Fiction.” And, as you begin your own writing, do not be afraid to let them help you with one of their wonderful phrases or a lightning word, to enhance your words. Think about what makes these writers good. And then think about what you have just written. Look at the words, the sentences. Can they be improved? Think about your audience. To whom are you writing? But remember this, for an accomplished writer, the ultimate satisfaction for what they have written must be their own. First and foremost, the writer has an obligation to be true to their characters; let them speak as they would have spoken; and let them do as they would have done, even if, at times, they are disturbingly violent. But remember, all the bad language and all the bad behavior is not going to make “a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” If the story is no good, it will not be made better by how many obscenities or throat cuttings you put into it. And for heaven’s sakes, if you want your characters to come alive, do not just write what makes people feel good; write what makes people feel that what they are reading is, or could be, real. Infuse their veins with emotional and psychological blood. I have never known an all-good, or all-bad person. In God’s Punishment, a kindhearted, strong, mountain woman takes two young Confederate deserters in for the night and while they are sleeping she kills them both with an ax` in revenge for Confederate guerillas killing her husband and son. I have known many preachers, politicians, and physicians, a few killers and some drug dealers—not one was totally good or totally bad. To give more reality to primary characters, avoid their being one-dimensional. Good stories set a hook in the reader with the first sentence and first paragraph, snaring the reader’s attention so tightly the reader does not want to stop. Death of a Confederate Captain begins: They said Captain Robert Taggert hanged himself in Lady’s stall on June 27, 1874, because she had been his son, Bob’s, favorite saddle horse. Bob had died on that exact same day, ten years before. Years later, Aunt Sally, the Taggert’s cook, told me that the rope broke after the Captain was dead and that his body fell into the straw but the mare never stepped on him. Though he didn’t leave a note, I knew why the “Captain,” for that’s what everybody called him, did what he did. (Spain, 2013a)

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What is writing historical fiction? It’s creating a story around a historical person or event: one where the reader might even learn something; more importantly, a story that is not boring. Best of all, one that is memorable. I follow the rule that, “A fact should never stand in the way of a good story.” While flat out falsifying history should not happen, you are not writing pure history; rather, you are creating a fictional story that mixes historical characters, places, and events with those that are made up. Read Truman Capote’s reportage In Cold Blood as history created as reality. “Where do you get your ideas for stories?” From everywhere, though some seem to come from nowhere. From personal history, family history, or, sometimes, they just pop into your head. My Russian poem came from a photograph of a child’s sled, with a child’s body on it, being dragged through the snow during the siege of Leningrad in 1941–42. An idea might come from a fragment of family history that is so intriguing it will not leave you and slowly it evolves into a story. Last spring, one popped into my head at about 4:00 AM. It came as a question. Could I write a ghost story about my wife who died in 2009? That wondering became Come Sit With Me. There is enough factual history in it that several who have known us well thought it had really happened. Once you have settled on an idea for a story, the real work begins. Hemingway was once asked if writing was hard. He answered, “No, you just sit down at the typewriter and bleed.” That’s a tad dramatic, but I can tell you right now, “It ain’t easy.” A huge amount of research may be required to set the stage for a story. For example, in the short story The Searcher, which occurs two days after the Battle of Nashville on December 15–16, 1864, there is a detailed description of the city and the battlefield. You can see it, smell it, hear it, almost taste and touch it (Spain, 2013a). It is nearing late afternoon of the second day after the Confederates have retreated southward. The shell-torn hills and fields are covered with debris. Bodies and parts of bodies are still being found and buried. It stinks with a moldy odor: the Confederate dead in their shallow graves, buried where they have fallen; parts of men and horses scattered in the mud and litter; the blood of the wounded; the dead and the sick filling the hospitals; churches, home and schools; the stench of the unwashed thousands of prisoners packed into abandoned buildings and warehouses; the burning of dead horses and the wreckage of battle; the piles of rubbish, the piss, the shit and decay of all the living and the dead. It is the odor of war rising from a city of 30,000, now filled with 70,000 Yankee soldiers and thousands of Rebel prisoners and hordes of refugees, freed slaves, laborers, teamsters, gamblers, drummers, prostitutes, and herds of cattle and horses and mules…It is bitter cold. At times smoke and sleet mingle with rain. Fires burn night and day as the smoke drifts high above the city, spreading a dark smudge across the sky, a cloud that can be seen and smelled from miles away…Within the city the air is filled with the crunching of wagon wheels and the clopping of hooves of horses and mules on the unpaved streets…the high-pitched whistles of steamboats and gunboats on the Cumberland…the sounds of music from the theaters, and of soldiers singing and officers

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shouting orders, of teamsters and drovers cursing animals and of campfires hissing as the freezing rain continues to fall steadily all across the fields and hills of middle Tennessee. (Spain, 2013a)

Then, out onto this stage walks the major character, Katrine O’Conner, an Irish woman searching the city and battlefield, for the father of her son, a black soldier, who has fought in the battle with the 13th United States Colored Troops Regiment. Hours of research went into this story. THE STORY GROWS OUT OF YOU, EVERY BIT AND PIECE OF IT Unless quoting another writer, you are creating from what exists inside your own head. Every icicle hanging from the nostril of an oxen, every bit of dust falling from a wagon wheel, a heron’s call, the hot milk-gravy poured on biscuits, the pain from a knife twisting in your stomach, the words of slaves and the owners. The kindnesses, cruelties, the words of love, hate, the flock of black crows flying beneath the white clouds and blue sky. They all have come from your imagination. So represent your brain the best you can. After the first draft, read it out loud and listen to the words, images, and feelings. Do they ring true to you? Let me assure you that, rare to never is something written that cannot be improved by seven or eleven rewrites. Faulkner (1930)—God love him—was a helluva writer. Listen to this: Tomorrow is just another name for today. …But tomorrow is today also. Yao. Tomorrow is today.

That’s from Red Leaves. If you’re a Southerner, especially an old one like me, who was bred and born in the South and whose family has been here for generations, you know how our memories and story tellings of our yesterdays, todays, and imagined tomorrows get all jumbled up together. In the South, there are lots of dead people in the ground who still talk to us. In grave yards and almost everywhere else, when a backhoe or bulldozer digs up the ground there is going to be bones of Woodland Indians, Cherokees, French trappers, frontiersmen, slaves, or Civil War soldiers. As the bones of our past come to the surface, they can be the seeds that bear the fruit that you, the writer, harvests. RESEARCH—RESEARCH—RESEARCH Research gives life to “dem dry bones.” If you are writing about an old former slave who, after the war became a preacher and about an old former Confederate talking to one another as they sit, side by side, on a wagon seat riding toward Winchester, Tennessee, on June 3, 1898, for the annual Confederate Decoration Day, find out what the weather report was for that day. What crops were in the fields? What wild flowers and shrubs were growing beside the road? What birds called

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from the fields and hedgerows? What were the names of the mules that pulled the wagon and what sounds did their hoofs and snorts make? What did the air smell of? What wood was the wagon made of and was it painted? How did they know one another? What did they look like? How were they dressed? How did they pronounce their words? What, if anything, did they feel toward one another? What do you want them to tell us about life? Answer these questions; weave them together with words that, when spoken out loud, sound correct to your ear, and slowly you give life to these old men. If the writing is good enough, you are transported back in time and, it is as though you are seated in the wagon bed behind them, leaning forward, listening and watching two old friends who love one another dearly. There are multitudes of sources for gathering detail if you are willing to do the digging: photographs, paintings, illustrations, diaries, journals, wills, newspaper accounts, and trial testimony from the period about which you are writing. Pile stacks and stacks of books around you: old, new, histories, and biographies when possible. Visit the actual sites where the events occurred. And of course, there is lots of stuff on the Internet. Read and read, make lots of notes, and then set the books and notes aside and begin to write. In, My Grandfather and The Heron (2013b), I wanted to replicate the call of a Great Blue Heron. I listened to the website for the heron’s call over and over; then I’d take a shot at writing it, then said it out loud again and again until finally, after several changes, I got as close as I could to their calls when they are startled. To my ear it sounded like— Ack—Ack—Ack—Ack—Ack

GIVING BIRTH TO A CHARACTER Taggart’s Six Letter begins with a description of a sixty-three year old woman that intertwines her outer and inner beauty and strength—My Lord, Lucy Gaunt Taggert was a stunningly beautiful woman! Every small bit of her body, every small bit of her mind and soul and all of her spirit was a woman’s—a woman second to none and certainly second to no man (Taggart, 1923). Her long, straight neck was crowned by a finely shaped head with a face so strong and striking, that men, and even women, could not help but stare at her. Her head was always held high with her slightly curly, soft-gray hair drawn tightly back in a bun. Her face toned with pride; her eyes ash-colored, intelligent, reserved, almost cold, seldom blinked as they saw the lies and fears beneath the masks of others; her lips, full and pink, pursed slightly as might a young woman’s who was about to kiss her lover. She was sixty-three— Her beauty was sensual, not like that of a rose or a sunset, it was the beauty of the bed; her flesh touched with light and shadows, spread over her body like smooth, white milk. Men sought her but never once did she seek them. Many

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men, including her minister, Reverend Thomas Dark of the Estill Springs Baptist Church, could barely control the lust in their faces or voices when they were near her. She treated these men, even if they were among the gentry, with the same coldness she might use when dealing with ill-mannered white trash. When she saw sex in the eyes of Reverend Dark the day he came to her house to comfort her and pray with her after Bob’s death, she told him to take his Bible and hat and go home and go to bed with his wife. After that, she never set foot in church again. Men saw her beauty, her aloofness, her perseverance; what they did not see was her anger, an anger that eventually turned into hatred when death came to her home. I believe your characters—your fictional children—should think and talk as they would have in their day and place. Field hands did not talk like house-servants; an uneducated man, from deep in the mountains of east Tennessee, did not talk like an educated plantation owner from west Tennessee; the words and sounds of a woman who has just come over from Ireland differ from those of a third generation Irish Bostonian; I do not talk like my far-back-in-time ancestors. Some of their sayings are no longer regularly used. Some are extinct. Some of the words we now use have only recently been put into Webster’s. How are our people to speak? How are their words to be written down? Some writers and readers do not care for dialect. I do. Here’s an example from, The Hunters (2013) Ye say hits down thar? Un huh. Neath them bluffs? Un huh. That’s whar hit kilt her an I seen hits tracks. Ye say hit et her? Un huh an hit drug her leavins back in tha cave. Lord Pa, you reckon hits still thar? I God if hit is I aims to kill kill hit. Well I shore don’t want to git kilt. Well then damn ye if ye be scairt give me tha lanterns an git on back home! Hell Pa, I’us jest a mouthin.

This is the dialect of the Appalachians not far back from today; bits of it are found there in the mountains and on out into hills (Spain, 2013c). Books such as Our Southern Highlanders, Smoky Mountain Voices, and Down in the Holler are good references. As has been, is, and will be, words and their pronunciation are caused by umpteen influences: race, education, family, geography, religion, economics, history, and on and on. A wonderful man, Reverend Billy Highfield, began life as a slave and field hand, but his educated master favored him, so he began working in the yard at the “Big House” and became his master’s buggy driver. After the war, he worked beside white engineers as a railroad fireman on the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway and then became a minister for the Mt. Zion African

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Methodist Church in Tullahoma, Tennessee. Here he is talking to the Colonel as the ride to Winchester in 1898 – You/ know, Colonel, you nevah ask me what it was like bein a slave an I’s nevah said a thing til now…folks look at me an they sees a kind-lookin, ole white haired colored preacher who likes to help people, an that’s pretty much true now, but I hadn’t always been this way. A long time ago, tha Lawd an Liza change me. I wants to kill people…wants to kill white people fo what they done to us…I’d wanted to kill you I’s so full of hate. Bein a slave is a bad thing, so bad you can’t nevah know it, we wadn’t much mo than a bunch of two-legged animals worth lots of money… the Major an his wife, they was church goin people who said the blessin at all their meals an always talking bout Jesus an how someday they’s goin to heaven, an look at what they did…they’s made me hate Jesus an tha Lawd God. But all tha while I nevah lets on, I’s covered it all up, all my sadness an hate, even when they’s sold my Liza an Hattie away, I’s didn’t show nothing cause I’s promised her I wouldn’t kill someone or do something awful an that one day I’d come an find em an we’d be togethah again… An thas what I did…An tha Lawd was good to me an forgive my sinful heart an answered my prayers, an so Him an Liza, they’s teach me to want to be good an to help others an He move my heart to preach His word an help sinners like me To find Him… (Spain, 2013a)

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Federal Writers’ Project sent out hundreds of jobless writers to interview former slaves about their lives in slavery. Two thousand slave narratives came from this; many were written in dialect, a resource available in several publications. I’ve drawn from them for a two-dozen years. We are the creators of our characters and the worlds they live in, the air they breathe, the earth they walk upon, the words they speak. Your primary obligation is to them, not the reader. To paraphrase Hemingway, bleed your blood—and theirs—into the words you write. And, for heaven’s sakes, do not drive yourself crazy trying to answer each and every question a reader might have about a story, especially when it comes to the ending. Our lives leave lots of unanswered questions. Come the final page, life raises more questions than answers. A writer, if they are any count at all; a reader, if they are any count at all, can be—should be—left to wonder. And so to one last disclosure – 5.

I also hate broccoli. REFERENCES

Faulkner, W. (1930). Red leaves V. Saturday Evening Post. Philadelphia, PA: Curits Publishing Company. Spain, G. (2013a). Our people: Stories of the south. Kingston Springs, TN: Westview. Spain, G. (2013b). The grandfather and the heron. Unpublished manuscript. Spain, G. (2013c). The hunters. Unpublished manuscript.

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Taggart, S. (1923). Letters of Samuel Taggart: Representative in Congress from 1803 to 1814: Part I, 1803–1807. Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 33, 113–226.

CHAPTER 4

RESEARCHING THE NOVEL Patricia H. Quinlan

All my life, I wanted to be an artist, but an artist, whatever the medium, lives to create something new, something that had not existed before. I did not start out being a writer. But a writer is no different from here, the sculptor (I’ve done that) in that the sculptor creates something new. So the writer takes bits and pieces from today, yesterday, or some other time and place. I have borrowed from history and from family. Writing was not a plan of mine until a few years before retiring, dreaming instead of pursuing my art. I spent seven years at Mammoth Cave listening to stories of the cave and its history. Many years later, I began telling friends that someone should write the history of Mammoth Cave. I guess they got tired of hearing me say it because they began telling me to write the book. I was no writer, as I repeatedly informed them. But slowly, I began to think about some of them. My second husband thought it was a great idea. He loved history, and he liked to write. There were three different men I knew, all far more knowledgeable than me, but none of them had any desire to write a complete history of Mammoth Cave. If I were to write such a book, I wanted it to be a novel, not non-fiction history. All three of these men were encouraging, and two of them offered to help me in some way. I had no idea how to even begin, and my first attempts were miserable. My first husband had spent twenty years collecting material on the history. He had a passion for the cave, but in 1995, he died here in Nashville. My son let me borrow Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 31–36. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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whatever I needed to write the book. I returned to Colorado with three large boxes of material, much of it photocopies, pamphlets, and antique books. Still not sure how to begin the actual writing, I spent a few months sorting the pile of material and putting it into chronological order. I still had a full time job and was taking care of my mother, who was developing dementia. The book would cover 140 years of history from 1811 to 1941. By the time I finished sorting it all, ideas began to form in my head. By then, I knew who the main characters were, people who were prominent in the cave’s history. But, there were many gaps. I wanted to tell the story through the lives of the people who lived there, so next, I had to create a family and its genealogy, linking them to the true characters. I learned that no matter how overpowering the task may seem, it could be done. The one simple trick was to break it down into parts and deal with each part separately. With all the material, and with the family genealogy mapped out, I began. I wrote and destroyed three attempts before I learned how to begin. I hadn’t written a thing since college, and I was not a very good English student, even then. Finally, I found a way to begin. I borrowed an idea from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. From then on, I followed the outline, provided by all that material arranged in chronological order, year by year and decade by decade. I had not been back to Kentucky in over 15 years, so I was not able to adequately describe the cave. When I moved to Denver, I thought I was done with caves. My second husband was an unpublished writer and a prolific reader of history. He told me I was not describing the cave with enough detail so he could see it. I spent several vacation trips going back to Kentucky. On each trip, I took two or three tours and talked with the guides as we walked through the cave. My husband and I also spent hours at the Louisville Public Library copying articles found on Microfilm. There were also visits to libraries in Lexington and the university at Bowling Green. My book only covered those parts of the cave as they had been discovered during the course of 140 years, or up until 1941, and most of them are on the commercial routes now available to tourists. On one trip to Kentucky, I spent a few hours with Angelo George at his home and office in Louisville. He knew the history of Mammoth Cave as well as anyone I knew, and though he has published several small books on various parts of history, he did not want to write the book. However, he let me copy numerous items from his extensive library, and later he answered my many questions by mail since, at that time, he did not like using the computer. Angelo George graciously edited the book and helped me enormously with details of history During the six years it took me to write that book, I developed rheumatoid arthritis, so I retired in 2000. I had attempted to find an agent and traditional publisher, but the best response I received was that the agent liked the book but thought it had too narrow an audience. In 2004, after losing both my mother and my husband, I finally self-published Beneath Their Feet through iUniverse. For my second book, I decided to avoid research. It was pure fiction. That did not last long. I placed the book in the mid 60s, during the Vietnam war. The

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Internet became an invaluable tool to answer the many questions that popped up. I needed to understand farming and ranching in Kansas, weather in Kansas, and the terror of being caught in a tornado. Fortunately for me, my next door neighbor had spent two tours in Vietnam and gave me several tips, movies, and books, and he edited that part of the book for me. For my third book, I needed to know something about the French and Indian War. My mother spent thirty years researching our family genealogy. So after she died, I went through all her papers, a laborious job because she left a four-drawer filing cabinet stuffed full of papers, plus binders of material. In there, I found a small newspaper article published in 1757 about Peter Looney, who was the younger brother of a direct ancestor. He had been captured by the Indians. Well, that got my attention. According to the article, he had lived with the Indians south of Detroit for one year and was sent to Niagara, where he met another white man who had also been captured and together they escaped. I had a lot of questions, many of them concerning the French and Indian war in general. Where was it fought? Who were the main characters? Who were the Indians? The only thing I knew was from that tiny article my mother had found. I bought a membership in Questia.com an online library. As a member, I was able to read complete books and articles on a wide variety of subjects, and I could subscribe month to month. The next step was to answer the question of travel. From southwestern Virginia near what is now Roanoke, how did the Indians move their 24 captives across the mountains into what is now West Virginia and north across the Ohio River ending up in Michigan south of Detroit? I collected a complete set of topographic maps covering the area, then I used Google Earth to see what the terrain looks like. I learned from my reading that the Indians often followed the rivers, so I did the same, inch by inch along the maps and spent hours looking at it on Google Earth. Peter Looney’s family had a farm near what is now Roanoke, Virginia. He was a Sargent in the militia at Fort Vause. The fort was destroyed in 1756 by 100 Indians and a few French soldiers. Seventeen men, three women, and four girls were taken across the Shenandoah Mountains north of the Ohio River. My knowledge of the area was skimpy. I went to school in Blacksburg and had driven through parts of West Virginia, but I did not know how anyone would travel that far on foot and with only a few horses in the 18th century. Not only that, I had been living in Colorado for over 20 years. I spent hours on Google Earth, following every river between Virginia, West Virginia, and across the Ohio. How did I know I was on the right trail? I knew from the history book that one of the captives was a girl named Levisa. From the history book, I learned that she wrote her name on Beech trees along the way. On one of the topo maps, I found a river running north through West Virginia that was named for her. It could not be a coincidence. I had to ask myself, how would they have crossed the Ohio River? Reading books about the Indians, their habits, and their mode of travel was very important. Peter Looney was adopted by an Indian chief as his brother and lived with them

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for a year. Reading about Indian life was essential in order to make his life with them believable. But, that was not all. He was sent to Niagara the following year on a fur-trading trip. How did he get there? Google Earth gave me the idea of canoe travel. Then, while he was at Niagara, he met another white man and together they escaped. Where did they go? Again, Google Earth helped me out. A surprise to me was crossing the Potomac River. I had learned where the major roads were in the 18th century, so I followed them. Until I saw the view from Google Earth, I did not realize how steeply the Potomac River cut through the countryside. But there is always an answer. Sometimes you just have to look a little farther or harder. If you spend enough time with Google Earth, you begin to imagine how it might have looked from the ground, how dense the woods were, how steep the ravines and waterfalls, so you begin to create a trail that they could have followed. It sounds laborious, but you can get quite addicted to the study of an area. Another book I had been wanting to write was the story of my great-grandmother, Henrietta Looney. My mother lived with me for the last seven years of her life, during which time she suffered from dementia, and though she could not remember 10 minutes ago, she remembered her childhood as if it as it were yesterday. I listened to her talk about her grandmother, a woman she loved very much and was very close to. Mom told me these stories again and again, and I grew to feel I knew my great-grandmother well. I cannot remember ever meeting her. Through my mother’s stories, I grew to admire my great grandmother’s spunk and resourcefulness and wanted to write about her. I took a few trips from Colorado to Alabama, met with relatives, and they mainly reiterated all that my mother told me. On various trips around the county, the places where she had lived were pointed out to me. Of course, I had to look past the current buildings and imagine what it looked like when it was a farm and before the National Forest took over. Much of Winston County is now in the Bankhead National Forest, but there are a few farms scattered around. For instance, the house in which my youngest uncle was born 87 years ago is still standing, so I could see for myself how it looked like and the picture of the field across the road is what I used on the cover of my book. For my latest book about northern Alabama during the Civil War, I had to do a lot of reading. Another wonderful source of information is the Civil War archives on the internet. As you may imagine, the Civil War is extremely well documented. I knew, through relatives that my great-great-grandfather, Anderson Looney, served in the Union Army, that he was a Quarter Master sergeant in the First Alabama Cavalry, but not too much more than that. But through Google, I got more information than I could use. From there, I learned of other sources. Then, on a visit to Alabama, I spent an hour or so with an elderly second cousin, a retired doctor, now sadly no longer with us. He had reached that stage of life where he may remember a lot, but it was rather disjointed, or so it seemed to me. I wrote down everything I could and went home more confused than ever. I had a puzzle, but I did not know how it all fit together. I took each piece and looked

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it up. Finally, I began to see the connection, and it was far more interesting than I could have imagined. Again, I thought I was finished when I found, on Amazon, another book that seemed far too important to ignore. I was right. Everything would have been easier if I could have discovered this book, The Lightning Mule Brigade, a year earlier. This required several chapters to be completely rewritten. During all of this, I was reminded of a comment that Barbara Tuchman, the author of The Guns of August wrote. At some point during your research, you have to stop and write the book, or you will never stop doing research, and you will never get the book written. I am sure I have paraphrased the idea, but basically that’s what the author was saying. Following are things I have learned along the way and hope they will make your journey an easy and pleasant one. First of all, be sure to have your core idea mapped out. Know where you want to go before you begin the trip. Know the time period and the place. Second, we all need a system for keeping information handy. I have tried 4x6 index cards, copies of articles in binders, as well as notes on the computer. Though sometimes I get lost as to what is where, I do not know how to consolidate it into one place. How you keep it may depend on the source of information you use. Even if you do not need to cite your sources, you should definitely keep track of them. Third, study social history so you know how it was to live in the time of your story. It might be helpful to establish a timeline so you understand how one event can affect another. This was very helpful with my last book that took place during the Civil War. Even if I did not directly allude to other events, it was helpful to me to know what else was going on during the events of my story. How did these people live? What did they eat? What kind of clothes did they wear? Was their speech pattern different from what you are accustomed to hearing? What books might they read? What games could they play? If you introduce an item, a machine, or a make of car, was it available at that time? What else was going on in the country? You might be surprised how one small event could make the difference between your story being believable or not. A recent example of keeping true to a period is the attention to detail given by the producers of Downton Abby. There are other recent examples on TV and in the movies (Movies made in the 30s and 40s can be laughable in their lack of accuracy). In my second book, I overlooked the fact that the interstate highway system was not complete in 1965. This was pointed out to me by a friend, and fortunately I had time to fix it. The Internet is perhaps the one tool you will use more than any other. Aside from Questia.com, there is the Library of Congress website, plus the National Archives, and more is being added all the time. Names are another thing to pay attention to. There are websites to help with this. If you Google the words: last names you will find a long list of searches. The right side of the screen is another list, depending on what nationality you are searching. Another interesting site is wordreference.com which is an online language dictionary, which will give you a

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translation into whatever language you need. I continue to learn more from more recent searches. By typing in the question, I get all sorts of answers. It continues to amaze me. Other obvious resources are friends and family associates. There is always your local library. But, the local library may not have all the information you need. For instance, while I was living in Colorado, my local library had very little on Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. Questia.com is a powerful online research tool, more so now than when I used it several years ago. It is designed more for the student engaged in research for papers, but not limited to that. It is available for anyone. There is a membership fee, but it is month to month so you are not locked in for more than you need it. Google online libraries and you will see a long list of other possibilities. Another resource is Google Earth. It is free, and you can get a bird’s eye view of the terrain in which your story takes place. It is also fun to look at. An example of Google Earth’s feature, a friend of mine is writing a book that takes place during the Civil War in Pennsylvania. She refers to the western part of the state as prairie land. Well, prairies are a different ecosystem and a simple search would tell you that. I hated to set her straight, but as a friend I could not let her continue making that mistake. Now, aside from what I have listed so far there’s another source that cannot be overlooked. Sometimes, if it is at all possible, you just have to go there. As an example, I said before, I was living in Colorado when I decided to write my first book about Mammoth Cave. I had lived at Mammoth Cave for seven years, but I had forgotten what it felt like to walk through it. For my second book, a friend and I drove from Denver to Kansas to study the area, take pictures, and visit the local library. To summarize, there’s Google Search, Google Earth, Questia.com, The Library of Congress, and the National Archives. There are also old newspapers, many of which are being digitized. And if you do not mind spending the money, you can find hundreds of books on Amazon. I hope all this rambling has been of some use to you. In short, there are tons of materials available, and more is being added all the time. You just have to take that first step. It may seem like the hardest, but it puts you on the path. Just keep going. You will get there. Have a pleasant and successful journey. REFERENCE Tuchman, B. (1962). The guns of August. New York, NY: Macmillan.

SECTION 2 CREATIVITY IN WRITING

CHAPTER 5

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BRAIN SCIENCE AND WRITTEN EXPRESSION Oluwakemi Elufiede

Brain Science is the process of how the brain functions. The brain consists of four parts: brainstem, cerebellum, limbic system, and cortex. The brainstem deals with survival; the cerebellum regulates the autonomic nervous system; the limbic system deals with emotions; the cortex is involved in reasoning. The brain has two hemispheres that work together. The hemispheres of the brain play a larger role in particular functions; for example, the left hemisphere generally controls speech (van Dam, 2013). Research reveals that learning techniques that enhance memory formation include elaborating, verbalizing, writing, drawing, and sharing learned information. Short-term and long-term memories include four components: declarative, episodic, semantic, and procedural. These four concepts impact the creativity within writing for facts, events, experiences, words, and the process for the completion of tasks. Once writers understand the major functions of the brain, they are able to allow natural things to flow for accommodating experiential strategies in writing, assimilating new ideas for writing exploration, and engaging in possibilities in writing. Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 39–43. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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SELF-EXPRESSION Most writers base their writing on personal experiences and knowledge obtained throughout their lifetime, which may be considered lifelong learning (LLL) and reflective expression, which deals with learning to know, do, and live together. LLL is considered flexible and diverse (llcq.org). The concept of LLL impacts the degree to which writers express themselves because it is solely based upon personal experiences. Reflective writing encourages critical thinking skills in formal and informal educational environments. Creativity helps writers realize their talents through identity and self-awareness for respecting their unconscious depths (Innerwriter). Brown and Inglehart (2014) explains that greater self-expression values mean having more action resources that include material and cognition. EXPERIENCE Creativity includes identity, resistance, art, and culture. For instance, when writers have unpleasant experiences with written expression, there is a hesitation to express themselves. This hindrance has a major impact on personal well-being and societal relations. Experience is what makes the world go around. People relate to text based on past experience and the desire to experience new things. Kolb (1984) developed the Cycle for Experiential Learning, which includes concrete experience, active experimentation, reflective observation, and abstract conceptualization. Concrete experience is the act of doing something as it relates to being an expert. Active deals with the inclusion of what you have learned to work. Reflective deals with analyzing and reviewing individual experience. Abstract conceptualization deals with learning from a particular experience. BRAIN-BASED LEARNING In the classroom setting, brain-based learning (BBL) is most commonly used for best practices in teaching strategies and lesson planning based on cognition and improvement of the implementation of scientific approaches that influence educational practice, which is neuro-education. Worden et al. (2011) explain that ignoring important findings from educational neuroscience can be just as dangerous as uncritically embracing brain-based interventions, but there is not always a correlation between brain size and intelligence for academic achievement. These are essential to the stimulation of cognitive abilities in written expression. Although BBL has a major influence in the educational environment, it also impacts written expression – without BBL, written expression would not exist. Writers should express their emotional thoughts because those same ideas will become repressed thoughts that will continue to recur when writing new ideas, and the brain will experience memory overload. The brain is not meant for multitasking because it can slow down the learning process – brains are not wired for multitasking. Subconscious and unconscious mental processes harbor the treasure for writers because the brain stores facts absorbed through living in the world (Arms-Roberts, 2013).

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ACTIVE LEARNING Learning is always occurring unconsciously, but people do not notice it consciously because it is a function that is consistently relied on and not thought about. Writers should take advantage of their internal knowledge based on innate and learned skills. Writing is thinking and discovery as it relates to reverence of mystery (Mbalia, 2004). Writing is also significant to the emotions and motivation within the brain (van Dam, 2013). Expressive writing and written emotional disclosure are psychosocial interventions that promote emotional expression (Nazarian & Smyth, 2013). In the traditional educational setting, learning has been stagnated based on standards, expectations, and subjectivity. The discovery of the role of emotions and stress may present a threat to memory systems for motivation because of the challenging assumptions in traditional education. The truth is that every writer has an equal chance to express because cognitive brain processes are configured the same for every human. EXPLORATION Writers should be willing to explore new ideas in order to improve writing skills along with overcoming writing challenges. Lamb (2011) notes that regardless of education or other presumable factors, most individuals demonstrate a marked disinterest or active resistance to considering new information when it challenges existing beliefs. Some existing beliefs derail new possibilities as there is always something new to learn. Boss (2011) notes that when people encounter new information, the brain quickly transitions to pattern-recognition mode because it causes people to think about things that they may have encountered before. When new information does not relate to existing information, the brain gets excited. Exploration of new ideas enhances brain abilities for remembering and articulating specific details in writing. For example, when writers are describing what they have seen or heard, they demonstrate the ability to document information vividly. Writers should look out for new ideas that can drive innovation for critical thinking in relation to sparking creativity for breaking the thought patterns through challenging assumptions, rewording the problem, thinking in reverse, and expression through different types of media (Cook, n. d.). Cook also notes that people can enable idea generation by allowing creative loafing time, shutting out distractions, and including humor. Although there are several strategies for exploring new ideas, many writers experience writer’s block, which means the writer is blocked from exploring current or new ideas. Writers should focus on the topic and not the concept of writing. Writing faster than thinking can unleash creativity and prevents writer’s block because the subconscious and unconscious mental processes harbor the treasure of writers (Arms-Roberts, 2013). Figure 5.1 provides a realistic formula to initiating new ideas, which is learning, exploring, and then writing. With all three steps, it requires motivation, determination, and realization.

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FIGURE 5.1.

Steps to Exploring New Ideas

CONCLUSION Writing is a vital part of active learning and progression in society (Shinko, 2006). When writers learn to utilize various techniques for expressing themselves, this increases self-esteem and confidence. This chapter provided three perspectives for unleashing creativity through experiential practices, the exploration of new ideas, and engagement. Engagement is making a commitment to acknowledge unconscious thoughts that have never been initiated. This can be challenging because most unconscious thoughts have been blocked due to structured instruction in the educational environments, but with repetition, it will improve. With improvement, writers are able to represent their experience and the history of society. REFERENCES Arms-Roberts, K. (2013). Writing at the speed of the unconscious. Retrieved from www. creativitypost.com Boss, S. (2011). Six tips for brain-based learning. Retrieved from edutopia.org Brown, K., & Inglehart, R. (2014). Millennials: Narcissists, or hope for the future? Center for Political Studies (CPS) Blog. Retrieved from http://cpsblog.isr.umich. edu/?p=469 Cook, L. (n. d.). Generating new ideas: Think differently and spark creativity. Retrieved from www.mindtools.com Writing from your subconscious. (n. d.). Retrieved from http://theinnerwriter.com/32/writing-from-your-subconscious/ Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning as the science of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Lamb, R. (2011). Lifelong learning institutes: The next challenge. The LLI Review, 1–18. Mbalia, D. (2004). Toni Morrison’s developing class consciousness (2nd ed.). Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press.

The Connection between Brain Science and Written Expression • 43 Nazarian, D., & Smyth, J. (2013). An experimental test of instructional manipulations in expressive writing interventions: Examining Process of Change, 32(1), 71–96. Shinko, R. E. (2006). Thinking, doing and writing international relation theory. International Studies Perspectives, 7, 43–50. van Dam, N. (2013). Inside the learning brain, learning and development. American Society for Training And Development. T+D, 67(4), 30. Worden, J. Fisher, K., & Hinton, C. (2011). What does the brain have to do with learning? Brain Research, Kappan Magazine, 12(8).

CHAPTER 6

A TRANSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE OF CREATIVITY IN ACADEMIC WRITING Emmanuel Jean Francois and Carrie J. Boden-McGill

Creative writing provides a literary framework and a flexible setting that incentivizes imaginary, symbolic, and metaphoric contents, as well as informal, artistic, and figurative styles, which enable the writer to captivate, provoke, or even entertain a variety of audiences. While this reality represents a refreshing well of opportunities for creative writers, scholars in the social and human sciences found a rationale to raise doubts about the scholarly value of creative writing, especially in regard to its subjective tone and arbitrary organization. Obviously, academic writing is known to be conformist to the rules of scholarly accepted principles that may limit the full release of creativity in ways that are truly liberating and satisfying in the eyes of a creative writer. Consequently, many seem to develop an assumption that creative writing and academic writing cannot dwell in a coexistentially shared universe without compromising the integrity of one another. This chapter intends to channel a counter narrative by arguing that creative and academic writing can foster and nurture a healthy and fulfilling relationship that allows for both scholarly and imaginary expressions. The purpose of this chapter Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 45–58. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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is to explore, analyze, and reflect on the transculturally implications of creativity in academic writing. The chapter is articulated around a transcultural flirtation framework, drawing from the cross-cultural experiences of two creative writers and co-authors, who are positioned from unique, but similar cultural backgrounds.

TRANSCULTURAL POSITIONALITY This section will position co-authors as members of transcultural communities, thus carrying transcultural experiences related to their personal, cultural, and academic backgrounds that influence their creative and academic writing. This section will include two sub-sections, co-authors as academic writers and co-authors as creative writers. Co-Authors as Academic Writers What is academic writing? As the term indicates, academic writing is done for academic purposes and is based on rigorous requirements to justify the expectations of relevance set by targeted audiences. Academic writing concerns the underlying theories and causes governing processes and practices in daily life. Therefore, a piece of academic writing will explore alternative explanations for every day events, follow a particular ‘tone,’ adhere to traditional conventions of punctuation, grammar, and spelling. More specifically, a writer produces academic writing to: • • • • • •

Sustain academic life, Share teaching experiences and scholarly findings, Foster academic career growth, Maintain esteem (Self, group, department, institution), Develop and maintain a network of support, and Provide lived meaning to academic life.

Academic writing must comply with the need for connectedness to empirical reality, expectations for scholarly structures, some level of objectivity, and overall academic relevance to readers. Academic writing can be refereed (i.e., blind review, peer review) or non-refereed (Self, invited). Academic writing has the challenges of being time consuming, having a lack of adequate resources for data gathering, and sustaining the scrutiny of lengthy blind/peer reviews. This section will position the co-authors as academic writers through their academic backgrounds and scholarly products (i.e., books, book chapters, peer review articles).

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Author Jean Francois as Academic Writer of Books, Edited Books, and Book Chapters As an academic writer, author Jean Francois has published four books, one edited book, and five book chapters. Although the academic publications are scholarly in nature they are none less influenced by the creative writing of the author to create new words, new expressions, and alternative ways of looking at phenomena or issues. The following paragraphs will outline summaries of selected publications as a way to illustrate their creative facets. Transcultural Blended Learning

Transcultural blended learning and teaching in postsecondary education (Jean Francois, 2012) was written based on a desire to strengthens the understanding of readers across nations and cultures on theories, models, research, applications, best practices, and emerging issues related to blended learning and teaching through a holistic and transcultural perspective (Jean Francois, 2012). While this text provides ideas and conceptual frameworks to plan, develop, implement, and evaluate blended learning programs and courses, it also introduces new concepts in the literature on transcultural teaching and learning. For example, the author introduced the dimensions of transcultural integration framework, which argues for analysis, and understanding of uniqueness, sameness, sameniqueness, and unique sameness. Transcultural uniqueness concerns what a group of people learns, teaches, knows, understands, sees, or does uniquely or differently. Transcultural sameness refers to what a group of people learns, teaches, knows, understands, sees, or does similarly, but calls differently. Transcultural unique sameness addresses the transcendental question “What do we learn, teach, know, understand, see, or differently, but serve a same general purpose?” Transcultural sameniqueness is about “What do we learn, teach, know, understand, see, or similarly, but has potential for applications in a unique context?” Financial Sustainability for Nonprofit Organizations

This book (Jean Francois, 2014a) was inspired by the reality of fierce competition faced by nonprofit organizations to secure sustainable funding, especially in times of financial and economic hardship. This book offers creative frameworks to enable nonprofit organizations to effectively further their goals and make a long-term impact in the communities they serve, and to ensure they are financially sustainable. The book includes creative and practical tips and illustrative case examples for the reader. Building Global Education With a Local Perspective: An Introduction to Global Higher Education

Building global education with a local perspective (Jean Francois, 2015) introduces a creative and provocative conceptual framework that challenges existing

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paradigms in global education, and promotes concepts, theories, and practices associated with glocal higher education, based on the ideas of “think globally, act locally,” and “think locally, act globally.” The book explicitly challenges the critical thinking of scholars and policy makers in international, comparative, and global education. Author Jean Francois as Academic Writer of Refereed Journal Articles

Author Jean Francois has conducted empirical research that led to refereed publications in professional journals. Article publications are primary for scholarly purposes for use by scholars, faculty, and practitioners. The following represent a sample of peer review articles published as an academic writer. Motivation for Internationalization Scale

The Motivation for Internationalizing the Curriculum Scale (Jean Francois, 2012) was informed by Herzberg’s two-factor motivation theory, involving intrinsic (motivator) and extrinsic (hygiene) factors of motivation. The MICS includes 20 items, and was administered to a national random sample of 418 college professors in the United States. The validation of the case revealed that influence faculty’s motivation to internationalizing their curriculum is influenced by a combination of dominant intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors. Perceptions of Globalization

The study that led to this article involved non-traditional American and international students at several U.S. colleges and universities, using interviews and focus group techniques (Jean Francois, 2014b). American and international students in the United States acknowledged some positive effects as well as their discontent about globalization. However, the meanings of the discontent about globalization differed based on the students’ cultural backgrounds and field of study. American students saw the offshore outsourcing practices of U.S. businesses as a threat for the American economy and hegemony in the world. International students in the U.S. perceived globalization as a transnational exploitation of the working class in developing countries. Students in business related programs have different views of globalization in comparison to those in human and social sciences. This underscores the implication that discontent about globalization may not be properly understood exclusively in terms of industrialized versus developing countries, but also in the context of a transnational, intercultural, and cross-disciplinary framework. Motivational Orientation Study

The purpose of the research that involved this article was to investigate the motivational orientations of non-traditional adult students to enroll in a degree-seek-

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ing program based on their academic goal (Jean Francois, 2014c). The Education Participation Scale (EPS) was used to measure the motivational orientations of participants. Professional advancement, cognitive interest, and educational preparation were found to be the dominant motivational orientations of non-traditional adult college students. There were significant differences in motivational orientations among associate’s, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree students. The findings from this study provide opportunities for instructors and administrators in higher education to use motivational orientations data in designing recruitment materials and activities for their program as well as in adopting curriculum and instruction strategies to increase students’ motivation toward learning. Cross-Cultural Readiness

The CRES was developed from a grounded theory of intercultural interactions (Jean Francois, 2012). The items were pilot tested on a convenience sample of graduate students, administrators of international education programs, and faculty members of postsecondary education institutions in various countries around the world. The CRES encompasses six sub-scales, assessing racism bias, discrimination bias, ethnocentrism bias, prejudice bias, stereotype bias, international curiosity, cultural relativism, international communication, and intercultural sensitivity. The CRES was designed to be used to assess the effectiveness of intercultural interactions in study abroad programs or assignments in a foreign country. Author Boden-McGill as Academic Writer of Books and Book Chapters As an academic writer, author Carrie Boden-McGill has published four textbooks, four edited books, and eighteen book chapters. These publications are scholarly in nature, but many of them employ literary tools such as metaphor, imagery, word play, and recurring symbols. In the following paragraphs, excerpts from selective publications will exemplify instances of creative writing elements woven into academic writing. Pathways to Transformation: Learning in Relationship

Transformative learning occurs through the process of perspective transformation, which often results from a disorienting dilemma or an accumulation of small changes in meaning schemes over time. Perspective transformation includes changes in self-perception (psychology), beliefs or meaning schemes (convictions), and behavior (interaction with the external world). Pathways to Transformation: Learning in Relationship, co-edited with Sola Kippers (Boden-McGill & Kippers, 2012), examines how two fields, adult education and counseling, approach transformative learning theory. In reviewing the literature, the editors soon learned that there are divergent and convergent lines of research related to transformative learning. To capture this phenomenon, the editors used the metaphor

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of “pathways.” The framework facilitated by this metaphor enabled the editors to fulfill the mission of including multiple voices from various contexts in the collection. The subtitle and organizational structure of the book, learning in relationship, also functioned as a metaphor-of-sorts to describe how transformative learning occurs through “the mutuality of ‘learning in relationship’” (Walters, 2008) with self and others, with culture, context, and technology, and with academic fields of study. The collection synthesized current research on transformative learning and created a space for dialogue among scholars from various fields to expand the knowledge base around transformative learning. Developing and Sustaining Adult Learners

This book, co-edited with Kathleen P. King (Boden-McGill & King, 2014), is the second volume in a book series affiliated with the annual Adult Higher Education Alliance Conference. The book encompasses significant issues and questions at the forefront of the field of adult education. The book’s title was gleaned from the theme of the 2012 conference. The editors asked the questions . . . What does it mean to develop and sustain adult learners? What image, symbol, or metaphor illuminates development and sustainability? When the editors answered this question, the idea of symbiosis came to mind. In Greek, symbiosis is derived from –biosis (living) and –sym (together). The editors used this metaphor to explore how, in the field, we might live together in relationship between facilitator and learner, institution and students, organizations and stakeholders, and institutions and constituents. Seeing Oneself in the Other: A Model for Intercultural Competence in Education

This book chapter, coauthored with Nora Cavazos, Melisa Kakas, and Dorinda Noble (Boden-McGill, Cavazos, Kakas, & Noble, 2014), builds on the model of intercultural competence proposed in Conversations about Adult Learning in Our Complex World, edited by Carrie J. Boden-McGill and Kathleen P. King. In this model, the intersecting elements of the learning environment, teaching and learning practices, university redesign, leadership and professional development, and meaningful assessment form the model of intercultural competence. The metaphor of a mirror is used throughout “Seeing Oneself in the Other . . .” to encourage the reader to continuously reflect and to examine his/her motivation, knowledge, and skills in the areas of intercultural competence. Author Boden-McGill as Academic Writer of Refereed Journal Articles

Author Carrie Boden-McGill has conducted studies that have resulted in refereed publications in professional journals. Journal articles are expected to be written in a dispassionate tone and rarely allow for creative word choices or extensive use of metaphor. In some instances, such as qualitative research, sub-

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jectivity, lived experiences, and thick descriptions are included. The following sample includes recent published peer-reviewed articles. Research Goes Digital: Some Methods, Frameworks, and Issues

This article, co-authored with Geraldine Torrisi-Steele, Victor Wang, Amy Sedivy-Benton, and Carrie Boden-McGill (2015), examines how the role of librarians is changing in the digital age. The traditional work of librarians is connecting researchers with resources. Currently, in order to remain relevant in the digital age, librarians often take on an additional role by acting as digital guides and/ or engaging in research as co-investigators. In order to contribute to this work, librarians must be well-trained in research methods, frameworks, and issues. This article outlines competencies librarians need related to digital research. Good Ol’ Boys, Mean Girls, and Tyrants: A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experiences and Survival Strategies of Bullied Women Adult Educators

This article, coauthored with Amy Sedivy-Benton, Gabriele Strohschen, Nora Cavazos, and Carrie Boden-McGill (2015), examines the increasingly common phenomenon of bullying in higher education. Workplace bullying in a university setting may have a negative impact on the students’ learning environment, the workplace culture, and the quality and quantity of work completed. This study was a phenomenological investigation of the lived experiences of bullied women adult educators. Six themes, positionality, differences, jealousy, clandestine decision-making, accountability/leadership, and blame the victim, emerged from the data. Participants shared survival strategies for avoiding bullying and/or reducing its personal and professional impact. Unpacking the Effects—Identifying School and Teacher Factors and Their Influence on Teachers’ Intentions to Stay or Leave the Profession

In this article, co-authored with Amy Sedivy-Benton and Carrie Boden-McGill (2013), the authors examined the costly implications of teacher turnover. Using the most recent School and Staffing Survey (SASS) data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the researchers conducted an analysis of teacher’s intentions to stay or leave the profession of teaching. The results of the analysis indicated that three factors, teacher influence on school, teacher perception of control, and teacher perceived support, are significant in in teachers’ intentions to leave or remain in the field of education. By understanding these factors, administrators and policymakers can implement interventions to improve work environments for teachers. Teacher retention is an essential element of improving teacher and school quality nationwide.

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Co-Authors as Creative Writers Simply put, creative writing refers to a form of expression that relies on the use of imagery, narrative, intrigue, drama, and thought provocation to convey particular meanings that can be diversely interpreted by various readers. Therefore, creative writing is very subjective in its essence, in the sense that the writer tends to primarily follow the lead of one’s imagination rather than the scholarly structures of academic writing. Creative writing allows flexibility in its structure to nurture the flourishing of imagination. The production of creative works has provided opportunities to observe patterns in creative writing. Therefore, creative writing is not without structures or organization. There are simply different forms of structures that grant themselves license to defy certain rules of scholarly writing. Creative writing is inherently a very engaging and sophisticated endeavor that requires the writer to be a prisoner of one’s freedom to create one’s own universe and be the sole liberator at the same time. Both co-authors are creative writers. Their cultural backgrounds shape their relationship with imaginary expression and their mental models when writing. Co-author Jean Francois as a creative writer Co-author Jean Francois was born in Haiti, and grew up in a country that cherishes sentimentalism but was also troubled by ongoing political instability and socio-economic inequality. Co-author Francois started to write poems and short stories while in school, and started his writing career as a creative writer while teaching literature in high school. His first publication was a collection of poems titled “Cache-cache” (Translation: Intimate Secret). As the title indicates, the collection included exclusively poems that depicted the experience of the author with love and his adventures with his lovers. The first-person poems where inspired by the French Romanticism of the 19th Century, as the following verse from one of his poems illustrate: You are the air I breathe. My heart beats every breath you breathe. Your smile satisfies my thirst. Your words calm my hunger. The souvenir of your beauty makes me fall asleep And life would be meaningless Without the hope of your love.

Later, he found his muse in political poetry, and more specifically, social activism. He wrote on various themes such as poverty, social justice, political and economic imperialism, and inequality. His poems related to such themes reflected his anger about oppression, exploitation, and injustice. In one of his poems, he wrote: The GI put his boots On the neck of the naked body

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The GI raped her hope Until there was no blood left Then, took a cup of hypocrisy With a dirty smile And said: Take! Take it! Take it! This is democracy! Take it! Take it! This is capitalism for your good! And I spit on his face!

And later in his journey, his poems became closer to surrealism. They involved more and more the creation of imageries that associate misfit words and figures for most people, but not for the creative universe that he created inside his imagination. His poem “I stop learning a thing” is an example of this quasi-surrealism writing: I spent all my chaos In one page of your homework And my confidence bled, bled, bled… Until my grades go for the jugular, Until I realized I was in your wilderness. Your patience ran away! Your compassion faded with the wind You muzzled the mouth of your heart, And I stopped learning a thing!

Co-author Boden-McGill as a creative writer In the fourth grade, co-author Boden-McGill decided that she would become a writer. She began writing stories, poems, and journaling as a hobby. In college, she took studied creative writing and English Language and Literature. Following college, she pursued a M.F.A. in creative writing, and her first academic appointment was as a Writing Center Professional and English Instructor. She fell in love with adult students and simultaneously began to think practically about a life in academe. . . What would a THIRD degree in English/Writing do to help her career? What is the job market like in the humanities? Given the dismal answers to these questions, she decided to retain her post as an English professor while pursuing a doctorate in adult education. For many years, she lived with a foot in both worlds as an English professor who taught classes for adult students. Over time, as opportunities arose, she migrated from a focus on publishing creative writing and literary analysis pieces to social science-style writing needed for journals in the field of adult education and to fulfill administrative assignments. As the trend continued over time, she realized that she had, like those who immigrate to another country to seek new opportunities, intellectually and practically left her academic home for another field. Consequently, in 2007 she went on the market as adult educator and has held adult education-related academic appointments since that time.

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Co-author Boden-McGill’s published poems are heavily influenced by writers such as Maxine Kumin, Mary Oliver, James Wright, Sharon Olds, Walt Whitman, and Adrienne Rich. Her collection of poems, The Unabridged Body, explores the relationship of text, place, and the human body. The introduction to this work discusses poetic influence and the notion that all texts, regardless of time span, genre, and geographical location, engage contemporaneously in conversation with what T.S. Eliot would call the “living whole” of all literature. The topics of Boden-McGill’s poems span from deeply personal reflections to political and intellectual matters. She experiments with poetic forms. Some poems are concentrated with haiku-like brevity while others ramble through unexpected associations and verbal play. Her favorite poetic devices include alliteration, assonance, consonance, allusion, and enjambment. Examples follow in the poem, Imprinting. I dream about landscape and geese, hills like bosoms and the online of full-bodies in flight occluding the moon as Conrad Lorenz appears as a hologram or reflection, the surface and depth of his movements indistinguishable. His geese know precisely when to turn together to fracture wind into words, topography into syntax, terrain into the lexicon of the language of a perfect V formation. I can’t follow exactly what is being inscribed, but can sense the sway of sounds straying into the evening where wings beat in the wind, on water, manifest their motion in ripples pushing out into the creases of pillow lines on my face. I stretch and pull back skin, as if this would work like make-up to conceal the fault underneath. I reveal nothing. The lines tell all that can’t be guessed. Indentations are superimposed onto the ranks of geese who have memorized the clay and clouds of countless counties from Canada to Kansas, where I know little of either soil or sky, but return to the hollow where the moon, half empty, holds me in her gaze for hours. Reflected light illumines impressions long after the geese find home.

Co-author Boden-McGill’s story of her relationship with creative writing is one of living in diaspora, with an occasional trip back to the homeland through incidental encounters in everyday life: regular recognition and appreciation of craft, stumbling across lines of poetry while surfing the Internet, and once in a while, in

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a time of great inspiration, composing a new poem. Like the geese in the poem, she always returns to her creative roots. Transcultural Flirtation: Academic Writing Versus Creative Writing in Transcultural Contexts The co-authors have academic and creative writing experiences and have crosscultural experiences and interactions with people from diverse backgrounds, at both the personal and professional levels. Their reflections from their personal experiences suggest that academic writers who are also creative writers deal with transcultural flirtation that involves one’s own culture (self), the reader’s culture (reader), and the reviewer’s culture (reviewer). Own Culture (Self) Academic-creative writers flirt with desires to express their deepest selves even when they aim to further a scholarly purpose. Obviously, creative writing is about both the expression of one’s feelings, but also the art of communicating such feelings in ways that others can feel. For the academic/creative writer, it is not that different. Therefore, academic writing of creative writers tends to borrow from their creative selves, and consequently, they try to express their scholarly ideas in creative ways that are still relevant to both scholars and practitioners. Reader’s Culture (Reader) Academic/creative writers are challenged with the intent to satisfy readers from both similar and different cultural experiences, needs, expectations of the writers, and variable levels of flexibility or tolerance for the ego of the writer. In other words, readers bring their diverse life experiences to any text with which they are interacting with. That life experience can be objective, subjective, or combine both subjectivity and objectivity. Reviewer’s Culture (Reviewer) Academic/creative writers set their own expectation to please and convince blind reviewers from both similar and different cultural experiences, needs, expectations of the writers, and variable levels of flexibility or tolerance for the ego of the writer. There is a serious risk for their writing to be perceived as “unfit,” “inappropriate,” “inadequate,” or “unacceptable,” and not as serious work. In other words, the greatness and uniqueness of personal expression in academic writing can be easily dismissed. Similarly, the presence of formal structures in creative writing can be easily challenged as too orthodox.

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Transcultural Insights This section will provide practical insights to the readers with respect to strategies that can help successfully navigate the transcultural flirtation and remain a creative academic writer. Openness to Social Reinvention Writing is about recreating or reinventing our own world and the world around us. Obviously, the world around us is made of our acquaintances, our relationships, our communities, and our overall society. At the heart of all these facets of our surrounding world dwell joy, love, hope, dream, happiness, success, achievement, and satisfaction. Similarly, our surrounding world carries pain, sorrow, depression, neglect, abuse, low self-esteem, despair, oppression, exploitation, discrimination, prejudice, racism, sexism, unmet needs, and other issues related to the reality of life. An academic/creative writer should embrace the wholeness of these facets with both their negatives and positives, and use her creative and scholarly imagination to reinvent the surrounding world by inspiring as much positive and sustainable change as possible. There is no guarantee that such social reinvention will always be possible. The only thing that is possible is for one to remain open to opportunities for social reinvention through creative and/or academic writing. Embracing Subjective Knowledge as Valid Academic research that is inspired by creative writing principles tend to be dismissed as subjective, thus considered as not being scholarly work. The reality is that subjectivity exists in both academic and creative writing. It is obvious that creative writing carries a great deal of subjectivity. It is also obvious that scholars select research topics based on their research agenda which simply is subjective. This is why different researchers have different research agendas based on issues or topics that interest them more or they are more curious about. The selection of research topics is subjective. The choice of method of inquiry is subjective in most cases. However, their subjectivity can be corrected through the adoption of conventionally accepted objective framework. Therefore, academic/creative writers should embrace subjective knowledge as valid. They should push the boundaries of inflexible dogmas, without positing themselves against objectivity because objectivity is contextual, and hence, limited. Proactive Critical Creativity The embrace of subjectivity should not be taken as a license to transform such subjectivity into a dogma. This would be a reverse dogmatization. Subjectivity must be purposeful and open to the scrutiny of critical thinking. The academic/ creative writer should proactively adopt principles of critical thinking by chal-

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lenging her writings, inviting others to challenge her work, and open to adjustment subjectivity becomes an excuse for lack of professionalism. Accommodation for Scholarly—Practicality Creative writers should be open for creative research with potential accommodation for scholarly practicality. This serves as a win-win proposition. The creative writer remains authentic to his own universe, but allows for others to enter his universe in ways that are scholarly and practical to reviewers, readers, researchers, and practitioners. Academic/creative writer should accommodate for scholarly-practicality. In other words, whether subjectively or objectively written, a piece of work should show some relevance to both scholars and practitioners. Scholars can find relevance even in work that provides them an opportunity to make valid criticism. Practitioners will find relevance in works that make sense to their lived experience or their practice. CONCLUSION Academic writing is ruled by the principles of compliance to specific purposes related to theoretical or conceptual frameworks which are conventionally accepted. Therefore, the rules of academic writing are set a priori. On the other hand, creative writing provides license for subjectivity or the ability of the writer to create one’s own universe. Academic writing is based on the need for connectedness to empirical inquiry, expectations of scholarly structures, implications for research and practices, and some form of objectivity. Creative writing is inspired by creativity and novelty, license for subjectivity, and flexibility to go outside, inside, above, underneath, or beyond the box, while surviving the scrutiny of conventional standards or dogmas. In a transcultural context, principles of academic writing and facets of creative writing can mingle to give birth to creative academic writing works that serve both scholarly and literary purposes. Academic/creative writers dispose various tools to that end, by embracing the challenge of transcultural flirtation and make themselves vulnerable to the magic of their favorite words, as well as the seduction of their burning creativity. More concretely, this may be likely to occur when an academic/writer opens herself for to opportunities for social reinvention, embraces subjective knowledge as valid, adopts proactive critical creativity, and accommodates for scholarly-practicality. It is important to acknowledge that individual transcultural experiences must be considered only within their own contexts. REFERENCES Boden-McGill, C. J., Cavazos, N., Kakas, M., & Noble, D. (2014). Seeing oneself in the other: A model for intercultural competence in education. In J. Gourlay & G. Strohschen (Eds.), Building barriers and bridges: Interculturalism in the 21st Century (pp. 71–83). Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press.

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Boden-McGill, C. J., & King, K. P. (Eds.). (2014). Developing and sustaining adult learners. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Boden-McGill, C. J., & Kippers, S. M. (Eds.). (2012). Pathways to transformation: Learning in relationship. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Jean Francois, E. (2012a). Transcultural blended learning and teaching in postsecondary education. Hershey, PA: IGI-Global. Jean Francois, E. (2012b). Development of a scale to assess faculty motivation for internationalizing their curriculum. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 36(4). doi:10.1 080/0309877X.2012.706801 Jean Francois, E. (2012c). The Cross-cultural Readiness Exposure Scale (CRES).International Pre-Conference of the American Association for Adult & Continuing Education. November 3–5, 2012, Las Vegas, Nevada. Jean Francois, E. (2014a). Financial sustainability for nonprofit organizations. New York, NY: Springer. Jean Francois, E. (2014b). Perceptions of globalization by non-traditional adult students in the U.S. International Journal of Business and Globalization, 13(3), 307–321. Jean Francois, E. (2014c). Motivational orientations of non-traditional adult students to enroll in a degree seeking program. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 26(2). doi: 10.1002/nha3.20060 Jean Francois, E. (2015). Building global education with a local perspective: An introduction to glocal higher education. New York, NY: Mcmillan. Sedivy-Benton, A., & Boden-McGill, C. J. (2013). Unpacking the effects—identifying school and teacher factors and their influence on teachers’ intentions to stay or leave the profession. Research in the Schools, 19(4), 75–89. Sedivy-Benton, A., Strohschen, G., Cavazos, N., & Boden-McGill, C. J. (2015). Good ol’ boys, mean girls, and tyrants: A phenomenological study of the lived experiences and survival strategies of bullied women adult educators. Adult Learning, 26(1), 35–41. Toffisi-Steele, G., Wang, V. C. X., Sedivy-Benton, A., & Boden-McGill, C. J. (2015, in print). Research goes digital: Some methods, frameworks, and issues. The Reference Librarian, 56(4). Walters, D. A. (2008). Existential being as transformative learning. Pastoral Care in Education, 26(2), 111–118.

CHAPTER 7

A SENSE OF WONDER Why Every Creative Writer Needs One Tina Murray

Each human being has an innate sense of wonder. As a child, you used yours continually without realizing you were doing so—without conscious awareness— every time you played pretend or created a mud pie or performed a cartwheel spontaneously. You were using your imagination. You were filled with wonder at being newly alive. You believed you could do or be anything. Wonder and imagination go hand in hand. While pretending to be a prince or princess, you believed in your imaginary world. Today, as a weary adult writer; however, you may feel you have lost touch with your imaginative faculty, but it is still there. It’s probably in your mental closet, right next to your sense of wonder. Most likely, your sense of wonder is lying dormant within you, too, pining away, waiting to be rediscovered and dusted off, along with your imagination and belief. Becoming aware retrieving your sense of wonder will go a long way towards helping you create your own vision of good with your writing. By bringing your capacity for wonder into conscious awareness, you can tend it, feed it, and develop it until it becomes a vital and active part of your creative process. Nurture the capacity for wonder, and it will bloom abundantly, informing your writing with grace, roEnhancing Writing Skills, pages 59–64. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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mance, beauty, wisdom, and insight. Cultivating it will help revive your abilities to imagine and believe. Who knows? It may even lead you to ultimate truth. The purpose of this chapter is to guide you in furthering this process. In the following paragraphs, I will address, briefly and informally, two questions so that writers who are unfamiliar with the concept of a sense of wonder may put a name to their heightened experiences and benefit creatively from them. These two questions are: “What is ‘a sense of wonder’?” “Why do creative writers need a childlike sense of wonder?” By opening yourself in abandonment, both mentally and spiritually, to wonder, you, as a writer, indeed, every member of the creative community—can expand your own creative production and enable yourself to bring more and better writing projects to completion. So, let us look first at meaning. WHAT IS ‘A SENSE OF WONDER’? A sense of wonder, ultimately, is that state of innocent sudden or gradual awareness in which you feel or experiences the grand reality of the entire universe and beyond—its majesty, mystery, and dynamic energy. It can happen to you or anyone with any outlook—faith-based, science-based, or a combination thereof—at any time or place. Sometimes, wonderment erupts internally when you are confronted by grandeur and spectacle, such as when you are contemplating an ocean or a mountain range. Often, however, it emerges when you stumble across a small or simple scene, such as raindrops on a windowpane or the antics of a beloved pet. Sometimes it occurs as a result of delight or great joy, such as in lovemaking or the news of a birth, or even tragedy, as in the midst of battle. It can be brought on by visiting historic sites, handling relics, or learning about breathtaking scientific discoveries. It can be flavored with poignancy, pathos, joy, faith, or gratitude. It can encompass the magical, the mystical, the strange, and the exotic. It can be a fleeting or long-lasting experience, a glimpse or a shadow or a full-blown knowing. While experiencing wonder, you may feel an overwhelming inner knowledge of transcendence, that quality of being stricken with awe and at-one-with by the magnitude of life. In this state, you are able to see and experience the grandeur of the endless life cycle, the miracle of existence, and the fragility, the transience, of all living things. Deep within your personal core, you can sense with knowing that you are part of an incredible, mysterious world, a world at once gigantic, yet infinitesimal, and beautiful, yet terrible—incredible, astounding, fascinating, fantastic... This experience is holistic, an exercise in totality of consciousness, of wholeness in being, whether it occurs as an epiphany or a reverie. No rules exist, and each experience is unique. If you, the writer, can bring such experiences into conscious awareness, you can cultivate the capacity to experience and communicate them, thereby giving readers what they ultimately crave: connection.

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WHY CREATIVE WRITERS NEED A SENSE OF WONDER Writers, as well as readers, often feel the need for connection. We write to share and communicate our thoughts and feelings. Connection with whom or what? Among other things, with ourselves, other human beings, the Higher Power, the known universe, and beyond. How you conceptualize the world will impact how you answer that question. Only you can answer it for yourself. I am suggesting that, no matter what your world view, wonder will open you to a greater experience of being alive while you exist on the planet. It will add color, depth, and dimension to your work as a writer. For a creative writer, an active sense of wonder can broaden the scope and understanding of life—mental, spiritual, and physical. It can support your growth in wisdom and profundity as you experience and express the human condition in all its glory and degradation. If you are able to see life as it is, but then, see beyond what is to the possibilities, you will write about that, thus encouraging intelligent change for the better. You may find that, as you challenge yourself to greater understanding of many difficult life experiences, wonder will enable you, the writer, to discover beauty and hope in situations of ugliness and despair. Wonder will allow you to envision hope where there is no hope, to examine humanity’s height and potential and realize the wonder-filled comfort found in minute, shared details of everyday life. As you grasp the challenges faced by all sentient creatures, your own expanded awareness will flow into your writing. As you grow in understanding and compassion, your readers will relate to your observations, both in details and generalities. Your readers will be more likely to see themselves and others whom they know in the characters and situations you create. As you increase your ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, you will help your readers to relate deeply to their own inner selves and to their concept of a higher power and the infinite—because that is what you will be doing, too, when you write. Furthermore, the wonder-connection to higher realms or energies can help strengthen your belief in yourself. Belief in yourself will enable you to bring more of your own works to completion. The sense of wonder can help you accomplish a great deal as a writer. As you accomplish these feats, your confidence will explode, and your writing will be more likely to approach artistry. Certainly, it can take on greater significance. Artistry in writing is a manifestation of not only talent and skill, but also profound awareness and insight. To be most effective as a creative writer—poet, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and lyricist—you need to be in touch with as much true-life experience as possible, while also being able to experience the transcendent and, perhaps, impact humanity’s understanding of itself and the universe(s). If you are a writer who wants to change the world or express it or both, a purposeful, ever-widening scope can help you to mature, as a creative individual, through the development of important qualities such as compassion and empathy, often by-products of awareness, wisdom, and life choices made, for better or worse. As

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you come to comprehend the vicissitudes of life, the consequences of thoughts held, and the actions taken as a result of specific thoughts dominating the mind of an individual or group, you will develop into a sage. Like a singer coming down on a note, you will comprehend rightly what previously seemed incomprehensible. All this thanks to wonder! An active sense of wonder can lead you to a feeling of unity with the whole— whatever it is, in actuality—and, as a result, allow you to realize that you are part of the great totality. This may lead you to grasp that your own mind is a creative portal for infinite mind. Awareness is the path, and wonder is the gateway to bringing one’s vision into reality by believing in oneself. Belief is the latchkey that will open your door to creation and fulfillment. The first step in this process, as a writer, is to increase your awareness—to become aware of awareness. AWARENESS, IMAGINATION, AND BELIEF Awareness is not necessary to the experiencing of wonder, but it can increase your receptivity and control. However, just as writers can have differing goals, so awareness can mean different things to different writers at different stages. For some writers, awareness can mean a cognizance of the physical environment, one’s immediate surroundings. For others, it can indicate a receptive intuition, a feeling for the emotional vibrations or energy given off by human and other sentient beings. For still others, it can mean a focus on tiny, telling details—of movement, expression, appearance, sound, and scent. For some, awareness can indicate focus on the five known senses: smell, taste, touch, hearing, and vision. All these understandings of awareness are valid, and all are gifts, fine tools fit for any writers’ toolbox. However, the discussion here is focused on awareness-in-the-moment as expanded consciousness with realization—a grand, innocent awe—in the qualified form of a childlike sense of wonder. Two of wonder’s aesthetic offshoots are romance and beauty, and I advocate for both. However, such loveliness can be a tough sell in an age of cynicism and skepticism, which, of course, is all the more reason to pursue it. The need is great. If humanity loses its ability to visualize and create beauty or anything else positive, there will be no future. A sense of childlike wonder is the foundation for the building of creative works by individuals and the destiny of our creative species—and there is hope if awareness can prevail. Your innate sense of wonder can be developed only through an ever-expanding awareness of mind. Your sense of wonder grows the ‘awe’ in ‘awareness.’ Begin by communing with nature, preferably in solitude. Focus your attention on a single leaf, for instance. Contemplate it deeply. . . Art as well as nature offers opportunities to raise awareness. A work of art is often an expression of wonder as experienced by the work’s creator. Artists in all fields—visual arts, performing arts, literary arts—tend to be creative adults who have retained the childlike capacity for play and make-believe. Hence, they seem

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to be able to create something out of nothing—like magic: a poem, a composition, a dance, a painting, a novel. Voila! Not only do they experience childlike wonder, but they also use it operationally. They visualize and produce their visions. In doing so, they also attempt to preserve and communicate their heightened experiences, along with the insights and observations they have gained, to others through the creation of works. Legendary action teacher, Harry Maestrogeorge, relentlessly encouraged his student actors to open their instruments to childlike wonder in the moment, thus freeing the actors to imagine and believe during rehearsals and performances. You, as a creative writer, are your own instrument, also, and may benefit in a similar fashion, if you based your awareness in acceptance. Acceptance extrapolates wonder. Resistance shuts it down. To flourish, the sense of wonder requires an openness of mind and heart—an innocent acceptance of all that is. This willingness to accept, which is the forerunner to pretending and make-believe, allows for the realization—and the operation—of a greater force beyond the obvious physical manifestation. Without imagination, there can be no creativity. As a writer, actor, artist, one must accept the possible reality of an imaginary situation. Unless you do this, all hope of bringing an imaginary world into being is lost. A refusal to accept without hesitation—i.e., disbelief—negates wonderment and imagination. Creation requires the inhaling of ideas and formulating these thoughts into careful plans. Thus inspired, creative individuals—including visual artists, actors, musicians, dancers, and creative writers—often discover intuitive perceptions which allow them to function as intermediaries between the physical and metaphysical realms, not unlike artistic shamans. For these creatives, who have—or wish to increase— experiences of heightened consciousness and convey such to others, the possibilities are infinite. If communing with nature and art seems outlandish to you right now, then start your quest for wonder where you live: in your own writer’s head. Start with words. In addition to communing with nature and works of art, I suggest contemplating words which conjure aspects of wonder, such as astonishment, rapture, enchantment, incredible, fantastic, fascinating, mesmerizing, charm, romance, awesome, magnificence, mystical, cosmic, energy, miraculous, marvelous vibration, joy, truth, beauty, love, faith, and belief. No doubt, you will come up with words of your own, many of them, if you choose to believe. Belief is a component of success in creativity in more ways than one. The ability to love and believe in one’s vision is crucial to artistic attainment. The difference between creatives who bring their ideas to fruition and those who do not is a function of belief, the belief in one’s own vision, worth, and ability to produce work of value. Belief is what pulls a creation out of the ether and into the physical realm. To participate fully in this process of creation, one must have a capacity for wonder, imagination, belief, and love. In days to come, I will develop on these ideas in a broader format and present them, along with applications and exercises, in future publications and workshops. I hope they will be of benefit to you.

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BECOMING A PRACTITIONER OF WONDER To sum up, we have addressed the meaning of ‘a sense of wonder’ and discussed some of the reasons why a sense of wonder is important if you are a creative writer. I encourage you to resurrect your own sense of wonder, the one you discarded when you left childhood behind. Remove it from your mental closet and air it out. Then try it only for fit. The resurrection of your sense of wonder will allow you, as a creative writer, to find the marvelous in even the most mundane aspects of living. All of us live daily with millions of small miracles happening around us. Realizing what is causative, what underlies creation, and not just seeing, hearing, feeling a thing or action itself, which is merely the result of causation, is the hallmark of a hearty and thriving sense of wonder. I encourage you to become a practitioner of wonder. Make it a lifelong pursuit. To the practitioner of wonder, the utter complexity of existence itself becomes apparent in the perfumed petals of a single lily. Become a practitioner of the sense of wonder and assure yourself of a fascinating life and writing experiences. Eventually, you will realize that the greatest miracle of all is you—who you really are, that is.

SECTION 3 ACADEMIC WRITING

CHAPTER 8

ACADEMIC LITERACY AND THE CREATIVE WRITER Why Should Anyone Care What Theorists Have to say About Creativity and Literature? Joseph Ballantyne

The ambition of much of today’s literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination. —Charles Simic, The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs At first, I was glad for the help [offered by literary theory]. My freshmen English class, “Mythology and Archetypal Experience,” confounded me. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on them —Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 67–76. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men. —Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot To the uninitiated reader, academic culture is often intimidating, confusing, and alienating. To these readers, it is opaque and useless; to aspiring writers, it is frustrating and unrewarding because their purpose in writing is unclear, and the audience from whom they wish to gain approval is unresponsive. Consequently, few readers or writers who are not already trained and experienced in academic literacy venture to explore and exploit the wealth of insight and inspiration that is available through a cross-disciplinary study of the natural world, human psychology, and our shared social reality. As the range, scope, and depth of our knowledge continues to expand at an unprecedented rate, this inability to access this reservoir of knowledge and inspiration is a great misfortune and unnecessary handicap for one who is interested in individuals and the society as a whole. Learning a little about the nature and purpose of academic writing can expand anyone’s horizons and open great reservoirs of beauty and knowledge as well as empower the writer to address complicated and controversial issues of personal and public interest. Academic literacy is reading and writing using theory and evidence to explore, explain, and change the world with the intention to advance our knowledge of fundamental fields of enquiry and to promote progress toward social justice and personal enrichment. Every academic discipline addresses distinctive problems using characteristic methods that are defined and adjudicated by qualified and concerned communities of experts. Readers in these fields need to understand the essential vocabulary, the discourse procedures, and the frames of reference for the current set of problems and objectives that are significant to the community of experts within the discipline. Books and articles in any academic field of study assume a prior knowledge of these basic elements. Without this foundation, therefore, interested, yet uneducated, readers will often lack sufficient background knowledge to interpret their selected academic writing. Frequently, they will be unable to apply or extend the specialized results, conclusions, or implications. Similarly, aspiring writers seeking to contribute to an academic discipline and assert their voice within the academic community must understand and master these ‘rules of the game’ or risk being ignored or, worse, dismissed as ignorant and irrelevant. Many students and writers of all kinds have found academic writing, especially academic literary studies, to be intimidating, obtuse, and frequently irrelevant. It neither enlightened them about the nature of their craft nor enabled them to write better prose or poetry. This is understandable. For readers and writers to appreciate academic writing, we must be familiar with the assumptions and principles, the goals and methods, and the terms and values of the field. This is true of any academic discipline. Few can open a calculus text and immediately relish the beauty of the theory of limits. And the same is true for physics, chemistry, economics, philosophy, etc. Yet, we can often read a poem or a novel and im-

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mediately be moved and fascinated by the language, the images, the story, or the wisdom embodied in the text. Nevertheless, few readers or aspiring writers can so easily describe, analyze, or evaluate these works, and not surprisingly, the normal response is to dismiss literary criticism and analysis as vain and arrogant intellectual games that only serve to extinguish all the wonder and joy in reading or writing creatively. Many great creative writers have shared this opinion, so I cannot deny that the creative process may be incompatible with academic analysis. Most of the other academic disciplines have not found deep, systemic knowledge of the field as expressed in abstract terms and complex arguments to be an impediment. Most, to the contrary, have found this knowledge to be essential for substantial work that advances the horizons of their field. As an example of academic writing, could literary theory and critical analysis also serve to empower writers of all kinds to read more sensitively, think more astutely, and write more meaningfully? In this short paper, I will try to make this case. In this paper, I hope to open the door to one field of study that can illustrate the basic features of academic writing by offering insight into the art of creative writing and the inherent structure guiding the forces that determine the publishing choices, evaluation, and reception of literary genres and imaginative literature. First, I will briefly discuss the current dominant literary theories, and then I will employ these theories to explore and explain a few important aspects of the structure and character of the literary marketplace. To illustrate these features of contemporary literary studies, I will discuss two related examples of the puzzle of popularity: why some works are received enthusiastically by the reading public and others are ignored, and why the popularity and prestige of those works sometimes rise and fall with time. I will briefly analyze the very famous case of the crossing fates of two American classic novels: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Moby Dick. Based on this analysis, I will conclude with some suggestions for authors on how they might understand fiction, genre, and literature in order to develop their work further and position themselves within the literary market for greater satisfaction and success. All academic writing usually includes three basic modes: description, analysis, and argument. Academic writers must identify their area of study by naming and describing the phenomena of interest. They must develop their description by situating the problem or topic within a framework of interpretation that illuminates issues of concern for the reader and the researcher. Then they need to indicate the principles that structure their field of study and the methods that will be used to examine their topic. Literary theory refers to any principles derived from internal analysis of literary texts or from knowledge external to the text that can be applied in multiple interpretive situations. All critical practice regarding literature depends on an underlying structure of ideas in at least two ways: theory provides a rationale for what constitutes the subject matter of criticism—”the literary”—and the specific aims of critical practice—the act of interpretation itself. (Brewton, n. d., para 1)

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Some issues of great interest in literary theory over the last century have been: the role of the author in determining and controlling the meaning or the work; the role that literature plays in advancing or retarding political and social change; the value of the traditional canon in educating and socializing students as well as its capacity to transmit meaningful and desirable cultural traditions and moral values. Other issues of more recent concern have been: the effects of intensified commodification of all arts, and the viability of literature in a rapidly evolving technological environment that is replacing the book with the computer, the page with the screen, and the sentence with the interactive image. To address these issues, literary theory has had to adopt, adapt, and articulate specific applications of theories from many other fields: psychology, history, linguistic philosophy, sociology, economics, and applied engineering. This multidisciplinary approach that relies on conceptual eclecticism and inter-textual analysis is one of the distinctive features of current literary studies. One question that engages most of the important issues of the field of literary studies is: Why are some works so much more popular than others? Related to this question is the puzzle of durability and universality: Why do some books continue to be read and treasured by generations of readers who differ in race, class, gender, and culture? Any writer who wants to secure an audience for his work and who wants to earn a living from his work, must be concerned with these questions, even if they do not determine his choices and creative efforts. Shakespeare is the standard example with which to frame these questions. Why were his plays and poetry so popular and why did they wax and wane over the century following his death? Why did his revival approach idolatry, and why has his appeal persisted so long with so many readers and playgoers in so many different cultures, religions, and social arraignments? Dr. Johnson, the great 18th Century scholar and critic, argued that nothing lasts long that does not both please and educate the reader. He thereby claimed that Shakespeare’s work possessed a natural and universal beauty that revealed eternal moral and intellectual values that enrich and enlighten the reader. More recent critics might argue that continued popularity is not due to any superior aesthetic value or greater depth of thought. Instead, the public preference for certain authors’ work is the result of the socialization process that begins with school curriculums and extends into commercial and artistic choices throughout the cultural marketplace that are based on the bias of cultural guardians, like teachers, professors, critics, editors, and play and film producers, exercising the reinforcing powers of capital, social prestige, and political ideology. The game is rigged from the beginning, and the chosen spokesmen for the privileged elite classes continue to serve the goals of the master class. Shakespeare did write for the monarchy and the aristocracy; he was a successful businessman who was unashamed of his wealth and reclaimed his father’s lost title as a gentleman. Some have called him a Tutor propagandist, but his vision seems wider to me and his talents seem to speak to a broader spectrum of humanity about issues of common

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interest in a manner that has proven to be inspirational to many with no interest in political or social conflicts. The question is open to debate and the problem remains unresolved. The example we will consider is more recent but no less fraught with significance for American writers, readers, and critics: Why was the initial reception of the two great novels of mid-nineteenth century America, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Moby Dick, so different and why were their relative critical and financial fates reversed in mid-twentieth century only to arrive a approximate parity by early twenty-first century? In other words, what is the source of artistic value and how is this related to financial success? Why do great books fail to find an audience? Why do bad works prosper? Is there really any way to distinguish between good and bad writing independent of the marketplace? Can millions of readers be mistaken about their choices? Are those readers really free to make independent judgments or are they merely choosing products that have already been prepared for them and for which they have been predisposed and programmed to prefer? What would cause subsequent generations of readers to reverse these general opinions? Is artistic value intrinsic to the work or merely a transient fad of momentary popular taste? Do writers have any enduring principles to guide their choices as they imagine, compose, and craft their work? These are deep and abiding questions that would require an extended discussion with detailed descriptions of a wide selection of texts, rigorous analyses of those works, and sound and complete arguments that address the literary and critical antecedents as well as conflicting voices and their alternative approaches. An adequate and thorough response to these questions is well beyond the scope and purpose of this paper, so I will limit my efforts to a very inadequate sketch, hoping to indicate the basic elements of academic writing as exemplified by literary analysis and to suggest the potential value, for writers of all kinds, in the academic study of literature, including the mastery of its discourses, its methods of analysis, and its standards of argument. After the initial statement of the question to be examined and an explanation of its relevance and importance to the reader and the community of concerned scholars, traditional literary analysis begins with definitions of the critical terms used in the investigation, indicating the theoretical framework. For example, traditional criticism from the late 19th Century would begin with an examination of the genre and the author’s biography, seeking to establish important experiences and intellectual influences that might have shaped the author’s thoughts and expressions. As a definitive basis of interpretation for fiction, biographical and source studies have been abandoned as the linguistic, socio-political, and psychological theories of Saussure, Marxism, and Freud persuaded critics that fictional products are constructed from pre-existing concepts, values, and terms within the language to meet commercial goals predetermined by the marketplace and motivated by hidden unconscious desires and displacements reflecting innate struggles against social conventions and restraints. Most critics today assume a collectivist stance that looks to the preexisting moral, artistic, and linguistic environment that sur-

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rounds and incorporated the writer and from with the work emerges. In our case, both works are novels, so we can begin with this vehicle of significance. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a novel as “a fictitious prose narrative or tale of considerable length depicting characters and actions representative of real life” (Novel, 2015). In his recent study, The Novel: A Biography, Michael Schmidt (2014) questions the adequacy of this brief formal definition and offers a more complete historically informed description: The novel, a form that grows with protestant individualism, education, technology and capitalism, is rooted in medieval soil. In structure, in intended effect, it has more in common with medieval than Renaissance concerns. Its audience is not, to begin with aristocratic or learned; nor is it limited to the new middle class. The illusion of factuality that fiction tried and often still tries to create, lying to entertain and at the same time morally to instruct and exhort, means that it has much in common with allegory. Concentrating on trial, on testing character, with evidence presented and examined, it relates also to medieval verse debates and dialogues and early theater, the mystery and miracle plays. It is more serious in its intentions than romance, which supplied the pleasure but only a specialized form of moral uplift. In formal terms it owes little, in its early phases, to the classics or to humanism. (p. 25)

What distinguishes the novel is that it is a “new story,” reflecting its origins in Italian, but its newness does not only consist in innovations in the basic formal elements of plot, character, setting, or style. The novelty of novels is their capacity to transform the reader: we become new people. The reader’s self-understanding is transformed through the process of reading and reflecting. After reading a great novel, we are not the same persons. In the spirit of the old Protestant journals of reflection, an attractive and persuasive novel will induce us to confront our joys, our hopes, our fears, our sins, our strengths, and our weaknesses. We take an accounting and contemplate our fate, our past, and our future. We emerge from the struggle, the quest, the dance with new sense of the world and our place in it. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (UTC), published on 20 March 1850, is captivity romance, beginning in slavery and ending in emancipation, a quest to overcome monstrous injustice to achieve freedom. From the beginning, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a stunning success: The initial printing of 5,000 copies was soon exhausted, and by 1 April 1852 a second printing of 5,000 had appeared. In mid-April, Jewett announced that these two printings had been sold in two weeks and added: Three paper mills are constantly at work, manufacturing the paper, and three power presses are working twenty-four hours per day, in printing it, and more than one hundred book-binders are incessantly plying their trade to bind them, and still it has been impossible, as yet, to supply the demand. And demand did not slack off. By mid-May it was announced that fifty thousand copies had been sold, by mid-September seventy-five thousand, and by mid-October one hundred twenty thousand. (Winship, 2002, p. 314).

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We follow the journey from “slave” to “free person” and in the process, Harriet Beecher Stowe intends for her readers to free their minds of prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, and cruelty. Stowe spoke and found resonance in an America stumbling toward civil war. Moby Dick (MD) is quest or adventure romance. Beginning in fear, depression, and despair, and ending in resolution, acceptance, and calm, the hero searches for meaning and redemption. We follow the journey from “callow novice” to “chastened survivor,” and in the process Melville’s challenging story and intricate, multi-vocal narrative demands that his readers free their minds of intellectual and moral arrogance, indifference to suffering, greed, and unbounded ambition. Melville gained an audience in the wake of the cataclysm of the horrors of the industrial slaughter in the Great War. In contrast to the almost universal acclaim and approval showered on Stowe’s melodramatic romance of enslavement and emancipation, Moby Dick was almost completely ignored initially and then forgotten for nearly a century. On 18 October, the English edition, The Whale, was published in a printing of only 500 copies. On 18 October, the English edition, The Whale, was published in a printing of only 500 copies bout 1,500 copies were sold within eleven days, and then sales slowed down to less than 300 the next year. After three years the first edition was still available, almost 300 copies of which were lost when a fire broke out at the firm in December 1853. In 1855 a second printing of 250 copies was issued, in 1863 a third of 253 copies, and finally in 1871 a fourth printing of 277 copies, which sold so slowly that no new printing was ordered. Moby Dick was out of print during the last four years of Melville›s life, having sold 2,300 in its first year and a half and on average 27 copies a year for the next 34 years, totaling 3,215 copies. Melville’s earnings from the book add up to $1,260: the ₤150 advance from Bentley was equivalent to $703, and the American printings earned him $556, which was one hundred dollars less than he earned from any of his five previous books. Melville’s widow received another $81 when the United States Book Company issued the book and sold almost 1,800 copies between 1892 and 1898. (Tanselle, 1988, pp. 810–812)

So if we were to explore the reasons that a work of fiction is popular, financially successful, critically admired, and artistically influential, we might begin by observing that linguistic theories such as deconstruction would insist that these are really several inter-related but separate questions that must interrogated through specific, concrete examples. According to current approaches in Cultural Studies, any specific example would have to be acknowledged to be only an individual work that is representative of a particular culture, time period, genre, and language. Thereby, any attempt to generalize or universalize our argument would be invalid and its findings would have a highly circumscribed scope and limited application. Feminist theory would emphasis the author’s biography in order to draw attention to the privileged role men have had in educational preparation, cultural fluency, access to the marketplace, and critical acceptance as well as intergenerational prestige which

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embeds their work within the canon thereby perpetuating standards and expectations that promote and ease acceptance and rewards for subsequent generations of male authors. Modernists would seek the autonomous aesthetic qualities that reveal innovative formal expression of enduring human problems within the context of daunting and difficult historical moments that threatens disintegration and meaninglessness. Great and significant fiction for them would be that thread of Ariadne that leads us up from the dark labyrinth of despair and into the light of a new made world of fertility and community. Post-modernists would seek for the hidden collaborations between the author, the market, and regimes of oppression. They would search the seams and crevasses of the fictional structure of language, form, and meaning for the contradictions within the text that reveal the lies lurking within any and all systems of thought. These systems form the background and framework of the work of fiction and covertly claim to explain or justify the unjust institutions that uphold the current malignant and exploitative world order. A post-modernist critic might wish to expose the culture industry of late capitalism, which includes all kinds of fictional modes, film, television, music, games, and books. According to some of these theorists, these cultural products are all based on trivial entertainments, intended to disorient, distract, and disempower the consumers; and thereby, robbing them of meaningful lives and political agency, thus allowing for the perpetuation of a power elite dedicated to class dominance of the economy, racial superiority, global political hegemony based on industrial and military violence, and the repression of political change. Without delving too deeply into the implications, any one of these theoretical constructs for the two novels in questions, we can at least note that masculine adventure sagas and historical romances like the Leatherstocking Tales by J.F. Cooper and Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott were very popular in the first half of the 19thC as were the emerging genres of Gothic and Horror as represented in the work of the Bronte sisters and Poe; so, formal and genre considerations would apparently have favored Melville’s novel. However, tastes in genre were changing. UTC combined melodrama and sentimentality with social message and reformist intention—like Dickens in The Old Curiosity Shop and Oliver Twist. While the established dominant paradigm favored MD, the popularity of the emergent style provided a sympathetic audience for OTC. Furthermore, the French revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the Second Great Awakening had created a social, political, and cultural framework in which personal, spiritual, and national emancipation facilitated demands for universal suffrage and the abolition of slavery; so social and political considerations favored Stowe’s story of resistance, protest, and liberation as well. In addition, white middle-class women dominated the reading public. UTC relocated the center of power away from traditional male bastions of power—the capitol, the courts, the factories, the docks and the marketplace— to the home and the kitchen. Women became leaders and liberators. The decline in popularity for UTC, and MD’s rise, coincided with the rise of English as an academic discipline and the professionalization of writing. While

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UTC was seen as unsophisticated and naïve, direct, emotional, and earnest (all of which had contributed to the novel’s widespread popularity, its power, and its effectiveness as a revolutionary polemic), academic scholars discovered that MD was philosophical, symbolic, and formal –inspired by Shakespeare and Hawthorne. Modernist scholars and students had endured the collapse of the ancient aristocratic empires, the brutality of the unprecedented technologically enabled destruction of the war, and the failure of traditional moral and religious codes to limit or restrain hatred and cruelty unleashed by the nationalistic and racist struggles. For them and the reading public of the mid-twentieth century, MD’s complex, inter-textual structure, its moral ambiguity, its racial and religious plurality, and its brooding sense of doom represented a prophetic warning that had gone unheeded. As the second war approached, the unimaginable repetition and escalation of violence was upon them, MD embodied the struggle to confront the demons of Western, scientific, capitalist, and imperialist hubris. With time, this sense of profound insight into our society’s psychopathology has only grown to include the environmental devastation as well as racial and religious intolerance. Today, many scholars and many readers (both domestic and especially foreign) view Moby Dick as the great American novel. Our analysis has indicated that the success of a book depends on formal genre preferences by both popular, scholarly audiences as well as historical, social trends and concerns. As these change, a work’s popularity and relevance rises and falls. The intrinsic qualities of the novel as manifested in plot, character, imagery, setting, tone, and language are received and interpreted by the reading public according to broader issues of social and political relevance and aesthetic resonance. A great and beautiful work can be rejected by publishers or languish unread by an audience that is unprepared to accept its methods, values, and style. Novelists, poets, and non-fiction writers need to be aware of the dominant discourse of their field, the leading scholars who guide judgment and taste, the popular as well as the elite opinions of exemplary work in their area. They should become and remain aware of the complexities of our rapidly evolving religious, moral, social, political, technological, economic, and natural environment, in order to address the taste and concerns of their audience, and to see where and how significant artistic innovation is possible. Perhaps, ultimately all writers write for themselves, but as we learn more about ourselves, our society and the natural world we often want to write to a purpose. Academic literacy can help us explore, explain, and change our world through more persuasive argument and focused attention to our audience and their demands. In this brief analysis, I have attempted to illustrate the character of academic writing and to demonstrate the potential benefit literary analysis can offer to creative writers. I have employed theory and evidence that explore and explain an important artistic and cultural issue in order to promote greater awareness of the complex interaction between art, the individual, and society. With this awareness,

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I believe all writers can produce more successful, more pleasurable, and more meaningful work. REFERENCES Bechdel, A. (2006). Fun home: A family tragicomic. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Brewton, V. (n.d.). Literary theory. Retrieved from www.iep.utm.edu/literary Eugenides, J. (2011). The marriage plot. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Melville, H. (1988). In Moby-Dick, or, the whale: The writings of Herman Melville (Vol. 6), H. Harrison, H. Parker, & G. Tanselle (Eds.). Chicago IL: Northwestern University Press. Melville, H., & Tanner, T. (1998). Moby Dick. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Melville, H., & Thomas, T. (1983). Redburn, his first voyage; White-jacket, or, The world in a man-of-war; Moby Dick, or, The whale. New York, NY: Literary Classics of the United States. Novel. (2015). In Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/ Schmidt, M. (2014). The novel: A biography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Simic, C. (1994). The unemployed fortune-teller: Essays and memoirs. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Tanselle, G. T. (1988). Editorial appendix. In H. Harrison, H. Parker, & G. Tanselle (Eds.), Moby-Dick, or, the whale: The writings of Herman Melville (Vol. 6, pp. 763–953). Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press. Stowe, H., & Yellin, J. (1998). Uncle Tom’s cabin. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Winship, M. (2002). “The greatest book of its kind”: A publishing history of Uncle Tom’s cabin. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society.

CHAPTER 9

ACADEMIC WRITING Expanding Your Creative Writing Through Use of the Library Janet Walsh

Libraries are unique treasure troves that allow creative writers to expand their literary and professional reach through creativity, community, and entrepreneurship. They offer extreme value through visibility, awareness, location, usage, and exchange. Long gone are the days when libraries were just buildings for holding books. Today, libraries remain active hubs for all intellectual, creative, and social expansion. Each city, county, and local government library serves humanity. As the American Library Association asserts, public libraries are dynamic and versatile community centers (American Library Association, 2014). Public libraries and academic libraries received more than 1.5 billion in person visits in 2015, and over 2.2 billion materials were circulated (American Library Association, 2014). Libraries that serve the public exist in municipalities and colleges all over the country. College and university libraries also serve the academy and surrounding communities. These facilities make enormous resources, past and present, available to patrons and students and often occupy space conducive to productivity for Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 77–81. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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writers. In general, many state-supported institutions make resources available to residents of that state. With this unlimited access, an author has many options for supporting academic writing. While most libraries market and promote resources that are currently available, they often expand exposure to materials beyond the library, including the works of published authors. With record onsite and virtual usage of libraries, academic writing has an additional layer of provision and opportunity to expand written work through the library. Library decision-makers are not fully aware that library users are able to read, gather, and share information from phones, tablets, and automobiles. Libraries allow discovery through both physical and virtual space. Any series of activities including journaling, reading, research, and creative brainstorming sessions may occur in conjunction with normal and structured writing routines. Uniquely qualified to partner with a variety of resources and people, libraries promote scholarship, stewardship, and usership from the academy to the community (Farkas, 2013). These same libraries serve as authoritative references of catalog and collection, content stewardship, content delivery, and public venues. All of these disparate collections help build the narratives that will support and give weight to creative works. Consider the fact that Instagram, boasts of handling 75 million photographs a day (Mon, 2015). It is also noted by Mon that nearly one billion Facebook users are writing, sharing, and blogging as online journalists, spectators, and participants. Google also contributes to information activity considering over 3.5 billion google searches are done daily (Internet Live Stats, 2015). As we continue to write above and beyond the information overload that exists, libraries synergize all components as place, space, and central repository for expanding the writing lens. The connections between academic writing and creative writing has rarely fallen far from the reach of authors. Many famous authors have sat, written, and researched in libraries to formulate the voice of social, cultural, economic, and creative freedom. Ray Bradbury notes, “I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library” (Bradbury, n. d.). At the end of 10 years, Bradbury had read every book in the library and had written a thousand stories (Steinhauer, 2009). August Wilson was a steady patron at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The very space influenced his expansion and creativity. Lauded for his efforts, Wilson was awarded the first degree ever from a library (Public Broadcasting System (PBS), 2015). Libraries will always augment academic writing through creativity, community, innovation, and entrepreneurial pursuits. Enhancing creativity through the use of libraries includes play and expression. There are several ways that authors can enhance creativity through use of the libraries and engagement of play to stimulate such creativity. Creative models in libraries include a balance of work and play. Play consistently energizes, engages, and motivates its participants (Anderson, 1994). Several creative artists

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and scientists such as Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used play to stimulate cognitive ability and production output (Mainemelis & Ronson, 2006). Many libraries across the country offer various modes of Play for creative inspiration. Rutgers University introduced a space of creative inspiration through the Art Library Lego Playing Station. The Art Library Lego Playing Station was created to stimulate creativity and innovation within the Rutgers University Libraries. Lotts (2015) notes that many of the activities related to the use in academic and communal share multiple creative languages that use action, building, thinking, and creating in only a space that the library can provide. The Chicago Public library promotes creative vigor through the Chicago Public Library Maker Lab. This center offers workshops, labs, and demonstrations. Students may utilize state of the art equipment and tools to create, come together, learn, and collaborate. The tools, materials, and technologies are at their fingertips (Edwards et al., 2015). Participants overwhelming showed a mapped outcome of creativity after participating with the Maker Lab. Collaborative spaces in the library also offer a creative boost for academic writing through the connections with the community. Pomerantz and Marchionini (2007) applaud libraries as one of the few places on the planet that link people to ideas and each other. In public libraries, decreasing budgets provide opportunities for the library to serve as conduit for inspiring creativity and inspiration for patrons. A deluge of traditional social activities that often happened only outside the library now take place in the library. Academic writers now find a plethora of art, literature, and music within community with others. A diverse offering of programing is now concentrated within the single library universe, and the community of followers add to the rich experience. The writer must not look far to uncover several of the goals of library services: libraries as community builders, libraries as community centers for diverse populations, libraries as centers for the arts, and libraries as universities (Edwards, Rauseo, & Unger, 2013). Finally, libraries and librarians expand academic writing through support of the entrepreneurial pursuits of writers. While most libraries and librarians utilize recommendations from professional journals and magazines, some do not include small presses or self-published works. Libraries purchase books for adults, young adults, children, and special readers. They also purchase newspapers and magazines, reference sources, scholarly journals, electronic resources, and various formats including streaming and digital downloads. Libraries offer a space on shelves, a place for lectures and book talks, and they give free publicity and promotion of authors’ work. Librarians generally rely on pre-publication book reviews or vendor lists, where self-published authors are rarely reviewed or included. Most libraries, both public and academic, support a number of local authors. This support is often given by way of book purchases or local-author spotlight. With the abundance of books being written per year, a library is a great place to share resources with a librarian. They will often consult with writers regarding

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the steps and process for getting books in a library or location. Once established, they also can suggest a series of author events that have worked really well and planning materials and support to work efficiently. Once a book event is planned, most libraries have a marketing or promotion department that help get the word out about published works and upcoming publications via the library’s website, blog, email list, or social media pages. Libraries are mystical places, ideal for academic writing and focus. Novice and advanced writers should consider these ten methods for making the best use of libraries. 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

Secure a public library card to gain access to print materials available at the library, national resources via Interlibrary Loan, and electronic databases, e-Books, videos, music, and movies from many sources. Subscribe to the mailing list of your local public and academic library for ongoing scheduling and updates of free workshops, tutorials, lectures, and creative play opportunities. Participate in training on library resources to insure that you are competent with tools and resources before you need them. Many workshops are offered virtually and monthly at your local libraries. Connect with a librarian. They are often aware of information that might not be publicized but details that might enhance your academic writing. Host a book event or writing workshop or host a public talk at your local public or academic library. Browse the literal or virtual shelves. Learn and discover something new often at the library. Read leisurely in areas of knowledge scarcity and expanding proficiency. Utilize space. Most libraries have individual and group spaces that you can use daily at no charge to write, create, and brainstorm. Utilize personal information shoppers. Schedule time and consultations with librarians, who offer people capital to aid you in finding information, quickly, conveniently, and relevantly. Volunteer at library locations and events to remain visible and in the loop. REFERENCES

American Library Association. (2014). Public libraries. Retrieved from http://www.ala. org/news/state-americas-libraries-report-2014/public-libraries Anderson, J. V. (1994). Creativity and play: A systematic approach to managing innovation. Business Horizons 37(2), 80–85. Bradbury, R. (n. d.). Ray Bradbury quotes. Retrieved from http://www.brainyquote.com/ quotes/quotes/r/raybradbur412203.htm Edwards, J. B., Rauseo, M. S., & Unger, K. R. (2013). Community centered: 23 reasons why your library is the most important place in town. Public Libraries Chicago Public Library Association, 50(5), 42–47.

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Farkas, M. (2013). Open access everything: Libraries are making scholarship accessible to all. American Libraries, 24. Retrieved from http://americanlibrariesmagazine. org/2013/12/23/open-access-everything/ Internet Live Stats. (2015). Google search statistics—Internet live stats. Retrieved from http://www.internetlivestats.com/ Lotts, M. (2015). Lego play: Implementing a culture of creativity and making in the academic Library. ACRL Conference Proceedings (pp. 409–418). Portland, Oregon. Retrieved from: http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/ confsandpreconfs/2015/ACRL2015_A.pdf Mainemelis, C., & Ronson, S. (2006). Ideas are born in fields of play: Towards a theory of play and creativity in organizational settings. Research in Organizational Behavior, 27(1), 81–131. Mon, L. M. (2015). Social media and library services. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers. Public Broadcasting System (PBS). (2015). August Wilson: The ground on which I stand. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/august-wilsonthe-ground-on-which-i-stand/biography-and-timelime/3683/ Pomerantz, J., & Marchionini, G. (2007). The digital library as place. Journal of Documentation, 63(4), 505–533. Steinhauer, J. (2009). A literary legend fights for a local library. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/20ventura.html

SECTION 4 WRITING AS A BUSINESS

CHAPTER 10

SPEAKING YOUR TRUTH Freedom and Authority in an Era of Independent Publishing Candy Paull

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. —Martha Graham You do not need a Master’s degree or a literary agent or a New York publisher to give you the authority to write and publish today. With emerging self-publishing options, writers have more ways to reach audiences than ever. Going through traditional gatekeepers is no longer the only path to publishing work that comes from the heart. But even as we enjoy greater freedom to publish, the inner gatekeepers of our own doubts and fears often stop us from creating the work we long to do. We hesitate to write, wondering if it is arrogant to imagine we have something worthwhile to share. Writers still need to give themselves permission to trust their deepest Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 85–93. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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instincts and speak their inner truth, whether it is the story that has been set aside in a drawer or a message that emerges from their own life experiences. It’s a both/and, not an either/or world now. You have the power to explore creative options, be open to new possibilities, trust the process, and nourish a writing career that comes from the heart. There are many resources available to help you make the best choices in today’s evolving publishing paradigm. You can embrace the best of traditional publishing and new innovations in self-publishing to bring your work to readers. And you can reach people with your message in new ways. You get what you focus your energies on. So instead of imagining impossibilities—all the reasons you can’t be a successful writer—imagine the possibilities. Think about what could be, not just what has been or what isn’t. Dare to dream and then be willing to commit to making that dream come true. As Ralph Waldo Emerson (n. d.) said, No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you. (para. 1)

Every great artist knows that creating something fresh requires an open mind and a willingness to try something new. In the beginner’s mind, there are endless possibilities. In the mind of the expert, there are a limited number of answers. Instead of basing your decisions on what you know of the past, explore unknown possibilities. Break out of the box of old limitations and approach life with the attitude that you are a beginner and can learn something new. There are no “wrong” answers in the creative process. Often, it is the “mistakes” that lead to a new way of seeing, a new way of approaching our work. Each book I have written has a life of its own. I wrote my first book, The Art of Abundance, for publication with a traditional publisher in 1997. It was an experimental book in a new format. Though it did well in the marketplace (it went on to sell over 100,000 hardcover copies in two editions) getting the next deal was no picnic. Agents came and went. Publishing opportunities made it seem as if I would finally land with a publisher who would nurture my career. Instead, a book might come out, but the timing for the market was not right, so the publisher was not interested in signing another project. One agent would not return my phone calls. One publisher who signed my book was bought out and another publisher picked up the project, excited to bring it to market. But a big publisher bankruptcy in the marketplace disrupted the entire industry, and my publisher got caught in the wake of that particular Titanic, as it sank and swamped the other smaller boats around it. My publisher declared bankruptcy less than a month after my book was released. It took me a year to get my rights back. More opportunities. More gains and losses. More challenges and setbacks. A new agent, a new deal with a respected New York publisher, and some sales, but not enough to create career momentum. More rejections. My agent could not sell my work in a shrinking market. She was a great agent and put it in my contract

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that I would automatically get my rights back if the publisher put published works out of print. After the financial crash, my publisher remaindered books and returned my rights. My agent dropped me. I thought my career had ended with a whimper. Little did I know that I would have the ability to take advantage of the new e-book self-publishing revolution because most of my copyrights were now my own. I have royalties come in every single month, even if they are small. My free e-book has been downloaded by over 200,000 readers. A publisher came looking for me and paid me an advance for a project. I have business backers who believe in my potential. There are still challenges and setbacks, but there is more hope and possibility than I could have imagined back when I depended on playing by the old rules. Whether you are building a professional career or just concentrating on writing a current project, there is no predictable plan with guaranteed outcome. Not for new writers and not for old pros. Though I once wrote with a marketplace in mind, I now write with more dependence on inner guidance. I follow my instincts and listen to my heart. I see that the projects I loved doing have become my most valuable copyrights. In the process, I drew on a deep inner wisdom that teaches me through the act of writing. In fact, I am still working on applying the wisdom from pages I wrote years ago. When I write, I write more wisely than I know at the time I am writing. As I look back on my work, I see that there is a sure thread of insight weaving through my work that anticipated my future spiritual growth. Something wants to be birthed through me. It is up to me to nurture that sense of aliveness that wants to become a book. In the words of Paul Klee (n. d.), “Each should follow where the pulse of his heart leads” (para. 1). I also remember that when I was writing my early books for publishers, I was struggling with the limitations of dogma and doctrine, trying to find my way through the labyrinth of questions and changes and challenges to old belief systems. The world I knew then is not the world I know now. The rules I was trying so hard to follow back then are now broken, discarded, or have morphed into something less legalistic and more about living from the heart. Even if I wanted to play by the old rules, the game has changed, and in most cases you get to make up your own rules as you go along. Might as well follow your heart and create something you love. You may be fascinated by a subject or viewpoint that current audiences are not comfortable hearing about. Trust your fascination, not the reviews of past work or the limited views of a certain audience. Continue to honor your current audience by doing good work, but realize that boredom or frustration is a sign that you are ready to expand your horizons and move into new creative territory. I spent years writing for clients, and I always gave my best to the work, even if the project differed from my personal passion. I learned to write on deadline and to write with excellence. I grew as a writer and as a person because I worked

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on projects for other people that covered a variety of subjects that I would have never otherwise explored. It was a writer’s boot camp, and I am a better writer for having done that. But I cannot do that anymore. What I could say in those old projects was often limited by the prejudices and preconceptions of the market I was talking to. I was told, “You can’t use that word, quote that person, speak that thought.” Because I was outgrowing a belief system that had nurtured me and was the basis of my marketplace, I was afraid to admit that I no longer agreed with the assumptions of many of my clients and readers. For a long time, I was cautious about really saying what I meant for fear of offending someone. I visualized the resistance and criticism that would arise, so I stayed “safe” by refusing to risk revealing the real me. I was cautious and conservative and grew angry when that very caution and conservatism seemed to limit my options. I was unhappy about taking any risks because I was afraid that my more conservative colleagues would read something I had published and decide that I was too “liberal” for their audience. I did not know it at the time, but I was freer to pursue my passions than I was allowing myself to be. It was not the clients who were holding me back. It was not the conservative worldview of longtime friends and colleagues that limited my personal explorations. It was my own doubts and fears, my own concern about what others would think, and my own diffidence about truly giving myself to new ideas and experiences. I did not trust my own instincts and gave my power and authority away to others. Joseph Chilton Pearce (n. d.) notes, “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong” (para. 1). Eventually one must grow or die. I began to do more writing for myself instead of arguing with the inner critics I heard in my head. I decided to invest more time on my own creative projects and to explore new markets in places where others were asking the same questions and feeling the same need for different ideas and fresh insights. As I began to draw from the new ideas and resources of other faith traditions, I learned to appreciate the tradition I came from. But I now had a richer understanding and a wider perspective. As I discovered new concepts, my faith grew and so did my craftsmanship. By being more honest with myself, I became more open with my readers. The truth was, I had never really hidden my inner spiritual evolution, I had only learned to use simpler words and avoided jargon or “trigger words” that got in the way of expressing myself clearly. My writing was strengthened because of the challenges of learning to state my own truth—and in becoming the first person to take my own thoughts and feelings seriously. Even those who preferred a more conservative worldview and disagreed with me acknowledged that my writing had excellence and value. Instead of worrying about being wrong or having to defend myself, I began to nurture the artist in me who wanted to break out of conventional thinking and embrace new ways of being.

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David Whyte (n. d.) wrote, The more you discover your true work and give time to it, the more you are unearthing your gift. And as you do that, you will notice that people want it; they want the aliveness you carry, because that is our true gift to each other and the world: our joy. What could be more spiritual than the sharing of joy? (para. 11)

I have discovered this: If I follow my deepest intuition in my writing, it will prove to be true over the long run, and by giving myself permission to stretch and explore, I am more likely to create something that is lasting, and that speaks to others on a deeper level. I know this because the books I have written still speak to me, and surprise me again with insights I didn’t even realize what I had known back then. Every book I write is another chance to explore new ideas, to stretch and learn. Each act of creation begins with questions, chaos, and emptiness. You may have a mental picture of the finished work of art at the beginning, or just a small spark of an idea that catches your heart and connects you emotionally to the act of creation. Like any journey, whether meticulously mapped-out or launched on a whim, the creative journey starts with that first step into the unknown. Begin— and see where the work leads you. True courage resides in the trembling heart that is afraid to try but tries anyway. It takes courage to stand for your convictions when the crowd urges you to compromise. Believe that your opinions count. Understand that if you have a deep urge to write, that it is important that you follow that urge. Believe that it is your calling from a Higher Power. Choose what is most meaningful for you, whether others agree or disagree. Make choices that honor your own possibilities, especially in difficult and demanding times. As William Butler Yeats (2015) exclaimed, “Throw fuel on the fire at the center of your being, and the fire will take you where you want to go” (para. 1). Evaluate your career choices in light of what you love. Set a goal that lifts your heart with anticipation. Focus on something that makes you happy to be who you are. Evaluate your present goals. Are they consistent with your innate gifts and talents? Do you see them as fulfilling your priorities and life purpose? Give yourself permission to experiment and try out new ideas and creative projects. Express yourself. Admit that you have a fascination for bugs, that the tango drives you wild, that the retro mid mod world of the 1950s has deep appeal, and that you long for more color and excitement in your life—and in your writing. Be bold and daring. Have fun. Feel free to go over the top. Do not worry about making mistakes. Let yourself enjoy being playful. Pay attention to what delights your heart and makes you feel good inside. Take your own dreams seriously enough to make them a priority. Yes, take care of business and all the life “stuff” but also make time to do creatively satisfying projects that make you happy. Those are the real gold.

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A writing friend who was gaining success with his first book once marveled at what could happen when you say yes, even in a small way, to what you love. He said that he had discovered that the things that were most unique about him, the things he felt most vulnerable about, were exactly the things that made his writing and career work. It was when he allowed himself to be who he really was instead of trying to be what he thought others thought he should be that the whole thing clicked for him and he found career success. As May (n. d.) contends, “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself” (para. 1). Times of chaos and change may be perceived as overwhelming crises or as opportunities for self-reinvention. The book-publishing industry is facing the same challenges as the music industry did a few years ago. Traditional publishing used to be the only game in town. Now a new paradigm is emerging, offering opportunity in turbulent times. I have been involved in the publishing industry in one form or another most of my adult life. Now the form is changing in these transformational times. I spent over twenty years writing marketing materials and creating special projects for book publishers, as well as building my career as an author and songwriter/ artist/singer. The bottom fell out of my copywriting business with the crash of 2008. The paradigm shifted in publishing. The financial meltdown accelerated the change, but it had been building for a long time. Now undreamed of freedoms and opportunities are transforming the landscape, and writers are claiming their creative and career power in new ways. The traditional publishing paradigm was based on a short-term “produce” model: throw a book at the wall and see if it sticks, then let it go out of print to make way for the next gambling chip in a casino marketplace. Much money was invested in product creation, but the model only measured immediate results. Authors shared grim jokes about yogurt being on the grocery shelf longer than their books were available in bookstores. Only a rare few books created the ongoing backlist, which, up until ten years ago, was the backbone of the publishing industry. Today’s book industry, with its constant search for the instant bestseller, offers more and more throwaway and celebrity titles and less substance. The digital revolution is changing that. With the unlimited shelf space of the online world, that model is being turned upside down. Now e-books and print-ondemand can exist forever—giving plenty of time for building an audience through branding and relationships, and books are always updatable when new information and insight become available. Writers have many choices, and they are constantly evolving. If you are willing to take ownership of your writing career, you can create what your heart is calling you to write. You have choices that were never available previously. It is no longer necessary to write to a market pitch to agents or publishers or lock yourself into a traditional (and often draconian) publishing deal. Neither are you obligated to become a self-publishing maven or create your own mini-publishing empire. You are free

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to follow your own interests, your inner guidance, and the way the process wants to unfold. For some, a traditional publishing deal might be the way to go. For others, self-publishing offers the freedom to write what you want, as often as you want, and publish it in any form that suits your fancy, provided you are willing to do the work required. The “hybrid” author follows a both/and career path. You are the one who chooses. No gatekeeper can stop you from creating projects that express what is important to you. Your inner critic is the only gatekeeper who will stop you from daring to do what you love. Remember the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson (2001), “By doing his work he makes the need felt which he can supply, and creates the taste by which he is enjoyed” (para 26). Every book I write is another chance to explore new ideas, to stretch, and to learn. I create something of value for myself and for others who are ready to hear what I have to say. It does not matter how many books I have written. Each book is like the first one all over again. I never know what is going to come through, I just have to start writing and see where it leads. That may mean I will startle myself and be uncomfortable with the insight on the page. But I must serve the work if I wish to create something worthwhile. I must trust that inner instinct and follow where it leads. Ditto with packaging, publishing, and marketing that creative work. You cannot navigate by the “rules” any more. You have to do your research and follow your instincts. Dare to honor your best self in your creative work and business life. Do not worry about justifying your choices. Be brave. Just gently trust your deeper instincts, follow the passion of your heart. Honor the boundaries and needs of clients and colleagues, but also be true to your own beliefs. Challenge yourself creatively. Trust that if something fascinates you, it is a form of guidance leading you to work that expresses your best self. Let your heart lead the way. And enjoy writing, publishing, and creating in this exciting new world of publishing. As Judy Garland (n. d.) advises, “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else” (para. 1). Likewise, Pablo Picasso (2009) notes, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” The words of Carl Jung (1996) support this advice, “Whatever you do, if you do it sincerely, will eventually become a bridge to your wholeness, a good ship that carries you through the darkness” (para. 26), as does the statement of Søren Kierkegaard (n. d.), who notes, “It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities. A possibility is a hint from God” (para. 1). Finally, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (n. d.) and Robert Mallet (n. d.) note that “The man born with a talent which he is meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it,” (para. 1) and “It is not impossibilities which have filled us with the deepest despair, but possibilities which we have failed to realize (para. 1).

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SELF-PUBLISHING RESOURCES Here is a list of trustworthy online resources for understanding the new publishing paradigm. They offer perspective on the evolution of publishing, both traditional and independent. The better educated you are about the options and opportunities, the better decisions you will make. I offer more links on Resources page on my Links, Information, and Resources Website: http://www.candypaull. com/helpful-information. Here are some suggested resources: 1.

2.

3.

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Secrets to Publishing Success by Mark Coker. The latest information on ebook publishing basics from Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords. The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success reveals the best practices of the most commercially successful self-published ebook authors. This ebook is a must-read for every writer, author, publisher, and literary agent. Learn over 25 best practices you can implement today at no cost. These secrets will help you become a more professional, more successful writer and publisher. Joanna Penn: Author 2.0 Blueprint. A strong blog for writers who want to learn how to succeed in the ever-evolving digital book market. Download her free Author 2.0 Blueprint for expert guidance on publishing your own book. The Passive Voice. I read this blog daily. An intellectual property attorney (aka Passive Guy) collects some of the best online for those interested in self-publishing and the book industry. Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Go to her business resources for some of the best and most trustworthy information on the self-publishing revolution. I recommend reading her publishing industry series for a greater understanding of how publishing worked then (5-10 years ago) and how publishing works now (including publishing without a traditional publisher). Dean Wesley Smith. Married to Kris Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith offers even more insight on the publishing business and succeeding in this new paradigm. Check out his series on Think Like a Publisher and Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. REFERENCES

Emerson, R. (n. d.). Ralph Waldo Emerson. Retrieved from http://www.azquotes.com/ quote/1277422 Emerson, R. (2001). Spiritual laws. Retrieved from http://www.emersoncentral.com/spirituallaws.htm Klee, P. (n. d.). Paul Klee “ on modern art.” Retrieved from http://www.paintersandpoets. com/2012/09/paul-klee-on-modern-art.html Garland, J. (n. d.) Judy Garland quotes. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/ quotes/5466-always-be-a-first-rate-version-of-yourself-and-not

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Garland, J (n. d.). Judy Garland quotes. Retrieved from http://www.brainyquote.com/ quotes/quotes/j/judygarlan104276.html Graham, M. (n. d.). Martha Graham quotes. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/ author/quotes/47790.Martha_Graham Jung, C. (1996). Treasury of spiritual wisdom. Retrieved from http://www.worldcat.org/ wcpa/servlet/org.oclc.lac.ui.DialABookServlet?oclcnum=33131643 Kierkegaard, S. (n.d). A quote by Soren Aabye Kierkegaard. Retrieved from http://blog. gaiam.com/quotes/authors/soren-kierkegaard/43182 1 Mallet, R. (n. d.). Robert Mallet quotes. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/311176.Robert_Mallet May, R. (n. d.) Rollo May quotes. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/ quotes/874843-if-you-do-not-express-your-own-original-ideas-if Pearce, J. (n. d.). Joseph Chilton Pearce quotes. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads. com/quotes/30290-to-live-a-creative-life-we-must-lose-our-fear 1 Picasso, P. (2009). Pablo Picasso. Retrieved from https://simple.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso Whyte, D. (n. d.). Trust your instincts to help your business evolve. Retrieved from https:// www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140416224124-50527730-trust-your-instincts-to-helpyour-business-evolve 11 Yeats, W. (2015). When you are old. Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/ poem/1720551

CHAPTER 11

IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER Carissa Barker-Stucky

In the world of self-publishing, authors are finding increasingly simple ways to present their writing to an audience. If one can market a work correctly, then the hassles of finding a literary agent or publishing house are nonexistent. However, even with this rise of independence in writers, one should not forget a very important step in the quest for publication: an editor. Novel writers are not alone in this need. Whether your project is a book, a dissertation, or a blog, all forms of writing deserve a proper professional edit. Allowing an editor to smooth things over has several benefits: it adds a touch of professionalism, a dash of credibility, and improves overall reader experience. Mistakes within any form of writing can instantly jar a reader, or downright confuse her. I remember a time when I was reading a book, and a piece of dialogue was attributed to the wrong character. I was so confused that I had to stop the story and investigate what I had just read. Another example was one of my editing tasks—a dissertation student whose grammar was so terrible that his advisor refused to pass the draft to the panel until he found someone to edit the work. The student needed this degree to maintain his current career. Not having an editor, could have cost him a graduate degree and, in turn, his job. However, editing is not just about finding errors like the aforementioned cases. For creative writing, such as novels or flash fiction, I also make sure the plot flows well, the characters make sense—be they round or flat, and things are eiEnhancing Writing Skills, pages 95–100. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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ther resolved or purposefully unresolved. When I was going through my Master’s program, I always looked forward to peer critiques. We would give the rest of the class a copy of our story, and then a week later we would hear what everyone thought about it. Did this make sense, did that make sense? Why did this happen? Something felt like it was missing. Why do I care about this character? I couldn’t stop crying over this character. By trusting your work to nine other people, you discover things that you may not have noticed. They can be simple things, like name selection (When you said “Adam and Steve,” I wasn’t thinking the story would be about twins...), or large issues like plot holes (But why was he so concerned about that going missing?). In regards to business and academic writing, I make sure thought processes are easy to understand and ensure a professional tone throughout the piece. I adjust tense, smooth sentences, and ensure that the necessary format and style rules are followed. Although I only recently made editing my full-time career, I have worked as an editor on various projects for several years. I have seen many things from roundabout sentences to verbatim repetitions—not to mention the everyday typo. As a writer, I have been guilty of several such mistakes in my own work. Seeking an editor does not signal a lack of grammatical knowledge or a lower intelligence—it shows that you are wise enough to realize a fresh set of eyes would benefit your work. A FRESH SET OF EYES: THE OBJECTIVE EDITOR Many authors quail at the thought of hiring an editor. Their blood, sweat, tears, and life have gone into their manuscript—surely they know what is best for it, what should remain and what should go? However, this very thought process proves the opposite. By hiring an editor, the author is bringing in a fresh set of eyes. For professional writing, the editor should have a basic understanding of the topic—important terms and information—to ensure that data lines up correctly. For a creative piece, the editor should be someone who is not familiar with the content, who can notice something is missing that the author’s mind may automatically fill in, or find typos that the author subconsciously corrects. Take as an example my experience editing a novel. There was a scene in which the protagonist, who worked at a bar, was assisting a drunken customer. To help the customer, the protagonist got her a basket of fries—except that in the manuscript it was a basket of fires. Imagine how that would have changed the story! The author had spent so much time polishing the chapter that her mind automatically supplied “fries” where “fires” hid in plain sight. Only when she sought an editor was the typo caught. Believe me: I understand where you’re coming from. As much as I love taking other people’s stories and cleaning them up, I have a hard time handing off my own works. I get butterflies in my stomach and my hands shake. What if they don’t like it? What if I made a huge mistake? Should I just scrap the story all together? What if they don’t understand this plot device, and I’m not as clever as I thought?

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A portion of that nervousness is valid—not everyone will understand the quirks in your writing. However, most editors are wise enough to understand that there is a certain amount of artistic license in writing. We will wait to hear you out before making you adjust something. After all, our job is not to make the author feel good or bad about himself; our task is to polish the manuscript and help the author ensure the work is complete. On the flip side, taking the plunge and handing off your work ensures clarity. We approach your work from a unique perspective: an equal mix of reader and teacher. An editor will look at the piece as a whole but also at each individual line. Nothing escapes us: grammatical or contextual. We can help you spot consistent errors in your work and assist in their correction; we can also tell you if the plot works, if a character fits, or if a certain mood comes across. Perhaps you are writing nonfiction, attempting to get a point across (say, an article on why editing is important)—an editor can make sure the lesson will be understood. Maybe you are writing an academic piece and need assistance using the proper tense or voice, or you know what your writing weakness is (run-on sentences, split infinitives, improper citations, etc.) and just need someone to help adjust your content. Some of my clients speak English as a second language and just want someone to make sure their writing makes sense. Whatever your needs may be, editors are there to help. PROFESSIONALISM AND CREDIBILITY: THE AUTHOR, THE EDITOR, AND THE WORK Some authors dislike the idea of an editor for reasons besides having to trust their work to the hands of another. There is an unspoken stigma, a negative connotation to the job. This person will be a critic, they say to themselves. Somewhere along the line, “Editor” became synonymous with “Negative Feedback,” and that just is not the case— at least, not if you have found an editor who acts in a professional manner. While an editor does provide feedback, said feedback should be in the form of constructive criticism. Anytime I find something that requires attention, I point it out in a polite manner and help the author through correcting it. In addition to maintaining a positive look on the issues, I also make a point to comment on the successes. An air of professionalism should persist between author and editor. After all, if you do not feel you can respect the person, then how do you know you can respect their advice? Hiring an editor requires more than looking at their resume. You will be working very closely with this person, entrusting your manuscripts to this person. You will also be paying this person. When searching for an editor, get into a conversation. You want to get a feel for their turn-around time, their experience, their qualifications, etc. Going with an established editor may not be the right path for you; it could be she is too expensive or does not have enough one-on-one time available. Conversely, you may decide that an amateur editor is too much of a risk. The more specific you are, the sooner you will find an editor to fit your needs.

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Questions I like to have answered before I agree to a job include the following: what type of writing is it—article, novel, dissertation?; for creative writing, what is the genre?; for academic writing, what is the topic?; how many pages is it?; what is it about?; are you going to self-publish or send it somewhere?; what is your deadline?; and are you working within a budget? All of these questions help determine whether or not I am a good fit for the writer’s needs. Once a client and I have worked out the details, we can get started on smoothing out the work. A smooth-flowing manuscript does more than lead the reader from one thought to the next. Proper grammar, smooth flow, and a clean read also add credibility to the work. Imagine that you are writing an article with the hopes of publishing in a high-end research journal—if someone is reading the article but she realizes that every other word is misspelled, do you think she will still print it? Short answer: no. Long answer: if it is a good topic, she will send it back and recommend you send it to an editor. Even in creative writing, multiple typos and mistakes can draw away from the power of the manuscript. If a reader feels like reading a paragraph is akin to walking on LEGOs, then he will not continue. You could have written the next Harry Potter, but no one would finish it to know. No one expects your work to be perfect (though that would be nice), but every typo, jarring or unbelievable moment, or strange shift slowly works down the reader’s fuse. Some readers are more forgiving then others, but everyone has her limits. How an audience perceives your work can make or break your career. THE REACTIVE AUDIENCE: AN UNFORGIVING SOCIETY A meme has been going around Facebook lately. On the picture is a pair of flipflops made out of keyboards with the caption “how [author] wrote [book.]” The author’s name and the book’s title change, but the message is the same—be careful how you write, for you risk unleashing the trolls. While the example is extreme, the message is not. A lack of editing can mean far more than a few mistakes in your final manuscript. Today’s audience has a wide variety of outlets for their thoughts. The internet is a hive of activity and reviews, and you want to make sure yours are good ones. In the past, mistakes passed by more quietly. It may be a reader found an old novel and decided they did not care for your style, but if you wrote something else more popular, then it easily gained steam. These days, the Ghosts of Career-Past are simmering in someone’s hard drive, just waiting for you to try again. Instead of vowing to never release your typed children to the public eye, your best defense is to take every step possible to ensure that your work is a beacon of excellence. You have written what could be the next-best breakthrough in science or the next popular Young Adult series—now you just need to make sure it is ready. A good way to think of it is through imagining the stages of metamorphosis. You start with the idea, the egg. It hatches into your first draft, the larval stage. Working with an editor is like the pupae stage—keeping the manuscript

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under wraps, working closely with your editor to bring out the beauty. Finally, you release the adult-stage work to the world to think of it what they will. While there is no escaping every troll—the term in itself refers to someone who likes being antagonistic—you can face them with confidence. In the realms of business and academia, audience reactions take on another light. Research projects contain more than just the time you spent writing: hours of work and cartons of data rest between each character typed. You have more to convey than a story—facts and results, processes, and recommendations. Your audience could be peers or faculty. You have something to prove to them, and you want to do it to your best ability. Hiring an editor to smooth over and clarify your work will ensure that your audience can focus on the points in your paper. You not only want your points to come across clearly but also want your data to be delivered clearly. A single misplaced comma or parenthesis can misconstrue important information. Similarly, communications for business purposes need to be concise and error-free. Whether you are delivering a report or completing a set of instructions, clarity and tone are key aspects. If you run a small business, then you want to be taken seriously; if you are within a large corporation, then you want to improve your chances of a positive review. Regardless of who makes up your audience, a smooth thought process and clean grammar will improve your chances for making a good impression. You want to be able to feel confident in your work, knowing you have taken the necessary steps before releasing it. The more easily understood your writing is, the more likely a reader is to return for more. FINAL THOUGHTS Many authors, myself included, are tied heart-and-soul to their work. While some might take this as an excuse to not trust anyone else with their work, others realize the truth—we need to do what is best for our manuscript. This includes getting an editor. If your writing is comparable to your child, then imagine that the editor is their teacher; while the majority of raising and caring for the project rests with you, the editor helps to shape it and prepare it for the real world. Even so, there are more benefits to hiring an editor than simply finalizing your project. By coming to know your editor, you open new doors through the magic of networking. In this sense, “networking” is a business term for surrounding yourself with opportunity. Perhaps you need to find an illustrator for a new project—ask your editor if they have any recommendations. Or you may find that your editor contacts you to see if you can suggest a good self-publishing format for another client. I make a point to recommend people I trust when there is a task I cannot complete for a client. The further my career progresses, the more people I meet or introduce to others. Some editors can do more than simply proofread your work. We can help you work past a block in your writing. Your editor is someone with whom you can discuss your writing and not have to worry about spoilers. Just like when we are

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proofing something, we can look at your work objectively and give you an honest opinion. Your manuscript does not have to be complete for you to seek assistance. Some projects, like dissertations and capstones, go easier if you send drafts to an editor. That way each draft is concise and issues do not stack up. I had one client who sent me drafts of her capstone project over the course of several months in addition to side projects that were related such as proposals and data sheets to make sure everything coincided. Each progressive draft was better—she took my suggestions to heart, not only improving previous drafts but also progressing in her own writing ability. No project is too small or large for an editor. I have tackled projects from a short comic, to concert notes, to flash fiction, to dissertations, to novels, to hundred-page instructional books. Each author had a different reason for seeking assistance. Some were for the sake of grammar, others for feedback, still more for ESL (English as a Second Language) assistance. Whatever your reason, whatever your project, and whatever your grammar proficiency, an editor can always find ways to assist you with enhancing your writing skills.

SECTION 5 MECHANICS OF WRITING

CHAPTER 12

LIGHTNING AND THE LIGHTNING BUG Why Language Matters and How to Make It Work for You Beth Terrell

The first time it happened, I was at an Irish pub, sitting across a table from a man who had recently written his first novel. “I’m not a writer,” he said, with an unmistakable air of pride. “I’m a storyteller.” Since then, I’ve heard this phrase more times than I care to count, always with the same sense of pride, as if being a writer is something undesirable. Further questioning usually confirms this ideology. Writers, they seem to think, are pretentious, revision and editing unnecessary. All that matters is “a good story.” Let’s think about this for a moment. Have you ever actually heard a master storyteller? He chooses his words carefully. He uses a range of vocal tones, facial expressions, and gestures to enhance the listener’s experience. He’s ever conscious of the effects of his words—and the presentation of those words—on his audience. When you write a novel or a short story, your audience cannot see your face or gestures. They cannot hear your rumbling troll voice or your bleating baby goat Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 103–114. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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voice. All they have are your words. It is just as important for you to choose those words carefully as it is for the master storyteller—more so, because the words on the page must convey what the storyteller can portray with his voice, expression, and body language. The storyteller’s voice is his medium. Yours are words on the page. That, my friend, makes you a writer. It’s easy for writers to rationalize that good writing does not matter. After all, revision and editing can be difficult, confusing, and time consuming. If you have a good story idea, that should be enough, right? If you are writing only for yourself, maybe it is, but once you decide to write for an audience, even if it is only an audience of one other person, everything changes. Now it is not just about what’s fun for you. It is about what will create the best experience for your readers. Imagine this. You are sitting in a restaurant with a group of friends. “You won’t believe the day I had,” one says. He proceeds to regale you with a hilarious account of the mishaps that have characterized his day so far. His voice is strong, his words carefully chosen and cadenced. You hang on his every word, and before long, your sides are aching with laughter. Another friend pipes up. “Well . . . um . . . I had a pretty bad day too. It was, like, well, I guess I should start with the flat tire. No, actually, I guess it started at breakfast.” Painful. Your second friend’s mishaps—his story—might be just as interesting as the first’s, but you don’t get the same pleasure from listening to them. Not even close. The truth is, you are both a writer and a storyteller. That’s a good thing. Unlike the storyteller who gets one chance to deliver a master performance, you can revise and polish your story until it shines. No one has to see that messy first draft. No one needs to know how long it took to get it right. We can start with the difference between revision and editing. Revision deals with story structure and character—deepening characters and themes; adding, subtracting, or moving scenes; repairing plot holes, and so on. Editing involves correcting factual and typographical errors and improving the language. Before beginning the editing process, make sure your story is structurally sound and your characters adequately developed. If that is not the case, you should revise your manuscript and address those issues first. Otherwise, you may waste time polishing chapters that will ultimately end up needing to be cut. Worse, you will be more reluctant to cut them, having spent all that extra time making them just right. All done? With the story itself in place, you’re ready to think about editing. Here are some things to consider, from the most basic to the more complex. GRAMMAR AND MECHANICS Tense Tense errors are among the most common grammar errors. Linguists say English has only two tenses, past and present, while many ESL programs say there are twelve. For our purposes, we will stick with the basics, which means three pri-

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mary tenses—past, present, and future. Most stories are told in past tense, though there are exceptions. • • • •

Past Tense: Jared walked to the stables. Present Tense: Jared walks to the stables. Present Tense: Jared is walking to the stables. Future Tense: Jared will walk to the stables.

There is another commonly used variation called past perfect tense, which is used when the story as a whole is written in past tense, and you have to discuss events that occurred even further in the past. For example: Jared walked to the barn. It seemed farther than usual. He had walked this path a thousand times, but now he could hardly lift his feet. In this example, the first two sentences are taking place in the past (Jared walking to the barn and feeling like it’s farther than usual). The third sentence refers to events that occurred previously (all those other trips to the barn he took before this one). A common mistake is to switch between present and past tenses. A writer will say: Jane went to the closet. She picks out her favorite blouse and a suit she had not worn in a long time. She dressed quickly and goes into the kitchen, where she realized she is out of coffee. The problem with this paragraph is that Jane is bouncing back and forth between the present and the past as if she is caught in a malfunctioning time machine. The paragraph should read one of these two ways: Correct, past tense: Jane went to the closet. She picked out her favorite blouse and a suit she had not worn in a long time. She dressed quickly and went into the kitchen, where she realized she was out of coffee. Correct, present tense: Jane goes to the closet. She picks out her favorite blouse and a suit she has not worn in a long time. She dresses quickly and goes into the kitchen, where she realizes she’s out of coffee. Keep your characters in the correct tense. Your readers will thank you. Those “-ing” Clauses When you say something such as “Running for the bus, he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk,” or “Turning on the oven, she baked a cake,” make sure the two actions you have chosen really can be (and would be) done simultaneously.” While a person might trip while running, she could not bake a cake until after the oven is turned on. Therefore, “Turning on the oven, she baked a cake” is incorrect. You would not say, “Falling onto the bed, she dialed the phone.” She must fall first, then dial. Or dial first, then fall. It would be virtually impossible to do both at the same time. Misplaced Modifiers In the same vein, watch for misplaced modifiers: Mary moved to a little Irish village with nothing but a suitcase and an extra pair of overshoes. Does the vil-

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lage have only a suitcase and overshoes? No, try this instead: With nothing but a suitcase and an extra pair of overshoes, Mary moved to a little Irish village. Punctuation Punctuation errors include missing commas, extra commas, and missing periods. Incorrect punctuation can completely change the meaning of a sentence. There is a popular T-shirt among grammar geeks that has two sentences at the top: “Let’s eat Grandma!” and “Let’s eat, Grandma!” Underneath, it says, “Punctuation saves lives.” In the sentence “Let’s eat, Grandma,” Grandma is being invited to share in a meal. In the sentence “Let’s eat Grandma,” the speaker is inviting the listener to partake to a meal in which Grandma is the main course. Independent Study If you do not feel comfortable with grammar and mechanics (or if you did not understand why the two sentences above have different meanings), you should spend some time studying them. This need not be painful. There are several excellent books on grammar and punctuation, including the time-honored The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White. This book is affectionately referred to as Strunk & White. If you prefer a little humor with your grammar, try The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon or its companion, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by the same author. For online grammar help, it is hard to beat Mignon Fogerty, best known as Grammar Girl. You can find her grammar tips at http://www.QuickAndDirtyTips. com. For an engaging journey through the intricacies of punctuation, try Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss. SYNTAX Syntax is the way we arrange words and phrases to create meaning within sentences. If you live anywhere in the western hemisphere, odds are good that you’re familiar with Yoda. Who hasn’t heard this famous mantra: Do or do not. There is no try. George Lucas used inverted syntax to make Yoda’s speech patterns seem alien, yet we can understand the Jedi master’s meaning perfectly well when he says, “Powerful you have become” or “Patience you must have.” (Kurtz et al., 2004). This was purposefully done in order to create a specific type of character. James Joyce intentionally used bizarre syntax to achieve a particular effect in Finnegan’s Wake (Harty, 1991). You can use slightly altered syntax as well, if it is done purposefully (for example, to show a foreign character’s way of speaking English or to indicate that a given character doesn’t understand the rules of English). In general, though, the syntax of your sentences should be correct. Errors in syntax are glaring, and

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readers lose patience with quickly if supposedly everyday characters engage in Yoda-speak. SENTENCE STRUCTURE One of the ways writers create readable prose is by varying their sentences. There are several different sentence types: simple, complex, compound, and complex compound. A sentence has both a subject and a verb, and it stands alone. Simple sentences contain the most basic elements of a sentence—a subject and a verb, along with enough additional words to form a complete thought. These additional words do not include conjunctions such as if, while, but, because, or unless, which would make them dependent clauses. Here are some examples of simple sentences: • • • •

He went to the car. She read a book about dragons. The girl climbed a tree. The boy went out to look for the cat.

Complex Sentences use additional phrases to add information and create fluency: • After the argument, he went to the car. • Because she felt lonely, she read a book with a dragon on the cover. • Although he was not due home for hours, the girl climbed a tree to watch for her father. • When his mother was not watching, the boy went out to look for the cat. Compound sentences are made up of two or more simple sentences (meaning each part could stand alone): • • • •

They argued, and then he went to the car. She read a book, and she liked it. The girl climbed a tree, but she could not see her father. The boy went out to look for the cat, but he could not find it.

Complex Compound sentences are made up of two or more sentences, at least one of which is a complex sentence: • After they argued, he went to the car, but since he could not think of anywhere else he wanted to be, he just sat behind the steering wheel feeling stupid and embarrassed. • She read a book with a dragon on the cover, wishing she could somehow step into the story, but she knew that was too much to hope for. • Although her father was not due home for hours, the girl climbed the tree to look for him, but three hours later, he still had not returned.

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• When his mother was not watching, the boy went out to look for the cat, but she was nowhere to be found. Too many short sentences in a row can make your story sound choppy and amateurish. Too many sentences that begin the same way or which are of similar length and construction can create monotony. Imagine someone reading the words aloud. Varying the length and complexity of your sentences can help make your story flow better. It is more pleasant to the ear. It can also influence the pacing of your story. Shorter sentences tend to make events seem to move more quickly, while longer ones tend to slow them down. An exception is the breathless, run-on sentence used for effect during, for example, a high-tension action scene. In this case, the breathlessness of the sentence can ratchet up the pacing. WORD CHOICE Clarity is the most important part of word choice. Make sure the words you choose mean what you think they do. There’s a vast difference between palpate (to examine a part of the body by touch, especially for medical purposes) and palpitate (to tremble or shake, or for a heart to beat rapidly or irregularly). If you use one when you mean the other, you are saying something very different from you think you are. A common error is to use “eyes” when you mean “gaze.” My gaze might follow you, but my eyes do not. I once read a manuscript that said, “His eyes slithered down her body.” Not good. Not good at all. Keep your characters’ eyes in their heads. You can do much more with your choice of words than just convey information, though. Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug” (Schmidt, 1997). Effective language is vivid and evocative, active rather than passive, and purposeful. Every word serves a purpose. A good rule of thumb is, if you can cut it out without detracting from the meaning, the effectiveness, and the rhythm of the sentence, cut it. E. L. Doctorow said, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon” (The Writer’s Society, 2015). So, how do you evoke those sensations? One way is to look for generalities and replace them with specific details. Look for bland nouns and weak verbs. Replace them with strong, vivid ones. Instead of saying, “She was the nicest woman I’d ever met,” try, “I knew she only had ten dollars to last until payday, but she pulled a crumpled five from her pocket and stuffed it into the blind man’s cup.” Rather than, “a man with a big beard,” try “a beefy biker who looked like someone had glued a tumbleweed to his face.” If I say, “The car went down the road,” what do you see? Ten different people would see ten different cars, ten different roads. If I say, “The red Ferrari zoomed along the Autobahn,” do not you get a much clearer picture? How about, “The rust-pocked jalopy jounced along the rutted road”? Those same ten people would

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see a much more similar vision. Vivid language and sensory details can bring your scenes to life and create depth of emotion in your characters and in your readers. Do not settle for the almost right word. Go for the lightning, not the lightning bug. LYRICISM AND THE RHYTHM OF LANGUAGE As important as it is to choose the right words, balance and rhythm are sometimes as important as or more important than the perfect word in the right place. When we read, most of us hear the words and the rhythm of the language in our minds. Virginia Woolf said, “Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words.” Read your story out loud, listening to the rhythm of your sentences. Is there a comfortable flow? Are there parts you stumble over? Do you end your sentences with the word that has the most weight? Not, “There was a star-shaped hole in his head, and a thin line of blood trickled from it,” but “A thin line of blood trickled from the star-shaped hole in his head.” Since “head” is a much stronger, weightier word than “it,” the second construction might be a better choice. Do you have a lot of “filler” words, like that, just, very, etc.? Cut them out whenever you can. You do not need, “She was very beautiful” or “The stench was pretty awful.” The “very” and “pretty” dilute the “beautiful” and “awful.” Do a global search for these words and eliminate every one that you do not absolutely need. Along the same lines, we all have favorite words and phrases we like to use. For example, a popular author whose work I generally admire used “the tires chirped” or “I pulled away with a chirp of tires” at least half a dozen times in one book. It was an interesting line and sounded original the first time, but after a while it just seemed odd. Do tires chirp all that often, really? These unintentional repetitions can detract from the fluency of your writing. Do another search for those and see if you can replace some of them with other words, phrases, or images. Occasional, purposeful repetition, on the other hand, can create a powerful rhythm. Think of Winston Churchill’s famous speech: “…we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender” (The Churchill Centre, 2015). Now, that’s powerful stuff. DIALOGUE Read your dialogue aloud. Does it sound natural? Does it sound too natural? Real language is bogged down by repetitions, ramblings, “uhs,” “ums,” and “likes.” In literature, we distill conversation down to the essence of speech, leaving out the boring parts. The dialogue in a novel sounds like real conversation, only better. In real life, when you call someone on the phone, you engage in several minutes of small talk. “Hi, Bob.”

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“Why, hello, Sandra, nice to talk to you.” “Nice to talk to you too. How is Jim?” “He’s had a little bit of a cold, but other than that, he’s pretty good. How’s Victoria?” “She’s well. She just back from a visit with her mother.” And so on, and so on, and so on. In an effort to create realistic dialogue, beginning writers often try to include all of this small talk. The result is deadly dull dialogue that readers skim over, or worse, skip altogether. There are several other pitfalls writers stumble over when writing dialogue. Among them are not using contractions, “As You Know, Bob” information dumps, “Hardy Boy Syndrome,” problems with attributions, or speech tags, and “on-the-nose” dialogue. Contractions When we talk, we use contractions: I’m going to the grocery store. Don’t you want to come with me? Didn’t I see you here last week? We’ll go to the opera on Tuesday. Some writers, perhaps in an attempt to seem more literate or formal, write dialogue without contractions: I am going to the grocery store. Do you not want to come with me? Did I not see you here? We will go to the opera on Tuesday. This creates a stilted manner of speaking. While there are some characters, usually those for whom English is a second language, for whom this appropriate, most should use contractions. “As You Know, Bob.” “As You Know, Bob” dialogue is dialogue in which one character tells another character things they both already know. This usually occurs when the writer needs to tell the reader something and isn’t sure how to go about it. When this happens, you end up with something like this: “Why, hello, Bob. I see you’re back in the country after your two-week vacation in Greece.” “Yes, as you know, they’re reading Mother’s will this afternoon, and my wife, Leticia, and I want to be there. I’m sure you and your wife, Geraldine, and your three grown children, Tom, Renee, and Evelyn, want to be there too.” “Well, of course. This is the first time either of us has seen our younger brother Hugh since he eloped with that trapeze artist and broke Mother’s heart. I suppose he thinks he’s going to inherit something, but you remember how she said he’d never get a penny, not after bringing that little tramp home, even though she did nurse

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Mother through the worst of her illness, even when she was suffering from dementia and couldn’t remember anybody’s name.” This is not a natural way to deliver information to the reader. Instead, you can weave this information in through exposition, interior monologue, and dialogue with other characters who do not already know the information. Beware the information dump, especially of the “as you know, Bob” kind. Instead, ask yourself when this information would naturally and realistically be remembered, thought of, or discussed. Hardy Boy Syndrome “Hardy Boy Syndrome,” she quipped. “Just don’t do it.” The name of this syndrome comes from a popular series of children’s mysteries, The Hardy Boys. While these books have a great many good qualities, the authors seemed to have an aversion to using the word “said.” Characters whispered, mumbled, murmured, shouted, purred, declared, complained, moaned, groaned, and even ejaculated their words. “Said” is good. “Asked” is fine. Rule of thumb: only use a descriptive speech tag if the way a thing is said belies what is being said (“I hate you,” she said sweetly.), or if it’s necessary for characterization or effect. Note: you cannot hiss anything unless it has a lot of sibilants. It might sometimes be important to tell us if someone whispered or murmured something. Other words for “said” might be effective on rare occasions, but unless there’s a compelling reason not to, stick with “asked” and “said.” “I Love You,” She Smirked You cannot smile a word, grin a word, smirk a word, or frown a word. Please don’t put a comma between these actions and any quote that might precede or follow it. Not: “They’re beautiful,” Jen smiled. Instead, try: “They’re beautiful.” Jen smiled. “On-the-Nose” Dialogue On-the-nose dialogue is dialogue in which every character says exactly what he or she means. Here’s an example: “I can’t believe you’re late again. It makes me really sad and angry when you come home late, especially when you don’t call. It makes me feel abandoned and insecure.” “I’m sorry, darling. I would never intentionally make you feel that way. I guess I’ve just been feeling a little stressed at work, maybe a little bit trapped. Not that I don’t love you. I do. It’s just that this whole

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marriage thing feels very new to me, and I need to assert my independence a little. Can you understand that?” “It frightens me when you talk that way, because it makes me think you don’t really want to be married. That maybe you’d rather be with someone else. My friend Sally saw you with Veronica the other day, and she said you looked like you were really enjoying her company. She’s so pretty and, okay, let’s admit it, a little bit slutty, that it makes me afraid she’s going to lure you away from me.” “Oh, darling, that will never happen.” No one talks like this. In real life, we talk around our feelings. The more intense the emotion and the higher the stakes with the other person, the less likely we are to come straight out and say what we’re thinking. Instead, we use subtext. Our true meaning lies beneath our actual words. When the other person responds, he or she responds, not to our actual words, but to their interpretation of the subtext. There’s an old joke that says if you go to a friend’s house for dinner and say, “Where did you get that steak?” a man will say, “Kroger.” A woman will say, “Why? What’s wrong with it?” She’s responding, not to your question, but to the criticism she hears beneath the question. Near the beginning of my third novel, River of Glass, homicide detective Frank Campanella asks private detective Jared McKean to identify the body of an Asian woman found in Jared’s office dumpster. The two men are long-time friends, former partners on the Murder Squad. Jared has recently suffered the loss of a family member and is still reeling from the experience. When Frank first approaches Jared, they have a brief conversation. I will repeat it here, minus the gestures and interior monologue, and with the subtext in italics. The dialogue in quotes is what they actually say. The words in italics are the deeper meanings behind the words. These meanings are not on the page, yet the reader understands them. “How you doing, Cowboy?” I’m concerned about you. “You didn’t come here to ask me how I’m doing.” I don’t really want to talk about how I’m doing. “No, but now that I’m here, the question has crossed my mind.” I came for another reason, but now that I see you’re here and not at work, I’m worried that you’re not moving past your grief. “I’m fine. Or was, until you stopped by.” I really mean it. I’m not going to talk about it. But I can tell you’re here to give me bad news. “I’ll try not to take that personally.” Okay, that kinda hurt my feelings, but I’m too much of a tough guy to admit it. We’re friends, so I’m not going to bust your chops over it, but I’m going to call you on it. “It’s not personal. You know what they say about shooting the messenger. You have your bad news face on.” You’re right. I was out of line that

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time. Sorry about that. Now let’s get back to why you’re here. Might as well get it over with. “I have a bad news face?” Now that we’re getting right down to it, I’m not sure how to start. A little levity before things get heavy? “It’s like your regular face, but squintier.” Yeah, a little levity. Good idea. “Did you go to the office today?” I know the answer to this, because if you had, you would have seen bloody footprints on the sidewalk, but I can’t take that for granted, so I have to ask. And also, I want to know if you’re going to work at all, not just today, because if you’re not, then you’re still a walking wound. “What are you, the office police? I did a skip trace and a couple of background checks. Nothing I couldn’t do from here.” I’m feeling defensive now. I know what you’re getting at, but I’m okay. I’m working. I just didn’t happen to go to the office today, because I could do what I needed to do from home. “Skip traces. Background checks.” Aw, buddy. You’re breaking my heart. “It’s honest work. Pays well. Plus, I can do it from my couch.” I’m still feeling a little defensive, but let’s lighten the tone a little bit, okay? “You’re wasted on it. Jared, what happened to Josh wasn’t your fault.” You’re better than skip traces and background checks. I’d like to see you back in the squad room where you can make the most of your talents. Plus, I miss working with you. How long are you going to punish yourself for something that wasn’t your fault? While you always want your writing to be clear, you can trust your readers not to need everything spelled out. They’re smart. They will get it. GESTURES AND BODY LANGUAGE Early drafts are often full of characters grinning, shrugging, smiling, and smirking. While there is nothing wrong with these and other basic gestures, they can feel generic and overused. In some contexts, a shrug or a grin is exactly the right gesture, but in others, these gestures are so meaningless they are virtually invisible. When you are in the edit and polish stage, try doing a search for these words. Are there instances where a more telling gesture or detail would be more effective? If you are not sure what kind of body language your character might use, consider going on a field trip to a coffee shop, bus station, concert, or any other place where groups of people gather. Take your notebook and record some of the more notable gestures you see. What do people do when they are stalling for time? When they are angry, bored, or nervous? When they are flirting? A woman trying to avoid her lover’s gaze might tip her soda can and watch a bead of cola roll slowly around the rim. A man feeling pressured might tug at the knot of his tie. A woman who is attracted to a man might move her hand closer to his. A girl feeling nervous might twirl a strand of hair tightly around her finger.

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A woman feeling angry but unwilling to lose control might grip her purse more tightly while her nostrils flare and her lips press into a straight line. For one character, sorrow might be sobbing into a pillow. For another, it might be watching raindrops on a window and remembering raindrop races with her father; they would each choose a raindrop and see whose would reach the sill first. For another, it might be going to gym and pounding a punching bag until his knuckles bleed. The right body language at the right time can reveal a lot about a character. THE STORYTELLER As a writer and a storyteller, you have other tools at your disposal, such as knowing when to show and when to tell, how to handle point of view, and how to balance dialogue, action, and exposition. However, these are not primarily issues of language and are therefore beyond the scope of this article. It should be clear, though, that writing and storytelling are not separate things. If you have a tale to tell, you are a storyteller. If you tell your story through the written word, then you are a writer. You can use your medium, words on the page, to tell your story in the best way possible, to as many readers as you can reach. A writer’s words can live forever, so why not make them the best words they can be? REFERENCES Gordon, K. E. (1984). The transitive vampire: a handbook of grammar for the innocent, the eager, and the doomed. New York, NY: Times Books. Gordon, K. E. (1993). The deluxe transitive vampire: The ultimate handbook of grammar for the innocent, the eager, and the doomed. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Harty, J. (1991). James Joyce’s Finnegan’s wake: A casebook. New York, NY: Garland Pub. Kurtz, G., (Producer), & Lucas, G. (Director). (2004). Star Wars: Episode V. [Motion Picture]. United States of America: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Strunk, W., & White, E. B. (1979). The elements of style (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan. Truss, L. (2003). Eats, shoots & leaves, London, UK: Profile Books. Schmidt, B. (1997). Twain quotations: Lightening. Retrieved from http://www.twainquotes.com/Lightning.html The Churchill Centre. (2015). We shall fight on the beaches. Retrieved from http://www. winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/we-shall-fight-onthe-beaches The Writer’s Society. (2015). Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Retrieved from http://the-writers-society.tumblr.com/post/125936879184/goodwriting-is-supposed-to-evoke-sensation-in

CHAPTER 13

AS CLEAR AS MUD The Correct Usage of Metaphors, Similes, and Idioms Jamie Hughes

There are many concerns for writers when producing a piece of work for public viewing. The desire for someone to read the work and understand the intended meaning carries a heavy weight that demands the writer to carefully consider several aspects of writing. One key to successful writing that can be confusing is the correct usage of literary devices such as metaphors, similes, and idioms. They are part of the spoken vernacular that each person learns as they grow up hearing their native tongue. These figures of speech may be understood as such—metaphor (Def. 1): a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (Metaphor, n. d); simile (Def. 2): a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by ‘like’ or ‘as’ (Simile, n. d.); idiom (Def. 3): the language peculiar to a people or to a district, community or class (Idiom, n. d.); dialect. Because these figures of speech are second nature, the question can arise of when to use or not use them properly when writing. Just like other parts of language, such as accent, vocabulary, and tongue, they are subconscious when we begin to communicate with others in Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 115–122. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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the world around us but deserve a level of scrutiny when including in writing. An important consideration for writers is audience. Although authors would like everyone to read their work, there is always a specific group to which the writing will appeal and be useful. Another major consideration for writers is the separation between creative and academic works. Reviewing the usage of metaphors, similes, and idioms within literature from multiple eras reveals the correct placement throughout distinct genres both formal and informal. AUDIENCE Writing for the intended audience should be the foremost consideration when regarding the usage or limit of figures of speech. When an author has a message to convey, the reader needs to be able to understand what is being written as well as the underlying meanings within the literature. Written communication can be relayed in various forms, but must be understood in each. Consider a time when you have read something that you did not understand because it was written in an archaic dialect, foreign language, or confusing style, filled with professional jargon or inundated with figures of speech that you were not familiar with. The difficulty of translating the piece into a common vernacular probably overshadowed the content and may have even discouraged you from finishing the piece. In most cases, the desired message is lost. Not everyone is going to understand figures of speech so they must be used carefully and correctly. One of Stephen Covey’s (2001) principle ideas is to begin with the end in mind. His advice goes a long way when considering the target audience and what information the author desires to convey. Two forms of writing that address different types of audiences are formal and informal. Found throughout historical literature, those forms are still relevant today. Formal writing includes genres such as journalism, academic papers, business reports, scientific thesis, formal letters, resumes, and other professional articles. They are crafted with the purpose of communicating serious, professional level information intended to be read and understood by a broad audience. This writing style conforms to the standards of grammar, punctuation, and structure for the chosen language (English or the target audience’s accepted reading language). Because the intended audience includes a greater range of readers, the paper must be written in such a way that it can be easily understood by a general audience. Some writing will be specific to a particular group based on profession such as those in the scientific or medical community and will include professional terminology. With the need for universal understanding at a professional level, using figures of speech is discouraged from formal writing. Including metaphors, similes, and idioms within that context is viewed as unprofessional and may discredit the writer from serious consideration. Informal writing includes all other genres such as poetry, fiction, non-fiction narrative, personal letters, and others. Informal literature allows for the expression of culture, ideas, and creativity in proper context by using figures of speech, even as the main literary tool in some occasions. The creative nature of this style means the

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guidelines vary widely. Even with a lax approach to using figures of speech, the intended audience is still the highest consideration. In informal writing, the point of view normally represents the author himself or a character on a more personal level. Therefore, the audience expects to read less formal and often creative dialogue. However, the intended audience still needs to be able to understand what is written and/or be able to accept the speech as customary to the character or region represented in the piece. Considering the audience helps to convey intent. GENRE Throughout history, the use of figures of speech has been a normal and important part of writing that stretches across multiple genres. Writing types and styles have changed very little over time. Considerations have been consistent pertaining to the correct usage of figures of speech such as metaphors, similes, and idioms. They involve much more than just an attempt to use colorful language. Writers want to express themselves in a way that effectively relays their thoughts, ideas, and emotions to their audience. Writing is not only about linguistic acrobatics, it is an art form and tool for expressing ideas in such a way that others can understand and relate to. Part of making a writer’s message successful involves carefully crafting their work in clear and meaningful ways. Figures of speech convey that message throughout a variety of genres such as fiction or nonfiction narrative, poetry, and theater. Literary devices often serve to conceal deeper meaning within the work, sometimes on a small scale, referring to a single item that has another meaning. In The Red Badge of Courage (Crane, 1895), the title itself is a figure of speech that reflects the ironic notion of the main character’s pursuit of courage. The wording refers to a wound received during battle, a visible display of the soldier’s courage. There are several examples of metaphors and similes throughout the book especially those comparing war to animals. War is described as a “red animal,” the enemy are “like flies,” and the army line writhes “like a snake stepped upon” (Red Badge of Courage Novel Guide, 2015). METAPHOR The modern use of metaphor stems from classic literature. According to Robert Graves (2009), myths served to answer life questions and to explain the origins of social systems and customs. The overlapping use of metaphor fulfilled both of those needs. By telling a story, the deeper meaning could be encased within the events and characters. One example is the story of Icarus. His story evolved as part of other memorable myths such as the minotaur, labyrinth, and Minos. Whether the tale of Icarus was written as mythological narrative or meant to provide a proverbial lesson is unclear (Island-Ikaria.com, 2015). Throughout time, it has become a metaphor for ignoring warnings and becoming overconfident. King Minos had imprisoned Daedalus and his son Icarus in the Labyrinth for leaking helpful information to an enemy of the king. The secrets shared resulted in the

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death of the Minotaur. In order to escape the maze, Daedalus engineered wings made of feathers and wax. The wings would allow them to fly out of the maze to freedom. He warned Icarus not to fly too high, or the sun would melt the wax in his wings. Icarus became so enthralled by flying that he ignored the advice of his father and soared higher and higher. Per the warning, the wax melted causing the wings to fall apart sending Icarus plummeting to his death in the sea below. Shakespeare, the playwright and poet, invented thousands of words that expanded the English language (Shakespeare, 2015). One of his earliest poems, Venus and Adonis, drew heavily on Greek mythology that utilized metaphorical tales to explain earthly conditions or natural phenomenon. His later dramatic pieces included now historical lines ripe with simile and metaphor. For instance, in Macbeth, Macbeth tells of seeing the dead king’s body, Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers, Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers Unmannerly breech’d with gore. Who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make’s love known?” (Shakespeare, 2010, Act 2, Scene 3)

The use of the simile like a breach... illustrates the cosmic implications of the senseless murder. The following metaphor, the colours of their trade…, ties the death red blood color to their actions and intent, to their work, and in essence, to their very nature. In The Taming of the Shrew a messenger says, .”..too much sadness hath congealed your blood, and melancholy is the nurse of frenzy” (Shakespeare.MIT.edu, n. d.). Here, the despair of melancholy is compared to a nurse, indicating that it provides for or even birthed frenzy. An amusing banter between the main characters compares Katherine to a wasp: Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp, i’faith you are too angry. Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting. Petruchio: My remedy is then to pluck it out. Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies. Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail. Katherine: In his tongue. Petruchio: Whose tongue? Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell (Shakespeare, n. d., Act 2, Scene 1). Shakespeare was moving from the Greek usage of figures of speech being used as complete stories to explain natural conditions or human events toward using them to capture the essence of an individual or their actions. One of the great les-

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sons from the comparison is variety and scope. Understanding the writer’s overall intent and purpose allows specific selection of methods used to fulfil that purpose. Whether describing the individual character or a life lesson, writers can formulate literature based on tried and true classical models. A literary device can also encompass an entire work. The concept of a suprametaphor involves a single figure of speech that encompasses the theme of an entire body of work. Some titles are suprametaphors, such as A Raisin in the Sun, the title of the classic play by Lorraine Hansberry (1959). The suprametaphor refers to dreams deferred becoming withered and dried out. This theme is displayed in the lives of the main characters, leading the audience to a deeper examination of the subject and the impact of unfulfilled dreams on a person’s life. SIMILE Similes, when overused, may cause the writer to sound amateurish or prone to create only superficial comparisons within their work. In similar fashion to metaphors, similes are most effective when they evoke a deeper meaning such that the comparison is powerful enough to transfer the qualities of one object to another. Hudson, in his piece on metaphors and similes, offers a classic example from Paradise Lost: As when the potent rod Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day, Wav’d round the coast, up call’d a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darken’d all the land of Nile; So numberless were those bad angels seen Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell, ‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires. (Hudson, 2009, p. 124)

The portion showing the full usage of simile, having drawn out the comparison with detailed description, “similes carefully elaborated through all their parts,” giving the reader a more in-depth understanding and appreciation for the literary device” (Hudson, 2009, p. 146). Homer’s entire epic is full of simile that mirrors the ancient Greek writings that his audience would have clearly understood, and thus incorporating proper regard for audience and solid associations for the genre. Correct usage of similes (aside from characterizations), should lead the reader into a deeper analogy. In this way, it becomes more than a comparison, it becomes a tool for discovery, reflection and developing a meaningful connection to another idea, not just another subject. Similes used by characters in a story can add depth to the story by revealing additional plot meaning. They can also establish setting or character background.

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METAPHOR AND SIMILE IN POETRY Robert Frost said, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words” (Robert Frost: Quotes, 2015). The art form of poetry uses figures of speech to creatively explain human emotions and life experiences. No other style of writing masters the beauty of metaphors and similes. All generations and cultures have used this medium to express themselves and their understanding of the world around them. Comparative description is seen from such poets as David in Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path,” and Horace in Odes, See, in the white of the winter air The day hangs like a rose. It droops down to the reaching hand Take it before it goes. (McEvilley, 2013, para. 3)

While the most basic component of poetry is figurative speech, the depth of meaning has as many forms as there are poems in the world. There are light and capricious lines as well as dark, ominous refrains. In the witty poem A Boy Named Sue by Shel Silverstein, the writer says his father “kicked like a mule and bit like a crocodile” (Silverstein, 2015), while in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Capulet pines, “Death lies on her like an untimely frost” (Shakespeare, n. d., Act 4, Scene 3). While not every poet uses direct simile, metaphor is a powerful method for expressing imagery throughout the genre. Edgar Allen Poe was a master at using metaphor, especially to imbue the characteristics of evil and death onto normal objects. The City in the Sea begins, “Lo! Death has reared himself a throne,” setting the eerie imagery of the watery grave being the destination of human souls after death (Poe, 1831, p. 1). The important thing to keep in mind is the use of metaphors and similes by the great poets were not simply comparisons of two objects, they were connections to greater ideas. When writing a poem using these figures of speech, the writer should consider the greater concept with which the reader will connect. Consider The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams: so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens (Williams, 1923, p. 1)

The reader not only imagines the picture of the scene, but also begins to interpret the metaphor according to their own life and circumstances. Proper and lasting

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usage of figures of speech in poetry will have a similar effect. The writer creates an image that conveys a deeper, possibly universal meaning. IDIOMS Idioms in writing are used mainly for characterizations or to show distinctive native or geographical vernacular. They can determine the setting of the story. These native phrases may have been passed on for several generations. Some idioms that were used during the time of the Roman Empire are still used today (Idioms in Classical Literature, 2006). For example, “brave as hell,” “beware of the dog,” or “you watch over me, I’ll watch over you.” An author may use these types of sayings when writing a character’s dialogue. For a fiction writer, the aspects to consider when using idioms would include localization, profile, and audience. The geographic or historical setting of the story can be reflected through proper use of idioms. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is teeming with examples of idiomatic phrases. For example, “That kind of talk won’t wash,” “honest as the day is long” (p. 35) “he’s full of the Old Scratch” (p. 3), and “dad fetch it” (Twain, 1884, p. 87). The setting of the story, whether time or place, can be disrupted by incorrect dialogue or phrases. If an author uses an idiom that is common in the southeastern United States for a story set in the upper Michigan peninsula, there will be a disconnect for the reader. A character from the Upper Peninsula would not likely say, “bless their heart” as part of their normal vernacular. Location, era, and culture should be the determining factors when writing idioms into a story. CONCLUSION Writing for an audience demands certain considerations in order for the work to be understood and to be successful. Planning the writing with the intended reader in mind is the greatest consideration, especially when using figures of speech. Formal and informal writing are distinctively different and should be treated separately when using figures of speech. Their use in formal writing should be extremely limited, if used at all. Informal writing can draw from examples found in classic works and used appropriately across all genres. Metaphors, similes, and idioms have all been used in literature for centuries and are equally important in today’s writings for expressing ideas, emotions, settings, and characterizations. Used correctly, they can reveal more than a superficial comparison. The skilled author will use them to express deeper meanings and thematic elements throughout the story. A supra metaphor, normally the title, will encompass the theme of the entire work. Both metaphors and similes are staples for the genre of poetry, allowing the writer to discuss various issues through comparison. Dialogue between characters is the most prominent placement for idioms, revealing setting, vernacular and era. REFERENCES Covey, S. (1989). The 7 habits of highly effective people. New York, NY: Free Press.

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Crane, S. (1983). The red badge of courage. Toronto, Canada; New York, NY: Bantam Books. Graves, R. (1960). Robert Graves, the greek mythology. Retrieved from http:// www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Robert-Graves-The-GreekMyths-24grammata.com_.pdf Greek Mythology. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/ greek-mythology Hansberry, L. (1959). A raisin in the sun. New York, NY: Random House. Hudson, H. (2015). Shakespeare: His life, art, and characters, Vol. I. New York, NY: Ginn and Co. Idiom [Def. 3]. (n. d.) In Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved June 24, 2015, from http:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiom Idioms in classical literature. (2006). Retrieved from http://www.religiousforums.com/ threads/idioms-in-classical-literature.30543/. McEvilley, T. (2015). Seventeen ancient poems, translated from Greek and Latin by Thomas McEvilley. Retrieved from http://jacket2.org/commentary/seventeen-ancient-poems-translated-greek-and-latin-thomas-mcevilley Metaphor [Def. 1]. (n. d.) In Merriam-Webster Online, Retrieved June 24, 2015, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphor Poe, E. (1831). The city in the sea. Retrieved June 26, 2015 from http://poestories.com/ read/cityinthesea Robert Frost: Quotes. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/104305poetry-is-when-an-emotion-has-found-its-thought Shakespeare, W. (n. d.). The complete works of William Shakespeare. Retrieved from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/index.html Shakespeare, W. (2010). Macbeth. Boston, MA: English Play Press. Simile [Def. 2]. (n. d.). In Merriam-Webster Online, Retrieved June 24, 2015, from http:// www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/simile. The myth of Icarus (Ikaros) and Daedalus. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.islandikaria.com/culture/myth.asp The red badge of courage: Metaphor analysis. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.novelguide.com/the-red-badge-of-courage/metaphor-analysis. Twain, M. (1884). The adventures of Tom Sawyer. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg. org/files/74/74-h/74-h.htm Silverstein, S. (2015). A boy named Sue. Retrieved from http:// famouspoetsandpoems. com/poets/shel_silverstein/poems/14827 William Shakespeare. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/williamshakespeare Williams, W. (1923). The red wheelbarrow. Retrieved from http://www.writing.upenn. edu/~afilreis/88/wcw-red-wheel.html

CONCLUSION Oluwakemi Elufiede, Tina Murray, and Carrie J. Boden-McGill

We would like to thank you for reading the chapters presented in this publication. We hope that you enjoyed the chapters and that by reading them, you have learned about the art and craft of enhancing your individual writing skills. If you learned, then you are not alone. The contributors and editors of this volume, too, are learning as we go. We, too, are seeking to enhance our writing skills and in the process, are sharing what we have learned with other writers. It’s heartening to learn there are many contemporary writers who are excited about writing and eager to learn. The bringing forth of this book and its accompanying writers’ conference is a proud first for The Carnegie Writers, Inc. It has been, for us, a labor of love, not to mention a great adventure and a noble experiment. Indeed, the writing, compiling, and editing of these chapters has been a valuable learning experience. We know we are not perfect nor is our product. It is in this imperfection and striving for improvement where growth occurs. We are deeply grateful to the talented and learned writers who have contributed so generously to this anthology. We appreciate their faith in us, as well as in the future of The Carnegie Writers, Inc. We greatly appreciate the information and expertise they have shared with us. All in all, the authors who have contributed to Enhancing Writing Skills, have provided a wealth of information and insight based upon years of experience and study. It is our hope that you will take with you inspiration from these pages, and a creative upwelling will come forth. We wish you success in your writing endeavors, and we welcome stories of your successful writing endeavors.

Enhancing Writing Skills, page 123. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Lisa Aschmann is a prolific professional songwriter, a singer, educator, and author. She has recorded six CDs of her own and has had hundreds of songs recorded by major artists in almost every genre, including bluegrass, jazz, country, folk, inspirational, pop, and R&B. Joseph Ballantyne, Ph.D is currently employed at Measurement Inc. on the 2015 TCAP-WA. In 2012, he joined the teaching staff at King Saud University Preparatory Program for incoming freshmen in Riyadh, KSU. Initially, he worked as an instructor in the EFL program, teaching reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills with a curriculum designed at Cambridge University. After serving on the Dean’s Task Force preparing for the international TOEFL accreditation process, he joined the research team assisting the Chairman of the English Preparatory Program. He also teaches at Middle Tennessee State University. Carissa Barker-Stucky, M.F.A graduated from Lindenwood University with a Master’s of Fine Arts in Writing in December 2012. Since then, she has written and edited several pieces for fun while working in the animal industry through both retail and veterinary receptionist positions. Carissa now pursues her dream job, working as a freelance writer, editor, and graphic designer. She lives in Little Enhancing Writing Skills, pages 125–129. Copyright © 2016 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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Rock with her husband Christopher and their four four-legged babies—Astro the mutt, Kevin the short hair kitty, Hoot the long hair kitty, and Felix the dragon. Carissa’s creative writing can be found on her blog, chocolatecat42.blogspot.com. Carrie Boden-McGill, Ph.D. is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Occupational, Workforce, and Leadership Studies at Texas State University. Dr. Boden-McGill’s research is primarily focused in the areas of teaching and learning strategies, mentoring, transformative learning, and personal epistemological beliefs. She has presented papers in over 25 states and foreign countries and published articles in journals such as Adult Learning Quarterly, The International Journal of Learning, and National Teacher Education Journal. Her latest books are Pathways to Transformation: Learning in Relationship, co-edited with Dr. Sola Kippers, Conversations about Adult Learning in Our Complex World and Developing and Sustaining Adult Learners, co-edited with Dr. Kathleen P. King, and Building Sustainable Futures for Adult Learners co-edited with Jennifer K. Holtz and Stephen B. Springer. Dr. Boden-McGill serves as a Director on the AHEA Board and co-chairs the research and theory SIG of the Commission of Professors of Adult Education. Mary Buckner is an award-winning author of five novels, one YA project, and two memoirs. Her work has been published in five languages and well received on three continents. Buckner holds a Master’s in Creative Writing from Boston University. She is co-founder and senior editor of Turn Style Writers, where she teaches, coaches and edits new writers. Additional publishing credits include creative nonfiction, magazine features, blogs, and content for many websites. Her advertising copy has earned two Diamond Addies, three NAMA awards, including Best of Show, numerous Golden Quills and other professional awards. Oluwakemi Elufiede, M.Ed is the founder and President of the Carnegie Writers, Inc. She is also the founder of two other community-based writing groups in Savannah, Georgia and Huntsville, Alabama. She has experience working in the public education, community education, higher education, mental health, and substance abuse sectors. Her skills include tutoring, teaching, curriculum development, program planning, case management, community relations, and editorial consulting. She has facilitated over 30 community, professional reading, writing, and author events. She is a talented editor with experience in creative, inspirational, and academic publications and is the editor of five books. She is currently working on her next book, The Desire has Expired. She holds degrees in P–12 Special Education from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College and B.L.S in Psychology and a Master of Adult Education from Armstrong Atlantic State University. She is a Doctoral Candidate in Educational Leadership at Tennessee State University.

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Emmanuel Jean Francois, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Comparative and International Education at Ohio University. He previously served as Assistant Professor of Human Services Leadership and Director of the Master’s program in Transnational Human Services at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. He earned a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Adult, Higher Education, and Human Resources Development from the University of South Florida (USF). Dr. Francois’ repertoire of publications includes more than 30 titles in English, French, and Haitian Creole. His most recent books include Financial sustainability for nonprofit organizations (2014), Transcultural blended learning and teaching in postsecondary education (2012), DREAM model to start a small business (2011), and Global education on trial by U.S. college professors (2010). He is the current president of the Transnational Education and Learning Society (TELS). He has presented at various regional, national, and international conferences about his research on adult and continuing education, non-traditional college students, global education, transnational education, transcultural issues, globalization, international development, study abroad, transformative learning, scholarship of teaching and learning, and community based participatory research. He is on the Editorial Board of Human Services Today. He served as peer reviewer for the International Journal of Multicultural Education (IJME), American Educational Research Journal (AERJ), and the Annual Conferences of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE), the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), and the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). David M. Harris had never lived more than fifty miles from New York City. Since then he has moved to Tennessee, married, acquired a daughter, a classic MG, and gotten serious about poetry. All these projects seem to be working out pretty well. His work has appeared in Pirene’s Fountain and in First Water, the Best of Pirene’s Fountain anthology, Gargoyle, The Labletter, The Pedestal, and other places. His first collection of poetry, The Review Mirror, was published by Unsolicited Press in September, 2013. On Sunday mornings, at 11 AM Central time, he talks about poetry on WRFN-LP in Pasquo, TN (www.radiofreenashville. org). Jamie Hughes is the founder and facilitator of Writing for Well-Being, a therapeutic writing course. He has been journaling and writing poetry for over 20 years. Most of his creative writing stems from an artistic nature and a love of reading. His earliest writings were inspired by all of the fantastic comic books he read as a child. Some of his more personal writing, however, stems from a life-long battle with depression. His greatest desire is to share hope with people who might only see darkness or pain in their lives. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Gardner-Webb University, is a certified instructor for journal writing, and is the author of The Jesus I Know, and The Game plan for Defeating Depression.

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Tina Murray, Ph.D., is the author of two novels, A Chance to Say Yes and A Wild Dream of Love, both published by ArcheBooks Publishing, Inc. A Chance to Say Yes, her debut novel, received five stars from the Midwest Review of Books. Prior to becoming an author, Murray earned two degrees—BA in art and MS in education—from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, and completed the doctoral program in art education at The Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Southern by birth, she has lived in various parts of the United States, including Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and Oregon. Her interests are many and varied, as are her work experiences. Fields of endeavor include entertainment, real estate, retail, and education. Her academic experience includes designing and implementing courses as a TA at FSU and as an adjunct instructor at FAMU. She worked briefly as an Assistant Professor at Ball State. Most recently, Dr. Murray has become vice president of Carnegie Writers, Inc. Currently at work on her third novel, A Big Fan of Yours, she resides in Nashville, Tennessee. Candy Paull is an author that offers words of encouragement, inspiration, and gratitude. She is the author of The Translucent Heart, Finding Serenity in Seasons of Stress, The Art of Abundance, and other books. She writes the way she lives, which is inspired. She helps men and women reduce stress, enjoy a more creative, abundant life, and nurture spiritual growth. She is a “hybrid” author who has traditionally published and self-published her first ebook in 2009. Over 200,000 people have downloaded her free ebook, The Heart of Abundance. Sign up for her email list and receive a 21–day series of FREE Audio Affirmations. 2 minutes of instant inspiration to brighten your day. http://www.candypaull.com. Patricia H. Quinlan lived in Colorado from 1980 to 2013. She spent five years with an Oil and Gas company, then twelve years with a mutual fund company as a desktop publisher, the last several years as a supervisor. She often spoke of the need for someone to write the history of Mammoth Cave, and after much prodding from friends and family, she decided to take up the challenge. Her career as a writer was born with her first novel, Beneath Their Feet, the history of Mammoth Cave and its people. She learned to enjoy the research involved in creating a story and went on to write: Amanda; The Story of Peter Looney, his year of living with the Indians; Growing up in The Free State of Winston, and finally No Way Out, Surviving the Civil War in Northern Alabama. As a new resident of Nashville, she is enjoying the mental challenges that come with creating other worlds on paper. George Spain is a native Tennessean. Author of Our People: Stories of the South, Lost Cove, Come Sit With Me, and Delightful Suthun Madnesses XIII. Now retired from his work in mental health, he lives in Nashville. Beth Terrell is a Shamus Award finalist and the author of three Nashville-based crime novels. Sheila Deeth of Café Libre says of A Cup Full of Midnight, “A story

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this powerful is hard to find…the perfect combination of noir and human hope,” while the San Francisco Book Review says Terrell’s River of Glass “positively bristles with the darker side of wit.” Terrell has been a teacher and trainer for more than thirty years, first as a special education teacher and later as a trainer for an educational assessment company. She currently works as a freelance writer, workshop leader, and writing coach and consultant. Learn more at http://www. jadenterrell.com. Janet Walsh, Ed.D has more than 19 years of experience enhancing academic library services through technology, marketing, administration, and instruction. Her professional experience includes Sirsi Corporation, Fisk University, HBCU Library Alliance Leadership Program, American Baptist College, Ingram Library Services, and Tennessee State University. She has worked with educational and non-profit organizations that promote literacy and library usage to children and adults including Southern Word YouthSpeaks and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and the Children’s Defense Fund.