As a writer I consider words and reading important. But I was also trained in the visual and graphic arts and have longed been attuned to the type and fonts that create the words and make them legible — or not, that can enhance the meaning of the text — or undermine [...]]]>

Even when the message isn't very clear, clear type has a voice of authority

As a writer I consider words and reading important. But I was also trained in the visual and graphic arts and have longed been attuned to the type and fonts that create the words and make them legible — or not, that can enhance the meaning of the text — or undermine it, that can influence whether we even read a single word — or all of them. I’ve also been keenly aware for some time that we are moving from text to verbal and visual communication. Oral traditions and pictographs gave way to literacy which will eventually give way to voices (mostly computer generated) and images.

So what does this all have to do with Steve Jobs and the iPhone?

On Tuesday, October 4, the new CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, introduced the iPhone 4S. Many Apple fanatics, and less astute reporters, were disappointed that the phone lacked significant physical design changes. They missed the significance of a little feature named Siri. Bascially, Siri acts something like an artificial intelligence interface. You say something natural to your iPhone like “I have a meeting with John Doe on Wednesday at 3 o’clock” and the phone adds the meeting to your calendar and will even remind you that the meeting is approaching. You can ask it something like “Where’s the nearest sushi restaurant?” and Siri will note your present location and return a listing of sushi restaurants sorted by proximity (and provide more information on each). It can do a lot more and you don’t. have. to. speak. slow—ly. and. careful—ly. like you did for earlier voice-activated interfaces.

Just in case you aren’t certain, This (Siri) Is Big.

Steve Jobs and the Mac made us aware of how fonts and type affect what we read

It’s like going from a manual typewriter to a wordprocessor big. Or like going from hand-copied books to the printing press big. It’s game-changer, life-changer, society-changer big. It’s 1984 all over again. Trust me on this. In a society where less than 2% of the population has ever entered a bookstore, this is going to make epubs eventually seem like the invention of White-Out or the auto-correcting Selectric typewriter. Apple really doesn’t care if Microsoft Windows copies touch-screen technology or Amazon creates a Kindle iPad. The folks over at Joy of Tech got it right — Apple has developed “fusion.”

Tuesday night I started reading the book (in hardcover) Just My Type by Simon Garfield. It’s a book about fonts and their impact on what and how we read. The introduction begins with an excerpt from Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 where he discusses how he came to take calligraphy classes and the lasting impact of what most considered a useless liberal arts waste of time and money had on him and his business decisions throughout his life not the least of which was the decision to introduce the MacIntosh computer with a selection of carefully crafted, for their day, set of font choices. The book later discusses how the MacIntosh introduced the world to the concept of fonts and font selection, to the idea that how the words looked affected the tone and perception of the message often as much as the words.

Which is one of the reasons I find it ironic that Apple restricts font selection on its epubs.

So I went to sleep with my head swimming with the implications of Siri and a greater respect for yet another way in which Steve Jobs dedication to fine design and detail radically affected my life.

The morning, I awoke to the news that Steve Jobs had died. I wasn’t especially surprised. We all knew he was dying and after a half a year spent dealing with a family members pancreatitis, I knew a great deal more than I ever wanted about the pancreas and pancreatic cancer.

What struck me was the irony of his death the day after the introduction of the Siri interface and the eeriness of my having read about his contribution to text and type and visual literacy just the night before. Obviously, Mr. Jobs knew about Siri and I’m certain he knew of its implications to future of reading and writing and the communication of stories and information.

May Steve Jobs rest in peace. His legacy will live on.

In the near future, because of oral interfaces, the stories that live on will be the ones that sound good with words chosen for their cadence, well-defined characters with distinctive voices and plots that make us ask “What happens next?” These are the stories that live on now, in printed text, that we read again and again and pass along to our children whether it’s Winnie the Pooh or Pride and Prejudice. 

Next week (Oct. 14-16) my town is host to the Forest Storytelling Festival. Each year the storytelling festival holds workshops in the not-quite-extinct art of telling stories: folks tales, new tales, native peoples stories and all the other oral storytelling traditions. There is always some sort of workshop focused on cadence or rhythm. In the past I’ve only caught a few of the public performances, but this year I may just have to register for the whole weekend and brush up on my oral storytelling skills.

I’ve tried reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac three times in my life. I forced myself to finish it last time. But apparently I was reading the wrong Kerouac or the wrong format.

My 1st choice [...]]]>

Try finding the Resonant Detail in your descriptions by using evocative sense memories.

Wow! The beat goes on! Molten meltdown of mental memes send me searching shelves for slender volumes.

I’ve tried reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac three times in my life. I forced myself to finish it last time. But apparently I was reading the wrong Kerouac or the wrong format.

My 1st choice for second period of the Richard Hugo House Write-O-Rama was overflowing. So continuing the medieval mind theme for the day (still taking things a signs and portents), I’m at the Jack Kerouac class — Memory Babe with Deborah Woodard as our instructor.

The first thing was listing the senses:

• sight
• sound
• touch
• taste
• smell

Then Deborah Woodard asked for other senses. Students came up with “thought” and “intuition.” Woodard asked how we came up with thought and a student said ideas were popping out of her brain all the time. Even when meditating. Another student suggested his dreams were merely nighttime thoughts. (Which made me wonderful if my nighttime thoughts would be different without a cat sleeping on my head.)

Woodard then suggested we should practice notation — Notation is a way to quickly capture ideas and memories — and record them in journals. It seems Kerouac kept these kinds of journals which he used when working on his writing. (It seems his works were not the stream-of-consciousness impulses I’d been led to believe in school.) Woodard read us an excerpt for Kerouac’s Dr. Sax describing an urban neighborhood in summer. It contained lots of evocative details. Woodard pointed out that all of these details lead to the Resonant Detail (and yes, you could hear the capital letters in her voice). She asked what people remembered that made them feel the heat of summer in the city and several people mentioned the reference to the wrinkling tar of the sidewalk. Woodard goes on to discuss Proust and his use of details and the Resonant Detail of the limeflower tea (Swann’s Way) in another excerpt. She states that if you sit down and write 30 details, one may be the resonant detail you are looking for.

Resonant Detail Exercise Part 1:

Think back to your home town. (Put yourself in a specific location if you have several “home towns.”) From that vantage point, you’re going to note all the senses and write down details of each. Just do sight, then just do touch, etc. The first part is just to generate lists of the 6 senses, each sense held in isolation and details you remember for that sense.

Here’s my list:

Sight: bright light of sunshine making the sky seem impossible blue; white Conch houses behind white fences; the kapoc tree at the courthouse with it’s rough, knobby bark and short, faded leaves; kids on bikes; the Iguana Man on his old Schwin covered in iguanas, the chihuahua shaking in the basket on the front; magenta splashes of bougainvillea bursting over and through fences contrasting with the violent, shocking purples, reds, oranges of hibiscus; the slatted shadows from palm fronds against the white; pelicans spreading wings to dry

Sound: A masculine voice distinctly enunciating “Here is the kapok tree. The bark of this tree was used to make life preservers during WWII…” rising and fading as the Conch train rolls past; barking dogs in backyards; kids shouting and shrieking on the next block; gulls calling; the infectious rhythms of the steel drum band; the click of the tourist cameras; the lapping of the waves 24 hours a day as constant background to my life

Touch: the heat of the sidewalk, of cars, of steering wheels, of buildings, always warm; the hard, sharp, smooth fronds of the palms; the sharp thorns of the bougainvillea biting me when I wasn’t paying attention; the hard, cutting bumps of coral rock chewing my feet on the beach as I minced my way to the cool water

Taste: the oily, spicy taste of the bollos; the sweetness of fried plantain

Smell: the salty, manky ocean scent; intense sweetness of gardenias, roses, camellias catching you by surprise; the smell of aging wood an undertone to it all

Resonant Detail Exercise Part 2:

Now we each chose a card containing a line from Kerouac and using that line to start, we were to write a short piece using what were resonant details from our own lists.

The line I had was “Dirty snow piled in the gutters.” Here’s what I came up with:

Dirty snow piled in the gutters
Makes me long for Key West.
Fried, sweet plantains,
black beans,
yellow rice,
spicy bollos from brown paper sacks fresh, dripping from the oil
All salty from the taste of the air.
Warm air, heated air
Iguana Man rides past on his old rusty Schwin.
His iguanas basking in the heat, stretched out still, unblinking along shoulders, back, handles as his chihuahua in ratty basket trembles.

Most of the class are poets, but there are some folks who work primarily with prose. There are some excellent snippets, but one especially stood out. The young woman had asked before we started writing what to do if you had no home town. It seems her childhood was spent traveling around the country. Woodard suggested she choose whatever memory came to mind, a moment in those travels that stood out. She chose spending holidays at a Waffle House. In a few short lines she evoked the basket of assorted hot, sticky syrups and the potential delights it offered and then turned it into a symbol of resentment and longing for a home and community.

I’ll never be able to look at a Waffle House the same way again. Now that’s writing well!

I’m falling behind on getting my posts about Write-O-Rama. Life — and other people — keep having other ideas of what I should be doing. Isn’t that always the case? I’ve got 5 more workshops (and the exercises from them) to write up plus lunch and the post Write-O-Rama dinner party (yep, they gave us breakfast, lunch AND dinner).

See you in Ordinary People.

The idea was to choose strong words;  words of one syllable. [...]]]>

Try using single syllable words to focus your writing. It can make it stronger and more dynamic.

My first Write-O-Rama workshop was “Pare It Down” with Anne Leigh Parrish. A workshop to get us to write simply and therefore strongly. Think Hemingway. Not one of my favorites. Not as pathetically macho as Mailer, but too focused so-called “masculine” values for me.

The idea was to choose strong words;  words of one syllable. If we couldn’t write with monosyllables, we were to go back and edit replacing polysyllabic words with monosyllabic ones.

Exercise: Pretend to write a letter using words of only one syllable.

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Heidi,

Thank you. You gave me the this chance to go to this class to write. I find I am sparked and fired up by the aura and the dare to write short and clean. You are a great and true friend. Who would have thought that such a strong link could be forged by chance on the Net.

On my first draft of this exercise, I find it hard to use one syllable words. I do not think in one syllable words. I try to write like Hemingway. It is cool and gray this day. The clock on the wall ticks, ticks, ticks. A woman at the table coughs and clears her throat. A plane flies in the sky while a car drives by. You are used to these sounds. I am not now. I do not live in the city now. I can not block them. This is a good test.

I must decide which task to work on for the May trip. I want to work on my book but I want it to be good and there is not much time. My tech thought would be fast and I would have more time to hone it. What do you think is best?

Have I told you how proud I am of your work and grit? You are a spur to me. I get a lift each time you write to tell me of your feats and acts. Bless you! I will now have to use your strength to rein in my glut so I can meet you in May at the class.

This will be a short note since I am stuck with such short words. I do not think in short words. I was taught to use all my words and to learn more words. I respect writing of short words and lines, but I like a mix of words better. You can not get a book like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with just short words even though you must use very few long words.

It’s peaceful with everyone working quietly — except me. I am very conscious of the key clicks as I work on my MacBook Pro over here in the corner. I appear to be the only person who brought a notebook computer to work on. Some didn’t even bring a pen and paper!

There are 2 men and 9 women in this class. I think that may be a consistent ratio, although I suspect things like the zine, graphic novel and performance workshops may have a higher male ratio. I considered going to the workshop on Diary Comics, but I think I’ll keep focused on prose. (Although I have a smashing idea for a non-fiction training guide done as a graphic novel…).

The exercise was a lot of fun and very stimulating. I, obviously, can’t do it all the time, but I’m now more conscientious about paring down some of my writing.

My 1st choice for second period was overflowing. So continuing the medieval signs and portents theme of my day, I’m off to the Jack Kerouac class — Memory Babe by Deborah Woodard.

Given my inability to actual finish On the Road: The Original Scroll (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) the three times I’ve tried it, this is an interesting departure for me. Definitely pushing out of my comfort zone. Check out the next post.

I did, however, get to work tangentially on writing. A friend asked me to be a beta reader on the first draft of her first novel. She’s [...]]]> The plan was to spend January completing the first draft of a memoir and then going back to work on the NaNoWriMo novel revisions. That was the plan.

I did, however, get to work tangentially on writing. A friend asked me to be a beta reader on the first draft of her first novel. She’s published some short things but this was her first complete, 90K word novel. I was honored.

Unfortunately, it’s in a genre I don’t often read outside of a small, narrow group of authors. So this required some research. I firmly believe that you have review things in context. Each genre or category has certain unique needs beyond the basics of good writing. Seriously, would you complain that “King Lear” didn’t have enough jokes? Or that there wasn’t enough romance in Carrie?

So in the course of a couple of weeks I re-read a half dozen titles that were successful financially and/or I considered some of the best of the genre as well as alternating between skimming and scanning about a dozen that were typical. I even plowed through as much as I could stand of the book that had sent me fleeing the fantasy aisle many years ago. (It didn’t get better with age — its or mine.)

I spent the better part of an hour randomly opening paperbacks from the rack at the grocery store. After the first six, I was about to write to my friend apologizing that I was totally unsuited to critique her book because I simply could not read more than a few paragraphs of the standard titles in her genre, when I picked up one last title, opened it at random — and found a delightful bit of good writing. I’m at the library right now, where I found the first of the author’s titles to check out and try. (Sorry, but unless a title or author is recommended by someone I completely trust or has multiple reviews that make it compelling, I always try new authors via the library first. This way I can keep affording to buy new releases, including hard copies, by the good authors.)

The point of all of this, is that I’ve spent the better part of the two months reading as a writer instead of a reader. When I read like a writer, I focus on things like the structure of the plot, how the characterization is handled, the development of tone and style. There are many times I’ve read something as a reader, completely lost in the story and characters, swept along by the pros; and then, I read the story again, this time as a writer noting how the author managed to capture me.

Some writers can write a plot that’s intrigues so completely, I ignore the less than perfect prose (My “potato chip” reads are mysteries). Others create characters that are such lively, fascinating companions, I myopically overlook plot holes — unless I fall in one. Then there are writers who voices are so witty and charming, I’m completely seduced. Often awaking to find a note on my beside table and my wallet emptied. And finally, there are the writers whose prose is so beautiful and graceful, I feel as if my own efforts resemble the first steps of a gawky teenager amongst the corps de ballet.

Periodically, when I feel I need a refresher course in how to read as a writer, I pull out my copy of Francine Prose’s Reading Like A Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want To Write Them. While Ms. Prose (Isn’t that a wonderful name for a writer? I wonder if it’s too late to have mine legally changed?) targets the future M.F.A. candidate and completely eschews anything so plebian as “genre” authors, she does teach me how to read, both my own work and others, critically. And by “critically,” I mean objectively with a discerning eye and ear.

Here’s how she opens her book:

Can creative writing be taught?
…I answer by recalling my own valuable experience, not as a teacher but as a student in one of the few fiction workshops I took… Its generous teacher showed me, among other things, how to line edit my work. For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what’s superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, and, especially, cut, is essential. It’s satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical and sharp.

Here’s an example from her chapter on “Narration”:

… this device enabled me to overcome one of the obstacles confronting the novice writer. This hurdle disguises itself as the question of voice and of who is telling the story (should the narrator be first or third person, close or omniscient?) when in fact the truly problematic question is: Who is listening? On what occasion is the story being told, and why? Is the protagonist projecting this heartfelt confession out into the ozone, and, if so, what is the proper tone to assume when the ozone is one’s audience?

I had always assumed that I was alone in having discerned that the identity of the listener was a more vexing problem than the voice of the storyteller until I heard a writer say that what enabled him to write a novel from the point of view of a rather complicated middle-aged woman was by pretending that she was telling her story to close male friend, and that he, the writer, was that friend.

Ms. Prose goes on to examine and dissect successful examples of narration ranging from Wuthering Heights to Anna Karenina, from Philip Carver to Isabel Walker to Mark Twain to Diane Johnson (Le Divorce, a book alas I didn’t finish because I was simply in the wrong mood. My mood is something else I have to keep in mind when critiquing my own or someone else’s work). I got more out of one trip through Reading Like A Writer than I did from an entire semester of writing class. If nothing else, I learned how a master writes a compound, complex sentence.

After a couple of months of reading like a writer, I’m ready to start writing for myself again. I’m encouraged by how badly some published authors write, humbled by how well some do and greatly inspired by the realization that I can improve my own initial drafts by applying some firm, disciplined manuscript critique.

To the keyboards! Tally Ho!

The novel’s not quite done, but the end is in sight and I feel confident I’ll actually make it.

I’ll write more tomorrow.