The Gap Between Family Legend and Fact

With respect to family history, legends are those stories that survive through generations, like Grandfather Flynn was a Methodist circuit rider, or Uncle Roger fought with Pancho Villa, or Grandma Flowers single-handedly fought off Indians with an empty gun while her husband was out plowing.

The legends tend to be headline length and seldom have much substance. They contain the hook of a good story, but more often than not, the story has come off the hook. If you like the legend, you may prefer to keep the hook and forget the story, and that’s okay. Just know it’s a choice. If you’re a stickler for facts, you’ll check things out, and that’s getting easier to do.

The clipping above is related to a  legend about my maternal grandmother. I’ve known most of my life that she (not my grandfather, but she) was a delegate from New Mexico to the Republican National Convention in both 1952 and 1956. I was proud of her for that. Somewhere along the line I heard that she started the New Mexico Republican Women’s organization.

Last summer while visiting a cousin, I copied the clipping above. A couple of days ago I found the copy and took the time to read it. That clipping seemed to validate the fact that she really was head of Republican Women. Turning to Google, I discovered that Stockton ran for Governor in 1954, and the Republican State Convention took place the end of February that year. So the picture was surely from that Convention.

I flashed back to a memory of a thumbnail story my grandmother told me in 1987, 33 years after that picture was taken. We were talking about her involvement with the Republican Women and she said, “Ed Mechem (a long-time family friend who began his first term as governor in 1951) asked me to help him get them started and I said yes.” That’s not much of a story now that I think of it, and it has a lot of holes, but I didn’t notice that at the time and didn’t think to ask questions.

So I clicked over to Google and discovered that a huge movement was begun in 1952 to get women to vote for Ike. That muddied the water floating my legend. I felt stymied. After finding her contact info online, I shot off an email to Jo Mitchell, current president of the New Mexico Republican Women. I included the clipping and what I thought I knew about my grandmother, including that “fact” that she worked with Ed Mechem to found the NMRW.

Jo promptly sent a long and thoughtful reply explaining that the organization actually began in 1939 and that Rene Dinsmore’s name was not on the complete list of presidents. Furthermore, Jo pointed out, the article does not say what she was elected chairwoman of. Most likely she was the state chairwoman for the party. If she’d been in charge of Republican Women, she would have been elected president, and not by the State Committee. As state chairwoman, she would have gone to the convention. That makes sense.

I’m grateful to Jo for the time and effort she put into her reply. I love the helpful spirit I generally find when I ask for this sort of help. Her explanation makes total sense. Discovering the communication disconnect doesn’t damage the story. On the contrary, the revised version is more consistent with my perception of my grandmother, so I’m pleased she set things straight.

This small disconnect is a perfect example of how we hear through the filters of what we already know – or think we know. I thought Grandmother was involved with Republican Women, so I heard her explanation that way and read the news item from that perspective. We hear a tidbit and our imagination goes to work, embellishing or coloring in details. Over generations, these legends may shape shift like messages in the game of Telephone.

In the end, what does any of this matter? Not much. I enjoy untangling stories, and I enjoy writing and telling them. I like to tell my grandchildren about my grandparents and older ancestors to connect them with history and help them feel rooted in a sturdy tree. I want them to know that our family has survived, one way or another through thick (many ancestors were wealthy a few generations ago) and thin (the Civil War and the Great Depression depleted those fortunes). I want them to know that many of their ancestors started with nothing or less and went on to thrive and enjoy success. I want them to know that many of us, perhaps most, have dared to be different and march to our own drummers.

I like to stick as close to the facts as I can, but I do admit that I will let at least one family legend stand unchallenged. I love the legend too much to risk deflating it. So I explain that it may be fiction when I tell it, and include the evidence of why I think it could be true.

What about you? What family legends do you cherish? What about those you don’t? Have you hit the web to look for facts? Do tell! Jot a comment now and stories for your family.

Always Date Stories

If dates don’t fit in your story flow, anchor them at the end. Yesterday I had a frustrating reminder of how important this is. Read on to learn why and how to do this automatically.

Inspired by yesterday’s solar eclipse on August 21, 2017, I decided to polish up my account of viewing a total eclipse in Richland, Washington on February 26, 1979. I knew I’d written the story, but it took some digging to find the file. It was buried in a story I posted online, but I don’t know when I wrote or posted it. Ordinarily this wouldn’t matter, but today it did.

I know when the Richland eclipse occurred. That date is in the story, and I verified it online. I also refer in that document to an eclipse in Hawaii “about ten years later” that friends traveled to watch. Again, I was able to nail the date for that one online as occurring on July 1, 1991 – about twelve years later, not ten.

I have no clear idea when I wrote and posted that container story that begins with a mixed reference to celebrating Christmas and watching an eclipse in partial form in clear Pittsburgh skies while it was cloudy for some others. The original file date is 2010, but I know that’s wrong. That date signifies when I moved the file to a new hard disk. My best guess is 2003, but I’ve searched the web and can’t find anything about any USA eclipse during the early 2000s and my memory of that event has faded to the point I could doubt my own words in that story.

I’m kicking myself for not dating the story, at least in a signature line! A simple name and date would do, but there’s an easy way to ensure stories are dated with a bit more useful information. I generally begin with a story template that that includes these four lines at the end:

I created this template using fields, a mysterious function few of us ever need to learn, though these particular ones are simple enough. The Created date is unchanging. The Edited date updates each time I resave the file. In each of these cases, you click on the Insert tab and select Date & Time. Select your preferred date format. The difference between the two is the Update Automatically option on the right of that menu. Check to see that it’s cleared for the Created date and selected for the Edited one.

The file name field is a little different. It’s also on the Insert tab, but in Word 2013 you’ll find it under Quick Parts > Field. Scroll down the list to FileName, then select your Famat option. You can, if you wish, add the full path to the filename. That used to be helpful, but today, search functions are strong enough that the filename is enough without the path. If you have a different version of Word, you can easily find out how to insert these fields using the Help function or a web search, specifying your version.

To create this template, add  your name, the filename filed, Created date field, and Edited date field to a blank document, leaving a couple of blank lines above. Format them as you wish. I like to reduce the font size a couple of points and italicize it, but that’s merely personal preference. You can add dingbats or anything you wish. You can align it to the left margin. Suit yourself.

Then save that blank document, but not as a .doc or .docx. After you name it, click the Save as type: field directly below the file name and select Word Template (*.dotx). This will place your new template in your Documents folder in a Custom Office Templates subfolder.

To use the template to begin a new story, in Word 2013 select New on the file tab, then select Personal from the line above the template icons. You’ll find your  new template there. Select it and write your story.

This all sounds way more complicated that it is. The five or ten minutes you may spend mucking around to create this template will ensure that you’ll know when you first wrote a story. It would have solved my dilemma today.

If you forget and begin a story in a standard file, no problem. Just copy it all: use Ctrl+a)to select all, then paste it into a new template page and resave.

Now that I think of it, I’m going to add this snippet to my default template so it will be on EVERY document I create. I can always delete it later. If this sounds like a good idea to you, do a YouTube search for “editing default template Word (your version).”

Here’s to anchoring dates!

Three Cheers for Word’s Grammar Check

Grammar Check is not perfect, but it keeps improving, and I’ve come to rely on it as a polishing tool. The short video above gives you a bird’s eye view of how the combination of Spelling and Grammar Check work in tandem.

Until recently I ignored the Grammar Check function in Word, because only a small percentage of the items it flagged were relevant, and my writing style is, well, some might say quirky. That has changed largely changed. My writing is still quirky, but Grammar Check's improved analytical tools now accommodate that better. The percentage of relevant flags has improved to the point they are all worth considering, though some will still be off-base.

Whether I’m working on my own document or someone else’s, I polish the piece as well as I can the traditional way. Then I click over to the Review tab and click Spelling & Grammar to check grammar. I leave it off while I’m writing for two reasons. It’s distracting, and it can stifle creativity. Grammar Check is rule bound. Spellbinding phrases may transcend rules. Give your Inner Artist free reign. Write with colorful creativity, then use Grammar Check to tweak the results rather than stifling them.

I keep Spell Check on all the time, but only run Grammar Check as a last pass tool. It picks up easily missed things like periods outside quotation marks or missing Oxford commas. It alerts me to passive sentences. Or not. You can set the factors you want it to check. You can select a specific one, or you can activate all 35. Depending on what I’m working on, I use about six.

This next video shows how to select which factors to activate. This is especially  helpful for rechecks where you only want to check one or two things.

These videos are based on Word 2013. You may find slight differences in older or newer versions. Never forget that any time you have tech questions about software, YouTube is an entire university at your fingertips. Some videos are more helpful than others, so if you don’t find an answer on your first try, watch another.

When you look at the list of options, or read explanations in the Review panel that opens on the right side of your screen, you may see things you don’t understand. Look them up. You will always find the answer online. Use a search engine, not the help button in Word.

You may decide you won’t bother with this step because you plan to pay an editor. Please understand that your editor may well be using these same tools, and you can save time and money by doing this yourself so your editor can focus on what really matters. A few times I’ve been baffled about what the heck a client was trying to say. That invoked an additional round of editing and extra charges. Grammar Check would have red-flagged those areas, saving that client lots of money and both of us frustration.

You can find other grammar checkers online. Grammerly.com may be the best known and gets high ratings. Teachers often use it to check student work for plagiarism, but that won’t be a problem for you.  It’s now available as a free Chrome extension and plug-in for Word that seems to work even better than Word's native grammar checker.  Although the installation process is well-explained, many find it intimidating. If you are one of those people, pasting your story into the online window may work well for you.

Here’s to clear, flowing rivers of writing, thanks to the help of sophisticated digital editors.

Three Tips to DemystifyTense

Question: “Is it ever okay to switch tenses in a story?”

Answer: Since you included the word ever, the answer is yes. Sometimes switching up your tenses adds power and interest. But generally no. These tips should take the tension out of working with tense and help you decide.

#1 – In general, choose one and stick to either present or past.

Because we may switch back and forth naturally in conversation, tense changes can slip easily into writing. It may take a keen eye to notice it, but some people will. Pointless switches signal lax editing and may be confusing. Only switch when you have a clear reason.

Present tense can enhance the tension and make short stories with lots of drama even more compelling to read. It’s an especially good choice for stories written to stand on their own. Past tense may feel more natural and works well for anthologies, composite stories, and memoir.

#2 – You may need to mix tenses if you are writing in the present about someone who died.

For example:

My father loved to tell stories about the olden days, and every now and then he e-mailed stories about cowboys, hunting jack rabbits, raising chickens and other nostalgic topics to family and friends. He was a masterful storyteller, and his work is polished and entertaining. Although it barely scratches the surface of his life, it’s a cherished legacy. We looked forward to each story.

He DID love, and his (remaining) work (still) IS . . .  Mixing tenses is the only accurate way to state this and other cases where one thing is gone and a related one endures. This sort of shift is clear and easily understood.

#3 – Switching tense for flashbacks may be a powerful option and set them apart.

If your main story is written in the past tense and you reflect back to an especially dramatic scene, it can work well to write that scene in present tense, bringing the reader into the moment. Conversely, past tense makes sense for flashbacks inserted into stories written in present tense. Even if the reader does not specifically notice the shift in time, the change of tense signals it to the unconscious, preventing most confusion. Tips on writing successful flashbacks abound on line.

Think of tense as a two-lane highway with fast-moving traffic. In general it works best to stick with your lane. Look carefully for the right time and signal your intent when you have reason to change.

How to Write About a Change of Perspective

The meme you see above has prompted millions of laughs, but can you imagine a more life-changing moment than a priest, monk or nun hearing this revelation after decades of devotion?

Misperceptions like this do happen, and they can shape lives. This meme came to mind recently when a woman told me how she spent her child and early adulthood terrified of burning in hell. She knew in the core of her being that ministers thundered messages of hellfire and brimstone “all the time.”

Eventually she discovered that her particular church believed that yes, the wicked did perish in “The lake of fire,” but they did not burn forever. The perishing was mercifully quick and permanent. The wicked were punished only by being deprived  of the multitude of blessings the righteous are due to receive. She did hear about a lake of fire. That was true. But the burning forever part must have leaked in from outside, according to her informant. “I assure you, that was never part of our teaching.”

By the time she heard this, she had moved away from that church. But learning this still angered her: I didn’t have to spend all those years so scared!

Now she’s wondering how to write about this: “I really did believe that. That is how I heard it. If I was wrong, and I only have that one person’s explanation to go on, I still totally believed it. But now things have changed. And I’d definitely never go back to that church. How do I tell this story?”

“That was your truth back then, and nothing has changed that,” I said. “Not even finding out you were, or might have been, wrong.” My advice to her was simple and four-pronged.

1) Write about what life was like back then. Explain what you heard and how that affected you.

2) Write about the whiplash you experienced when you heard the other point of view. Who told  you? How did you know to believe it? How did that affect you? How did you and do you feel about all this? What has changed?

3) Write with compassion. True, you may feel angry and betrayed. Own that and write it. Then consider the angles. Did any one purposely deceive you? Did you ever ask for help or tell anyone you were scared?

4) Sum it all up. By the time you’ve written through steps one, two and three, you will probably be feeling some closure, if you weren’t already there. Stories demand it, whether they’re still at the stage of self-talk or written down. Readers crave it.

Conflict or tension, especially the internal sort, is the meat of this and any story. Jump into the middle of the mud with both feet and let it all rip. Be brave. Write it real. Polish it to flow smoothly, but leave those emotions in place. They are the lifeblood of your tale. They add the juice and the glue that bonds reader to story and helps them gain their own insight from your message.

Personal Truth vs. Factual Truth

Rereading old stories often sparks new insights. Ditto with old blog posts. En route to finding an old post about something else, I found “My Brain on Story.” That post is based on an incident where a witness to a mock crime testified that what turned out to be a plastic water pistol was the gun that fired the shot she heard.  Rereading the post led me to reconsider the controversy about Truth I reported there. My son-in-law’s adamant position was that although the perception that a water pistol was a bullet-firing weapon was real, it was not true. I disagreed, clinging to my assertion that the perception was true.

Today a flash of insight penetrated my skull. Sally’s perception of an actual gun and speeding bullets was personal truth  or perceived truth. The documentable fact that the gun was a water pistol was factual truth. While not every instance of questionable truth has documentable evidence to prove it “right or wrong,” in this situation , the matter can be settled. I still maintain that each form of truth is equally valid, but I’ll concede they are different.

Bottom line, in my opinion, it still does not matter. We’re still talking about terminology and the fact that perceived or personal truth plays a powerful role in our lives.

Sally’s personal truth that a pistol was aimed at her and that shots were fired is still as true today as the day it happened in 1984. I did not stay in contact with Sally, but I can say with absolute certainty that she remembers that personal truth, how real it was, and how stunned she was to hold the water pistol. I’m willing to wager that her life turned a corner that day.

The timing of this discovery is amazing. Life has intervened, and that new volume of advice for writing your lifestory is not finished, though I’m deeply engrossed in it again. I believe it’s no coincidence that I’m currently working on the chapter on memory and truth.

This flash of insight holds two jewels for that chapter:

1. Truth comes in at least two versions, maybe more. Each or all are equally valid, just different.

2. Insight and understanding evolve. I’ve written about this before. Lessons sink in and begin to grow when their seed sprouts, and some seeds can take a long to sprout.

My life is full of slow-cooker lessons and evolving understanding. What are some things you’ve been slow to learn?

Tips for Scrubbing Stories to a Sparkle

You’re ready for your final edit to streamline, scrub and polish your story to its finest shine. What should you look for? Among other things, extraneous and misused words. What should you do? Tidy and toss! I see you cringing, but take heart and be courageous. Look at this effort as an adventure. Four suggested events are listed below to comprise an editing quadrathalon or something like that with pointers to two more. Add additional events of your own choosing. With a little imagination, you might make it to decathalon status.

Dead Would Chopping

Have you used some variation of the phrase, “we would” as in “we would go on a picnic when” … or “we would often have roast chicken …”? That’s a variation of passive voice. Streamlining these phrases to “we went on a picnic when …” or “we often had roast chicken …” perks up your story right away.

Only use would in a conditional situation, as in “If he gave me $50, I would do that” or “I would do that for $50.” If there is no uncertainty, you have dead would. Chop it. Burn it to heat up your story.

Which Hunting

Most English speaking people are massively confused about the difference between that and which and have no clue how to use them appropriately. They’re confused about whether to write “Songs which are sung by Willie Nelson give me goosebumps” or “Songs that are sung by Willie Nelson give me goosebumps.”

Here’s a simple tip that will clear up most of the confusion, at least if the term “phrase” doesn’t roll your eyeballs to the back of your head:

Use that in your sentence. Then eliminate that and words connected with it. Does it make the same sense to say “Songs give me goosebumps”? No. Songs in general do not give me goosebumps. Only those sung by Willie Nelson. This sentence calls for that.

If your phrase is expendable, use which and set the phrase off by commas. If it changes the meaning, use that. 

In case you’re one of the many who think which sounds more “right,” hunt down all whiches and switch them to that when that’s the write thing to do.

Another misuse of which designates place, as in “the party at which I met my friend. Oh, my goodness. What  tongue tangler. Switch at which to where, as in “the party where I met my friend.”

Weed Pulling

Some perfectly respectable words can be weeds when they don’t add value to your sentence. For example, the, that, then, your, an, somewhat, very, of the, quite, and more are words that do not add value to your sentence and slow your story down. It’s not wrong to leave these words in, but do an experiment. take one story and look at each word to see if the story is changed or enlivened by removing it. You’ll be surprised.

Words like very, quite and somewhat are lazy, nonspecific qualifiers that do not add value. Very pretty doesn’t tell anything more than prettier than pretty, but what does pretty mean? Our language overflows with specific adjectives that let readers know (I just revised from your reader) what very pretty means to you. In fact, you may want a simile or phrase to show what pretty means and how it affects you.

Clutter Clearing

Phrases like “she thought to herself” are redundant word clutter. Who else would she think to? “He stood up, then sat down.” I suppose you could stand down, then sit up, but that’s not what comes to a reader’s mind. “She nodded her head.” It’s worth mentioning if she nodded her fist. “Choose from among five choices.” “I don’t like opera, but nevertheless, I’ll go anyway.” In this sentence, nevertheless and anyway say the same thing. Pick one, toss the other.

As you pursue this adventure, look for additional ways to sharpen and focus your story. Refine descriptions, Check for extraneous details that don’t show up on weed word lists.

This is not an exhaustive list. For example, I’ve said nothing about using active verbs. but I wrote about them recently in this post. I also wrote earlier about the challenge of avoiding Ditching Dummy Subjects. Between this list and those two additional posts, you’ll be well on your way to a sparkling story that mesmerizes readers.

Which events are your favorites? Which are the toughest?

Write Away Election Stress, part 2

In my previous post I touched on Expressive Writing as a way of dealing with post-election stress. I need to expand on that. Writing for stress relief takes more than one form, and spontaneous writing in real time is best known as journaling.

I can attest from personal experience that journaling my heart out has been hugely helpful in coming to grips with anger, confusion, and other chaotic emotions. I highly recommend it, and if your topic is a tender one that could cause the chaos to spread of others near and dear to you happened to read it, write it into the fireplace, or the shredder, or delete the file.

As great and powerful as journaling is, I’m not aware of any studies showing that it has long-term health benefits. Nor is it reliably useful for calming currently chaotic emotion.

Expressive writing is especially powerful for resolving stressful memories after the fact. This research was pioneered by James Pennebaker and expanded upon in over 200 replications in situations ranging from prison populations to cancer patients and outplaced high tech industry personnel.

In Pennebaker’s original research, people were asked to write about “a trauma, emotional upheaval, or unsettling event that has been influencing your life, spinning obsessively in your mind, and maybe keeping you awake at night” for twenty minutes on each of four consecutive days.

Subsequent studies have found similar results by having people write for as little as five minutes. They have scaled the four days back to one or two. They’ve left it consecutive and spread it out. Research in other directions sheds even more light.

Almost without exception, results showed durable health benefits. In the case of the tech workers, the ones who wrote according to the experimental protocol found new jobs significantly sooner faster than the control group.

So in concert with what I posted last week, I urge you to journal about current fears and frustration. In a few months or more, if it’s still troubling you, switch to the Pennebaker Process. Meanwhile, if journaling current stuff triggers traumatic old memories, do the four day routine with them now.

In fact, most readers here are writing lifestories anyway. Part of the healing value of expressive writing is the way it turns endless rumination loops into coherent story with context and meaning. So take this process one step further and turn the results of those 20 minute sessions into a coherent, meaningful story worthy of passing along.

Write for the health of it!

Image credit: Prawny, posted on https://morguefile.com/creative/Prawny

Who Owns Which Memory?

I know three sisters who remember life differently, and sometimes things I hear from them drop my jaw, at least mentally. For simplicity here, I’ll call them Annie, Betsy and Connie, in order of age. All are in their mid-eighties.

One day I got an email from Connie with a scanned letter attached. The letter was from her aunt, confirming that this aunt had indeed taken Connie as an infant to her house to care for while Connie’s mother was sick.

“I can’t wait to show this to Annie! She has sworn for years that Aunt Laura never took me home with her, she just took me to a motel!”

Apparently, when Annie saw the letter, she humphed and changed the subject. Obviously this development did not square with her memory of things, and as the older sister, she was supposed to be the authority. 

During a recent visit with Annie and Connie, we got to talking about their grandfather. He let me drive his old car all over the place when I was only eleven. He even lied to the Department of Motor Vehicles so I could get my driver’s license when I was twelve. He told them I was fourteen,” said Annie.

“That’s interesting. He did the same thing for Connie,” I said.

“What?”

“She told me the same story about him taking her to get a license when she was twelve and letting her drive thirty miles to Turkey Town by herself to get something he needed.”

Annie looked at Betsy. “That’s not possible. He didn’t live near us when she was that age.”

Betsy shrugged. She didn’t seem eager to get involved. I changed the subject.

Which sister owns that memory? Did Connie hear Annie tell the story often enough that she started thinking it had been her? Stranger things have happened.

As it turns out, I may be the one with the creative memory. Connie affirmed that it was Annie’s story. “I hardly ever spent time with him when I was young.” Well … whatever. In the overall scheme of things, who cares?

This all goes to show that much of family history is myth, and a changing one at that. One key thing we collectively agree to is that the old man was a scoundrel who bent rules when it suited him and ignored them much of the time.

From the larger perspective, that matters more than which granddaughter got to drive when or where. I’m semi-sorry I sought to clarify the source.

Writing tip: Do some freewriting or journaling about conflicting stories within your family. (This may be best left unshared.)

Publish No Story Before Its Message Is Right

Color me perplexed. I’m having trouble getting a blog post right. I know what I want to say. I’ve said it a few different ways. A couple are eloquent, well-crafted. But I fear I’m in love with the sound of my own (writer’s) voice, and the message is still not quite right.

So what do I do? Post it anyway? You can tell by the gap between posts that has not happened.

No, I've come to a conclusion that applies to anything I might write — blog posts, emails, short stories or entire memoirs (not to mention novels, cookbooks, or any unpaid project that lacks an urgent deadline). This conclusion may also work for you:

IF YOU DON’T FEEL IT’S READY, 

IF YOU CAN’T QUITE MAKE IT WORK, 

WORK ON SOMETHING ELSE.

How simple is that? Back off. Write something else. Edit something you’ve already written. If you’re still not clear, try

• discussing the topic with friends.
• journal or free write about it.
• read up on the topic
• asking yourself, “What am I trying to say?”

In general, Give your problem piece space and before long, it will pop into clear focus. And if you write something else in the meantime, you'll at least have something to show for your time.

Photo credit: Ron St. Amant, shared by Creative Commons License

I’m in Love with Volya Rinpoche

I never expected to fall in love with Volya Rinpoche, a bald, squarely-built Russian quasi-Buddhist monk who dresses in gold-trimmed maroon robes and sandals, has skin the color of acorns, and is a world-renowned spiritual leader and author. Neither did Otto Ringling, the narrator of Breakfast with Buddha, Lunch with Buddha and Dinner with Buddha, a trilogy of mind-bending, possibly life-changing novels by Roland Merulo . But who could resist that heart-melting smile, that endless compassion and infectious laugh? His naïve observations and whiplash fast “wessons?”

But wait. Nothing kinky here.As the story begins, Otto’s whacko, forever hippie sister tricks him into taking a road trip alone with this monk, her latest love interest. As miles and days pass, their relationship grows and Otto decides the Rimpoche is “the real deal.” Between volumes, monk marries sister, plots thicken, and Otto evolves. The novels are poignant in places, hilarious in others, always thought-provoking, and sublimely well-written. Otto’s acute observations on history, geography, philosophy and food are meticulously detailed.

I’ve always encouraged students of lifestory or memoir writing to read widely, to read like a writer, to find authors whose style they admire and immerse themselves in their work. Roland Merullo is my new hero behind the page. These digital volumes are full of pink highlights for exquisite description and gold ones for powerful points.

Although these volumes are clearly fiction, drawn from Merullo’s fertile imagination, they read like memoir. They are among those remarkable titles I occasionally find that convey Truth in concentrated form, more potent than most actual life experience could support. I consider them a prime example of the power of the fiction alternative.

The Buddha books came into my life at the perfect time (who believes in coincidence?). Over the last few months our nearly completed move from Pittsburgh to Austin has become unexpectedly complex and stressful, full of fretting and fear and second-guessing. I was convinced I had neither time nor the concentration to read. In spite of these self-imposed barriers, a book with a Buddha title slipped through the cracks.

I didn’t have time to not read these books. They reminded me of wisdom I’ve accrued over at least forty years, much of which I’ve ignored for the last many. They reminded me that I’ve largely fallen away from soul-enriching practice. They reminded me we can choose our reactions, our thoughts. Along the way, they altered and added perspective. I feel better now, stronger, and ready to forge ahead! Thank you Roland Merullo!

This is not the first time books have restored or enriched my soul and nudged me around corners. Should I include any of these time periods in a memoir, for example this move, it could not be complete without mention of these three books and their influence. I could take things further. Pat Conroy, perhaps best known for his novel, The Great Santini, wrote My Reading Life, a themed memoir devoted to books that have molded and shaped him.

What better time to snuggle down and read than these days of early darkness, of golden leaves and frosty mornings? Find an author you love and read ‘til your eyeballs cave in. Make highlights in ebooks. Put sticky tags in print ones. Collect heart-stopping phrases and notable elements of structure.

Write on: start a list of books that have affected your life and thinking. Write about these in your journal and develop your thoughts into an essay. Add a few of your favorite titles to a comment, as a tribute to the author and a beacon to fellow writers.

In Defense of Surface Writing

In her new book, The Art of Memoir, author Mary Karr repeatedly urges readers to dig deep to discover their true story. As a disclaimer, I’m not digging back into the volume to discuss it. This post is based on what I perceived, understood, and remember, not her specific words. My perception is my reality, my truth. If that varies from literal words in the book, that’s how memory works, and that’s part of my point.

Karr, along with countless others, myself included, have continually made the point that as you begin to edit and refine your initial story and reflect about what really did happen, how else you might look at the past, how else might you tell it, your story changes. In fact, you reconstruct history. Some give the impression that this reconstruction conveys our true essence and is truer than our initial understanding or viewpoint, no matter how long we held it.

As I read Karr’s thoughts on this reconstruction, I was overwhelmed with the certainty that these “deeper truths” are no truer than the ones we’ve lived with, perhaps for decades. Our lives may be richer for reaching them, but they NOT MORE TRUE.

What you remember on the surface is your story, the story that made you who you are. You may derive enormous personal benefit and change your life by digging, archeologist-style, into your past, but that does not diminish the personal validity of your original insights and belief, your original truth.

Early drafts of your story convey a sense of who you have been. When you begin crafting and editing that story, it remains true, but continues to develop. You continue to develop and grow. Deep reflection and insight can shape and reflect who you become. New information can change how we view the past, but it can’t change how we thought and felt before we turned that corner. We are, after all, works in progress, continually evolving as we travel life’s path, and stories change even for those who never write.

Memories do tend to morph over time. Read an old journal if you need examples. Just keep in mind that their initial form is as true and valid as whatever form they eventually take.

I bring this up in the hope that nobody will be deterred from writing or sharing stories for fear they have not dug deeply enough or their story may not be true enough on the first or second draft to be deemed “worthy” of writing or being read. I hope nobody will be deterred from writing at least a few stories from the certainty they’ll never have the time, skill or motivation to polish it to perfection.

Enough of that Inner Critic talk! All stories are worthy of writing and sharing. Furthermore, no matter how well-developed and polished, or how loudly your supporters cheer, not all will appeal to a million people. So whatever your level of skill, motivation and resources, don’t hesitate to write yours.

Do you find this concept startling, that truth can be defined on multiple levels? Do you agree? What are your thoughts and experiences? I welcome and encourage comments on all facets of this topic. Please join the discussion.

Email As a Journaling Tool

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m journaling the heck out of this relocation experience. I may not be making as much sense of things right now as I’d like – that usually takes more time and distance. But I will have the details as I saw them when things were fresh, raw and new with all the roller coaster dips and climbs as they happen.

During this time when each moment is precious, I often face a choice: email a friend or write in my journal. As soon as I discovered email, I recognized its power as a personal history archive or journal. But who has time to sort through half a million emails to find those key 100? Especially when they’re scattered across half a dozen accounts and … you get the picture.

A couple of months ago, the lights went on. I saw a way to combine three main journaling streams – paper journal, a journal in Word, and email. I can write a long email detailing current stress and success, then copy the relevant part and paste in my Word Journal doc for the current year. That part is a no-brainer. The key to making it work for me right now is to pick up my paper journal and make a one line entry: “Aug. 30, Sunday, see Word Journal.”

I don't use my Word Journal nearly as often as my paper one. My Word one is lovely with virtual pink paper, a string of red hearts atop each page, and a handwriting font in blue ink. Realizing that layout is dependent on having that font installed and Microsoft’s history of changing document storage formats, I know better than to rely on Microsoft for long-term stability. I have 25-year-old Word Perfect files I can still access, but the layout and font info are out the window.

The simplest solution is to save each year's volume in PDF format, with the font embedded. Embedded fonts are the default if you create the PDF document with Word. PDF format is widely regarded as the most stable format for long-term accessibility. I'll also keep my word docs and revisit them every few years to keep them fresh.

Ultimately I may print them. Paper is still the most likely and accessible form for some descendant to find hidden away 85 years from now.

Returning briefly to that paper journal – sometimes I jot quick memory notes on random scraps of paper. I don't recopy those. I tear them out and stick in the relevant spot in my journal.

Write now: start adapting this system to fit your preferences. If you journal only on your computer, form the habit of pasting in relevant snips from email. If you don't have a digital journal, start one. It doesn't have to be fancy like mine. A plain old Word file will do. Just date each entry as you start and leave a couple of extra lines at the end. You can easily go to the end of the document via Ctrl+End. Hopefully a Mac user will leave a comment about how to do this in your version of Word. 

With this simple system you can have many of the benefits of journaling without ever specifically writing a journal entry!

What Is TRUTH?

Nine years ago as I pulled together the material that became The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, I thought I knew the answer to that question, what is truth: It's what really happened, or what you really think. It's basic honesty, plain and simple. Everybody knows that, right?

That's a good starting point, but as I've learned since then, that's both incomplete and misleading. Some of my increased understanding is old news, things I knew that had not integrated into my cluster of life writing neurons. Meanwhile, advances in the study of memory continue to deepen understanding. These discoveries have profound  relevance for life writers. Here's a list of a few evolving insights worth sharing:

Memory is fallible. Contrary to what you probably heard in psychology class, self-help seminars, and various other places, you do not remember every minute detail of every sensation that ever entered your brain. Recent evidence shows that incoming data is filtered, scrubbed and consolidated. Irrelevant material is unlikely to be retained. Furthermore, our brains often mistake vivid mental images for fact, embedding them as memory.

Memory morphs. Research shows that each time you recall an event or thought, current circumstances and thought become enmeshed in the memory, and the initial memory may become buried in debris over time. Compare this to your story files on disk. You may save your initial draft. Then you edit and save again. You may repeat that process twenty times, perhaps changing only a word or two each time you read. Five years later, if you had a copy of that original draft, you may not recognize it as the same story. But you didn't save the original, so there's now way to know.

Perception is personal and situational. In 1978 I grew sick of my long, hippie hair. I was enrolled in an off-campus graduate program at Central Washington U at the time, and made the hundred mile drive to the Ellensburg campus every couple of weeks. One day I left early and stopped at a hair salon before a lunch date with my mentor. Although I felt foxy as heck with my sleek new bob, I could barely see beyond a new fringe of bangs invading my view. My next stop was the library. When I stepped up to the checkout desk, I heard a man say, "Oh, my GOD!" A bomb exploded in my self-absorbed brain. Could my hair be that bad? I swung around and saw him gaping at a document.

Truth is relative. This perspective is based on the one above. In my essay, Mayhem at Camp RYLA, I cite the example of a young woman who worked as a bank teller and was held up at gunpoint a few months earlier. Shots were fired, though not at her. During a simulated crime at Camp RYLA, she saw an object held at arms' length, pointed in her direction. Not only did she tearfully swear under oath at the mock trial that a gun had been pointed at her, but that she'd heard a shot. That belief was so strong and true for her that she went into near meltdown at the revelation the "gun" had been a plastic water pistol.

Truth is situational and sometimes inconsistent. Victims of abuse often testify to this. "I loved him," they claim, years after they got brave enough to leave. "I really loved him. And I hated him when he beat me. Sometimes I wished he was dead." Those feelings, those truths, can exist side-by-side for decades.

So, you see, although I don't deny the existence of universal truths like the power of love, story truth is fuzzy, fleeting and personal.Write your story the way you see it, the way it's real and true to you. If you find truth changing as you write, consider yourself blessed.

Write now: Make a list of beliefs about what you hold true. Jot down a few examples of each. Then ask yourself Byron Katie's question, "Is this really, really true?" and "How do I know it's true?" You may be surprised by what you learn.

Photo Scanning Tips for CreateSpace

My heart nearly broke when I checked the resolution of a photo in a client’s family history/memoir I was preparing for upload to CreateSpace.com for printing copies for family members. When I copied the document photo and pasted it into IrfanView (my favorite free photo editor for low-end needs), I saw that the resolution was only 72 dpi (dots or pixels per inch). That’s a small fraction of the pixel density CreateSpace requires. This was the case with nearly all the several dozen photos in the book.

I had the gut-wrenching task of explaining to my client that she had a choice: I could resample the existing images to trick CreateSpace into believing they were 300 dpi . . . or she could rescan them.

How I wished that she, like the majority of people scanning old family photos, knew all along about scanning at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Here’s why it matters:

CreateSpace will sound an alarm when it analyzes an uploaded document and finds even one image of less than 300 dpi. For good reason. Lo-res images will look even worse in print than they do onscreen when zoomed above 100%. Ignore that warning at your own risk.

The left photo above is scanned at original size at 72 dpi. The image on the right is exactly the same picture, scanned at 300 dpi. Notice the crisp, clear detail in the high-res version compared to the blurry approximation on the left. That’s the sort of result you can expect with any image printed at 72 dpi.

My client wanted her volume to be top quality in every respect, so she opted to rescan as many photos as she still had available. For the rest, we stuck with small sizes and I resampled the existing photos as 300 dpi to stabilize them for printing. That turned off the CreateSpace alarms, but nothing could recreate lost detail. Still, those photos add value to the story and they are better than nothing.

Many of us scanned hundreds of pictures fifteen or twenty years ago when scanner technology was new and file size a concern. A 3” x 4.75” photo scanned at 300 dpi produces a file larger than the 1.44 megabyte capacity of the 3.5” floppy disks we used back then. We scanned at 72, or perhaps 96 dpi. I have a few hundred files like that myself, with the originals clear across the country, as many of hers are now. Those low-res files will work fine for eBooks and online viewing, but they are not print-worthy.

The tips below will help you get the best possible results for your publishing projects. If you decide to have someone else do layout for you, getting the photos right before you hand over the file will keep costs down and save you lots of aggravation.

Terminology

Resolution – the number of dots or pixels per inch. At 72 dpi, a square inch of image will have 72 pixels horizontally x 72 pixels vertically for a total of 5184pixels. At 300 dpi, that will be 300 x 300 for a total of 90,000, allowing for more than 17 times as much detail.

Resample – this word carries a touch of magic. If you change the resolution of an image, software uses samples from the image to calculate how to best condense or expand information to cover the desired amount of space. Increasing resolution spreads existing information thinner and is unable to add more detail.

Tips for preparing photos for publication

Scan at 300 dpi and 100% resolution – or higher. If you have a photo that’s 2” x 3”,  scan it at 600 dpi or higher to give you a high quality image printable at larger sizes so you can enlarge it enough to let people see detail. 600 dpi will allow you to double the size of the original in print. 900 lets  you print up to three times larger. Most old film photos lack the crisp resolution needed to successfully enlarge more than that.

Resample and enhance. If you aren’t able to rescan those old images, resample them to 300 dpi turn off the alarm.

Size in Microsoft Word to fit space on the page, then copy the image and paste into IrfanView or another editor to check resolution. Resample to 300 dpi at the precise size of the image in your manuscript. Replace the “temp” image with the resized one.

This matters because Word does a poor job of resampling, and images resized within the document generally look terrible when printed. This is partly due to changing the resolution as you resize in Word. Resizing is a nuisance, but worth the effort. I’ve tried not doing it and the results were not pretty.

Crop images with a photo editor. You  can do this in Word, and it might be okay, if you start with a 300 dpi image and don’t change anything else about its size. Check the quality of the image in your proof copy of the finished book.  For best results, crop in IrfanView, Photoshop Elements, or something similar and check to make sure the final image is 300 dpi.

Use an image editor to convert color images to grayscale if you plan to print in black and white. You can print from color or use Word’s image editing function to do this, but it’s not your best choice.

I’ll do another post soon on using your scanner interface. For now, scan big and pose questions in comments.

Write now: take a break from writing and scan a photo or two. Insert it in Word and play around with sizing. Download IrfanView and practice resampling. Tip: Resizing is on the Image menu. Ctrl+R will get take you right there. Have fun!

Six Things I Learned Going from Memoir to Fiction

Invited guest post by Carol Bodensteiner

Long time readers may be surprised to find a post about writing fiction on this blog about life writing. While it’s true that my focus is on memoir, lifestory, journaling and other forms that draw upon actual experience to express personal truth, sometimes the freedom of fiction is more effective in conveying truth. Carol Bodensteiner found this to be true. She has successfully written in both genres and her experience moving from memoir to fiction has lessons for all.

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I’d been a business writer all my life, so I was used to working with facts. Memoir was a logical first writing step. Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Girl, tells the stories of my childhood growing up on a family farm in the middle of the United States, in the middle of the 20^th Century.

When I finally raised my head from writing, publishing, and marketing the memoir, I looked around for what I’d write next. I turned to family-inspired fiction, which I’d never written before.  My novel, Go Away Home, which I indie published in 2014 and was acquired by Lake Union Publishing (an imprint of Amazon Publishing) later that year, is the result of that effort.

The road from memoir to fiction brought many adventures and a lot of learning. Here are six things I learned along the way.

1) A family story can be a great launching pad to fiction.

Go Away Home was inspired by my maternal grandparents. My grandfather died of the Spanish Flu in 1918. Throughout my life, I’ve been intrigued by my connection to this major world event. As someone used to writing from facts, a family story gave me a starting point: A story I cared to write and people and places that were familiar.

Writing the story as fiction was necessary for many reasons. One was that I didn’t have enough facts to write it any other way. Of course I never knew my grandfather and even though my grandmother lived until I was well into my 20s, I never asked her a single question about him or their lives together. And she was not the type to share. So though the story began with family, it is fiction.

2) Don’t get stuck on the facts

Once I got into writing the story, one of the biggest challenges was letting go of the facts. Since the genesis of this story rose from people in my family, and I knew a bit about the people, places, and events, my inclination was to use those facts. But I quickly found that the facts didn’t work for the story I was ultimately telling. They didn’t create a good story arc. There was no drama. On his website, Write the Truth, Robert McKee said, “The weakest possible excuse to include anything in a story is: ‘But it actually happened.’”  Having gone this route, I believe him.

3) Do get stuck on the facts

Since Go Away Home is historical fiction, research was critical to creating the time period accurately. Clothes, transportation, hairstyles, technology, colloquialisms. The list of topics I researched and fact checked was long. Readers of historical fiction really care about the details. Writers must, too.

Research also helped shape the story. One example: Family lore was that my grandmother went to a sewing school. Research revealed that the town in question didn’t have a sewing school, rather that young girls apprenticed with seamstresses as a way to learn an important life skill and to meet a man to marry.  The idea that seamstresses were invited to their clients’ house parties had terrific dramatic potential, so I ran with that.

Another bit of fact to fiction. My grandmother took pictures, but the whole part in the book about the main character’s work for a photographer and her relationship with him is entirely fiction.  Most of the book is that way. Tiny fact. Huge fiction.

4) Planner vs. Pantser

Writers fall into two general camps: Planners and Pantsers. I wrote my way into Go Away Home, discovering the story through countless re-writes – by the seat of my pants. I always knew the end of the story; I didn’t know how we got there. In the first draft, the story started in 1900 and my main character Liddie was 10. In the second draft, the story started in 1915 and Liddie was 19. In the published draft, the story starts in 1913 and Liddie is 16. Believe me – those changes create seismic waves throughout the story.

Having used this highly inefficient “pantser” approach once, I’m reasonably certain that I’m a “plotter” at heart and will be more plan-ful in future writing.

5) Fiction is freeing

While I thought it would be easier to start with some facts because that was what I was used to, the reality was there was great freedom in starting with nothing. As the story developed (pantser), it became clear that connections were missing. I needed a scene to show my main character’s inexperience with men. No problem. I made up a guy. I found it was great fun to let my imagination run. Over and over, I filled holes with scenes that met a plot need.

6) New craft to learn

I learned a lot about creative writing as I crafted my memoir, much of which was also applicable to fiction. Dialogue, scene development, visual characterization – all come into play in both genres. Plotting was a new challenge in fiction writing, as I noted earlier. Developing multi-dimensional fictional characters was another challenge.

I used a number of techniques that contributed to creating the real, individual people living in my novel. I visualized people I know who were somewhat like the characters I had in mind. Writing exercises helped to identify key traits and to express them in fresh ways. I used Enneagram research to flesh out the positive and negative traits of various personality types.

From memoir to fiction, from craft to research, I will always be able to learn something new about writing, and for me, that’s great fun.

Go Away Home is available on Amazon in paperback and ebook formats.

Growing Up Country is available on Amazon in paperback, ebook, and audio book formats.

Carol Bodensteiner – Bio

Carol Bodensteiner is a writer who finds inspiration in the places, people, culture and history of the Midwest. After a successful career in public relations consulting, she turned to creative writing. She blogs about writing, her prairie, gardening, and whatever in life interests her at the moment. She published her memoir Growing Up Country in 2008. Her WWI-era, debut novel Go Away Home was acquired by Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. It launches July 7, 2015.

Carol’s online links
Website/blog 
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook

Write now: think of an interesting ancestor or other person who has influenced your life that you know relatively little about. Drawing on Carol’s experience, write a short story about how you imagine this person’s life might have been. Don’t worry about facts. Just let that story rip. Have fun with this!

Clear the Haze from Pictures and Memory

The pictures above have deep meaning for me, and I think they are likely to strike a chord with most viewers, evoking memories of their own. I want my stories to have that effect. I want readers to see themselves in my words, finding new ways to see old situations and become more fully themselves.

I recently found this left-hand picture from 1973 in a pile I was sorting through. Something in it stirred me, though haziness dimmed my response. I decided to try restoring it.

I scanned it with my Epson V600 scanner using Professional mode on the scanner interface. I used the Color Restoration tool and the Unsharp Mask tool set to high. That produced over 90% of the result you see on the right, but I wanted more. I cloned out spots on the pillow and sharpened the picture a bit more. Then I added a warming yellowish tone to approximate the wall color I recall.

The crisp, haze-free result makes me feel like I’m “back in the picture,” especially when I view it full size and zoom in on details.

I used an ancient version of Photoshop for this, but Paint.net does almost as much as Photoshop and it’s free. Picasa, another popular free choice, is easy to use. Most scanners should have some semblance of the  Epson’s capability. My husband’s 12-year-old Epson can do this, just not as fast.

Once I got a clear view of the photo, I sat with it until I sank into the feeling of having those tots around full time, and gratitude I felt. I thought about how different they were from each other. I looked at our clothing and recalled the joy of sewing. George is on the left. I made his jeans. I made Susan’s shirt to match one I made for myself. I made John’s trendy fake vest shirt. Sewing with knits was big in the seventies. I’m surprised to realize that my shirt and pants both came from stores. Nearly everything in my closet was my own creation.

I remembered the challenge of reupholstering the tattered Goodwill sectional my mom was tired of. Fake animal fur was affordable and trendy. It was a perfect fit for the shag rug in our brand-new home. When we bought new living room furniture, this old stuff went down to the family room. On the right side you see the crewel embroidery project I was working on. That huge picture perfectly matched the carpeting. I put it away years ago. I may rehang it yet.

Oh, the hair – where did it all go? This was my Involved Earth Mother phase: PTO, League of Women Voters, Republican Women, bridge club and more.  I also recalled feeling overwhelmed at times, and wondering just where I fit into the larger scheme of things. Mostly it was a time of settling into house and community and keeping those lively youngsters and their daddy fed, clothed and happy.

I made a list of memories I can use in stories spawned by that picture:

• Shag rug: hard to live with! Vacuuming flattened it, and I used a garden rake to restore it to fluffiness. Needless to say, I did not do that on a daily basis.
• Bare feet. I lived in bare feet in the house. I still do in the summer.
• Making things. I loved crafting enhancements for our home. Repurposing “found objects” was my specialty. I hope to get back to that soon when we move into another new-to-us home.
• Informality: Our life style was and still is informal. What you see there is no formal pose. It’s typical.

The list goes on, but you get the idea.

My final thought is that stories are like that these pictures. I liken the left one to an early draft. A robust round of editing clears the haze, letting the story shine through. A few more tweaks enhance detail. The final version conveys the sense of the situation so well that readers feel “in the picture,” much as I do with the finished version on the right.

Write now: Find an old picture that’s hazy and indistinct. Play with settings on your scanner and use Paint.net or Picasa to touch it up. Zoom in on details in the finished result and look for stories everywhere.

Dreams Do Come True

Dreams do come true – the day dream kind, the wish upon a star kind. I know this because many of mine have. I know they have because I wrote them down. Two examples stand out and show how writing dreams down can benefit life writers.

Moving to Pittsburgh
Around 1983 I began dreaming about moving away from what I considered to be the serious career limits of life in Washington’s Tri-Cities (Richland, Kennewick and Pasco). That was during the hey day of the goal setting movement, at least for me. So I drafted a list of everything I wanted when we moved, even though no move was in sight. That list had over twenty items. Among other things it included

• Major university.
• Major corporate headquarters
• A house with high ceilings
• A stream in our backyard. (That was pure whimsy, nothing I expected to get.)

I stuck that list somewhere and forgot about it. 

In 1985 my husband accepted a job transfer from the Westinghouse Hanford Nuclear Project to the Westinghouse Nuclear Center in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I was thrilled to be in a suburb of a real city. Fast forward about three years. I found that list. I was stunned. Every item on it had been fulfilled. True, the high ceiling is only a half-cathedral in the living room and the stream only runs after a serious rainstorm, but it is a stream, and it is in the woods in our backyard. Pittsburgh has two renowned universities and several lesser ones and nearly a dozen major corporate headquarters as well a hundreds of smaller ones.

Moving again
in 1993 I wrote a future vision as part of another goal-setting/dream-building exercise. Over the past several years I’ve remembered that exercise often, and looked all over for it, primarily to show my daughter that a dozen years before she met their father, I knew she’d eventually have two daughters. My memory was of writing it by hand in one of the pile of notebooks I began as journals of one sort or another and then abandoned. I’ve found it perplexing that I’ve never been able to find it.

Yesterday I found it. While sorting through various artifacts in my office, thinning things out before packing to move (date as yet undetermined), I found some gorgeous 20-year-old overhead slides I used in workshops and programs on holding effective meetings. Hoping I could find the original file on my computer, I began digging through back-up folders uploaded from old floppies (remember those?). I never did find the slides, but I found something even better:

I found my dream building file, the one I’ve been looking for. Memory was wrong It was never on paper. It’s beautifully done in workbook format. I remember now that I had visions of publishing that workbook, without my personal content.

Reading over the elements of that dream, I buzzed with excitement. I’m living most of that dream right now. Other elements, like the office and house I describe, exactly match what I recently wrote about the house I hope to find in Austin. The dream document said Seattle, but at this point Austin is a better choice. My daughter has built the free-lance writing business I foresaw, and she does have two young daughters. Nearly 25 years after writing that, we will live near each other.

 So what?
Quite aside from any mystical, metaphysical “laws of attraction” aspects of goal-setting, these documents are jewels for lifewriters.

• They document with laser precision just what we hoped and dreamed for at various points in time.
• They provide a mirror for reflecting on subsequent events. If we were on target as I have been, we can follow the trail of events that led from then to now. If not, we can explore the insurmountable obstacles, how they affect us, and how they shaped our lives.
• They provide a focus for stories and memoir.

Sowing and reaping
It’s never too late to start harnessing the power and fascination of dreams. I can’t guarantee they’ll all come true, but I do guarantee you’ll have a fascinating experience as you consider the possibilities. Although it does work to lose them and find them years later, I suggest you start a journal for this specific purpose and keep track of it. That  might be on paper, but a computer file serves well too. Just back it up and file it where you’ll be able to find it again.

Write now: write down a dream of life as you’d like it to be at some point in the future. Give your inner critic a sleeping pill and call in your muse to help you be creative. Be precise and specific about describing details that make it real. Include whimsical elements like that stream. Include emotions and feelings you expect to have. Don’t worry about editing or spelling. Just write it all down. It’s worked for me to file this stuff away and forget about it. Most gurus have you post it on your wall and keep it in sight to keep its power alive. Follow your instincts on this. Years from now, you’ll find it again and have something to remember, write about, and maybe share with your family and the world.

Image credit: Ruben Alexander

Tips for Dealing with Details

Several pages into a highly recommended memoir, a factual error popped my eyeballs nearly out of my head. Can you find the mistake?

In September 1963, the Cuban and Russian governments placed
          nuclear bombs in Cuba.
In October 1963, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended….
In November 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
In December 1963, I was born….

The Cuban Crisis was in 1962! Both that event and the JFK assassination are indelibly burned into my memory. The author can’t remember, I thought, but how could something this obvious slip by the editing involved in a traditionally published book? I checked Wikipedia to be absolutely sure, then kept reading. Along the way, I found half a dozen typos, and by the time I finished, I’d found several loose ends in the story along with an apparent contradiction.

But still, I do appreciate the book and its many strengths. The story is powerful and the author’s voice superb. I understand the book’s appeal. The mess saddens me on the author’s behalf.

In one sense I felt vindicated that such casual editing was released by an established publisher when self-published authors are widely slammed for flooding the market with slop. But the point is to write your personal best, not to meet standards.

Whether you are writing a few stories for family or a major opus for the world, these guidelines will help you smooth wrinkles in your stories.

Check your facts. Always validate times, dates or places, if you’re sure you know. Those erroneous dates for the Cuban crisis may be accepted as factual reality by younger readers. Your error about a birthplace or date could throw genealogists into a tizzy years down the road.

Look for loose ends. They may be subtle. For example, this author doesn’t mention how she generated income, but despite a divorce, she spent money like it grows on trees. She says she remarried. To the man she had the amazing relationship with?

Look for conflicts. She reports reflections of someone with her son’s name who met a celebrity she was about to meet. It makes no sense that her young son would have met this person before she did, or that he would relate such a mature impression. Ebooks make searching easy. No other person with that name was mentioned at any other time. Confusing!

Look for missing information. She cites results of certain studies with assurance. The topic is new to me and I’d like to read more. I don’t need footnotes, but I’d love to see an appendix with references and suggested reading.

Rely on beta readers. You aren’t likely to notice loose ends or missing information, because you fill in the blanks from memory as you read. Even family members may gloss over omissions like these. Discerning readers who aren’t privy to the backstory will pick them up in a flash.

Don’t rely too heavily on professional editors. I don’t know what shape this manuscript was in when it arrived on the editor’s desk. Perhaps she did as much as she was able in the time allotted to meet deadline or budget. Maybe loose ends fly under her radar. If you are paying for editing, remember that more time means more money, so have things in the best shape you can before you seek help. Professional or not, nobody is perfect, and any given reader will fail to notice something. Have two or three more people read for further edits and errors after the formal edit is done.

Be gentle with yourself. Readers love this book in spite of its flaws. Write great stories, give them your best shot, and then chill. If you pour your heart into them, readers view mistakes with compassion – if they notice them at all. Many won’t.

Write now: if you don’t already have a writing group or a list of trusted beta readers, find or start a group and begin a search among friends, local or online, who can read pre-release versions and give you reliable feedback.

Accentuate the Positive

Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-inate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mr. Inbetween.

Who doesn't recognize the value of this sage advice from the 1945 hit sung by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters? But you may not realize the power of this advice for your writing when applied at the micro-level of sentences. I'm not talking here about avoiding negative topics. I'm talking about the value of rephrasing sentences from negative statements to positive.

One of the most compelling examples of this is found in an online article, Kurdish Female Warriors On the Front Lines Fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The lead paragraph states:

A notoriously fierce segment of the Kurdish security forces are striking terror into the hearts of ISIS terrorists – female fighters. The Jihadists have no problem slaughtering defenseless women but they don't like facing armed female warriors in battle – because they don't believe they'll go to heaven if they're killed by one of them.

In actual fact, those Jihadists DO believe they WON’T go to heaven if…

These tips will help you avoid false negatives.

Tell what IS rather than what ISN'T

Instead of writing "It wasn't raining that day," tell the reader, "The rain finally stopped" or "Dry weather that day allowed us to ..." or "My heart soared when I looked out the window that morning and finally saw patches of blue in the sky."

Do you see what's happening here? That negative statement implies a lot of things, but swinging it around to a positive, affirmative statement avoids a slightly onerous or whiney tone and creates space for discussing advantages and opportunities. Let's look at a few more examples of reversal:

Edward was not tall.	Edward was of average height, able to disappear in a crowd.
The meeting was not marred by any discord.	The meeting ran smoothly with no discord.
Every time I worked overtime it didn’t show up in my paycheck.	None of the times I worked overtime showed up in my paycheck.

Use precision wording

The paragraph about Jihadists is a prime example of imprecise wording. So is “all men are not tall” as cited in an earlier post, Brain Thorns. Examine each negative statement to be sure that is exactly what you intend to say.

View negative statements as opportunities to enhance the message

Rewording the description of Edward gives a better sense of his appearance, and the paycheck statement is awkwardly stated in several regards. The revision shifts the negative aspect to the subject, using a positive verb. The revised sentence flows smoothly, and the meaning is more clear.

Use negative statements sparingly for emphasis

Strongly worded negative statements have tremendous impact. George Washington’s purported statement, “I cannot tell a lie,” would not made history books if he’d said, “I must tell the truth.” How else could you state “The eyes don’t lie” without changing the meaning?

The paycheck statement is inherently negative and must be so for precise meaning. The obvious intent is to emphasize the inequitable situation. Revising yet again to state “Not a single one of the times I worked overtime ever showed up in my paycheck” adds additional emphasis and impact.

So, you see, by paying to detail, you can convey an upbeat, finely tuned, high impact message without sounding like Pollyanna. Consider every sentence and explore ways to ensure precise meaning and smooth flow. Trust me, smoothing sentences gets easier with practice.

Write now: Search several old stories in your collection and look for negative statements that would benefit from flipping or rewording.