Humanity: Will Rogers and the Heart of Good Writing

Analyzing great writing to determine what to emulate is fraught by an immensity of material, the amount of quality critics, and the differing opinions of agents, readers, and fellow writers who say things like:

“Be real.”
“Create tension.”
“Raise the stakes.”
“Avoid (Embrace) controversy.”
“Be concise.”
“Include detail.”
“Write what you know.”
“Be creative…”

Each one proposes, embellishes, and pronounces his/her cases with all the sincerity of Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. The wisdom of sage and scholar, authority and entrepreneur, promising and prominent blare from blog and cyber-page in italicized, underlined, and bold-faced type. Then, for added emphasis, these analysts punch the caps-lock key and add a string of exclamation points.

Nowadays, with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, blogs, and a plethora of experts willing to share everything online from plot sculpting to pencil sharpening, the volume of information overwhelms an inquiring writer like being whacked upside the head with a dead carp (to resurrect an old cliché).

The best advice I’ve found to govern my work, however, does not come from any modern authority, but from a superstar of the 1930s famous for his folksy humor, his genuine personality, and his unique and inviting temperament, Will Rogers.

I have to admit I knew little about Rogers before I visited his memorial museum in Claremore, Oklahoma. I had seen his name in quote books, video shorts on YouTube, and collections of his speeches stashed away in the deep, dark corners of independent bookstores in towns the size of mud puddles. The Will Rogers Museum, not far off I44, is a revelation of not only the man, but of his art.

Yes, art. I know people question whether a vaudevillian, circus performer, and rope-twirling movie star can be considered an artist. I contend he was.

Was he one of the world’s innovative, structurally sound, and emotionally evocative writers of all time? No. But his art was not so much what he fixed to the page, but what he added to life during one of America’s most difficult periods, the Great Depression.

Like many people today, I had heard of Rogers, particularly his famous saying, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Like most people, I too scoffed at its naiveté. “Oh, come on. He had to dislike somebody,” we say. “Everybody hates somebody.”

After attending his memorial, I’m not sure Rogers did.

The museum and its displays do an excellent job of transforming a long-deceased radio and movie star into a living, breathing, compassionate human being. Here was a man who took humanity seriously, but not himself. A genuine man who acknowledged his shortcomings and sought to be better. A man who loved family, friends, and people of all races, political persuasions, and economic status. A man you want to know.

As easy as it would be, Claremore does not deify Rogers, nor does a visitor get the impression he would he want that. His self-deprecating humor was one the many qualities that endeared him to millions of people worldwide. Even his famous quote above, as deep and profound as it sounds, was a part of a joke: “When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: ‘I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn’t like.’ I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.”

Rogers’ humility, his sincerity, and his sense of humor made him one of the greatest celebrities of his time. What makes him important to the people of today is his ability to observe the human condition. Amazing to 21^st century citizens are his remarks about America nearly a century ago that speak as much truth today. For examples, check the list examples on the Will Rogers Quotes page. An important maxim there for writers states, “It’s great to be great, but it’s greater to be human.” 

So astute.

We can comb all the information in the world to direct our careers, but even the greatest we find means nothing unless we use it to make our characters, our narrators, and ourselves human. After all, our readers are human. At least, most of them.

Most impressive about the displays and programs at Claremore is that when you hear Rogers speak, when you read the testimonials of rich and common people alike, when you see the outpouring of emotion from people of ever rank and profession concerning his work, his life, and his death, your realize this was a man above the common rabble. Here was the type of celebrity, spokesman, and leader the world needs today.

Regarding First Drafts: Revision Is Writing

I have to make a confession. I’m new to this whole blogging thing.

You can stop laughing now. I know. I’m late to the party. I’m old. I need to get a life. Hey! I’m trying.

One way I’m trying is by immersing myself in other blogs, especially those that explain this whole process. After all, advice is a good thing, right?

I’m beginning to think, “Not so much.”

An alarming number of bloggers tell newbies to abandon decades of training, disavow the precepts of the antiquated writing process, and produce simply for quantity of content rather than worry about quality.

Many say the writer especially need not concern him/herself with editing the first draft of a post. Simply let the words flow to a total of 400-500 or so, stop when the mind gets mushy, and simply hit the “publish” button.

Really? 

Writers can do that? Writers SHOULD do that? 

Seriously?

To quote the indignant ninth-grader with his baseball cap askew while chomping on his Juicy Fruit gum and wiping his allergy-affected nose with the back of his hand, “That ain’t happenin’.”

At least not for me. I may not want to, but I have to revise. For three reasons: I’m not articulate enough; my typing is not skillful enough (Heck, I’m still struggling with the concept of a home row); and I firmly believe a blog is not a journal.

First, I will concede that writing an uncensored first draft is valuable because thoughts can be amorphous beings just floating aimlessly through your brain, unformed, unidentifiable, and as profound as a first-grader with a mouthful of paste and crayons. It’s important for a writer to rescue those thoughts before they disappear by committing them to paper/screen. With those clumps of verbal clay before you, you can mold them into something coherent. 

The thoughts may have been shapeless and pointless before, but with their basic substance before you, you can form and sculpt them into something useful, artful, or both. All because you wrote them in their original form as messy and rough as they may be. And that is good, right? As the old adage says, “How can you know what you think until you see what you say?”

But to assume that those thoughts have magically appeared fully formed, eloquently stated, and completely free of structural gaffes is entirely foolish. And to publish them in their crude pre-revision state is even more foolish.

Oh, yes, there are happy accidents, like genius misspellings, word choice, or grammatical faux pas that confound the language imps sitting on your shoulder. That’s the beauty of writing the rough draft.

However, if you truly have something worthwhile to say, you must make sure your words express it in the most effective manner possible before you publish.

Secondly, if you have typing skills like mine, you know you'

re going to mess up. Thank goodness, most writing apps come with helpful tools to identify your clumsiness. 

One of the easiest and most essential has nothing to do with the words you choose: spell check. Remember this admonition: Spell check is your friend. It won't catch all your errors, assuredly, but it will catch many of the most common.

That being said, there are still many simple errors you have to watch for because, like typing, spell check and its evil twin auto-correct are still inexact tools. There are some simple-to-miss errors it just won't detect. Far too often, the writer will accidentally type something innocent like “far too often” which will morph into the totally wrong “fart too often.” Without reviewing the first draft … or second ... or third ... such mistakes will cause the subject of your post to be lost in a torrent of snickers and guffaws.

Then again, maybe auto-correct has a sense of humor and did that on purpose. 

The third of my concerns is that blogging is not journalling and should not be treated as such. Yes, some people use it for that purpose, but to them I say, “Stop it!” 

You write journals

for yourself, keeping them under the bed or in the closet where your nosy little brother won’t find them. 

Blogs, on the other hand, are public. They’re on the internet, for crying out loud, where anybody can find them ... especially that snot-nosed little brother wiping his runny nose with his bare hand. Get a tissue, booger breath!

Sorry. Back to first draft editing.

What is the purpose of the first draft? Let’s establish a few baselines.

First, the first draft’s most common alternate appellation is “rough draft.” Meaning it is roughly what you want to say, but not exactly. More often this version is more accurately referred to as the “really bad draft.” As your gunky freshman brother would say, “It really Hoovers,” which is much better than his original word

choice.

Secondly, the concept of “First thought/Best thought” does not equate to “First draft/Best draft.” Unless you are a writing deity, and even if you are, those good ideas that miraculously materialize appear on your screen still need revision, fashioning, copy-editing, and a strong shot of caffeine-laden liquid to make them comprehensible to your reader.

Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, your reader deserves your best writing, the writing that shows respect because you took time to make his/her job easier. In other words, revision makes you a nice person. Like your mother told you, “It’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice.”

Unless you are exceedingly wordy, the process won’t take that long. Plus your post will have more impact.

Who knows? Maybe in gratitude that gunky, insolent brother will smile and turn his cap brim the way it was designed.

And maybe I’ll munch on brussels sprouts for a snack. 

Nevertheless, revision is worth the effort.

Adaptability: Live in the Moment and "Make Good Art"

Living in the moment keeps a person alive and loving life, satisfied, confident, and even joyful. This moment today says to give up on my original plans for this morning's entry and share one of the best speeches I've heard in a long while. Thanks to Daniel Goldberg for posting it on his author blog http://www.authordanielgoldberg.com.

The speaker, Neil Gaiman, is one of the most prolific writers I've never read (a situation I need to rectify quickly). If his books, comics, and other artistic pursuits are anything like this, I've been missing a lot. Among all the insights into the creative profession, this phrase stands out: "Make good art!"

Typical graduation speeches strive to inspire graduates to be the best they can be, to trust in their education, and to utilize their innate talents. However, the words often fall flat or on deaf ears. It's impossible to hear this one, however, and not feel inspired, even impelled to maximize your life, your vocation, and your appreciation of existence.

This is the commencement speech I wish I had heard before embarking on my working career. This is the advice I needed then and need now to guide what comes next. The video below is approximately twenty minutes, but it will be time well spent. Enjoy and smile.

Neil Gaiman - Inspirational Commencement Speech at the University of the Arts 2012

The American Story: Hero from Protagonist

In 2013, my dad traveled to Iowa to meet one of his World War II buddies. Among the requisite clothes, travel food, and camera, he brought seven albums replete with memories and black-and-white photographs of the places the two had served in the Seabees together. My wife, uncle, and I accompanied him, not really knowing what to expect. What I certainly did not expect was a major shift in my view of American history.

I had always known history is story. My college professors taught me that. However, I had never put a literary spin on The American Experience 102: 1900-Present. I did after that  weekend seven years ago.

If I were going to be all English-teachery (and I am), I'd call the meeting's location a distinctive setting. Iowa City, Iowa. Not a metropolis, but as the home of the University of Iowa and located smack-dab in the middle of the cornfield that is Iowa, the city provides a unique mix of urban and rural climates. All one has to do for change is walk a couple blocks off campus.

For this story's structure, that's it for exposition. Two men. Iowa City. GO!

The plot jump-started as we finished registering at the hotel and discovered Dad's friend Weldon with his daughter waiting just inside the lobby door. After a brief introduction of the families, the two started what they came for.

Picture two 90-year-old men who hadn't seen each other for over two decades. One would assume there would be some testing of the waters, catching up, getting reacquainted.

No. These two began talking as if they had never left off from their last Seabee reunion back in the 1990s. As they chattered, the rest of us watched transfixed.

This was not simply old memories manifested in aching, aging bodies. Here were two uniquely kindred spirits, revealing the character not only of themselves today, but who they were seventy years ago. Through them we saw a world we had never known–what the earth was like and the character of America before we were born.

For years historians and pundits have called people like Dad and Weldon, those who served in WWII, the Greatest Generation. 

Greatest. Listening to these two veterans speak, one knew that greatest is such an inadequate superlative.

Great. Greater. Greatest. All are used to describe the sacrifice, the perseverance, and the accomplishments of men and women who fought, suffered, and died in the Pacific and Europe. The good guys. The protagonists of the war story. While these attributes are significant, they barely touch the totality of the contributions of people like Dad and Weldon.

These men and their fellow servicemen shared more than memories; they created a world which is foreign to those of us living today. As they talked, the story became far larger than just theirs. It was the American Story. 

The plot of the American Story differed from theirs, not simply due to the passage of time, but because of a major complication—the deterioration of national spirit and goals.

Prior to Pearl Harbor the whole globe had suffered ravages of the Great Depression, a time when people struggled here and elsewhere to simply survive. But in America, that struggle was internal.

With the advent of war, something changed ... for the worse. And the better.

War is never a good thing. But this complication to the story changed the direction of the nation. Through the hell of death and destruction of battle came a resurgence of spirit. The veterans' discussion revealed that WWII was not merely America pitting its forces against the Japanese and Germans, but it was a whole country marshaling its will and resources to defend its honor and way of life.

Scientists, engineers, and clerks joined with soldiers, sailors, and flyers to create the machinery for fighting the war. Crane operators  worked with road builders to establish and supply bases through the world  When attacked by the enemy, ALL Americans returned fire. When duty called, personnel changed jobs, locations, even branches of service. No task was too large or too menial. What needed doing, everybody did.

At home, petty political bickering gave way to thoughtful, careful planning. Leaders, united in common cause, cooperated to provide the armed forces the best chance of victory. Industry shifted production. Workers left traditional roles to assume new and necessary ones. The country accepted and supported fuel and food quotas.

Everybody was in the fight together. Warriors. Civilians. Government. Industry.

Then the war ended. But not the story. The country did not stop. Weary of conflict, the heroes returned from the conflict with a desire for peace, a pride in their accomplishments, a dedication to honor and morality, and a newborn confidence in America’s ability to do whatever it needed to do.

The people who fought and won a war developed the interstate highway system, improved the national  infrastructure, created unimaginable medical and scientific innovations, fostered a strong education system, and believed wholeheartedly in the attainability of the American Dream.

Learning from the war experience, they accomplished those tasks with the same approach, "we, not I."  And the men who fought the war taught that attitude to their children and grandchildren excitedly and emphatically.

For example, when I secured summer employment after high school working at a public sector job, Dad gave me a piece of advice I remembered all my life: “Remember. You are working for the people of the state of Minnesota. They deserve your best.”

Here the literary analogy takes a turn. 

One would hope for the fairytale ending "They all lived happily ever after." Unfortunately, one would have to assume the war was the climax of the story and the recovery the denouement. One would be safer calling the recovery merely an interlude.

Times changed. Generations passed. 

The whole story that became America changed.

Our localized setting became international. Complications became new conflicts—Korea, Vietnam, Civil Rights Movement, Watergate. 

Tensions rose and fell—Iran Hostage Crisis, Clinton's Impeachment, 911.

Characters big and small came and went, striving to become the new protagonist. 

Far too often, those characters were flawed. 

Far too often the American Story's themes of honor, duty, and virtue gave way to utility, greed, and expedience.

"Okay. The whole literary ting is getting out of hand. You're just a naysayer. You think the story is a tragedy."

Oh, no. I don't. I don't think the story is over. I think it's like a James Michener novel going on and on and will get better and better.

That's what I learned that weekend. If America has proved anything in its two and a half centuries, it is that it is uncommonly buoyant and brilliantly hardy.  

In the hands of a lesser people, a lesser foundation, this story would have died a quiet death in the dusty corners of history. But in America's history, crisis becomes opportunity. From an over-bloated cast of characters motivated by power and gluttony have materialized people of substance—leaders and heroes, motivated by character—to renew and sustain what is truly American. People like the Washingtons, the Jeffersons, the Lincolns, the Roosevelts.

Like the heroes I listened to that weekend in Iowa.

Thanks, Dad and Weldon

Recharging Your Writing: For a Change of Pace, Change Your Place

I don’t know what causes the condition, but way too often my mind turns to mush when I sit down in my office to write. I start contemplating everything from the meaning of life to the best place to get a haircut to the significance of a worldwide shortage of duct tape.

To escape the intrusive thoughts, I rise, migrate to the family room  and face worse dangers–the television and comfy couch. 

Craving and desperate for escape, I scramble up the stairs to the kitchen where there is nothing. Nothing but a treasure trove of delicious treats somewhere (if I can find where my wife hid them). Beyond the sliding doors is the city park. The radio sits on a bookcase daring me to turn on something that fully exhibits the high-definition bass of compact speakers.

I could hide in the living room, slipping into the quiet of noise-canceling headphones, but there’s another couch…

There is hope, however. Pack up the laptop, thesaurus, and notebooks and head away from the house entirely. 

It usually works, if for no other reason than the new geography shakes the cobwebs that dam the brain, allowing the words to flow. Complete with glaring misspellings and empty-headed redundancies like “simultaneously at the same time” (as if events can happen simultaneously at different times).

The main question is "Where to go?" There are the obvious choices of the local library, the nearest Starbucks, and the oft-mentioned McDonald’s. They all have the advantage of flat surfaces and free wi-fi for the computer , but familiarity can induce boredom and sleep as quickly as a nearby couch can. 

For something completely different here are some suggestions:

Away!

Do you have a vehicle or a gullible friend who can drive you out of town? Perhaps a rich benefactor with an underused Gulf Stream airplane? Use them. You don’t have to go far. Maybe simply the next town. Perhaps alongside a river. Possibly Argentina. Okay, maybe that's too far.

If you live in the country, venture to the nearest suburb. If you live in the suburbs, brave the traffic downtown. If you live in the city, bolt for the country. 

If a radical geographical shift is out of the question, try something simpler. Rather than a corner table in a quiet restaurant, plant yourself on one of the benches just inside the doors of a Walmart. Instead of Starbucks, try Caribou. Hate McDonald's? Try Schlotzsky's. Library's too noisy? Try a cemetery. (Seriously!)



Open Spaces

Although the outdoors has the glaring disadvantages of weather, bugs, and the need for sunscreen, it can spur innumerable thoughts and reactions. 

In rural areas, consider fields, wooded paths, pond sides, and honking huge rocks. Or be adventurous. Climb a tree.  

You’ve heard of mountaintop experiences? Try one. Find highest elevation you can find and sit atop it. Even if the rise is not exactly mountainous, let the view and air remold your thinking.

Or on the opposite plane, find a low place–a valley, a hollow, a dry riverbed–and feel the earth enfold you with its presence.

In urban settings, every major business these days enhances their campus with glorious plazas. Forward thinking cities provide their citizens respite from the concrete and steel with parks and other green spaces. Educational institutions, especially colleges and universities, seem to love picture-perfect scenery for their advertising brochures by planting trees, crafting malls, and erecting monuments, all furnished with benches to encourage reflection.

Enclosed Spaces

Libraries and restaurants, as stated before, are obvious choices for a writing environment, but rather than selecting ones you're accustomed to, drive to another town. 

Lobbies are great no matter what the site, as long as the business owners don’t mind your presence. Those in cities are safer since the traffic seldom notices you.

Did I mention museums? Museums are great places for meditation and revelation. Besides the inspirational surroundings, the curators love to provide information. Just ask. 

Few rural communities offer the enclosed spaces that cities do, but they are not without their locations. For example, many include shelters in their picnic areas, some even with electrical outlets. Yea! (Few with wi-fi, however. Sigh.) For a completely different experience, one can always try the local bar. 

Walks/Runs/Hikes

Sometimes, what you really need is to put the computer and pen away and just walk. Not to quit writing, but to re-energize, to reboot the mechanism, if you will. It is surprising what the process of walking in the fresh air (or polluted air, depending on your location) can jar free. Maybe it's your feet slapping against the pavement. Maybe it's the synapses flapping together for one mind-clearing moment. Maybe a hornet stings you in the nose and you let loose the perfect expletive you've been searching for to give your protagonist as she realizes her favorite color is puce. Suddenly, a half-formed, harebrained notion  morphs into a fully realized concept ready for typing when you get home.

Great writing often comes from not writing.

At least not in your usual writing environment.

Creating stories, elucidating ideas, or simply joining a noun and verb into a coherent system is difficult under ideal familiar conditions. Rather than allowing the same inconsequential temptations to distract you, rather than breathing the same stale air, rather than consuming enough of the same coffee to support the entire city of Seattle, it’s best to simply leave and write elsewhere. 

Wherever you go to write or to think will provide a new perspective, a change of pace, and a change of attitude that allows your brain and fingers to do what they were meant to do: Write!

Hey Jude: Happiness as a Writer's Greatest Tool

Nothing starts the morning quite like turning on the radio and hearing the Beatles sing “Hey Jude.” 

Especially after you’ve been fasting twelve hours in preparation for an early morning blood test. 

Especially after you’ve spent a fitful night, writhing from the agony of a mid-sleep charley horse.

First, you roll out of bed a mite miffed. Your leg still throbs. Your stomach rumbles. You can’t find a book to read in the lab waiting room. Your wife sends you a text reminding you there’s a chocolate donut in the refrigerator you can’t eat.

Muttering vague sounds resembling profanity, you limp to the car, dump your laptop and thesaurus into the back seat, sit behind the wheel, and then, surrounded by dark, remember it might be a good idea to open the garage door before backing out.

Safely outside on the driveway, you turn on the radio and navigate Sirius XM away from the frothing news stations, the all-too-important sports channels, and the worthless-to-Minnesotans traffic reports from Pittsburgh to the 60s music just in time to hear Paul McCartney exhorting someone to “take a sad song and make it better.” 

It's impossible NOT to be happy.

You crank the volume knob to "STUN." You start waving your head forward, backward, side to side. You wail like a water buffalo in heat, trying to duplicate McCartney’s unintelligible, yet mega-cool screaming.

The steering wheel magically transforms into a black-and-white pearl-finished drum set and you are no longer Joe Schmoe quietly driving his way to the clinic. You morph into a young Ringo Starr, pounding out the infectious beat to the best song ever!

Music transfigures the entire universe.

Leg? What leg? Donut? Schmoe-nut. You drive to the clinic and actually smile at the lab tech as she rams the needle into your arm. As your arm hangs limply at your side, the smile grows into a full-fledged giggle. The new you drives off to breakfast.

The difference between the new you and the one you were an hour ago? You actually look forward to what lies in store. 

A full day of writing? So what? 

Sixty short minutes ago–before getting in the car, before turning on your radio, before your musical tirade–the “real world” threatened to write you. The insignificant and the mundane jeopardized your attitude, your vision, even your ability to construct a coherent sentence 

However, after joining the greatest rock band of all time, if only vicariously, after wolfing down a heaping bowl of oatmeal, and after slurping the obligatory morning caffeine, the day belongs to you, not you to the day.

You are in control of not only the real world, but the fictional world only you can create. The world you get to build and determine who inhabits it, where they live, what happens to them, and how they react. YOU ARE A GOD!!!

"So, what if the fictional world I want to produce is anything but happy?"

You mean like a world where a crotchety old patient exacts his revenge against every sadistic lab tech he ever had, stab for stab, by attacking an unsuspecting garbage worker in the middle of a dark Manhattan alley on a rainy night?

Well, that could be fun. The important thing to remember, however, is that world will be more alive, more engaging, more affecting to the reader if you are in control of, not controlled by, your emotions. 

Instead of wallowing in the muck and mire of your real life, let it simply serve as background for your fictional world. Rather than allowing your attitude to hinder your construction, use your mood to color your characters, to enhance the plot, to infuse your story with reality. In other words, let your daily travails stir your imagination, not clog it.

How? By taking Paul McCartney’s advice: Take a sad song and make it better. 

Advice much easier followed with a happy mind.

Characterization: Write Who You Know–But Be Careful with Grandma

Recently, I shared places and things to use as inspiration for writing. Today, instead of the where or the what, let’s look at who you can utilize for character inspiration.

Here’s a thought. Family and friends.

Stop screaming. Bulging eyeballs and a frothing mouth do not become you. Let me explain. 

First, I am not suggesting you should insert Grandma, trait for trait, into your fiction. On the contrary, let me state emphatically: DON’T! Don't copy an ear twitch. Don't quote her favorite soap opera. Don't share her opinions on Engelbert Humperdinck, Carl Burnett, and Rand Paul.

In fact, never put anybody you know, trait for trait, into your fiction, especially Grandma. Not if you value her lefse recipe and all the cool things she bought you for Christmas when you were twelve.

Many authors like Ray Bradbury say they love to take the person they most despise, write him into a story, dress him all up in flowery language, and then kill him. However, unless you are completely antisocial, rest totally secure in your own person, are bound for Outer Mongolia in the morning, or you just don’t give a wombat’s booger whom you offend, you need to avoid copy-pasting people from real life into your fiction.

Instead, use those people you know as the basis for your characters, not as fully formed characters fit for the limelight. Especially if one of those people is your grandmother. 

Here's an example:

As alluded to above, I really loved my grandmother and her lefse. (For those of you who don’t know, lefse is a Norwegian delicacy–if anything Norwegian is delicate–that makes the very best of left-over mashed potatoes. Mmmmm.)  However, like with most children, for the bulk of my life, Grandma was simply Grandma. 

The woman we visited on Sundays. 

The woman who took care of me when my parents were away. 

The woman who let Grandpa live in her house. 

Mom’s mom.

That's who I thought she was, but she was so much more.   

Early in her life, she was a young Norwegian girl who lived the immigrant experience, moving to America in the early 20^th Century, failing first grade because she was unable to speak or read English, helping her family eke out a living amid the swamps and scrub-brush of northern Minnesota. 

When she grew up, she became a feisty woman who bucked age-old traditions and created a scandal by entering into a mixed marriage with–Gasp!–a Dane.

As a mature adult, her actions revealed her most endearing characteristics.

Loving, she housed her aging mother, raised four children of her own, and helped raise six grandchildren.

Caring, she fed the occasional hobo who came to our small town desperate for food. Yearly, she wrestled with spruce boughs to create evergreen wreaths for the neighbors' Christmas. 

Committed, she mourned the loss of her father, murdered on a business trip to Minneapolis.

Stalwart, she led the local American Legion Auxiliary after she lost her son at the Battle of the Bulge during WWII.

Ever curious, she read book after book, experimented with new recipes, and collected an eclectic assortment of music that included Joan Baez, Elvis Presley, and Lawrence Welk.

Blessed with a great sense of history, one dark, cloudless night she shooed her family onto the front lawn to search the skies to locate Sputnik as it traveled overhead. 

Observing her and listening to her stories, I learned that there was more to Grandma than simply what friends called "the lady in the big white house on the north side of town." I discovered there was more to her because of what she had experienced. Most importantly, I learned there was more to me because of what she had experienced. I had so many more stories to hear.

She's gone now. 

Except she's not. She's still telling her stories through the characters in my stories.  

None of them are her, but many reflect her. Combined with all my friends, relatives, colleagues, and acquaintances, Grandma provides enough examples and stimuli for thousands of characters. And they all have stories to tell.

So today's lesson in a nutshell is this: Rather than copy-pasting people from real-life into your book, use them to create new characters. Examine them, reinvent them, embellish their dominant positive and/or negative traits, or completely transform them into something unique until you barely recognize where the new person came from. 

Like lead character in my latest story idea: An elderly Norwegian ninja warrior who slaps all the power-crazed super villains senseless with her deadly roll of cinnamon-and-sugar-laced lefse.

Maybe not. But it's a start.

Writing and Music: Building the Inspirational Playlist

For many, writing is an activity best done in silence or  within the white noise of a busy coffee shop or the hectic courtyard of a shopping mall. Other insist emphatically, "I gotta have my tunes, man!" For them, music serves as motivational/inspirational background for a process too often as focused as canine attention span at a city park inhabited by tree-climbing rodents. 

But does music really help? And if so, what kind should a writer use?

I'm convinced it does, but to prevent sprained necks turning to the metaphorical squirrels of the music world, care should be used when creating your personal writing playlist. 

The following recommendations are based on observations during free-writing journal periods used with high school students. They are by NO MEANS scientific, but the results replicated themselves enough times to deem them useful.

Music to avoid: 

1. Rockin'!

If your aim is production, if you want to increase your daily word count, know that the heavier the beat of your music, the lesser is your output.  I know. Your soul wants to boogie, but your writing brain? Not so much. The more the brain gets lost in the music, the more you find yourself drumming on the desktop or tapping your foot, the more words will hide in the nooks and crannies of your consciousness never to be found.

2. “I LOVE that song!/I HATE that song”

If you do either, find something else to put on your playlist. You want the music in the background of your surroundings, not the foreground of the creative process. If you have a strong reaction to a piece—whether positive or negative—find something else.

3. Memorable lyrics

Seriously, avoid any song you will find yourself singing during your writing. You want to be composing your own words, not singing somebody else’s. This is not to say that songs with lyrics should be avoided at all costs, just that those lyrics should never move to the forefront of your thinking.

4. The [Insert Genre Here] Playlist

Avoid the temptation to only include one genre of music or only one artist. Variety is your writing friend, as is the wonderful shuffle tool. Classical is fine. Gaelic is spiffy. Movie soundtracks are great. All of them bunched together and randomly played keeps the brain fresh and alive.

Music to include:

1. Instrumental

One could argue that writing is instrumental and so should be the music on your playlist. At least a major part of it. As mentioned before, lyrics distract. This distraction can be easily avoided with instrumental music. That does not mean it can only come from a particular genre like classical. Most genres include excellent instrumental artists.

2. The Great Unknown

The less you know a song, the less likely the distractions. The more you hear one, the closer your emotional connection and the more likely your fingers are to jump wildly across the keyboard in uncontrolled paroxysms of fancy or joy, anger or fear.

3. Mood Music

If you are writing a scene to create mood, find music that creates just such a mood. For example, the Blue Man Group music that accompanies their stage shows can also be used to create the mood of controlled chaos in a crowd scene you are writing. Loreena McKennitt music can set the mystical mood of fog hanging over a swamp. If your scene is in the spirit world, the ethereal music of Diane Arkenstone can transport your writing there.

4. Transcendent Music

What if you don't know what you are writing? What if you need that spark of inspiration to get you past the irritating brain freeze. Put away your manuscript, play a song you don’t know, and close your eyes. As you listen, watch your mind’s theater. What is the music showing you? Where does if come from? When the song is over, write down what you saw. Let it rest an hour or so, and then come back to it. How can you use this in your story? Or is this the idea for another story? 

The Key to the Perfect Playlist

The key to developing the perfect playlist is to avoid the “squirrel factor.” Remember your music is suppose to work for you, not against you. On a separate page you will find a list of artists included on several of my playlists. I develop one for each different type of different of writing I'm doing. 

But that's what works for me. You will probably be different. Different is good. 

Find what works for you. Find your right music. The Write Music.