Making Sense of Your Writing–Part 3

When a writer invokes the sense of hearing in his writing, powerful images, again some maybe unrelated to the work but strong just the same, can be created in the reader’s mind.  Word choice can bring this to the forefront.

• "I’ll do it," he mumbled.
• "I’ll do it," he shouted.
• "I’ll do it," he volunteered.

What is said is the same, but a simple choice of word makes the reader hear something very different, and in turn, gives the reader a clearer picture of character.  Let’s take this a step further and use the reader’s past to add dimension to our characters.

I’m sure we all have those songs in our memory, the ones that take us back to special moments in the past.  Perhaps it was the feeling of being free and finally on your own.  Perhaps a song recalls a loved one or a lost love.  While not as closely tied physically as smell, hearing and auditory memories are powerful tools a writer can utilize.  Here’s what I’d call a good example for me.

I love that song.  It takes me back to a time in my life I felt carefree and able to do anything.  I associate it with driving the back roads on a summer day, the windows open and feeling so free.  The image is very real for me.  Invoking the sense of hearing certainly does not have to be confined to a sound an animal makes, or the way someone expresses themselves, or the sound a car makes backfiring.  The sense of hearing can be invoked by words, lyrics, music–anything that a reader can make an association.

Disaster Recovery

What these two weeks have been–and it wasn’t even my disaster.  I assumed the role of network administrator at work a few months back, recognizing a need for dedicated administration.  The disaster I predicted happened.  My whole life for the time it was down until it recovered revolved around a server.  Funny, there was an article recently, which unfortunately I haven’t located, that talks of how stress keeps people from exercising.  With all of this going on, I haven’t exercised, written, blogged, nor painted.  Not much in the way of any creative outlet.  There’s something about computers and data that puts me into a mother bear mode.  I was going to see the office through this disaster no matter how tired I was.

So yes, I do have a life outside of writing, albeit one that is as far removed from the creative process as can possible be.  Oh, wait.  Don’t they say on the WordPress home page that code is poetry?  In a way it is, but code has rules that can’t be broken.   All this talk of disaster has me in the mindset now to avoid my own.

Back ups.  Back ups are vital.  The business recovered because it had a back up.  For my part, I set up regular back ups on all of my blogs and website.  WordPress has a great back up plug-in to not only allow scheduled back ups, but recoveries as well.  I actually had to use that recently when I changed providers from GoDaddy to HostGator.  The change went smoothly, but I did email support quite a bit with issues along the way.  Anyway, so back up.

I utilize both a remote back up via my hosting provider and a back up on a flash drive.  Something about the added insurance of "something in hand" is quite comforting.  I’ve also put together a folder on my hard drive of necessary plug-ins.  I use several, so having to reinstall WP without my suite of tools would hamper me.  Again, back up.

I checked in with the office on Monday and all was well.  Now I can get back to my creative outlets.

Making Sense of Your Writing–Part 2

Sensory detail only begins with your sense of smell. Taste, another sense linked closely to smell, can also create powerful associations in your reader. In my current work, “Murder To Order”, I use the sense of taste to bring the reader closer to my story. In one scene, my protagonist and detective, Jack Hunter, is cooking dinner for his visiting daughter. He’s at the stove, sauteing mushrooms for a steak dinner, would-be chef that he is. His daughter, Cali, joins him. The scene is set in sensory detail. You can smell the mushrooms cooking. Yum. When Cali tries one, you can almost taste the mushrooms with her and react to her observation that they need a little salt. Perhaps more so than smell, taste provides intimacy, sharing of food perhaps, sharing of the sensation of eating. All in all, it is a great way to bring your reader to the table, as it were.

Of course, tastes can be good or sometimes not so good. Jack is a former cop. His sensory experiences could fill a book. When he imagines the scene of the crime, he can smell and taste the metallic sense of blood in the air. Experience has given him the sensory clues and their associations. Again, as with the sense of smell, the associations that readers bring with them as they react to your sensory observations are powerful, adding a bit more to your work than you can add yourself.

Photograph by WordRidden

Making Sense of Your Writing–Part 1

Invoking senses is a powerful way to enhance your writing by involving your writer in a personal way with your writing. Relying on associations between what a reader senses and his own experience can create a memorable reading of your work. Take the sense of smell, for instance. The sense of smell is the oldest, evolutionary speaking. It is also associated with long term memory. The nerves linked to the sense of smell are linked to the emotional center of the brain. Great fodder for capturing your readers’ attention.

Let’s consider smell. Think of your immediate associations with each of these images:

• Pasta sauce simmering on the stove
• The stench of rotting garbage as you walk down an alley
• The medicinal smell of your doctor’s office.

The last image is powerful for me. I’m immediately taken back to my first family doctor’s office, the doctor who, by the way, brought me into this world. I see my childhood home, my mom taking me to the doctor for a polio vaccine, and the unique smell of that lobby. Powerful stuff to bring to your writing.

Some associations your readers have will have nothing to do with your work, but are important nevertheless. Think of the smell of a burning sweet sauce on the stove. Your character is distracted by worry. She’s trying to prepare a nice sauce for dessert, but her thought wrest her away from the task at hand. I can see the woman distracted, the worry lines on her face, the sudden return to reality as she smells the burning sauce. Another image comes to my mind though. I’m taken back to what we refer to as our old-old house in my family. I was maybe five at the time. It was a summer day. I was eating taffy, I distinctly remember it being taffy. My sister’s boyfriend was there, I think helping my sister mow the lawn. All of a sudden the lawnmower caught fire. I remember this smell, this sweet smell that I thought was my taffy burning. Nothing to do with the story, but an instance of being distracted and brought back to reality.

Perhaps think about your characters then in terms of their jobs. A nurse? Comes home smelling like hydrogen peroxide. A mechanic? Smell of oil hangs around him. A dog kennel employee? Well, you get the idea. Smell can add a great dimension to your work, not to pass up.

Photograph by MiikaS

Technorati Tags: sense of smell,smell,long term memory,writing,writing tip

My Secret Indulgence–Ghost Hunters

OK, I’ll admit it.  While I don’t watch such drivel like American Idol, The Bachelor, or any of those other lame reality shows, I do watch one, whether or not it can be called reality is subject to debate.  My secret indulgence is Ghost Hunters.  Deep down inside of me is that part of me that likes to be frightened.  I love a good ghost story.  I suppose that too was the inspiration for my geocaching travel bug, Haunted America Travel Bug.

Anyway, Ghost Hunters.  For those of you that haven’t seen the show, it’s about a team of paranormal investigators who investigate accounts of alleged hauntings.  They claim to be different in that they go into a case to debunk a story rather than prove it.  Adds some credence to their work.  Along the way, they do encounter evidence, again though with a mind to prove whether something natural caused the phenomenon or if it is indeed paranormal. 

Now assuming everything you see is real, they’ve come up with some compelling evidence.  Their investigation at Fort Mifflin sent shivers up my spine in part because I understood the feelings of exploring cave like settings from my own experience as a caver.  I’m not saying I’m a believer, but much as made me take pause.  So how does this help my writing?  Again as with reading ghost stories to see how they convince me as a reader of the existence of a ghost, a TV show like Ghost Hunters makes me look at how to convince readers of something they may not believe in on a visual level.  How do they convince me?  That is a powerful tool in writing–convincing readers of the reality of your story and that’s why I watch Ghost Hunters.

Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid

There are a few mistakes you should never make, the kind of mistakes that scream stupid.  TechRepublic, again relying on a tech site for sound advice,  published a PDF titled, "10 Flagrant Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid."  I don’t say stupid to be mean, but rather to illustrate the carelessness and the horribly wrong message it sends about your writing.  I don’t rely on the grammar check of my word processor.  I have yet to find one that is truly a reflection of the type of work I do.  I rely instead on avoiding and checking for mistakes that I myself, cringe at when I see in other people’s writings.

My favorites are here:  it’s for its.  A stumbling block for the apostrophe-challenged folks.  They’re for their or there.  Yikes!  Or you’re for your.  The others included while careless are certainly not on my top 10.  I.e. for e.g.?  Well, maybe three years of Latin has made this one a hard mistake for me to make.

This story illustrates a good point and one that I learned recently at work.  You cannot solely rely on spell check to catch your errors.  If you enter it’s for its, your spell checker won’t catch it.  It’s spelled right, yes?  Of course it is.  In order not to make these mistakes not only do you use spell check for your first line of defense, but read what you wrote before you hit publish, send, or whatever.  How well you speak and write speaks volumes of what kind of writer you are.

 

Being Productive and Task Management

My latest advice comes not from the writing world, but the IT sphere.  Chip Camden’s post on Six Secrets To Being Productivity And Tasks Completed offers some very practical tips that apply to any field.  His first point, to make a list, is one that I have embraced lately.  I note things like elements or revisions I need to make with my work.  As I’ve learned time and time again, the Muse can never be trusted to be predictable.  Ideas spring to mind in the most inappropriate of situations, when I’m left to note them and add them to my list for the next day’s work.  This list has been the single most important tool I’ve used to make sure it gets done.  Memory is fickle; sometimes it remembers, sometimes it doesn’t.

His most important tip is follow through.  Yes, the project has begun.  You’ve made headway, but is it done?  Have you followed up?  These tips truly deliver the tools to be truly productive.  Break is over.  Now get back to work.