letusdare

Interviewing 101

This should probably be part of my writing lessons on Mud Pie Press. I just checked to make sure it wasn’t there, and it's not. Don’t know what I was thinking at the time -- probably that interviewing is not writing? -- but after a couple of conversations on the topic, I am rethinking that.

Conversation 1: I mentioned to my spouse that I knew of at least one reporter who hated to conduct interviews. When I asked why, she told me that she actually got fairly queasy to upchuck-sick when she had to talk to someone. My spouse then asked how people learn to conduct an interview. I don’t know how they learn it now (journalism teachers, feel free to answer), but when I was first learning about working for a newspaper, we learned on the job. Don’t they have a class to teach you that? my spouse asked. Nope, I said.

Conversation 2: I checked with fellow classmate Ray to make sure I my fact-and-trivia filled brain had not forgotten some long-ago interviewing class. He assured me my memory was fine, at least in that area. We just went out and covered things, he noted, and added, I think that if you have the inclination to be a journalist, you inherently know what questions to ask.

Maybe his second point is right, but we also learned from watching our colleagues and eavesdropping on others. One reporter I know of who always got the difficult assignments had a habit of waiting until the end of an interview to ask people how to spell their names. It was less intimidating at that point, he said. I guess it's kind of like asking someone how they are before you ask if you can borrow their car.

The reason I am thinking a lesson on interviewing should be part of my writing lessons is the second thing Ray said about interviewing: "I always thought interviewing was the fun part…especially if you had a good subject to interview." See, some people go into journalism for that, and some go into it because they are idealistic, and some people go into it because they like to write. You can go into it for all of those reasons and more, but most people usually list one or two at the top.

So if you like to write but aren't sure about all that interview stuff, watch this space. Rather than posting the lesson about interviewing on the lessons page, I’m going to do it right here. Consider this a quick and snappy, no-credit class. Look for it in the next few days.

• Hey! Saviors of the Bugle, my book about teenagers who save their town’s newspaper, just got another good review. Danielle, the reviewer for Reader Views, really nailed it when she said: “…the heroes of this book are ordinary kids who found something they were passionate about. They are not kids who do extraordinary things every day.”

Thanks, Danielle Feliciano, for getting it. To read the whole review, go here: www.readerviews.com and click on Read Reviews. You can search by book title or by author. That would be me. You can also find it on www.amazon.com on the Saviors of the Bugle page.

Pulitzers!

Sometimes things work just the way they’re ’sposed to – the cake icing covers the whole cake, the car starts up the first time, Word doesn’t shut down in the middle of a difficult editing job and the water from the garden hose doesn’t spray you instead of the peonies.

That was the way of the world Monday when the New Orleans Times-Picayune (online version) and the Sun-Herald in Gulfport, Miss., (online version) won Pulitzers for their coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The victory goes not only to these fine newspapers but also to the journalistic spirit that lives everywhere.

As a newspaper executive in the ’80s and ’90s, I attended marketing seminars where the frequent message to newsroom workers was, “You’re not doing God’s work.” OK. I got it. We shouldn’t believe that every word that hits the pages of our newspapers is worth its weight in a barrel of oil. We shouldn’t be afraid to have a little fun. We shouldn’t be afraid to -- gulp -- market our newspapers.

I think most newspaper people realize most of that without being told. It’s why we have comics pages and why we have page one. This knowledge allows the newspaper journalist to bury the Pulitzer story on the same page with the story about the guy who killed a young girl because of cannibalistic urges. At least that was the juxtaposition in my local newspaper, which rankled me a tad. (Will I stop reading the paper, or even call to complain that the Pulitzer story should’ve been in a better spot? No. I rank my rankles and I know about making up a page on deadline.)

The dual Pulitzers honor the newspaper companies’ commitment to publish, even when their newsrooms and presses were unusable and employees were left homeless and searching for relatives. It honors the reporters and editors and photographers and all the others who went to work because it’s what they do and they believe it important.

All newspaper people can take a bit of vicarious joy in the triumph because any good journalist would’ve done the same thing. Tell a nosy person to get the story and they’ll be paid for it, and they’re off on the trail. More seriously, good reporters and editors understand their responsibility. They do their jobs without being told. Those who misjudged the job get out of the profession quickly.

It’s also a victory for mainstream journalists everywhere who are told daily that they are liberal, biased, too stupid to understand complexities, and/or are marching to the tune of owners who have an agenda. Those who do have an agenda are top-notch at this name-calling.

Congratulations, journalists. Imagine me and many others tipping our hats to you. Keep up the good work. It may not be God’s work, whatever you define that to be. But it’s darn close.

The truth about bullies

Among the columnists in my daily newspaper, I have many favorites. Most are on the editorial page, but one is on the comics page -- the Everyday Cheapskate, aka Mary Hunt. I have to mention her column today because it’s about a topic dear to my heart.

Bullies.

Hunt called her bully a heckler. He sat through two sessions she gave on Debt-Proof Living and through his yelling and mannerisms tried to distract her from her topic. Then he handed her a letter and told her essentially that she was no good and should find another line of work.

You’ll have to read her column to find out how she resolved this matter. The important thing is that she resolved it.

I learned slowly about bullies. Men seem to get their education early on, and it usually involves pain or at least physical intimidation. It’s especially bad for males who are small, or who are successful in the parents/smarts/money or looks departments. I don’t think it always involves the cliche of a big guy holding down a little guy and rifling through his pockets, but I believe it’s pretty blatant.

Girls bully in subtler ways (“Barbara, I’ve always liked that dress. Every time you’ve worn it.”)

At least for me, it takes reflection to realize when I’ve been bullied. I’m getting better at it, though. At a recent panel discussion about books, when the moderator asked me where I got the idea for the bully in Saviors of the Bugle, I surprised myself when I said that everyone faces bullies, whether we realize it or not. I added that this is not just a problem for children, either. Apparently I didn’t surprise very many people in the audience because I saw heads nodding.

Here are a couple of hints for anyone who’s been attacked by a bully and then wondered what YOU did wrong: If a person pulls out in front of you in his large pickup then rolls down his window to yell at you because you almost hit him…he’s a bully. If a person insults, patronizes or manipulates you to get his way…he’s a bully. If a person attacks your religious or political beliefs or other values without provocation…he’s a bully. And although I use the pronoun “he” in these examples, feel free to apply it to both genders. I know women bullies and so do you.

As I told a child recently as we discussed the topic of bullies in school, there’s usually a reason for everything. However, analyzing the reason the bully is the way he is should not be your first concern. Recognizing bullying for what it is, and learning how to deal with it, is paramount.

Go, Mary Hunt -- and all you other bully fighters out there.

So many books, so little time

My downfall at the Plano (Texas) Literacy Festival in March was buying a book. I attend book festivals all the time, and most of the time I can will myself not to succumb. The reason: I have a tall bookshelf full of unread books, and I am woefully behind.

But Frank Schaeffer’s Voices from the Front tempted me, especially after I listened to his keynote address at the festival's authors' banquet, and heard him speak again the next day. Schaeffer, who says fiction is his love but writes a lot of nonfiction wrote Voices to introduce readers to the men and women who are laying down their lives for our country. I’m just now getting into the book, but two things strike me about it -- one, that Frank lets the letters speak for themselves. He inserts a note here or there to explain a phrase that a civilian might not be familiar with, but omits his own opinions and attitudes. And two, I’ve found very little political opinion in the letters themselves. What I find mostly in these compelling snapshots about our military men and women is a desire to tell parents or other loved ones about how it’s going where they are. No partisan politics, no pro-war sentiments. Maybe I will find those later. I’ll write more about the book when I’ve finished it.

A note here about book festivals…if you find one in your area, go. In Texas, the ones I have been to attract some very interesting people. Also, book festivals are generally free. And they provide a way for readers to get autographed books and meet the author face to face. More later about some of the people I met in Plano, whose books I didn’t buy but plan to.

A belated note from March…one of the best reviews ever for Saviors of the Bugle appears at this link. I like the review not only because the writer liked the book, but because she gives reasons.

Saviors, my latest book of middle-grade fiction, was a featured book at the Plano Literacy Festival and I enjoyed participating in a panel discussion about writing with two other authors.  

Balm to a wandering storyteller

Author Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and many other books) said something the other day that I chose to believe was specifically for me.

"When you talk -- when you're a full-time writer -- you don't have to keep to the point."

Love that. I like telling stories, but I can't keep to the point. It's a trait I inherited from my father, whose stories bled into each other until you needed a map to get back to Go. They were Stories Without Endings.

I'm not alone. I know every storyteller in that room felt just like I did, and we all knew he was talking specifically to us. I wanted to throw him a parade.

McCall Smith didn't keep to one point and nobody cared.

Other points he made:

· Stories tell us how to live our lives. They help us establish a human connection and make sense of the world. His topic centered on folk tales, but he was talking about all stories.

· Resolving problems, issues, evil in literature -- fulfilling our need for justice -- is important. More precisely, he said that it's important for evil people to get their just desserts.

· Once a writer develops a character that people take interest in, he doesn't own that character any more. Those who read his books now own Precious Ramotswe, the famous character from his Ladies' Detective Agency series. "I can't have her say things out of character. Or bring her to an end. That would cause difficulties for me. I wouldn't be able to appear in public."

· The conversations of women offer more promise to him as a writer than do the conversations of men. "Men are much more inhibited," said the sibling of three sisters and no brothers. For example, he said, women are much more likely to use the word "bitch."

· He is a cofounder of "The Really Terrible Orchestra," for which he plays the bassoon. But not the whole bassoon. He plays only the easy part of it and if I knew more about a bassoon, I could probably tell you where he stops. (I believe this makes me qualified to play in his orchestra, but first I have to find an instrument.) For now suffice it to say that he stops playing when it becomes difficult. He and his orchestra members play only when the music is accessible.

He encouraged all of us to form or join a really terrible orchestra if possible, because he was sure our city had its fair quota of really terrible musicians. "Get a professional conductor," he advised, "but you don't need to pay them. Find someone who will do that as his community service."

For those who want more trivia about Alexander McCall Smith, plug his name into Google and have fun. If you want to know more about his writing, you can do same. These are the books in his No. 1. Ladies' Detective Agency series. He's been writing books for years, but this series made him famous:

1. The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (1998)

2. Tears Of The Giraffe (2000)

3. Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001)

4. The Kalahari Typing School for Men (2002)

5. The Full Cupboard of Life (2003)

6. In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (2004)

7. Blue Shoes and Happiness (2006)

Boo!

Startlements are great in writing as well as life. And when I saw a couple of Halloween startlements this morning, it reminded me how good it felt to come out of myself and not take life so seriously.

If you go out on the streets of your village today, I'm betting you'll probably get lots of surprises, some that may even make you question your perceptions and attitudes.

To wit: Standing in line at the post office this morning was a young woman who looked from the back like she was outfitted in normal casual wear. When she turned around, I noticed a lip stud, a nose ring, a lethal-looking spike-and-leather bracelet, fishnet sleeves, a chain belt, and heavy makeup. My first thought was "Whoa! She's a brave young soul who must own her own business!" My second thought was "Congratulations, Sweetie, for wearing what you want!"

My third and embarrassingly slow thought: "Today is Halloween!"

She was in costume, and a very good one, apparently. Several people at the post office knew her but few recognized her until she said hello and told them her name. Then they felt comfortable enough to converse with her, even though they were dressed quite normally and she sported a lip stud. (Apparently glued on because it was moving around. Weird.)

So OK. I then realized the person behind me wearing operating room scrubs complete with one of those hair bubbles (sort of a squashed-down chef's hat) was really in costume and not some doctor or nurse who came out in public dressed like that just to impress us with medical credentials.

On my way to a client's office, I decided to drive by and see Darwin, the huge gorilla who graces the front lawn of a really nice home, to see what kind of costume he wore. Darwin's plastic body on the front lawn in a very nice neighborhood is a long story and a frequent surprise and delight.

More's the pity, I didn't have my digital camera. I'm sure some of you would've recognized the green body stocking and head covering, which sported a triangle in the middle of Darwin's forehead. Anybody know who he was supposed to be? I suspect it has something to do with Texas upcoming amendments election, because Darwin is frequently a political statement.

Forgive me my Halloween slowness. I haven't dressed up on this day for years, even when co-workers went wild with creative expression. It's taken me long enough to get comfortable in my own skin, so I don't want to go backwards by pretending to be someone else.

But here's the real fun of Halloween, for me and those like me. We get to be surprised. We get to tell ourselves, even as we are rushing around to complete the details of a day, to not look at every blasted thing as if it were a life-or-death situation.

Planting surprises is a good lesson in writing, especially in fiction. You can do this with a fun turn of phrase, an unexpected event, an off-the-wall character, a character's clothes, writing someone "out of place," where no one expects to find him. Writers can write surprise in a number of ways.

I think I'll go find a glue-on lip stud before I visit my next client. Can you talk OK with those things?

Voguish?

This week I learned that unclear writing irritates me a lot more than spam. More about how I learned that important fact in just a moment. First, I wish to give clarity to something I perceive as crystal clear: Unclear writing is most often a sign of muddled thinking. Clear writing doesn't necessarily have to be great writing, although it often is. It just must be, well, CLEAR.

This is one reason I'm not looking forward to voting in the upcoming amendments election in Texas. Our proposed amendments must be read backwards to make any sense. If you agree with something, you often must vote against it. If you disagree, you probably should vote for it. But that's politics and this is writing, and the twain rarely meet.

Last week I received spam like I do every week. For some reason, two of those Nigerian spam letters crept into my inbox instead of my spam box, along with the stray advertisements for viagra, web cams, great mortgage rates, *fun* dates and other detritus. For some reason, I happened to catch a glimpse of the contents of one of the Nigerian letters. You know the one. It asks for all manner of personal information so they can rob you blind.

Here's what the letter said in part: "I wish to inform you now that the square peg is now in square hole, and can be voguish for that your payment is being processed and will be released to you as soon as you respond to this letter."

Voguish? For that your payment is being processed?

Since those lines caught my eye, I had to read the whole thing. It was that bad all the way through. Is all spam this poorly written?

I don't respond to spam, but if I were going to, here's what I would say…

Dear Nigerian Minister of Robbing Idiots Blind:

I don't respond to spam, but if I did, I would react much better to well written spam than stupidly written spam. I am sorry to say that yours is of the latter variety and makes you look like a blooming idiot yourself.

Stupidly written items make people work too hard to get their meaning. They send people down rabbit holes where you didn't intend them to go. They don't carry a universal idea, something that rings the same bell for someone in Tennessee and Timbuktu.

I daresay, Mr. Nigerian Minister of Robbing Idiots Blind, that people would react better if you would say what you mean. You could simply write that you want all manner of personal information so that you can rob idiots blind. Once you make your wishes clear and state your point honestly, the idiots might even follow your directions and give you what you want.

Sincerely,

A Picky Reader

P.S. "Voguish" means chic and doesn't really go with the context of your sentence. It does sort of rhyme with bogus, however, in keeping with your theme.

Here's the dirt

I just sat down to write about the importance of character development, especially in fiction, and stared at the screen blankly for 15 minutes. "What can I say about it?" I thought. "That it's a good thing to do and here's how?"

The point is, a good writer knows that character development is important, and also that developing character is more than saying that her hair was a mass of blond ringlets or that he had a square jaw.

Point 2 is that I can't write well about character development in a short space. Maybe someone else can. Or maybe I can, too, if I have something specific in mind.

But just now I wanted to tell a story that I heard.

And that brings me to point 3, which is that writing should be fun, and that, to me, means telling a story. My story is about a friend's recent brush with dirt. She calls it a brush with the law, but it's really about dirt, and how her motivation to get some dirt caused her to have a brush with the law.

My friend is a walker in the neighborhood. As it happens, some other neighbors one street over had a big pile of dirt sitting in their front yard. My friend walked by it one day. Being in the market for dirt herself, she asked them where they got it.

They told her they had more than they needed and she could help herself to the pile of dirt. So, one morning recently, after checking once more to make sure they still were ready to be a few pounds of dirt lighter, my friend went to their house with a pickup and picked up a good deal of dirt. Then she drove home.

The trip from the dirt-owner's home to her home probably took less than a minute.

Shortly after she arrived home with her newfound load of black dirt, she answered a call at her front door. The caller was a police officer. "Ma'am," he said, "is that your pickup?"

"Yep," she said.

"Ma'am," he said, "is that your dirt?" (I wasn't really there, nor did I take notes when she related the story to me. So I am taking literary license with the quotes. This, however, is a reasonable facsimile of how the conversation went as told to me.)

"Yep," she said.

"Mind telling me where you got it?" asked the officer. And so she did.

As it turns out, a neighbor of the dirt owners saw my friend helping herself to the extra dirt. That neighbor called the police. The police sent over an officer to check out the report of dirt theft. Somehow, the police quickly found my friend's house, with the telltale pickup load of dirt parked in full view.

Good police work, I say.

As they sorted the matter out, someone decided to call the workplace of the dirt owners. Yes, said they, a woman had asked for some of the dirt. And yes, she had their permission to take some.

And so the case was settled outside the courtroom. A happy circumstance.

And this brings me to the neighborhood. For years, I have contemplated writing a picture book titled Claude takes a walk. Claude was my former walking buddy, and we saw some surreal things on our walks here over the years. For example, there's the story of the nude lawn mower. Claude saw him, and I saw him, but by the time anyone else happened by his yard, he'd apparently gotten wind of the fact that at least two sets of eyes saw his naked behind. And he hid. Or got dressed. I didn't stick around to find out.

It didn't help my credibility that Claude was a Great Pyrenees. He was a good listener and saw everything, but it wasn't like he could vouch for my story of the nude lawn mower.

Now I have a more dirt for my potential neighborhood book.

Aren’t neighborhoods great? You can find, and develop, all sorts of characters there. And that's what I have to say about character development.

May you find at least one tidbit here that helps you in your own writing projects. Feel free to e-mail me with your own thoughts or questions. You can do so from my Web site at http://www.mudpiepress.com, or leave your comments here.

Show & Tell time!

Most writers have heard the words, "show, not tell." Those three monosyllabic words sound good, but what do they mean in the context of writing?

I wondered about this the first few times I heard those words. What does "showing" look like? I wasn't sure.

At some point I started getting pictures in my head when I wrote. Or maybe I always had pictures in my head, but became more aware of them as words spilled out from my fingers onto the blank space in front of me. For example, I knew exactly what Alberta looked like in Breathing Room. She turned into someone I knew, not just a character in my book. I could see in my head her unruly red hair and her tattered running shoes, and when the cover artist asked me what she looked like, I found it easy to give him a description. During the days I wrote about Alberta, I wouldn't have been surprised to see her pacing up and down my street, or sticking out her tongue at me. She was real.

Still, I hadn't made the connection between showing and not telling. I don't believe the brass tacks meaning of those words came home to me until I edited the work of others. It's always easier to see your own mistakes when you're looking at what someone else did or failed to do. And one day I found myself writing to an author on a manuscript, "show, not tell."

"So that's what it means," I said, laughing at my concreteness.

If "showing" is a concept you still struggle with in your own writing, look below for a couple of examples that might help. In the first example, from Breathing Room, I'm telling more than showing. The scene occurs just after Alberta's mother, Mary Lou, has told Alberta that she has to give away her beloved dog, Josephine.

In the second example, which is the way I wish I'd written it, I'm trying to show more than tell.

EXAMPLE 1: "I feel as if I'm floating above the car, watching me and Mary Lou, driving down the street. I mean, this can't be real."

EXAMPLE 2: "Her words hit me as hard as a football in the teeth. I feel we're moving in slow motion, and some part of me leaves my body and floats above our beige station wagon. The floating me looks at the woman, who is driving and talking non-stop. Then the floating me looks at the crumpled figure beside the woman. I guess that used to be me before Mary Lou sucked out all my air."

Did you get a more vivid picture in your head with Example 2? Maybe it's a bit too showy or wordy, but you get my drift. Paint a word picture. Let the reader see what YOU see when you're writing.

Isn't hindsight wonderful?

May you find at least one tidbit here that helps you in your own writing projects. Feel free to e-mail me with your own thoughts or questions. You can do so from my Web site at http://www.mudpiepress.com, or leave your comments here.

Eavesdropper!

One piece of advice I read when I first started writing books for young adults said we writers should hang out at the mall and listen to how kids talk. The person who did this said it made the dialogue real.

I always try to see myself doing a thing before I do it, and ask myself what would happen if…? To be honest, this idea sounded fine until I envisioned being accosted by a mall security guard for stalking adolescents. Probably a more interesting dialogue would be the one with mall security: "I'm a writer. I only wanted to spy on them for a little while, to hear how they talk."

Uh-huh. He'd buy that.

Also, there's a problem with translation. Each new generation and every part of the country has its own language. I have enough trouble with plain old Texan English and Dodge commercials on TV featuring Snoop Dogg. I don't need a whole new language to translate, and I don't want to have to figure out whether this year's lingo in San Antonio was last year's in San Diego.

Still, there's merit in the seen and overheard. I just prefer that it come to me naturally, unscripted and unplanned. Like when I walk the dog, go to the grocery store, shop for black pants or talk to the neighbor. All it requires is paying attention, remembering, and embellishing when necessary. Often, real life needs no embellishment.

Example 1: My former neighbor from Austria dressed exotically, always in clamdiggers and an ornate shirt. She wore bright polish on her toenails and often wore sandals. Her gray-streaked black hair hung in waves to her shoulders. She drank iced coffee and spoke with an accent. And whenever my cocker, Fonz, got out by climbing up the leaning oak tree and hopping onto the leaning privacy fence, I knew where to find him. I'd call her and she'd say, "Oh yes, we are sitting on the couch eating tidbits -- a little chicken, a little fish. No hurry. He is good company, that Fonz."

She's a character in an upcoming novel.

Example 2: Early one morning as I walked my dog, a young boy on a bicycle swerved from a side street onto the road in front of me. There was no traffic save his two wheels. He rode slowly, into and out of driveways, making slow progress. Seconds later, a pickup truck pulled out of the same side street and followed him -- herded him, I realized later -- at a snail's pace. I got close enough to hear a woman's voice and knew immediately this was the young boy's debut trip "on his own" to school. "Stop weaving in and out of those driveways! Someone's going to pull out and hit you! Slow down! Are you looking in both directions?" As I got closer, I saw her watching him as she applied mascara and lipstick and fluffed her hair. As I got closer, she smiled and me and continued yelling. "Turn at the next street! Pay attention." Oblivious, the young boy continued pedaling. Part of me wanted to follow them to see how the story ended. Instead, they went their way and I went mine. I will use my imagination on the ending.

Example 3: In the overheard category, one of my favorites happened one day in a store -- a mall store at that. I wasn't there to eavesdrop, though, so the following conversation came to me gift-wrapped as I shopped for black pants. A weary looking woman passed by me pushing a stroller with a small child inside. A young boy trudged beside her, his hands touching every piece of clothing on a nearby rack. "Mommy, why are we staying at the mall?" he whined.

"Because it's not quite your bedtime yet," answered his mother with a sigh.

See? Real dialogue, gift-wrapped, as I shopped.

I found the black pants, too.