Listen to Your Writing

"Everything in writing begins with language.  Language begins with listening."

-Jeanette Winterson

           It was a warm spring afternoon and the students in English 101 stared at the screen with furrowed eyebrows.  They stared at the projection on the eastern wall of the classroom.  Their eyes seemed to be searching for an answer that would not appear on the screen.  Ten sentences were projected onto the screen.  All ten had errors.  I asked a question, however, no one knew the answer.    The ten sentences each had grammatical typos.  One student decided to change “…we decided to go to a beach” to “…we decided to go to THE beach.” 

            “Why change a to the?”  I asked, which brought us to the awkward length of silence.

            “I don’t know,” a student chimed in.  “It just sounds better.”  She shrugged her shoulders.  A few brave souls nodded their assent.

            Sometimes we aren’t aware of the fact that we determine whether a sentence is grammatically correct or not based on how it sounds.  I have seen this phenomenon play out many times in my Composition classes.  Whenever students are asked to judge an irregular verb, they revert back to “how it sounds.”  “Writing is just another form of communication, which is something that most of us do on a daily basis.”  I have stated this point many times in my classes to ease the stress of writing.

            When I am working in our college Writing Center, I make a point to read a student’s paper out loud to them.  This way, the student gets out of the mode of the writer and into the mode of the listener.  As I read their essay, I read it back to them exactly as they have written it (warts and all) so they can hear how the essay actually sounds.   Writers have a tendency to “hypercorrect”.  This is where the author of the text reads the paper and (whether they are aware of it or not) they correct the essay as they go along.  At times, the writer will not even see the error that they are correcting.  They will read the essay with the correction included.  What an author means and what the author writes may be two different things.  Due to this, more grammatical infractions may be committed when writing.  Once the student listens to his/her own writing, they will be more apt to view it in a rational way, rather than an emotional one.  It would be easier to see their own typos and errors, thus making them more effective editors.  

            Lately, I have been thinking about this idea of listening to writing, focusing particularly on my own.  I live on the west side of Michigan; however, my parents live clear across the state.  Plus, I have to drive 45 minutes to get to work.  To say the least, I spend a great deal of time in my car.  On many occasions, I have had an idea pop into my head only to lose it when I get to my destination.  To address this, I have been using a miniature tape recorder to dictate into on my extended travels.

            The storylines that I dictate into the recorder are streams of consciousness, at best.  Most of the time is spent recapping what has already happened in the works.  This allows me to review the particulars of the story to make sure that my thought process is on the right track.  On many occasions, as I am running through a story, I will come up with something new that could work its way into the manuscript.  Since time can be a precious commodity, time that would have been considered “wasted” while driving can be placed to good use.  The simple action of expressing your thoughts aloud can allow you to “see” your work differently.  Once the drive is over, I can write about the thoughts, plot ideas, etc. that I had set up in the tape recorder.  This has led to more developed scenes and interesting plot twists.

            In the same vein as dictating the story aloud, playing the tape back can be a good experience for a writer.  This is the part of the scenario that I do not like.  This is due, in part, to the fact that I hate listening to the sound of my voice (think Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with Mickey Mouse).  As agonizing as it may be, I listen to the stream of consciousness, all the while with an ear out for plot holes.  I can ask myself questions such as: Would this character do that?  Why would he/she commit this action?  What is going on with this scene?  This way, I become a more effective editor.

            Giving a voice to your writing can add dimension to the writing process.  The process need not be confined to a pen and piece of paper, or fingers along a keyboard.  The writing process can incorporate sound.  Even now, I am experimenting with using music in my process.  I am creating a soundtrack to my newest manuscript.  Don’t forget to engage yourself on many sensory levels.  After all, shouldn’t we be doing that with our readers?

The Longest Twenty-four Minutes of My Life: My Retirement from Writing

"A short retirement urges a sweet return"
-John Milton

"I write in order to know why I write."
-Alberto Moravia

On several occasions students, friends, and even colleagues have asked “Gerald, why do you write?”  Lately, I have asked myself that very question.  Writing is very time consuming, can be quite draining (physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially), and can be quite thankless.  On many occasions, I will write for an hour or so and in a fit of rage, tear up my work only to start writing the same piece over again.

If the writer even thinks of publishing their work, they may get to this point when rejection letters are the norm rather than the exception.  How do you keep writing when you are faced with all of these rejections?  How do you keep up the morale?  For me, the answer is to go back to the writing.

I quit writing for exactly 24 minutes back in 1998.  When I was an undergraduate student at The University of Michigan – Flint (UM-Flint), I was desperately (and I mean desperately) trying to submit my work for publication.  At that point in my life, I was a junior in college and had firmly thrown caution to the wind to purse a degree in English.  While working on my degree, working as a tutor in the Writing Center, and working as the news editor at The Michigan Times (the student publication at UM-Flint), I was furiously writing short stories and a novel.  I immersed myself into the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and Andrew Vachss (to this day, I cannot read a Burke novel without thinking I need to stop so I can study for a test).  All of these authors have taught me many lessons about writing.  Unfortunately, during this time, all I received was rejection letter after rejection letter.    To this day, I wonder why I didn’t give up for good.

Even though I didn’t hang up my pen and fedora (the latter I mean metaphorically since I never had one), I did give up writing for 24 minutes.  I was a junior at that time and ready to get into my career of being a published writer as soon as possible.  As such, I sent out query letters all over the country to present my work.  There was one mystery magazine above all others that I had my heart set on to accept some of my work.  Hardboiled magazine is published by Gryphon Publishing.  Gary Lovisi, one of the best in the business rejected several of my pieces.  Yet, he seemed to remember my name because on several rejections he would reply with “Good try,” or “Please try again”.  Unfortunately, due to the busy load of work Mr. Lovisi had, there was little else.  On a few occasions, he would reply with “Too wordy” or “Plays on obvious cliché”, but his rejections were quite short.

Most of my weekend nights were spent reading issue after issue of Hardboiled to learn the style.  Stories from Wayne Dundee, Mickey Spillane, Andrew Vachss, and Mr. Lovisi himself created noir films in my mind.  I read pieces that showed me what neo-noir was and how a true expert writes it.  After reading, I would set pen to paper and write a story that told what I wanted to tell and keep a style such as the ones I read mere moments before.  On a cold evening, I came home from a literature class and found a letter from another magazine.  I opened it, knowing in my heart what the reply would be.  My fears came true: another rejection.  It was a long, rainy day and I had two ten paged essays to write in as many days and this was the right nail in my coffin.  That’s it! I thought.  I am done with writing!  I had three notebooks filled with stories.  I calmly retrieved the notebooks and threw them away.  I went to my parents’ computer and deleted all of the stories I had on my floppy disk drive.  I took the entire “How To” writing books that I had in my bedroom and boxed them up.  I placed them in the basement with the rest of my failed ventures.  Fifteen years of writing, rewriting, and using up ream after ream of paper, and for what?  I looked at the folder filled with rejection letters.  Why are you keeping these? I wondered.  Was it a testament my own sado-masochistic tendencies?

Everything went into the trashcan that night.  I looked at the nearly full trashcan and huffed at the work that I’d done.  My room was a lot cleaner.  It looked less cluttered and I found little items that I had spent months looking for.  What was the first thing I did after I gave up my writing career?  I took a pen out and wrote about the experience!  This was 24 minutes after I had thrown my papers and notebooks away (I consider this my retirement).  I wrote for hours and it turned into a small essay that I thought was amusing.  The next morning, I went to The Michigan Times and edited a few pieces for the next issue.  I even worked on a book review of a novel that I had read.

Since that night, I continued to write fiction, with the same amount of success in regards to publishing.  However, I cut back on the submissions.  Back in those days whatever I wrote, I would immediately finish writing and put into an envelope to send it to the next entry in the 1998 Writer’s Market.  Since then, I did less submitting and more editing.  I left for graduate school and learned a lot of what I was doing wrong back then.  When I returned from graduate school, I continued writing.  A few months after I returned from graduate school I published Pro Bono, a mystery story I had written starring a private eye named Frank Mercer, in Detective Mystery Stories.  I had the story set in Flint, Michigan (my home town) and tried to capture some of the realism there.

A few weeks later, I wrote and edited another Frank Mercer short.  This short was called A Hint of Cinnamon.  This short was published as well.  A third Frank Mercer short, which was titled The Dead Don’t Dream was published as well (this one was originally written when I was at UM-Flint).   It is interesting to note that these two Frank Mercer mysteries were published in Hardboiled magazine.

As a fledgling writer (which I still see myself now), I felt that I have come a long way with my work.  It has matured a lot since I wrote at The University of Michigan – Flint.  However, the problem was that I was unwilling to reflect on my work.  I wanted to write and be done with it.  We must reflect if we ever want to grow and learn from our mistakes.  Mr. Lovisi was such a gracious editor.  He gave clipped responses to me, but he managed to give me important feedback that I was unwilling to accept back then.

Currently, as I write, I find myself mining my old stories, thoughts, and ideas.  Of course, I have to go by memory since a lot of it has been thrown away.  So when I return to the question of why do I write?  My answer is clear and simple: I can’t not write.  As writers, that is something that we need to ask ourselves.  Can we see our lives without writing?  I do not mean writing in every sense of the word.  Obviously, we have to write a check, a letter here and there, or an email.  What I mean is telling a story, expressing ourselves, creating a picture with words, or crafting language to entertain, inform or persuade in a detailed manner.  No matter how frustrated I still get with writing, I cannot see myself without it.  Can you?

Finding the Method in Your Madness

"All is change; all yields its place and goes."
-Euripides

"Change is the only evidence of life."
-Evelyn Waugh


This week my school is beginning a new quarter, which means new classes, new students, new preps, and new minds. Without a doubt, this has to be the most exciting and nerve-wracking portion of the quarter for me. With a new class I try to remind myself that all of the conceptions/notions that I may have should be thrown right out the window. A new quarter and a new class mean a fresh start. When approaching something new, even with writing, it is important to make sure you approach your writing in an innovative way. Otherwise, there can be baggage from the previous piece that makes its way into others. This can create dull writing.

For example, once I finished writing Demon in My Head, I began writing The Modern Prometheus, a “follow up” to Demon. In the initial stages of the writing, I found that the manuscript was very much like Demon. The protagonist was going through a “step-by-step” process (for tracking down a serial killer). It was eerily similar to Brimstone’s quest. When I discovered this (mercifully after writing only twenty pages), I scrapped the project immediately. I was still writing Demon in My Head! My major discovery was that even though I finished and published a “rewarding” novel, I was no longer finished telling the story of Gabriel Brimstone. I looked at this as not being finished telling a story. There was more that I could write.

As such, what I did was tell the story of others touched by Brimstone and his quest. The end of Demon placed Gabriel Brimstone in a very precarious position (that is all I will say). However, there were others who were affected by the events in that novel. So I decided to write a piece that follows up on the events in that novel. Due to this, Prometheus does not really act as a “sequel”, but it tells another story in that world. Many writers have a single character who acts as the protagonist. This protagonist continues to narrate throughout many books. Gabriel Brimstone, the “protagonist” (although I hesitate to use that word to describe him) that narrates Demon, is barely in Prometheus; yet, his presence is felt through the entire manuscript. Now when writing, I try to “breathe” between projects. Each piece that one writes should be different. There should be a different texture within a project, even if one is writing with the same character. In both manuscripts, the theme of family is present, which makes a lot of connections; however, it expands on the Brimstone mythos. Demon acts more as a horror story, whereas Prometheus (as it stands now) acts as a very dark (and horrific) mystery story.

I encourage writers to expand their horizons, write about something that is interesting to you, yet is different from you (or at least what you have recently written). Mystery fiction is a major passion of mine. However, when I wrote Demon, I wasn’t writing a mystery. It was outside of my element. With Prometheus, I am returning to my love, however, I am doing it in a different way. Writing involves growth and I encourage every writer to expand outside of your comfort zone.

In the Composition classes that I am teaching this quarter, I assign three major essays and a smaller essay at the end of the course. Each essay focuses on a different essay, and with each one, it stresses a different component on writing. I encourage those writers to choose a different approach when writing on that topic. If you are writing something persuasive, try writing it from a different point of view. When editing your text, how many times do you refer to yourself (using the first person)? Try cutting back on that in the next essay (or draft). Diversity is the spice of life!

Only when experimenting in your own writing will you discover what works and what doesn’t work with your own writing. At the very least, you will find out what not to do, this does nothing but narrow down what to do with your writing.

No matter what you do, keep writing!

The Circular Reality of Horror Fiction

"Horror is an unknown actress, perhaps the girl next door, cowering in a cabin with a knife in her hands we know she'll never be able to use." -Stephen King


How many times have you gone to see a horror film and the film becomes so predictable that you can almost recite the last fifteen minutes of the film by heart? As you watch the film, you know that the “final woman” gruesomely dispatches the villain. Bleeding and crying, she walks away from the horrific scene. In the last few frames, the camera pans back to the face (or mask) of the villain and just before the credits roll, his eyes snap open. Creepy (or speed metal) music plays and the credits roll. Immediately, upon leaving the movie theater, you (and/or your companions) mention that you “saw that coming.” As you’re looking at the others leaving the theater, you see their eyes roll around in their sockets as they speak about how predictable it was and/or how the sequel is inevitably on the way. If moviegoers are in on the joke, then why do filmmakers (and even horror writers) continue to make films with ambiguous endings like this? Heretofore, I will refer to this phenomenon as The Circular Reality of Horror.

What makes something horrific?

Horror is the survival mechanism at work and the futility of it. We are aware of the fight or flight mechanism. We are also aware of the natural instinct of it. What if no matter what we do, it isn’t good enough? What if, no matter how fast we run, or where we hide, the killer will always be behind us? How would you feel if you knew that someone was poised to kill you, or (worse yet) someone you care about, and there was nothing that you could do about it? This is the ultimate dread. This is where true horror lies.

Subconsciously, we use defense mechanisms to negate these feelings. For example, how many of us have been to see a horror film and went with a person who continued to berate the victims for the stupid decisions that they make to survive? How many of us know never to go down into the basement to reset the circuit breakers in the fuse box? How many of us know to never go outside alone to “check out” that noise in the woods? Of course, we wouldn’t make those rash decisions! We’re smarter than that. Yet, what would you do? How do you know that the decision that you make is the correct one? What makes you certain that the stalker/killer did not already account for the move(s) that you make?

Let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to play a game of chess with Jason Voorhees.

The horror film is one long study in fight or flight. Those that choose to flee are caught and killed. Those that fight back are shown the futility in this endeavor and are killed (unless they are the “final” victim). The fight or flight mechanism is engrained in our psyche so deeply that it is something that we can universally relate to. We can see ourselves in the shoes of these characters and sympathize with their plight. We can be glad that we are not them. In an article that I wrote entitled The Seduction of Fear, I even go so far as to mention that we can even see ourselves in the shoes of the stalker/killer. This sympathy can make us feel closer to the characters. This serves to make the story even more intense for us.

Also, the themes can hit very close to home. In Stephen King’s The Shining, we see a thinly veiled allegory on the evils of alcoholism. Seduced by ghosts (and his incessant drinking) Jack Torrence is transformed into a monster and stalks his own family. In slasher flicks such as Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees was an innocuous child who becomes a vengeful creature when he is neglected while at a summer camp and drowns. He takes it out on teens who smoke weed, have sex, and drink liquor (i.e. the same teens who would have allowed him to drown as a child). Who among us has not wanted to revenge themselves for someone’s wrongdoings? This can serve to humanize the villain/monster. The horror of sympathizing with the victim as well as the predator can be powerful in itself.

In a final reference to the fight or flight and inevitability of one’s demise, just think of this final concept. Let us say that you have spent an entire hellish night being terrorized by a monster/demon/whatever. Let us say that you have seen your friends, family members, and significant other be chopped to pieces and you have decided that enough is enough. You decide to take matters into your own hands and (against better judgment and warnings from some crazy person) try to kill that creature. You have discovered the monster’s Achilles heel and you have exploited it. In an epic battle with this creature, you (miraculously) kill this monster. Tired and drenched with blood, you crawl away from the epic battlefield to the nearest police station or hospital. You tell your story to anyone who will listen. What would be the worst thing that you can imagine? Would it be that notion that this creature was not killed, and is looking for you to start the whole horrific ordeal all over again? One of the biggest horrors is to realize that everything the final victim has gone through was all for nothing, and worse yet, they will have to go through it again. This horror is the Circular Reality of Horror.

As such, most of the sequels of horror films are based from this very premise. I do not write this to justify unnecessary sequel after sequel of bad horror (Did Friday the 13th really need so many sequels?). I write this to show the true horror that resides as a premise behind most horror fiction. There is a predictability that happens in these stories.

How many times have you gone to see a horror film and the film becomes so predictable that you can almost recite the last fifteen minutes of the film by heart…