Save Time and Writing Energy—Ask an Expert!

May 7, 2012 by 2 Comments

Today we welcome author Maria McKenzie who shares an insider tip that not many writers do. If you follow Maria’s advice, you’ll save yourself time and energy!
 

Thank you, Alice, for inviting me to post with you today at Write From the Inside Out!  My name is Maria McKenzie and I’m the author of the Amazon Bestseller The Governor’s Sons.   

 

Prior to discovering my love of writing, I was a librarian for several years.  I enjoy doing research, but as writers, writing is our first priority, not research. Sometimes, however, we can end up wasting hours looking for information that we thought would be relatively easy to find. 

 

That’s when we need to turn to “human resources.”  People can be our best options when looking for those elusive answers! Today I’d like to share an example of how an expert helped me prevent a research issue from becoming a serious time drain.

 

I asked my husband for input on a scene I’d written involving a dynamite explosion. My husband knows explosives, but he’s not an expert—he just built bombs as a kid (miraculously, he still has both eyes and all ten fingers). After I’d read my scene to him, hubby ripped it to shreds. Granted, at that point, I hadn’t done any research. I’d only used what I’d seen on TV as a guide—never a good idea. My husband couldn’t answer all my questions regarding dynamite, so I turned first to the encyclopedia, and then to the Internet.

 

Although I found lots of information (including the fact that Alfred Nobel, of the Nobel Peace Prize, created dynamite), I couldn’t find the answer to every single question I had in order to write a believable scene. Instead of going to the library, checking out books and investing more time, I decided to locate a human resource—someone who’d give me more than I could find in a stack of books for the particular episode I had in mind. After playing around for a little while online, I located the International Society of Explosive Engineers. With local chapters all across the country, I called the chapter chairman closest to me.

 

Understandably wary, the gentleman informed me that he usually wasn’t allowed to answer questions unless someone had gone through the proper channels. After trying to convince him that I really wasn’t a terrorist, he asked me to explain what I was looking for, and then told me he’d decide what he could or couldn’t answer. After the first few minutes, he realized I was safe and literally had no clue whatsoever about explosives.

 

This explosive engineer taught me more about dynamite than I’ll ever need to know. He even provided me with a more realistic scenario for what I was trying to describe, as well as a way to kill off a bad guy in the aftermath of an explosion, while the good guy survives.  In the end, my source gave me 45 minutes of his valuable time, answered all my questions, and let me pick his brain!

 

Nothing like communicating with a human resource through the good old fashioned way of talking! Sometimes that’s the most useful research out there.  Next time you run into a brick wall, pick up the phone and call an expert so you can get back to more important things—like writing!

 

For more information on research and contacting experts, visit my blog at www.mariamckenziewrites.com, and click on “Published Articles.”

 

Your Turn:

 

Do you have an exciting adventure in research to share?  And as far as research goes, do you love it or hate it?

 

Thanks again, Alice for a chance to post for you and your audience!   

 

 

 

 

 

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The Story Behind Alice Osborn’s Poetry

April 21, 2012 by 2 Comments

Photo credit: Marthanna Yater

What’s the story behind my poetry? I thought it was only fair to spend a little time talking about new book, After the Steaming Stops available now for $10 till the end of April! Read some of my poems here.

I also want you to check out this video (only 2:30 minutes!) from Diogenes Ruiz of Entertainment Triangle which also reveals the “why” behind my poetry.

Let’s get this party started:

Where did my book title (After the Steaming Stops) come from?

From an Aunt Jemima waffle box—if you check out the instructions on the back you’ll see some of the boxes say, “Bake until the steaming stops” after you’ve poured the batter into a hot waffle iron.  I love to make waffles on Sunday mornings and came across this phrase—and thought, “how intriguing.” I changed it to “After the Steaming Stops,” to reveal what happens after the anger and after the love is gone. Many of my poems use domestic imagery and I also wanted the title to have an element of danger—which is steaming. Steam will burn you and it can also melt your love. Love is represented by the frozen popsicle heart that’s being lowered via ladle into the pressure cooker. In this case steam, one of the three states of water, is a metaphor for love in my book. Some love is solid (you know it’s unconditional), some liquid (it flows all around you and you know it’s there), some is steam (it’s in the vapors and you don’t know if it really even exists).

 

What are these poems really about?After the Steaming Stops

 

All of my poems are stories, or narrative poems, about love’s flare-ups and endings. They are mostly true stories of what happened to me as a three-, eight -or ten-year old and how inappropriate my parents acted with me. As a kid, I remembered these incidents, locked them into my head so one day I could write about them. All of the quotations from my folks are real. Some poems weigh more on the father than the mother to give them equal time and I’m sympathetic with both. I also love to write about death! I also have two historical poems about a near death and a death and how they affected me. My poem “Early” is about a train engineer who kills someone on the tracks just because he was doing his job. I got the idea from that poem by reading the paper. The article said that over the course of a train operator’s career, they will kill three people on average.

 

What makes my poetry stand out?

 

My endings! I like to give readers an unexpected punch in the final line. I use stories and images that will stay in your brain for years (so sorry about that!) and many of my poems include my dry sense of humor, too. My poetry is very accessible and easy to understand BUT the more you read my poetry, you’ll discover more layers and more intrigue!

 

Your Turn:

What else would you like to know about me or my poetry? Please add your comments here!

 

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What’s So Transformative About Transformative Writing Anyway?

April 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Today we welcome author Pat MacEnulty who currently hails from Charlotte, NC. Enjoy this post about transformative writing–multi-layered writing that not only can change society, but the individual. Pat will also be coming to Wonderland Book Club in March 2013.
I had tea with a poet yesterday afternoon at a local coffee shop, and he wanted to know what I meant when I spoke of “transformative writing.” He assumed it meant writing that would have a transformative effect on our society. I explained that was exactly what I meant–and more.

To me the transformation is multi-layered. The first layer is transforming experience itself into art. When we write, we are not writing in a vacuum. We base our work on the material we have at hand. And we transform that material — just as coal is transformed into fuel or pieces of highly-organized carbon are transformed into shiny diamonds — into something else. We dig the material out of life, or we find it abandoned by the roadside, or someone drops it in our laps. We put the various elements we have together in our own unique way, and voila we create a work of art. 

Secondly, the writer is transformed. When we investigate the raw materials of our art through the lens of a character, we see it differently. Even when we are writing memoir or personal essays or in our journal, we take the substance of life and hold it up to the light. We learn something. We explore, we discover. We may simply have a greater understanding about ourselves or our situations, or we may change at some very deep level within ourselves. For example, when I wrote about my father’s memorial service, I was still bitter about the way he had treated me and my brothers. I wrote about the details of the service, about the conversations I had with my brothers, about the walk along the beach that I took that morning with them. By the time I got to the end of the story, I understood that I may not have had much of a father but I had something better: I had these two wonderful older brothers who knew me and loved me and who shared my life. My bitterness was transformed into gratitude.

Third, the reader or listener is transformed. Stories shape us. They help us to know the world outside of our limited perspectives. We work our empathy muscles. Here is a piece that Jennifer Huang wrote at the Winter Writers’ Retreat at Sevenoaks:

Writing is telling Tommy (my best friend) my hellish weekdays and my rides to the park, sometimes to run and sometimes just to sit and stare; and anyways, running and staring usually leads to writing. Writing is telling him how I like the feeling of velvet beneath my fingers and the pressing of pianos. Writing is him telling me that his parents don’t pay attention at all. He speaks of his car rides to school, his friends endlessly talking about nothing at all. Writing is him telling me that he wishes for something more but cannot describe it. Writing is our friendship, meshed and tidied into a bundle of letters, some turning yellow and others crisp and white. It is the box beneath my bed, exploding with laughter and tears and frustration that can somehow be heard even as I try to avoid them.

As they write to each other, Tommy and Jennifer deepen the friendship between them. They are transformed with every letter they write and every letter they read.

The fourth, but not the final, layer of transformation is societal. It is the third level writ large. I meet so many people in my workshops who are working in the trenches of our society. They are the ones who witness. They work in Washington D.C. and travel through the labyrinth of a system designed to defeat the underfunded; they do environmental work and confront the daily destructions of the greed machine; they spend their days with autistic children and explore the effects of our toxic world; they know what it’s like to be abducted, to lose children, to be widowed, to care so much they bleed. In writing, they have a tool to educate, to transform others, to open our eyes and maybe crack open a heart here and there.

What would Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath have been without the final scene? That example of compassion in the face of desperation is one of the most moving scenes in literature. And I believe that the final scene where Rose of Sharon performs her act of kindness is the one that enabled this work of art to transform a country. The rest of the book opened our eyes. The final scene opened our hearts. 

The way we can get to that fourth level of transformation is to search our own lives for the intersections between the personal and the societal (or political). My friend, the poet I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, is interested in writing a book about what it means to be masculine. This is an important question in our culture as we evolve and as gender roles bend, stretch, and sometimes bounce back. For him, it’s also a personal question — one that he grapples with in his work as a therapist and in his own interactions with other men. 

There is one more layer of transformation that I believe is important — the spiritual level, which I will write more about next time.

In the meantime, here are some things to think about:

1. Make a list of the books, poems, essays, stories, etc. that you have found transformative. How did they change you? How did they affect your world view? What were the words, the lines, the passages, or the scenes that opened your heart?

2. Try the “Writing About What Matters” exercise. Where in your life does the personal intersect with the societal? This question was the impetus for me to write about taking care of my elderly mother. My personal situation was reflected in some of the questions I had about our society: How do we treat our elderly? What happens when someone no longer “contributes” to society in a tangible way? What resources are there for caregivers? How do we juggle all the demands on our time and attention? So take a look at your own life. What are your pressing personal concerns? Are these concerns that others have to face in some way? And how do our national policies and/or our society mores affect those concerns?

3. Interview someone! I interviewed Ina May Gaskin, the mother of modern midwifery. I had no idea how the medicalization of the birth process has affected the birth experience in such a negative way — even to the point of sometimes causing maternal deaths. You can read the interview in the January 2012 issue of The Sun Magazine. I later turned that information into this essay about that intersection of personal and public.


About Pat:
Pat MacEnulty‘s most recent title Wait Until Tomorrow: A Daughter’s Memoir has been nominated for the 2012 SIBA Nonfiction Book Award. Her other books include the novels From May to December, Time to Say Goodbye, Picara, and Sweet Fire as well as the short story collection The Language of Sharks. Her essays, interviews, stories, and poetry have been published in numerous magazines and newspapers, including The Sun and Gargoyle. Pat has delivered writing workshops at Esalen, Rowe Conference Center, the New York Open Center, the TWA Conference, Sevenoaks Retreat Center, and the San Miguel Writers Conference. She also speaks about writing at colleges, high schools, and libraries. Currently an Associate Professor at Johnson & Wales University, Pat holds a Ph.D. from the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University where she received a Kingsbury Fellowship and a University Dissertation Fellowship. The recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the State of Florida, Pat is currently completing her book on transformative writing. She also blogs here about transformative writing.
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