Writing Full Tilt

Capturing the Complete Experience

Has it ever happened that you write a scene, it doesn’t matter whether it’s from memory or imagination (but perhaps this does happen most powerfully when we work from memory), and when you are done writing, you feel dissatisfied because the writing feels incomplete? You maybe feel that the writing hasn’t captured the complete experience and the full depth of emotions. I have heard writers say, “This doesn’t get at what I’m trying to show.” I have said this myself. What I’ve come to understand is that some experiences and even some imaginary scenes not only require but demand and deserve to be written more than once. Sometimes dozens of times. I tell writers who are experiencing this frustration that they haven’t failed, they haven’t demonstrated a lack of skill. The truth is that powerful moments are like rooms vibrating with tension, nuance, meaningful detail, powerful metaphor and strangeness. In order to first understand this room completely and then convey it to an audience, we have to enter it multiple times, and not always from the same door. We have to enter through the window, from the ceiling, a crack in a wall, a heat vent, a space between the floorboards. In other words, we have to write the scene from different perspectives, in different voices, moods, with emphasis on differing details, dialogue or gesture. It’s perfectly right not to be satisfied with one telling of a dynamic and powerful moment. That moment is a treasure trove of human interaction, awareness, misunderstanding, missed opportunity, subtle connections and realization. Every fiber of that room has something to say. Mining a scene over and over should be a writer’s joy. So when you feel disappointed after writing a scene because you haven’t capture the entirety of what you know is there, give a whoop of delight! You have struck gold.

Upcoming Events

Malibu Retreat: February 4 – 7,  2019  Four days of writing above Malibu Bay. Bring your imagination, stories, and poems. The surroundings are secluded and inspired. Join me to write your heart out in February! For more information: https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

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Where do characters come from? Everywhere and nowhere. They arrive like old friends we have always known, perhaps remnants or compilations of neighbors, siblings, uncles, colleagues. They arrive like strangers we want to discover, revenants of who we want to understand. Whatever the origin of characters, the trick is to let them come and let them have their say. Try not to argue with them. Follow them around as if you are a sleuth who has to uncover not only what they do, but why they do it. Because you don’t know. Not yet. And that is the miracle of writing. Ask them lots of questions: What happened before you got here? What are you going to do in the next few minutes? What are you afraid of? What’s in your pockets? If they don’t answer, be patient. They will answer in their own way. Sometimes by saying things, most often by taking action. Which means that very often the fastest way to understand a character is to give them something to do. Like sorting laundry, chopping an onion, putting gas in the car, feeding an animal, cleaning the gutters. You get the idea. An ordinary task will reveal a great deal. Yes, you want to include conversations both external and sometimes internal. Be patient there as well. Characters will only say what they are comfortable saying. Let them say what they want to say in their own voice, not yours. But the most important thing to remember about getting along with your characters is to let them surprise you. Let them drive the narrative. They will take you places you never expected, and isn’t that exactly why we write?

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Upcoming Events:

Weekly Workshops: Thursday Evening 6:30 – 9:30 September 13 – November 15; Friday Mornings 9:30 – 12:30 September 14 – November 16  https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Online Workshop: Monday Evenings 6:30 – 9:00 September 17 – November 5  https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

Malibu Retreat: Four-Day Retreat in the Malibu Hills overlooking the Pacific. February 4 – 7, 2019  https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Have you ever gone back to a piece of writing that you had to abandon because you ran out of time, or you ran out of steam, or you ran out of knowing where you were going? It happens to us all, all the time. When you go back, do you struggle with picking up where you left off? Is it difficult to find that thread? It’s not surprising that trying to re-enter a work in progress is difficult. What exactly were we thinking at that moment? What were we feeling? How were we trying to say what we wanted to say? The answers are there, embedded in our words. The trick is to re-discover the creativity behind them. Most often we want to pick up the last sentence or phrase and carry on as if we had never left off. The problem is that the last words we write often, unconsciously, have a way of closing off the entrance. Something like brushing away our footprints. It’s a natural instinct. The idea of tidying up, finishing, making our work sound complete is drilled into us from the moment we are taught to put forth ideas, arguments and stories. But this story is not done. How do you break into your own writing? Here are two strategies. 1. Ignore the last sentence. In fact, ignore the last two or even three sentences. Let the fourth sentence in be where you pick up the thread. That line will be much more open, much more in the heat of your writing. Tug on that line and start to write again. 2. Re-read your piece. Then re-read it again, this time looking for the line or phrase that is the prompt you inadvertently hid for yourself. It’s there. It’s the one that has heat. The line that surprises you. The line that sets off that spark and sends you back into the dream. You’ll know it when you hear it. Pick up that line and follow it for all your worth.

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Upcoming Events

Weekly workshops: September 13 & 14 2018 https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

Online Workshop: September 17 2018 https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

Retreats: Malibu California February 4 -7 2018  https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

What does it mean to discover our voice when we write? Is it that moment when we forget that we are writing, and what we most want to say finds its way to the page? When words boil over and spill in an avalanche of phrases, dialogue, images and rhythms? We know the power of feeling the direct connection of emotions, storytelling, and writing. It’s like being thunderstruck and struck open. So often we are surprised by the experience and often when we read what we have written to fellow workshop members, our voice fails us. Believing in ourselves can be very difficult especially when we’ve only just created something and that creation expresses our vulnerability. Our written voice can shake us into uncertainty and sometimes tears. It is right to be astounded at the vehemence of what we have to say, and awed by how we say it. It is also right to respond to our own strong words with respect. Often this means a writer reads their work quietly. Reading immediately after writing, we hear our immediate and deepest voices. We witness our dual courage of putting our words into writing and then saying those words out loud. What daring! What instant discovery! Those who are listening can take courage too. We share our acts of bravery and forge our way as our voices grow sturdier and more vibrant.

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Upcoming Events

August Retreat: Hawley MA   https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Weekly Writing Workshops  https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/ 

Online Writing Workshop  https://www.writingfulltilt.com/online-workshop/

February Retreat: Malibu CA https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

What do you want people to listen for when you read your writing? What do you listen for when someone else is reading? In our everyday lives we listen to each other’s stories and respond by offering a parallel story of our own. We don’t listen for how the story is told. We don’t listen for the ingredients that make it funny or a good character description or the suspenseful pacing. In the best writing workshops we listen in the way we want to be listened to. We want responses that are most helpful to us as writers. The quality of the listening, therefore, is different from swapping news of the day around a kitchen table. For me, listening with the heightened sense of entering someone’s created universe is what creates not only the safety of a good workshop, but the possibility for everyone to go for broke in whatever way they like in their writing. I count this kind of listening as the deepest element of what we do in our shared exploration of perfecting our craft. From my experience this is a unique skill that requires practice, which is why I don’t ask workshop members what they like about a piece of writing. I ask What is working? If a listener responds that they like a bit of dialogue or the way a landscape is described, it probably makes the writer feel good. But that good feeling lasts about a second. The liking doesn’t give the writer anything more to work with. By offering a writer a reason that an element of their writing is strong, it reinforces what’s effective and encourages the writer to build on that skill. Listening for how a piece of writing is put together and how those ingredients combine to make us feel sorrow, intrigue, worry, or joy, is noticing craft. As writers, our job is to notice through heightened listening how our fellow writers achieve what they set out to achieve. Attending to each other in this way helps all of us move more deeply into our writing because we are more deeply heard.

With joy in our words,

Maureen

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Upcoming Events

August Retreat: Hawley Massachusetts August 5 – 8, 2018  https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Weekly Workshops: Ten-week Sessions, Thursday evenings, Friday morning. Beginning September 13  & 14, 2018  https://www.writingfulltilt.com/workshops/

February Retreat: Malibu California February 4 – 7, 2018 https://www.writingfulltilt.com/retreats/

Come Write With Me!

Arriving Someplace Unexpected

It’s pretty frequent that before writers read in the workshop, they say, “I didn’t get where I wanted to in my writing.” Sometimes they’re saying they didn’t have enough time to finish what they started. But often they mean that they had an idea of where they wanted to end up but something else happened. Does this sound familiar to you? Beginning with an idea of telling a complete story and not getting to the finish means that something else or a great deal of something elses happened as you entered your work. This is a very good thing. The something else is the surprise of creativity, the subconscious genius that reinvents the story and/or the conscious memory that offers texture and detail. These elements are gifts to a writer. If you tell a story as you intend to tell it, the story will have the basic ingredients for comprehension. But basic comprehension is not why you’re a writer. Surprise and strangeness are essential elements of creativity. By allowing the story to tell itself, characters to manage their own phrasing, and memories to tilt toward one mood or another, the story evolves into its own form. Sometimes you begin where you didn’t plan to begin, perhaps mid-dialogue. Or maybe you include atmosphere like weather or ambient noise. These concrete details hold meaning, create subtle metaphor, under score emotions. As you include these additions or reshape the angle from which the story is told, you relinquish complete control, allowing the writing to have its way. You are inside the writing as it becomes more full and more authentic. You ‘lose’ your way and lose a sense of time. When the artificial time for writing is over in the workshop, you may look at what you have produced with surprise. It isn’t what you set out to produce. But you have created a genuine piece of writing that allows you to re-enter and continue when you’re ready. Not getting to where you first intended to go gives way to your own genius.

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Upcoming Events

Weekly Workshops May 11  – June,14 2018  Workshops

Online Workshops May 7 – June11, 2018  Workshops

Meet Me in a Museum  June 2 & 3, 2018  Museum

August Retreat August 5 – 8, 2018  Retreat

How False are False Starts?

We have all found ourselves staring at a blank page, beginning, beginning again, maybe even beginning once more. Sometimes we write the same line over and over. Sometimes we write ‘nonsense.’ I hear writers in my workshop name these beginnings as ‘false starts,’ as if they are throwaway lines that they dismiss as wasted or ‘going nowhere.’ Or they believe that this writing is in the way of what they really want to say. If we are privileged to hear these writings, it’s often evident that there is nothing false about them. The beginning writing is saying something. One possibility is that this first writing is like toes seeking the bottom of a lake, touching down and seeking traction. It guides the writer to deeper waters. It is needed for getting in touch with what is true for the writer in that moment. The second possibility is that this first writing is more emotional content that elbows its way forward, needing to have its say before the sequential and more standard way of creating a scene can be formed. Often writers call this ‘rambling.’ This kind of visceral expression is powerful and raw, and can startle a writer. The surprise and the direct feeling/words connection can make a writer disbelieve in its validity. But both types of ‘false starts’ are anything but false. They are essential avenues of getting us into our expressive selves, and they as necessary and honest as the steps up to your front door.

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Upcoming Events

Weekly Workshops February 22 – May 10, 2018  Workshops

Online Workshops April 30 – June 18, 2018  Workshops

Meet Me in Manhattan  April 14, 2018  Manhattan

Meet Me in a Museum  June 2 & 3, 2018  Museum

August Retreat August 5 – 8, 2018  Retreat