February 2015 Book Reviews

Can you believe it’s March already? I’m having a hard time believing it myself here as temps in Boston have barely climbed above freezing lately… but nevertheless, “Spring” it is. I have noticed the days are getting longer and the birds are more cheerful on my morning walks to catch the bus, so even though the temps remain pretty frigid, I do feel like maybe spring is starting to lurk somewhere around the corner.

All of which feels like a pretty good segue into this month’s book reviews, since this past month I finally got around to reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the environmental classic that warned of a spring without birds if pesticide use continued unabated. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I make a (very) small referral commission from purchases made using my links. This does not affect your price.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

“If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.”
— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

This month I finally got around to reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I like reading books that started movements and Carson’s book ranks as likely the seminal text which launched the environmental movement (there are undoubtedly others, but I think hers is the most famous).

A scathing indictment of pesticide use (most famously DDT, but she really covers all the bases), Silent Spring stands as a warning against the indiscriminate contamination of the natural world through the widespread application of toxic chemicals.

My interest in Rachel Carson’s book was partly historical (things were at least somewhat on the mend, pesticide-wise, by the time I was growing up), partly environmental (I have strong feelings about environmental issues, although Silent Spring is at this point sufficiently well-disseminated it’s mostly of historical interest), and partly psychological (a part of me is very interested in how and why the right book at the right time can birth a movement and radically change the operating paradigm of a society).

If any of those things appeal to you, then feel free to give Silent Spring a try. Similarly, if you don’t have a lot of understanding of ecology, environmental issues, or why mass application of pesticides is a bad idea, Silent Spring remains as relevant in the basic facts today as it was in 1962. The science is still sound, even if the reality is no longer so dire.

But if none of those reasons appeal to you, I have to say it’s a book better read in excerpt. Parts of it remain stirring and compelling, just as I’m sure they were when the book was first published. But there’s a lot of ecology and wildlife biology and chemistry explained for the lay person and as a scientist I’m finding those bits difficult to wade through. I’m sure the book explains what was cutting-edge science back in 1962, but 50-odd years later and I found it to be stuff I learned in middle school.

Start with Why by Simon Sinek

“Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money — that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?”
— Simon Sinek, Start with Why

If you’ve never read Simon Sinek’s Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action then I have to tell you: you need to read this book. Once again, I’m rather late to the game with this one (it was published in 2011) although I did watch Simon Sinek’s now-famous TedX talk several years ago. When I saw it several years ago I was buried neck-deep in my undergraduate course work and I really wasn’t interested in Sinek’s message. Now, having finished two advanced degrees and joined the ranks of corporate America, I have to say I think it’s one of the most important books I’ve read in years.

If you want a detailed overview of the book’s material, I highly recommend the Ted talk, but basically Sinek’s thesis is that “people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it”, and if they’re not buying WHY you do things then they’re only buying your stuff because it’s basically the same and just a little bit cheaper than everyone else’s.

I think it’s a fabulous argument and a fascinating bit of human psychology. If you’re a business owner or you aspire to be a business owner (or you’re like me and just enjoy hoarding ideas about what makes people tick) then I highly recommend Sinek’s Start with Why.

On a more personal note, I think a lot of the floundering and directionlessness I felt after I finished my college education had to do with losing my WHY. Prior to graduating from college my WHY had always been something along the lines of “because this is what I’m supposed to do” (the prestigious college, the science degree, the Master’s degree, the well-paying job, etc.) but if those things don’t align with your WHY then achieving them is an awful lot of work that results in very little post-college life satisfaction. So don’t be like me! Start with Why instead, and save yourself years of hard work that will inevitably leave you stranded and disappointed in some place that looks nothing like what you expected.

That’s all I’ve got for this month, folks. Now I’d love to know: what are you reading right now? Tell me in the comments below!

Tired of waiting for my monthly wrap-ups? I talk about what I’m reading each week in my email newsletter.

February 26, 2015

A meditation

This week I’m happy to share with you a prose-poem I wrote on the things that get in the way of writing — enjoy!
-Jessica

There’s a warm cup of tea on my desk and I finally can feel my fingers for the first time in hours as the warmth of liquid comfort creeps through my veins and slips hurriedly out into my extremities. My fingers sit on my keys and I wait.

Inhale.

I wait for the muse or my soul or whatever it is you want to call the first stirrings of inspiration. The flutter of here and now and this and why don’t you start here, with this beginning — with this warm cup of tea and my fingers, their skin overly dried and roughening but still a little soft from the water of dish-washing and counter-scrubbing, still noticing the ache between my shoulders after what feels like a cathedral of floor-sweeping.

Exhale.

The silence creeps in and I don’t know what to say. Inspiration refuses to budge and I can feel lists upon lists, quivering in the back of my mind. Reminding me that I forgot the stretch of counter with the toaster, that I haven’t touched the crumbs that have collected on the kitchen table, that the dust bunnies beneath my dresser just keep growing. There’s a thousand and one things that I still need to get to.

Inhale.

I keep my fingers on the keys. It’s a kind of rule these days. Fingers on keys is safe.

When I was little and just learning how to type they used to call these the home keys — asdf jkl; — the place your fingers rest in the moments between typing. The place from which all typing begins.

These days I find myself more familiar with the home keys than I have ever been as I sit, fingers on keyboard, and wage a war with myself over my own right to write.

Exhale.

The thing about stories is they speak to us. As readers and as writers, stories bloom in our mind and they teach us something about the kind of people we are — about the kind of people we wish to become.

When I was little I didn’t dream of writing. Or maybe by the time I did it was already too late. I think that by the time I dreamed of writing I’d already learned that writing isn’t a “real” job and that I shouldn’t bother to try. I’m doing my best to unlearn that thought now, facing it down every day as I sit — fingers poised on keys that are ever so slowly starting to feel like home.

Inhale.

I think that’s all it is really, in the end. Coming home to ourselves over and over and over. Showing up. We’ve all become so busy that it’s nearly impossible anymore to find the time: time to breathe, time to sit, time to rest, time to sleep.

It’s even more impossible to find the time to write.

Because writing is like fighting demons and the moment you sit down the thing that comes up is resistance and — even though the desire to write has been niggling all day as you bought the groceries and did the laundry and cooked and then cleaned up from cooking — as soon as you hit the chair and find your fingers waiting on their favorite keys the only thing you can think about is the laundry that still needs folding, and whether you should check on the crock pot, and haven’t you been meaning to vaccum for weeks?

Exhale.

The trick is not to do it. The trick is to keep your fingers there, in the home position that’s starting to feel less like a home and more like a prison the longer you wait — as the clamour of all these other things (useful things…) you could be doing just keeps getting louder. And louder.

And the thing I think it’s important to know is that you have to just keep sitting.

Inhale.

Every moment is a choice. And in this moment I choose to come home to my writing.

Exhale.

Now I’d love to hear from you! What gets in the way of the important things you’ve been meaning to do?

If making time for the stuff that matters is something you struggle with. Here are a few resources you might want to check out on why it helps to do the important things before the urgent ones (hint: your email is urgent, but not important!).

And if you liked this piece, please share!

February 19, 2015

How to turn an idea into a story

Story is something I struggle with as a writer. By nature I’m a poet rather than a story writer. I enjoy painting with words more than I like telling stories. And I have a hard time turning my creative ideas into stories. For poetry this isn’t necessary — a poem captures a moment, a thought, a feeling. A poem doesn’t have to be a whole story.

In practice, I find that for anything longer than a poem you can’t just have an idea. You really need a story and a character if you are to have a hope of making it all the way through to the end.

Your idea is just an idea, and isn’t a story (at least not yet)

I don’t know about you, but my ideas almost always start off as just little fragments of thought. Maybe I’ll stumble upon a great opening line, an intangible sort of feeling-thing, or an image that fascinates — but I never have a whole story plop down into my brain as if sent from the universe (or at least very, very rarely).

So it’s important that, as a writer, I learn how to fan the flames of these creative embers and turn your ideas into stories.

And, as far as I can see, there are really only two ways to do this: you can write like a “plotter” or a “pantser”. By which I mean you can sit down and think your idea through until you find the story in it, or you can just start writing by the seat of your pants — putting that little ember down on paper and hoping that it catches fire.

I’ve tried both, and they both work — but I think there are important advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.

Pantsing: It works better with ideas for beginnings

If you’re interested in just starting and seeing where you’ll end up, it helps to know where to start. What I mean is the seat-of-your-pants approach works best with ideas that are already interesting opening lines.

If you’ve got a good place to start then diving in may be a perfectly awesome thing to do. Yes, at some point your momentum will run out (probably within the hour if you’re me), but why not charge ahead while the brilliance of the idea is still gathered close around you? Write down as much as you can, as soon as you can. See where the pen takes you. If you don’t like where you end up, you can always go back and re-work things later.

Which is all well and good, but probably only 10% of my ideas come to me as fascinating opening lines.

So what do you do when you don’t have a clear notion of how your story starts?

Plotting: For when you really haven’t the foggiest

If you don’t know where to start then I don’t really recommend pantsing it. You could, but in my experience where you’ll end up is with a quagmire of vague descriptions and unresolved details that will require massive revision at some future date.

So instead, why not do yourself a favor and set things up for success by giving a bit of thought to turning your idea into a proper story?

Let’s consider an example

Recently I had an idea that came to me as an image: unusually colored eyes under a niqab-like veil. Now clearly that’s not a story. It’s really not even a scene. It’s basically nothing.

I could have taken the pantsing approach and written my vision down as a first line: “The first thing I noticed were her eyes….” or “I watch how his brow creases as he meets my gaze and I turn away — I hate they way they always stare whenever they catch sight of my eyes”.

But you can see the problem already, can’t you? These opening lines are crummy.

For one thing, I’ve not said anything about what makes the character’s eyes weird, for another we’ve got not setting, no scene. Instead we’re floating adrift with no purpose and no reason why the reader should care.

Pantsing isn’t really going to cut it with this one. Maybe I’d get to something resembling a decent story eventually, but not before generating tens of pages of useless floundering that would later need to be re-written — and I don’t have that kind of time to waste in my writing life. I’m guessing you don’t either.

So here’s what to do instead.

Plotting: Using interrogation to turn your idea into a story

Here’s an approximation of my thought process for this eyes-under-a-veil idea I’ve been chewing on the past few days:

What if it’s not just women who wear the veil, what if it’s everyone?
What if they’re worn all the time, even in the home?
If all you ever saw of people were there eyes what would be different about their culture?
- I posit: you’d have 1000 words to describe the color, shape, and texture of eyes & eyebrows
- And maybe: you’d have an elaborate verbal/gestural etiquette to make up for lack of visual cues
How would you be able to tell people apart? Maybe you wouldn’t? (But it seems like differentiation would be necessary for a functioning society)
- Maybe your veil would be unique, an emphasis on different colors or different fabrics by which people could recognize you
- What if you wore your life story embroidered on your veil?

Now we’ve found something interesting

What if there was a society in which everyone was covered head to toe by a veil, but their life stories were painted upon them for all the world to see? What if you embroidered your own veil as part of a coming-of-age ceremony? What if part of what you embroidered was your name?

It’s an intriguing idea. But you’ll no doubt agree it’s still not a story. For one thing I haven’t invented any characters yet, and you really can’t have a story without at least one character.

With the world is better-defined, we can start to see what kind of stories are a good fit

For example, what if the character was transgendered? First, we’d need to answer how gender plays out in a society in which everyone is always veiled — but assuming a gendered society, what if as a teenager/young adult you made your veil in secret, beginning the task of telling your life story in color and thread? What if you were transgendered and made your veil for the gender you identified with, not the gender you were assigned at birth? What would happen when you revealed your veil at your coming of age ceremony? How terrified would you feel?

That could be an interesting story with a scared and vulnerable and very human character at the center of it. There’s obviously a lot more detail that would need to be fleshed out, but at this point I think you could start writing, but I think at this point we’re getting close. Most of the rest of the details could be made up or figured out as I go along.

As much as I like pantsing it, I think it’s important to start with a story — and not just with an idea.

Now I’d love to hear from you — turning ideas into stories is something I’m still figuring out for myself, so if you’ve got any tips or tricks I’d love it if you’d let me know in the comments!

How do you turn your ideas into stories?

February 12, 2015

All about enjambment and caesura

Welcome to the second lesson in my live blog of Stephen Fry’s, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within. How does one live blog a book, you ask? — Well good question! The Ode Less Travelled happens to be more textbook than easy reading book and comes divided into lessons and exercises — so I’ll share a summary of the lesson and my resulting attempts at the exercises. I welcome your feedback on my practice in the comments! If you missed lesson one, you can find part one here.

In the last lesson, we learned about meter and iambic pentameter. In this second lesson from The Ode Less Travelled, it’s all about end-stopping, enjambment, and caesura, or in simpler words, it’s about how the sense of the poem interacts with meter.

If you write a few simple lines of iambic pentameter, you’re likely to end up with an end-stopped line.

To grab an example from the lines I wrote last lesson:

It truly was a staggering of snow.
I stayed at home and watched it, blow by blow.

Here you can see that each line stands on it’s own. While they’re clearly thematically related, each line could stand on it’s own as a complete thought. The sense of the verse doesn’t flow between lines. This is what is called “end-stopping”.

If the sense does flow from line to line then that is called “enjambment”.

I’ll denote enjambment as =>. For example:

I ran away and in my running lay =>
A longing need, a desperate escape.

Here you can see that the sense does flow between the lines — neither line can stand as a complete thought on it’s own, making this couplet an example of enjambment.

And finally, the last way (for this lesson at least!) in which the sense of the poem can interact with the meter is by caesura.

A caesura is simply a pause in the sense of the line.

(Stephen Fry notes caesura is from the Latin (caedere, caesum, to cut) and stresses that it is pronounced as in ‘he says YOU’RE a fool’).

Both of my couplets above utilize caesura (which I’ll denote with a ^ here):

It truly was a staggering of snow.
I stayed at home and watched it, ^ blow by blow.

And in couplet #2:

I ran away and in my running lay
A longing need, ^ a desperate escape.

So a caesura is simply a place where the sense of the line pauses, but the meter does not.

Why are enjambment and caesura so important for the poet?

It all comes down to poetic effect. And effect is best illustrated with a few examples from the masters. In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare uses caesura and enjambment to great effect to capture Leontes’ scattered state of mind after he learns his wife has cuckolded (i.e. cheated on) him.

Go play, boy play. ^ Thy mother plays, and I =>
Play too; ^ but so disgraced a part, ^ whose issue =>
Will hiss me to my grave. ^ Contempt and clamour =>
Will be my knell. ^ Go play, boy, play. ^ There have been
Or I am much deceived, ^ cuckolds ere now,
And many a man here is, ^ even at this present,
Now, ^ while I speak of this, ^ holds his wife by th’arm =>
That little thinks she has been sluiced in’s absence,
and his pond fished by his next neighbour, ^ by =>
Sir Smile, his neighbour. ^ Nay there’s comfort in’t,
Whiles other men have gates, ^ and those gates opened,
As mine, against their will. ^ Should all despair =>
That have revolted wives, ^ the tenth of mankind =>
Would hang themselves. ^ Physic for’t there’s none.

I challenge you to capture the emotional tone of even a tenth of his desperate rationalizing and helter-skelter thought-jumble using end-stopped lines. So that’s the power of enjambment and caesura — they bring a kind of depth and breathlessness to iambic pentameter that might otherwise be hard to capture using purely end-stopped lines.

Which brings us to this week’s exercise

The rules are relatively straightforward. Summarized in brief:

Write 5 pairs of non-rhyming iambic pentameter lines in which the first line is end-stopped and no caesuras are used.
Re-write those 5 pairs, keeping the same meaning, but make sure to use enjambment
Each new pair should have at least two caesuras

And to make things easier, Stephen Fry assigns a specific topic for each of the 5 pairs:

What you see and hear outside your window (I’ve got curtains and the dullest view on Earth, so I went with “hear”)
What you’d like to eat right now
What you last remember dreaming about
The uncompleted chores that are weighing on you
What you hate about your body

And here’s what I came up with

1. Outside my window:

I hear the neighbors hauling out their trash
And crunching footsteps fall out in the snow

The crunching feet of passers-by, I hear
and hark! The scrape of trash out to the curb!

2. Eat right now

A nice hot cup of tea would suit me well
With a small scoop of chocolate pudding

A cup of tea, and make it hot! I would
like a small bite of chocolate pudding

3. Remember dreaming:

I know not what I dreamed about last night
I hope it wasn’t anything too dull.

The dullness of unremembered dreams! I
fear for my sleep — of interest it was not.

4. Unfinished chores

I need to sweep my bedroom floor today
And pack up for my coming trip up North

My clothes need packing! And my floor, it needs
sweeping! So many chores to do tonight.

5. Hate about your body

My ribs poke out from underneath my skin
I am a walking skeleton in clothes

A walking skeleton I am — my bones
protrude so sharply from beneath my clothes!

Now it’s your turn! Let me know how I did or try your own hand at enjambment and caesura in the comments below.

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I make a (very) small referral commission from purchases made using my links. This does not affect your price.

February 2, 2015

January 2015 Book Reviews

Welcome to February! After what had been an unusually warm and snow-free winter here in the Northeast, we’ve suddenly acquired the year’s worth of snow in just the past two weeks. Here in Boston we clocked a good two feet last week and another foot or so today.

In case you’re having a hard time visualizing that much now, the snow in our backyard-area (I hesitate to call it a yard, but in lieu of a better word…), is up to the windowsills and door knob of our back door. It’s literally a sea of snow!

And as much as people like to complain about the snow, I have to say I continue to find it miraculous. When it snows in incredible amounts and leaves heaping white mountains on street corners it makes me feel giddy. Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up with snow, maybe it’s because I don’t own a car, maybe it’s just something in my blood — but what I know is that it makes me a very happy camper, despite having lived in Boston for going on 7 years now.

And so, without further ado (or proper segue), here are this month’s book reviews!

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I make a (very) small referral commission from purchases made using my links. This does not affect your price.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

“If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must… the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words.” — Anne Lamott

As part of my vision for feeling like a “real” writer in 2015, I started the year off with a classic of the “books on writing” genre: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. It’s a wonderful book and clearly a classic for a reason — no doubt I should have picked it up years ago.

Bird by Bird is raw and honest and funny and contains some of the best description of the mess of self-doubt that lives inside our heads that I’ve ever read. Both inspiring and relentlessly helpful, I found Anne Lamott’s advice to be spot-on in so many ways. I think I highlighted more pages than not.

If you’re a writer or you want to be a writer I strongly recommend you read Bird by Bird posthaste!

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

“Everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
— Patrick Rothfuss

This month I finished reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Well “finished reading” might be an understatement — a more accurate description is probably “galloped madly from start to finish” or something. I couldn’t put this one down!

I don’t read a lot of fantasy any more, but I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi growing up and I still like to curl up with a good tome now and again and lose myself within its pages.

If you, too, feel like curling up with a nice long book, I highly recommend this one. It’s an interesting and vividly imagined world and a rather brilliantly executed story-within-a-story. The only downside is that the third book in the trilogy hasn’t been published yet… alas!

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

“[Boheme] had believed in something he called ‘the signature of all things’ — namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity’s betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator’s love… Beatrix Whittaker had always been scornful of this theory, and Alma had inherited her mother’s skepticism.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert is a familiar name, and so it’s with some amount of humility that I admit that The Signature of All Things is the first book by her I’ve read — although I’ve seen and enjoyed her TED talk.

Having said that, I have mixed feelings about this book. The first half was breathtaking — a masterful dance between narrator and reader that left me feeling giddy. Gilbert managed to toe a delicate line between having things happen pretty much just as the reader anticipates at every turn, while still leaving us feeling delighted by events as they unfolded — a tricky balance indeed!

Unfortunately, I found the second half of the book disappointing — which isn’t to say that it was bad, but just that it didn’t keep up to the standard set by the first half. The characters weren’t as enjoyable, the narrator felt less charming, and on the whole the second half was just a bit dull after the book’s whirlwind beginning.

So my conclusion is that it’s not a bad book, and I did think it ended nicely. But the middle does rather drag on and so I’m not 100% sure it’s worth it. But it might be — because the beginning really was that amazing.

Expecting Adam by Martha Beck

“Living with Adam, loving Adam, has taught me a lot about the truth… As Adam’s mother I have been able to see quite clearly that he is no less beautiful for being called ugly, no less wise for appearing dull, no less precious for being seen as worthless. And neither am I. Neither are you. Neither is any of us.” — Martha Beck

In January I also picked up another book by Martha Beck (bringing my total up to three). This time I selected her memoir, Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic, a story about the havoc wrought on her life when she learned that she was pregnant with a Down syndrome baby while a PhD student at Harvard.

There are a lot of pieces to this book, but at it’s core it’s a story about transformation and the way in which expecting (and choosing to keep) a disabled child called into question the intellectual elitism of higher education and caused Martha to begin to question the very foundations of her life. She writes:

“I was not looking for information to transform my child into a prize every parent would envy. I needed to transform myself into a parent who could accept that child, no matter what. There were not books for that in the parenting section of the Harvard Coop.”

It’s a book that had a lot of emotional resonance for me because the story of her growing disillusionment with Harvard neatly parallels my own disillusionment with the cult of higher education after five incredibly stressful years as a student at MIT.

With that said, I would have read the book in any case, because reading Martha Beck is a bit like getting to hang out with the awesome (if rather eccentric) Aunt I always wished for. Your mileage may vary.

What are you reading right now? Let me know in the comments below!

Tired of waiting for my monthly wrap-ups? I talk about what I’m reading each week in my email newsletter.