“When I wrote my book ‘On Writing Well,’ I had a definite model in mind. . . it was Alec Wilder’s book about music.”

Posted on June 30, 2023 by Kate Stover

A veteran of WWII, William Zinsser was one of the first to give American writers advice that might be described as “touchy-feely.” In his classic On Writing Well, he says that he is most “interested in the intangibles that produce good writing – confidence, enjoyment, intention, integrity.” He identified attributes that weren’t even discussed in the writing textbooks of his day. Zinsser modeled his book on a book about music because “the subject of a book isn’t as important as the qualities of mind or personality that the writer brings to it.” What matters is the “integrity of your intentions.”

Zinsser, William. Writing to Learn. Harper & Row, 1988, p. 211.

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“Many years before, Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side.”

Posted on June 22, 2023 by Kate Stover

We are 500 pages into the story when this observation about the ideal structure for stories appears: “Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities….but at some untold moment, the two rays…turn a corner and begin to converge.” As a writer, I jumped out of my chair when I read this. These instructions reminded me of the principles Towles described on his website. I love it when novelists walk the talk beautifully. This novel can show writers how successful narrative architecture works.

Towles, Amor. The Lincoln Highway. Viking, 2021, p. 502.

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“Twelve years after Robin’s death, no one knew any more about how he had ended up hanged from a tree in his own yard than they had on the day it happened.”

Posted on June 13, 2023 by Kate Stover

Even though I am not normally drawn to murder mysteries, I read this novel because Donna Tartt demonstrates how a writer can successfully break the rules. None of her characters are likeable; instead, they are suffering, or damaged, or limited, or all three. The plot does not have a satisfying resolution. Good does not triumph over evil. Instead, this book provides a master class in how to captivate readers one sentence at a time with soaring, credulous, and even “gorgeously cruel” prose. The tense scenes are excruciatingly slow, the thoughtful bits are blurred, and yet, it’s  entirely engaging and haunting.

Tart, Donna. The Little Friend. Vintage Books. 2002, p. 17.

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“I am going to write about all this one day, I told her, and she smiled at me.”

Posted on May 30, 2023 by Kate Stover

This is the final sentence of Hua Hsu’s memoir. He is thanking his therapist for helping him deal with the death of his best friend. I imagine his therapist smiled because she knew that writing a memoir based on trauma is difficult. In fact, Hsu spent more than twenty years writing this book. He challenged himself to write “of love and duty, not just anger and hatred” so that it “would be filled with dreams, and the memory of having once looked to the future, and an eagerness to dream again.” This nuanced and beautiful book won the Pulitzer Prize.

Hsu, Hua. Stay True. Doubleday, 2022, p. 193.

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“Even as I write these words I am planning to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

Posted on May 23, 2023 by Kate Stover

We all know the feeling of being torn between wanting to take the time to think deeply and needing to get up to get something done. The tension between lofty ideas and everyday practicalities is a theme that runs through many of the works in this collection. In the poem quoted above, titled “Prayer,” we learn about “the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage” in addition to a condition where “days and nights pour through me like complaints and become a story I forgot to tell.” We all have those stories! These poems can make readers want to write poetry.

Howe, Marie. “The Prayer.” The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. Norton, 2008, p. 27.

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“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice –”

Posted on May 16, 2023 by Kate Stover

Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” continues, “though the whole house / began to tremble / and you felt the old tug / at your ankles . . .” The journey she describes didn’t stop, even though it was “a wild night.” The stars began “to burn / through the sheets of clouds” until there was “a new voice / which you slowly recognized as your own.”  I, too, am beginning a journey. I’m entering a place where I hope to hear a new voice. Poetry – especially the ones with wild parts – will keep me company. What will I discover? I have no idea what awaits.

Oliver, Mary. “The Journey.”  Ten Poems to Change Your Life, edited by Roger Housden, Harmony Books, 2001, pp. 9-10.

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“Remember: Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance . . .”

Posted on April 27, 2023 by Kate Stover

William Zinsser continues, “. . .not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.” Zinsser reminds us that readers don’t want to be impressed by your accomplishments. They don’t want to see whining, anger, or revenge. Instead, you should start with integrity. “If you make an honest transaction with your own humanity and with the humanity of the people who crossed your life, no matter how much pain they caused you or you caused them, readers will connect with your journey” (287). I have yet to find better advice than this.

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“I can allow myself to speculate on all that now, though it would not have occurred to me to do so at the time.”

Posted on April 20, 2023 by Kate Stover

When writing about something that happened years ago, should you stick to the story, or should you interject speculations about what could have happened? Should you also comment on your speculations? People who write stories about things that happened to them regularly consider these questions. Pulitzer Prize recipient Peter Taylor’s narrator frequently interrupts his story with commentary. In fact, “The Old Forest” reveals more about the narrator than anything else. Tension builds when we discover that the narrator is unreliable, and is in fact, oblivious to things we see for ourselves. Suddenly, we have to reexamine all of our assumptions.

Taylor, Peter. The Old Forest and Other Stories. Dial Press, 1985, p. 38.

 

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“Go north a dozen years on a road overgrown with vines to find the days after you were born.”

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Kate Stover

This remarkable first line of the poem “Sight” by Faith Shearin does three things: it provides a way to visualize a journey back in time along “a road overgrown with vines.” It includes an interesting slant rhyme with “vines” and “find.” And, it’s written as a command, in what English teachers call the “imperative mood.” Here is another example of a masterful opening of a poem: “The past wants you back. It wants you to leave / whatever you’re doing now: / eating oysters, brushing your hair, / and return to the scenes where / you were already yourself.”  I savor these haunting lines!

Shearin, Faith. Orpheus, Turning. Broadkill River Press, 2015, p. 28.

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“One goes on living in the hopes of seeing another spring,” Daphne said with a rush of emotion.

Posted on March 30, 2023 by Kate Stover

When the London Review of Books called Barbara Pym “a brilliant comic writer,” they had scenes like this in mind. Here’s how Pym does it: First, emotion is expressed – not by someone beautiful and in love, but by Daphne, the lonely older sister of the vicar. She points to a patch of purple, thinking she sees violets. However, it’s just a candy bar wrapper. Her brother quickly identifies the litter in the grass, as if to quash all hope. Even the young doctor moves away from Daphne. He wasn’t unkind; he just preferred taking blood pressures. Outbursts weren’t his thing.

Pym, Barbara. A Few Green Leaves. Harper & Row, 1980, p. 4.

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“His job wasn’t to recreate reality, but to immerse viewers in a kind of dream.”

Posted on March 26, 2023 by Kate Stover

When writing stories, the most important thing is to tell everything that happened, right? Well, maybe not. Hart argues that the author’s goal is not to describe the world in all its complexity.  Rather, consider the advice offered by David Lean, director of Lawrence of Arabia. He said his breakthrough occurred when he realized that he wanted to create a dream-like experience, not recreate reality. He didn’t have to include everything in every scene. When writing scenes, Hart recommends selecting a few details that stimulate memories that draw the reader into the story. Let the readers fill in the blanks.

Hart, Jack. Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction, second edition. University of Chicago Press 2021, p.89.

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“So I decided to fashion a special kind of collage.”

Posted on March 21, 2023 by Kate Stover

How would a dissident playwright, who spent five years in prison before becoming the first president of Czechoslovakia, construct a memoir? If you imagine a creative architecture not seen before, you are right. It’s an engaging mix of observations, flashbacks, interviews, commentary, and memos to his staff at Prague Castle. The New York Times calls it an “an artful, sly and touching self-portrait, cleverly and neurotically disguised as an artless heap of dry scribbled notes and wastebasket throwaways.” Those interested in the art of memoir will appreciate the way this book’s inventions, texture, and spirit help us enjoy Václav Havel.

Havel, Václav. To the Castle and Back. Translated by Paul Wilson. Alfred Knopf, 2007, Preface.

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“Kafka attended courses on the History of German Art, History of Architecture, History of Dutch Painting, and History of Christian Sculpture.”

Posted on February 26, 2023 by Kate Stover

Anne Tyler, John Updike, and Flannery O’Connor all made paintings and sketches in addition to writing fiction. As it turns out, so did Franz Kafka, who had a strong interest in art from his teens to his untimely death at age 40. What can you learn from looking at his works of art?  Clearly, they don’t illustrate his stories. And, as Andreas Kilcher argues in this book, the sketches shouldn’t be understood as an extension of his writing. Instead, they tell us something different altogether. They provide evidence of his engagement with art, which gives us a new perspective.

Franz Kafka: The Drawings. Edited by Andreas Kilcher. Yale University Press, 2021. p. 218.

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“Everything was pulled tight as a snare drum, so expertly smoothed that you could easily spot the century’s worth of patched holes and tears.”

Posted on February 16, 2023 by Kate Stover

Perhaps nobody is surprised that the British and the American reviewers of Spare by Prince Harry see things differently.  For example, the New Yorker describes Harry’s mended bedding in Balmoral Castle as “a metaphor for the constricting, and quite possibly threadbare, fabric of the institution of monarchy” while the British Guardian says, “Harry is so petulant: a man who thinks nothing, even now, of complaining about the bedroom.” The American reviewer points to many Shakespearean references; the British describes Harry as a “myopic, self-obsessed, non-empathic kind of person.” I side with this side of the Atlantic. I enjoyed it immensely.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Spare. Random House, 2023, p.18

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“There was the teasing and impossible desire to imitate the petty pride of sparrows wallowing and flouncing in the red dust of country roads.”

Posted on January 31, 2023 by Kate Stover

Richard Wright, who was born in 1908, describes the “brace of mountainlike, spotted, black-and-white horses clopping down a dusty road through clouds of powdered clay” in his memoir Black Boy. He finds beauty in the “green leaves rustling with a rainlike sound” and in identifying with “the sight of a solitary ant carrying a burden upon a mysterious journey.” These descriptions help us understand how he was able to survive near-fatal beatings, hunger, loneliness, and poverty as a child in the South. The way brutality and beauty share the page in this book is remarkable. For me, it’s unforgettable.

Wright, Richard. Black Boy. Perennial Classic, 1966, p. 14.

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