By Harvey Stanbrough | February 3rd, 2010
Eliot - A Writers' Blog
Hi Folks,
This week I thought I’d drift over to the poetry genre. Remember, though, all genre are written in the same language, so this might well contain some gems for you novelists, memoirists, short story writers and essayists too.
This is to counteract, especially in novice poets, the notion that a group of words structured as a paragraph may somehow be considered a poem. Despite the current fad spreading like a plague through college classrooms and writers’ workshops, a paragraph, whether it occurs in an essay, a vignette, a short story, a novel, or a so-called “prose poem,” is still just a paragraph.
Lewis Turco, in his New Book of Forms, delineates the difference simply and succinctly. To paraphrase him, Prose is a mode of language; the other mode is Verse. Prose is written communication in which the meter inherent in our accentual-syllabic language has not been intentionally manipulated. Verse is written communication in which the meter has been intentionally manipulated. That’s it.
Poetry, like fiction, is a genre, and all genres can be written in either mode. Most often, for example, novels are written in prose, but I’ve seen the occasional novel presented in verse (witness La Farge’s Each to the Other). Poetry, too, can be written in either mode. If the meter is not intentionally manipulated (as is the case in what is commonly called free verse), it is a prose poem; if the meter is intentionally manipulated, it is a verse poem. The true prose poem is what most people refer to as free verse, and what most people refer to as a prose poem is, in actuality, just another paragraph, albeit sometimes a lovely paragraph. The best examples are slice-of-life fictions, or vignettes. If anyone asks you the difference between prose and poetry, you can tell them accurately that prose is a mode of language and poetry is a genre.
But perhaps the real question is not the difference between prose and poetry at all, but the difference between the stanza or poem and the paragraph. That difference is (and should be) obvious to anyone who has studied the craft of writing in our language for any length of time. In a paragraph, the line ends where it ends, and the sentence is the basic building block. But in a poem, whether a prose poem (free verse) or a verse poem (meter is intentionally manipulated), the line breaks make a distinct difference. In a poem or stanza, the poetic line ends on a particular word for a particular reason, and the poetic line is the basic building block. The truth is, if you can remove the line breaks from a stanza or a poem and turn it into a paragraph without making a noticeable difference in meaning, it wasn’t a poem to begin with.
Of course, it’s true that we enjoy freedom in this country, and we might even agree that we can label things in any way we want without regard for whether that label makes sense to anyone else. For example, a few years ago, a gentleman sent me a series of poems he’d dubbed “16-line sonnets.” The fact is, to be called a sonnet, whether Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian, or any other kind, the poem must conform to certain rules, and chief among them is that the poem must consist of 14 lines. I explained this to the poet and he huffily withdrew his poems because I refused to introduce them to others as “16-line sonnets.” C’est la vie.
The point here is that any worthwhile endeavor requires the study and application of craft. Arbitrarily calling a 16-line poem a “sonnet” makes no more sense than calling a paragraph a poem; the former does not create an actual sonnet, nor does the latter create a poem. How quick would you be to hire a plumber to repair leaks in your home if he insisted on calling a pipe and elbow, or a pipe wrench a screwdriver? How quick would you be to hire a “master carpenter” who knew only how to use a hammer, nails and a saw but had no knowledge of a plane or a mitre saw or a dado joint? Write, please, to your heart’s content, but don’t allow those who believe craft is anathema to pull you down to their depth of misery. And for Pete’s sake (whoever Pete is), if you choose to call a pig a flounder, don’t be uspet that everyone else still sees a pig.
Happy Writing!
Harvey
Get Harvey’s Writing the World Seminars on DVD! http://StoneThread.com
Did you know the second edition of Punctuation for Writers contains a chapter on “The Use of Punctuation in Poetry”? http://www.booklocker.com/books/4056.html
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About the Author: Harvey Stanbrough is a fictionist, poet, writing instructor and freelance editor whose works have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. He works from his home near Whetstone, Arizona.
Harvey Stanbrough's Website
Scotland Trip
Photo Courtesy of Jud Miner
Copyright ©2010 Jud Miner. All Rights Reserved.
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Many others ask, “How do you work on so many projects at one time?” At the time of this blog I am working on one novel that is in rough draft, another that needs to be re-plotted and a short story that may turn into a novel. On top of these projects I also am working on poems (several that are ready for submission) and two short stories that need to be submitted and a novella that needs a rewrite. If that was not enough to keep me occupied, I have five blogs I maintain on a weekly basis. None of this includes my normal “bill paying” full time job, spending time with those who are important to me, or dealing with the everyday time bandits that life throws at us on a daily basis. With this in mind, I understand the question. I wish I had an easy answer.
One of the things I do that help to keep things straight and not cross two stories is by focusing each story on a separate genre. If using this pigeon hole technique did not work I might have a pipe smoking detective ninja ridding a mechanical horse (or some kind of hover motorcycle) across the plains of Mars slaying demons while being haunted by spirits that want to posses his soul. While such a story might work, if you break down the elements of that sentence you can see how each of the genres keep a “personal zone” between them—making it hard to crossover.
Another aspect is time and project management. I will not expound into how to do that here, only say that there are several good methods out there that may work for you.
The final trick is realizing it is not that hard. Before anyone argues the point, let me ask you a series of questions:
Do you read?
Do you go to movies or live theater?
Do you talk to others about your favorite show, movie, play, novel, short story and be able to talk about other such stories? As an example: can you describe Star Wars, discuss Agatha Christie’s Black Coffee, what happened on American Idol this week, and what is happening overseas on top of your everyday life stories? Of course you can even if not these specific topics, then others that are of interest to you. This is no different of a mental process than doing that. The only difference is that you are dealing with your own stories.
Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.
PS: For the record, I do not watch American Idol. I just could not think of a better example of that kind of topic off the top of my mind.
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About the Author: Martial Artist, Poet, and Author of Crime Drama, Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more info.
David Lucas II's Website
Hi Folks,
You’ve done it. Your novel or short story or essay collection is finished. You’ve written, revised, polished, and are ready to begin looking for an agent or a publisher. Or are you?
As the computer age advances, fewer and fewer publishers are willing to invest time and money in editing your work to make it compliant with their publishing guidelines. Even fewer are willing to polish it for you: to make sure you use punctuation correctly, that you don’t write “waste” when you mean to write “waist,” and to clean up all those little places where you wrote “he gave her a smile” instead of “he smiled.” And of course, your manuscript won’t make it even that far if it contains too many content errors: things like spelling the character’s name three different ways over the course of the manuscript or over-developing a character who has little or nothing to do with the story line or creating a main character (protagonist or antagonist) who is flat, linear, or one-dimensional.
The agent or publisher won’t explain a whole host of issues that keep novels and memoir and short stories and essays from being published every single day. They won’t address issues like the confusing over-use of dialect or tag lines or unnecessary narrative. They won’t explain why a narrator should always be in the background rather than the foreground, why dialogue is so important to advancing the story line, why some characters actually should be stereotypes while others are well rounded, or how awkward sentence constructions deflate a narrative. You’re the writer and it’s your story, so they expect you to have addressed all those things and send them a viable, publishable manuscript. That’s where a good freelance editor comes in.
But how do you pick a good freelance editor? After all, it isn’t like you can check out their “I love me” wall for a sheepskin that verifies their graduation from Freelance Editor School. So how do you choose from among the thousands of freelance editors advertising their services? Here are a few things to consider:
Get a sample edit — preferably at no cost to you. A freelance editor who is competent and confident in her abilities should have no problem editing a few pages at no cost to show you what she can do for you. Get samples from several editors and then pick the one that seems right for you.
When you review the completed sample edits, ask questions of yourself: Did the editor avoid changing your voice, your style of writing? (No writer experiences any urge stronger than the urge to change another writer’s copy.) Did she imbed comments in the manuscript or otherwise explain why she made particular edits? (The edit also should be a learning experience.) Does she seem truly invested in helping you polish the manuscript? Does her editing style seem a fit for your writing style?
When you’ve narrowed the field to a few editors in whom you’re interested, ask questions directly of the editor: How much will the edit cost? What sort of payment arrangements will she accept? Will she charge extra to edit any necessary rewrites? How quickly can she turn around your manuscript? Is she willing to entertain any questions that might occur to you after the edit is finished? Can she provide references and-or direct you to others who have used her services?
You can come up with other questions on your own. Most often you create in a vacuum, but once the basic work is finished, you should reach out to others for an honest appraisal and assistance. Attempting to edit your own work negates a learning opportunity and is risky at best. After all, your manuscript most often will have only one chance to make a good impression on a particular agent or publisher. Take the time to pad the odds in your favor.
‘Til next time, Happy Writing!
Harvey
For a free sample edit from this freelance editor, send your manuscript as an attachment in Microsoft Word to h_stanbrough@yahoo.com.
Be sure to check out my writing seminars on DVD at http://stonethread.com/, and remember to check back here on Eliot every other Wednesday for another instructive blog post.
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About the Author: Harvey Stanbrough is a fictionist, poet, writing instructor and freelance editor whose works have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. He works from his home near Whetstone, Arizona.
Harvey Stanbrough's Website
In the art of writing, there are questions of technique and method. Where do your poems or stories come from? Where do you get your characters? How did you compose such a plotline? All of this is part of the art of writing—either fiction or non-fiction. I have been to many lectures held by writers far more successful (published) than I. I get to hear all the questions and it is rare that you hear the one question covering the greatest obstacle a writer faces. The question is: “What keeps you going, inspired to write more, after all the rejections and all the hours you put into your work?”
The answer I believe is different for each writer. For myself the answer is simple and three fold. The first is that I love to write. The second is the bills facing me. (Yes, I want to be paid for my writing. If that is a sin—so be it.) The third I must keep to myself for now. The art of perseverance and patience is something every serious writer has to develop. We may get lucky and begin having publishers buy our work right away. We may publish something and it will be years before another is published. We may wade through an ocean of rejection slips before we can get another thing published. It is a hard and long road trying to walk from the “finished story” to the “published story.”
Oddly, when I get frustrated, I think of baseball. The great hitters only hit the ball three to four times out of every ten time at bat. That means they are only successful thirty to forty percent of the time. Note: This is per time they step to the plate to hit, not every time the ball is pitched. If you count, every missed swing and every foul ball—how what would their percentage of success be? Now add every time they should have swung and didn’t. When you put the success and failure of a new writer to publish in this pool of statistics, publishing once in a while makes you feel better and more successful. (Sadly, the ball player still gets paid when they are unsuccessful and the writer does not.) This helps me maintain the patience and to keep writing, like the ball player going to batting practice.
What keep you writing?
Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.
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About the Author: Martial Artist, Poet, and Author of Crime Drama, Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more info.
David Lucas II's Website
Please visit my blog; www.beckypovich.blogspot.com and enter to win a free book! See all the details there! Thanks! Becky
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Growing up as a writer—through the classes I took in high school and college, articles and books, I do not remember ever running across a truth about short fiction writing. In defense of all of those professors and the authors of those books and articles, the subject matter was short story writing and thus must have seemed obvious. After all, if the story is shorter, the plots are less cumbersome and the writing must be tighter than in a novel, it should have appeared to be obvious that the mindset of the author is also different.
I have spent most of my life writing long fiction, only writing short stories for classes during my student days. My mind develops complex (i.e. novel length) plots as second nature. Creating short story plots, keeping the framework so tight is difficult with a novelist mindset. I have wanted to take the story to a point that the style of fiction writing will not support. As a result, my short story writing has been stumbling along like a man who has left a bar after far too many drinks. Sometimes, as with the drunken man, I get lucky and bring the story home. More often, it is on the side of the road sleeping amongst the dumpsters.
As I have been exploring a new sub-genre (see my Coffee With David posting titled “An Argument for the Space Cowboy”) I have been pealing away at the layers of how to write short stories in that genre. The epiphany that should have come more than 20 years ago finally mounted the peak of my stubborn muse and raised a flag declaring “change your mindset.” A short story is a quick story. Get in, get out AND DON’T LOSE the quality of the story.
With this mindset change, I will be conquering new stories and rewriting unpublished ones—taking them to “I will not be a novel anonymous”—and hopefully have more success in this style of writing.
Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.
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About the Author: Martial Artist, Poet, and Author of Crime Drama, Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more info.
David Lucas II's Website
On December 7, 2009 I began this series of blogs on how to keep your muse energized. Tonight, I am going to bring this series to a conclusion with a discussion of writers’ groups. This may seem a bit obvious, but a good writers’ group provides not only a chance to network and learn about how to improve your craft, but it will also enthuse and recharge your muse. To find a good group takes a lot of research and honesty about what you are really looking for. Some groups are filled with “wannabes” and others are filled with the “elitist.”
What should you look for? The answer to this question is unique to your needs. What you should not look for is a group that will teach you how to write or will write your project for you. For the first, need I do suggest trying your community colleges or other schools of learning. Most writers who join a group are writers—regardless if they are published. Which leads to the second statement: While many writers are looking for paying projects, they usually want to focus on their own work—unless they are in the business of being a ghost writer and then you will hire them to write your project. This is not accomplished by just joining a group.
A writers group should offer you a chance to try new things, to grow, and to inspire yourself. I am admittedly spoiled in this regard. I belong to the St. Louis Writers Guild (www.stlwritersguild.org), which has workshops, open mic nights, and lectures—as well as special events. How I learned of them was by word of mouth.
How do you research a group or even learn of their existence? Use the web, but do not limit yourself to that, Ask other writers you may know. Ask the library and the local college English Departments. Simply ask around and then go to a few meetings before you join. See if it is the right fit for you.
Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for information on the blogs, stories, poems, and articles I write.
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About the Author: Martial Artist, Poet, and Author of Crime Drama, Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction. Please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for more info.
David Lucas II's Website
Fireworks at Midnight
Marcel Toussaint © 2010
The year is ending set on a rumbling train
dashing to beyond the horizon where
the last stop awaits for the finale of the run,
its definite time counting the seconds.
As final obligations demand to be attended,
festivities are set to celebrate what the year
was, now to be filed away into memory,
a roadway marker defining the end.
Man sees a need of fireworks at midnight,
deadening explosions thundering in the sky,
flashes lightning like, spikes of vivid colors
scattered in the darkness in visual patterns.
The ohs and the ahs, loud, appreciative, celebrate
the artistic technique used by the designer
of the rockets that carried the detonative
load high to let go of a spectacular fire.
Then, immediate darkness, imminent silence
mark the awaited start of the New Year
as the spectators drive off nescient but hopeful
that, what is to come, will surpass the past.
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Snow Here To Stay
Marcel Toussaint © 2010
Casually, the blinds were opened,
the usual, early in the day,
before anyone gets going
to their tasks awaiting miles away.
There was snow, a thick cover,
there was snow here to stay.
The first that will survive
beyond a brief winter show.
The pristine snow laid there,
its smoothness undisturbed,
no one had attempted to drive
out of our private enclave.
One could imagine all the TVs
their screens revealing the state
of the roads and highways,
decisions made to go or to stay.
This was the moment to settle
in a warm morning robe looking
at the logs sparkling fire
in the hearth already ablaze.
The weather per chance gives us
an unexpected pause that we end up
craving for, for more of the same,
when there is snow here to stay.
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