Ah, Christmas.

Yes.

I’m so, so glad to be home.

I haven’t had much time lately to write, what with the family and the cross-state driving and the hours and hours in front of my sewing machine, but I’m back home now and ready to tackle the writing projects I’ve been ignoring over the last few weeks. Once I sort through the bags and boxes of loot that Rob and I scored this Christmas.

Like a tortilla press! Yes, mom, I know that wasn’t actually a Christmas present, but it’s certainly one of the things I’m most excited about. Our kitchen is now crazy outfitted with all the gadgets we could ever need, as is my sewing room. I now have cozy sock-slippers to wear whilst I cook delicious meals and sew adorable clothes, yummy hot-drink mixes to sip with the whiskey we got in Idaho ($10 cheaper there, which is maybe why the roads aren’t as good), a new book of sewing patterns I’m dying to try out, a beautiful table runner from my oh-so-talented grandmother, and some gorgeous metalwork from my oh-so-talented father. And a massive bag of homemade caramel corn that I’m going to try very hard not to eat in its entirety today. I really should hide that in the closet.

It’s beckoning me from the table. Temptress.

Just a heads up, I probably will be blogging sparsely over the next week or so, since my sister is about to pop out the latest addition to our family at any minute. I am working on another writing exercise, however, this one about dialogue and accent, inspired by John le Carré’s The Secret Pilgrim.

Happy Boxing Day, and a Happy New Year!

Last week’s exercise was about allowing yourself to overwrite descriptions of things, turning off the inner editor in order to come up with ridiculously inflated metaphors, run-on sentences, and enough cheesy adverbs to choke a horse. How’d it go?

Being as that it’s Christmas season, and I’ve decided to handmake a majority of gifts this year (as well as hire my services out for others’ gift-giving needs), I’ve spent way more time this last week in front of my sewing machine than my computer or notebook. I still managed to come up with a half-dozen pages of purple prose, and although I didn’t go into any of the exercise sessions with this in mind, it turns out that I’ve churned out some good material for projects I’m working on–one or two evocative sentences that will help give depth to the setting.

But how to use this material most effectively? That brings us to this week’s exercise: Mood.

One of my scenes described an old man paying his bus fare. I had a lot of fun describing the various hisses and wheezes that emanate from a Seattle city bus, the feel of the coins in his fingers, the sound they made as they dropped into the pay station. I intend to mine this exercise for material for a short story I’m working on, and when I do I’ll be paying close attention to the mood I’m trying to create.

Scenario 1:

The old man is going to visit his adult daughter whom he hasn’t seen in years. They’ve been estranged from one another, but now, finally, there’s an opportunity to make things right. He’s never met his 5-year-old granddaughter, and he’s bringing a gift for her. He’s excited, and very nervous. He’s wearing his best suit, which makes him self-conscious, and he’s projecting his nervousness onto his attire–should he have dressed more casually? Was his best suit even good enough? Would his granddaughter like the gift he’s chosen?

The bus arrives only a few minutes late, but the old man has already begun to work himself into a panic believing that it won’t come. The wheezes of the bus reflect his own nervous anticipation, and the electric engine hums with nervous energy. The coins are warm from his pocket, he’s been rubbing them smooth while he waits, and they’re sticky in the palm of his hand.

Scenario 2:

The old man is on his way to a job he hates, but he knows that if he quits he’ll be hard pressed to find another. He and his wife had been saving up money for retirement, but that’s quickly draining into her medical bills. It’s hard not to be resentful, no matter how many years he’s loved her, and he despises himself for having those feelings. They’ve recently moved in with their son in the big city, leaving the comforts of country life behind, and everything is new and alien.

The bus arrives late, as usual, and the old man resents the fact that the inconsistency of the bus system here causes him to take the early bus and wait outside the plant in the rain before his supervisor comes to unlock the doors. If he could rely on the later bus to get him there when the schedule said it would, he would be just on time. But the buses are always late, and sometimes they don’t come at all.

The bus’s tires slice through the murky, oily water in the gutters, sending a filthy wave sloshing over the sidewalk. The old man scoots out of the way, but the water hits his shoes. His feet will be wet all day. Again. The shrill beep sounds as the bus kneels so he can get on, but the driver has stopped too far from the curb, and the old man grips the hand rail, hauling himself awkwardly over the moat of rain water and onto the slippery floor of the bus. He clings to the rail and tries to dig in his pocket for his change while the bus driver lurches away from the stop. He feels everyone’s eyes on him: Who is this wretched creature that just boarded our bus?

This week’s exercise: go back through the scene’s you’ve described and rewrite the details to reflect the mood. Is the way the sunlight plays on the rainwater hopeful? Menacing? Blinding? Deceptive? Playful? Seductive? Is the sound of traffic reassuring? Annoying? Overwhelming?

You needn’t use the scenes you did last week, if you don’t want. Just take any scenario that strikes your fancy and rewrite it from several different moods. Don’t let a single detail pass unused, from the chair lurking in the corner to the cheerful print of the waitress’s apron to the street sign sagging dejectedly from its rusty bolt.

Again, turn off your inner editor. Yes, we all know to steer clear of adverbs and silly metaphors, but for these exercises feel free to let their infestation run rampant.

Happy writing, and Merry Christmas!

This week’s exercise is all about writing overblown, flowery prose. You know, the sort of stuff that we’re supposed to pare out of our final drafts.

I’ve been meaning to read House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday for years, and it’s been sitting in my to-read pile for about six months. It’s slim size finally got it into my purse, and it’s been transforming my mundane bus rides into surreal, detail-rich journeys for the last few days.

And now the silent land bore in upon him as, little by little, it got hold of the light and shone. The pale margin of the night receded toward him like a rising drift, and he waited for it. All the rims of color stood out upon the hills, and the hills converged at the mouth of the canyon. That dark cleft might have been a shadow or a pool of smoke; there was nothing to suggest its distance or its depth, but it held the course of the river for twenty or thirty miles. The town lay out for a time on the verge of the day; then the spire of the mission gleamed and the Angelus rang and the riverside houses flamed. Still the cold clung to him and the night was at his back. Just there to the east, the earth was ashen and the sky on fire. The contour of the black mesa was clean where the sun ranged like a cloud in advance of the solstices.

A car appeared on the hills to the north; it crept in and out of his vision and toward the town and made no sound until it was directly below him. Then it turned into the town and wound through the streets and into the trees at the mission. All the roosters of the town began to crow and the townspeople stirred and their thin voices rose up on the air. He could smell the sweet wine which still kept to his clothing. He had not eaten in two days, and his mouth tasted of sickness. But the morning was cold and deep, and he rubbed his hands together and felt the blood rise and flow.

He stood for a long time, the land still yielding to the light. He stood without thinking, nor did he move; only his eyes roved after something…something. The rain-furrowed apron of the hill dropped under him thirty feet to the highway. The last patches of shade vanished from the river bottom and the chill grew dull on the air. He picked his way downward, and the earth and stones rolled at his feet. He felt the tension at his knees, and then the weight of the sun on his head and hands. The dry light of the valley rose up, and the land became hard and pale. (p. 23)

That is a single scene, 400 words to describe Abel entering town at sunrise. Enter the inner editor: Surely that could be cut down substantially? Surely some of those repetitive phrases could be stricken? Perhaps, but sometimes it’s marvelous to lose yourself in those rich images, like sinking into a candle-lit bubble bath with a glass of wine.

This week’s exercise: Every day for one week, choose a simple scene, action, or moment and use at least 500 words to describe it. Make your prose as purple as you can.

Maybe in the end you’ll end up cutting it down to a mere few sentences, but if in all your overblown description you come up with a couple gems like “The town lay out for a time on the verge of the day; then the spire of the mission gleamed and the Angelus rang and the riverside houses flamed,” or “the rain-furrowed apron of the hill,” it will be worth it.

I’ll be posting about my progress in the next few days.

So it seems as though this blog, much like the journal I was gifted upon graduating highschool (nearly 1/3 full after ten years!) is destined to be filled mostly with posts apologizing for not posting and promising to post more in the future. This is one of those posts.

I’m not going to pretend that there’s anything different about my latest resolution to blog more; actions speak louder than words, as they say. We shall see.

What is different is that I’ve been taking it upon myself to do semi-regular writing exercises inspired by the books I’m reading. Since I’m doing these already, it seems like a good idea to Blog them in the event that some other writer might stumble upon them and find them helpful in their own personal craft-honing efforts.

This week’s exercise: Cultivating Richness of Language, a la N. Scott Momaday.

And I’m totally splitting this into two posts, just to make myself feel like I’m making progress. Ha.

When I started this blog, I had high intentions for it. No matter if anyone else ever read it, I planned on using it as a motivational tool for my own little writing course. I would read books and analyze them for their style and voice, their pacing, their world-building, etc. I would treat blogging like an assignment for school, and therefore I would keep on track.

Of course I didn’t.

But I’ve kept on reading, and I’ve kept on thinking, and I have quite a few books I’ve recently finished that I want to post about. My thought here is that if I make this little promise right here and now, in words, I’ll actually do it.

So. Coming up, look for:

• On Creating an Imaginary World that Looks an Awful Lot Like the Real World: Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn and The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee.
• On Scenes and Pacing: Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane.
• On Voice: In the Woods by Tana French.