Writing Rules Redux

REPOSTED: I tripped over this post today while I was looking for something else and realized that I stand by my own list ten years and two graduate degrees later.  SH

Originally posted 3/7/10

Original Post: 

Elmore Leonard compiled his writing experience and wrote a list of rules for writers. His 2001 article in the NY Times: WRITERS ON WRITING; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle.

Inspired by Leonard's list, The Guardian recently collected writing rules from Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Michael Morpurgo, Andrew Motion, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Rose Tremain, Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson: Ten rules for writing fiction.

I love these. I love how conflicted the lists are. I love "Hooptedoodle." While I can't speak at the celebrity-level success as these authors, I do write. Here's some things I know. Also conflicted.

1. Write every day. I would love to have a special, established, sacred time in which I get to write, but I don't. That is the nature of my current reality. So I write whenever and wherever I can. Even if it is a single line that shakes out of my head while I am going to work and I have to write it on the back of a grocery receipt while driving down the freeway, although not advised due to some of the traffic implications. My writing brain does not stop just because I have to buy a gallon of milk or do a load of laundry. Honor that.

2. Capture those brilliant epiphanies in the moment. No matter what it is. If I wake up in the middle of the night with some amazing turn of phrase, I make myself get up and write it down right then so that I can read it in the morning and usually discard it for the rubbish that it is. Otherwise, it is gone from my head by morning, and I am left with a nostalgic fragment of memory that I had The Perfect Line. The glory of those moments of brilliance is generally "hooptedoodle," but the regret of not writing them down is real, and the process is far more important - it keeps me engaged.

3. Muses are overrated. Vodka was my Muse for a very long time. Although my writing from those vodka-years was mostly drivel, it was necessary. In retrospect, I probably could have written loads of drivel without the vodka, but that is not my reality. After a ten-year dry spell without either vodka or writing, I discovered that writing doesn't need a muse as much as it needs a sustained, consistent, daily practice.

4. Discover what process works for you and then keep doing that. My brain works faster than my fingers and eyes. It always has. They have real names for this now: ADD, OCD, neurosis, etc. I lack a formal diagnosis. But more than 25 years ago, my math teacher sat me down in front of an Apple computer (DOS), instructed me to write, and turned off the screen. When I just need to get what is in my head out, I turn off the screen and type. Or close my eyes. The trick is two-fold: don't stop until it's all out; and for god's sake, keep your fingers on the home keys.

5. Get everything down at least once. I always write more than what ends out in a finished piece. Better to write it all, and then cut the crap. Some of the crap will end up in something else. Some of it, thankfully, will never surface again. It's all part of the process.

6. Every pre-conceived ending always changes. I just expect it now.

7. Read every day. Novels, biographies, non-fiction, articles, blogs, newspapers, magazines, billboards, websites, backs of cereal boxes. I need language in all forms if I ever expect to be able to write it.

8. The greatest source of authentic dialogue is real people. I hang out in coffee shops, markets, business meetings, parties, hallways, city streets - anywhere there are people talking to each other - and listen. Then I write it down. Word for word if I can. I have not found any better published source for teaching real dialogue.

9. All input has value. A renowned national poet laureate evaluated one of my early pieces (from the vodka-muse years) in a university class I was taking at the time, and his written comments included a suggestion that I choose a different art form. After the sting had worn off, I was able to find helpful direction in his comments. If I am not afraid to look at both the negative and the positive input, I always learn something. For the record, I took up drawing and am an adequate artist to this day.

10. You can't make up better stuff than real life. For all the hair-brained, elaborate, whimsical, imaginary stories that flit through my head, the best ones for me are about real life. My absolute favorite rejection letter came from an East coast magazine declining my story, "Doing Time in the Real World" that said, "...while the writing was genuine, the material itself seemed unbelievable." The story, later published online by the Noneuclidean Cafe, is based on my several years of employment in the child welfare system as an Outreach worker, and my own early poverty-stricken years as a college student living in a trailer court with two small babies. All the facts are real, even if they are not exactly mine or not factually in order. Among other things, I did find a fly wrapped up in a package of meat, and there was a horribly embarrassing scene at the grocery afterward. Once I did burn my bangs right off with a lighter. And I was miserably grateful for government cheese back in those early years. I don't actually think you can do better than reality when it comes to a good story.

So there they are. Not so much rules, as just my experience.

Sherri

new fiction: The Far Away Smell of Water

Credit: NOAA Climate Program Office,
NABOS 2006 Expedition.

On the television, fishermen were pulling pots of pink and orange crab like giant spiders onto the decks of ships that rolled and bucked over white-crested waves. 

"Looks scary," the security guard said. His mouth was round and pink, his face clean-shaven. He wore a blue uniform shirt with gold insignia but had no holster on his belt. 

"Sca-ry." The guard said the word slowly, as if that would help. 

Jake shrugged. He wondered what the guard thought was more frightening—being in charge of security without a gun or having a deaf kid in his waiting room. 

The guard fiddled with the television remote until he got the captions to work on the screen. 

"Thank you," Jake signed.

The guard signed back. "You're welcome."

Jake couldn't hide his surprise, heat rising to this face as he considered his misjudgments. "You are cool," he signed. The guard gave him a thumbs up.

The crab ships fished in a place called the Bering Sea. At night, the sea was black and foamy and the fishermen pulled their enormous pots from the deep water. In the daylight, the water was the color of blue metal. Swells exploded like fireworks over the bows. One ship sailed further north than any of the others until there was ice all around in jagged, flat blocks, and the fishermen were able to step off the deck and walk on the floating ice in the middle of the sea.

Jake was waiting for the Crab Count to see which crew had caught the most crab, when his mother returned with a handful of paperwork and a set of keys. "We're going," she signed.

      ~ excerpt from "The Far Away Smell of Water" by Sherri H. Hoffman

I've worked on this piece off and on for a number of years, so I am thrilled for its first-publication home to be in this journal. Hawai'i Review has been a source of inspiring writing for me over the years.

The story itself—like so many of my stories—came about as the result of several real-world circumstances. The first was a fire, involving a semi-truck and a mattress. The second was that there was a period of time in my life when I had a large group of deaf friends, who tried to each me how to sign. The third was/is my ongoing nerdy love for Discovery Channel's documentary, Deadliest Catch. I've been a fan since Season One, back when there were no sponsor ads for each show segment. I adore the series—all of it. Perhaps on another day, I'll dedicate an entire post to its virtues.

In the meantime, these three "happenstancial" circumstances somehow crossed in front of me, and my writer-brain put them together to make a story. Sometimes, that's how it works.

Read the full story in Hawai'i Review 88. The print issue is available now at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. The online issue will be available soon at hawaiireview.org.

I loved the smell of ocean water. Salt always smells like memory. 

                   ~ from "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" by Sherman Alexie

no restrictions

I was asked this week what my choice would be if I could teach anything, and I am thinking about baseball. Perhaps because I visited one of my brothers last weekend, and he took me to Baltimore to see my first Orioles game. Perhaps because I simply love baseball.

The potentials are intriguing.

What's your favorite sports novel?

Reading the Game: Baseball

Sherri Hoffman's favorite books »

"In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

 ~ Vin Scully
          Announcing Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit, walk-off home run
          in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

16 random facts: the shortest stories redux

16. I love the rain, which happens at home throughout the year. In Wisconsin, the rains come mostly late summer-early fall, and then again in spring, mixed with snow. In Rwanda, there are downpour rains off and on in January, which is the end of the rainy season, and on the west shore of the Big Island of Hawai'i, the winter rains can be seen coming from a long way out across the ocean most mornings, and they pass over to leave behind the smell of plants and trees and wet stone.

15. Baking is like prayer in that its ritual grounds me and brings me comfort. I rarely use a recipe anymore unless it's something new. My favorite pie is huckleberry.

14. I learned to play the violin in 4th grade and came to love the used violin my parents purchased for me though I was never very good at playing. The violin disappeared from my parents' house after I wasn't living there—somewhere between moves or spring cleanings—along with my first pair of skis and the saddle I rode with throughout my Junior Posse years. I always hoped those three things ended up in the same place.

13. My only notable vice is good coffee despite the cost of imported small-batch beans or how many times my doctor recommends cutting caffeine. Decaf is for posers.

12. Most movies I watch in the theater are either action-dramas with big explosions and complicated fight scenes or sci-fi with elaborate special effects. Ellen Ripley remains my all-time favorite movie character, followed by John McClane and Wolverine.

11. Graduate school is not the hardest thing I've ever done, but it's up there in the top 20. Or at very least, the top 50.

10. My favorite vegetables are green beans. Second is butternut squash.

9. I learned to play baseball from my dad when I was a kid, and the first pro game I went to was an Angels game in California after we'd moved back to the states. I was probably 11. That year, our family also went to Disneyland, Sea World, Knott's Berry Farm, the San Diego Zoo, and the Hollywood Wax Museum, which contributes perhaps to my ongoing questions about American culture.

8. If I could take up another instrument, it would be the cello.

7. I've had textbook aura migraines since I was about 10 years old, which have increased in frequency over the years to as many as 2-3 per week. I've tried all kinds of remedies, prescribed or not, with varying success. I've also read that migraines become less frequent for women post-menopause, which may be the only medical condition I know of that can be ignored until eventually it goes away.

6. Watching Kirk Gibson's home run to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series makes me cry. Every time.

5. Spending Thanksgiving in Virginia with my cousin and his family has become a cherished holiday tradition for me over the last five years. Plus I get to try out all my latest baking recipes on them, and to date, no one has complained.

4. I love being able to tell people about all five of my daughters.

3. I used to sew most of my own clothes—everything except blue jeans—out of necessity but also because the work of sewing helps me think. Once when two of my daughters were toddlers, I made some fancy ruffled dresses for them out of bedsheets, and the most common question I got about those dresses was where I bought them. Strangely, I could never quite remember.

2. It always amuses me when people ask my husband how he could let me go off to school without him. The second question they ask—also amusing—is how he manages by himself.

1. I have successfully climbed a glaciated peak in the Pacific Northwest, which makes me eligible to become a Mazama, although I've never gotten around to turning in the paperwork. That day, the summit seemed like the top of the world. The horizons seemed to fall away on all sides under the chromatic blues of high altitude. Also, it was covered with ladybugs.

What you are thinking, what shape your mind is in, is what makes the biggest difference of all.  ~ Willie Mays

new fiction: Fire, Fire

We heard Fire! Fire! and hauled out of bed like it was a real emergency. Pounded out the back door in our boxers and bare feet. Ranger barking. Michael dragging his blanket. The summer was a dark chill on our skins dragged from our blankets. As soon as I guessed it was Lenny, I knew we’d been duped. Pops’ truck wasn’t in the driveway, and mom was still in Indiana keeping her secrets. Saying she needed a real Indiana summer. Even Pops knew it was something else.

from "Fire, Fire," by Sherri H. Hoffman

Read the rest of my short story, "Fire, Fire" in the newest issue of  Potomac Review, Issue 60. This story is a chapter from the novel I am working to finish, The Wildish Boys.

You can purchase your copy of Potomac Review, Issue 60, online. Or if you are going to the 2017 AWP Conference & Bookfair in Washington, DC next week, I'm sure you can pick up a copy at their table.