Creative Writing Corner

Spend Time in a Big City - and Know When to Leave

Now that I'm a full-time resident of one of the biggest cities there is (that's New York, for those new to the site), I've learned a lot about what it feels like to live in a constantly, often overwhelmingly urban environment. There are a ton of advantages, such as the convenience and closeness of every kind of store and museum and service, and other good things for my writerly life, such as the sheer number and diversity of people to observe, meet, and get interested in. On the whole, it can be a terrific experience to live in a big city.

No matter how invested you get in living in one of these cities, however, it can be important to know when to step away. New York has a funny way of engulfing you and your world view. It makes other cities, like my hometown of Boston, seem quaint and pedestrian. It makes you think this is the only place where things are really happening, where things are really important. It can give you too dramatically skewed a city-centric point of view.

So if you're a city-dweller like me, what do you do to make sure you don't become a city troll, some sort of city-obsessed person who won't leave and thinks it's the only important place? Do you take trips to other places? Do you go to the park or look out on the river and remember other worlds and other lives exist? What reminds you that the city isn't the whole world?

9 Summer Writing Workshops

Do you want to get some valuable writing and writing workshop time this summer? There's a plethora of options available for writers looking to spend their summers writing and learning from distinguished teachers. I've been going to summer writing workshops since I was in high school, and they've been enormously helpful to me. Not only did I get to learn from some great teachers and meet esteemed writers, but it gave me the chance to work on my writing in a disciplined way and come out of a program with a finished draft of a story. For those of you considering a summer writing workshop, here's a short list of some of the ones I know and respect.

For Teens

I got my start participating in teen writing workshops. They're wonderful opportunities for young writers to get the encouragement they need. For the young writers in your life, check out these workshops:

Teen Ink NYC Summer Writing Program
This terrific program offers daily classes and workshops along with sight-seeing tours of the city, including trips to museums, broadway shows, and tours of some New York's important literary hubs.

Choate Rosemary Hall Writers' Workshop
I loved this program when I was in high school; it gave a very intensive writing experience and included fun summer camp activities as well.

Walnut Hill Summer Writing Program
This was the first writing workshop I ever went to, and it gave a wonderful experience, particularly due to the small classes and personal attention and encouragement.

Breadloaf New England Young Writers' Conference
A short conference, this nonetheless provides a great experience for young writers, with classes, readings, and opportunities to read and share their work.

For Adults

Breadloaf Writers' Conference
Of course, Breadloaf has a conference for adults as well. This program offers an impressive faculty list and a wonderful milieu for concentrating on your writing.

Iowa Writers' Workshop Summer Programs
The Iowa Writers' Workshop is legendary, and it offers summer grad classes that are open to the public with an application. If you're looking for a trip to Iowa for the summer, you can't do better than studying with Iowa University's esteemed faculty.

One Story Workshop for Writers

In its first year, respected literary magazine One Story is offering a summer writers' workshop with a specific focus. It will be honing in on the question of whether writers should get an M.F.A. They'll weigh the pros and cons, as well as giving you a taste of the M.F.A. experience with workshops, lectures, and readings all in Brooklyn.

Wesleyan Writers' Conference
I went to this conference as a student and loved it. You'll have the opportunity to attend several very different classes in a short time, listen to readings of both your peers and the experts, and get a personal critique and consultation with a member of the faculty.

Tin House Summer Writers' Workshop
For something on the west coast, try Tin House. The respected literary magazine puts on a highly rated summer workshop every year.

Hopefully these resources will get you started on your quest for summer writing opportunities.

Parataxis and Hypotaxis

I know the posts have been a little scanty here at the Corner for a week; I've been swamped with administrative work (including doing my taxes!) but I'm back and ready to keep readers informed about the writing life. Today I want to talk about a specific style technique in writing that you can use to your advantage to create a certain tone. The two variations I'm talking about are parataxis and hypotaxis.

Parataxis

Both of these terms refer to sentence structures and how sentences relate to one another in your writing. They are one of the most important ways readers get a feel for your writing and get clues about your mood, tone, and seriousness. So to begin, parataxis is when all of your sentences carry the same weight. They usually have very few clauses, and more importantly, none of the clauses are subordinated to one another. We use subordinated clauses to indicate what the most important part of a sentence is (the most important part is in the independent clause), so when there is no subordinate part, it makes every part of the sentence seem equally important. The effect is flat, declarative, and often somewhat bleak-sounding. Hemingway made this style famous. Here is an example of parataxis:

There were no rooms at the inn. We drove farther until we found a hotel. It was raining heavily and we got soaked on the way to the door. Our socks stank of mildew. We ate dinner there and talked little.

As you can see in that example, the tone feels flat but also spare and uncompromised. It is declarative and direct. It doesn't beat around the bush, but it also leaves it a little mysterious about what the most important part of that paragraph is.

Hypotaxis

Hypotaxis, on the other hand, is when clauses in sentences are subordinated to one another. This makes it clear what we should be focusing on, and therefore also can give an emotional cast to the writing. It points clearly at what is important and what should be read with the most weight. Here's an example of hypotaxis:

Because she didn't want to go shopping, she decided to go to the park instead. While strolling along a path, she discovered a hidden garden. Inside the garden, while squirrels chattered at her, she rolled delightedly in the grass.

In this case, you can clearly see what the most important parts of the sentences are. She decides to go to the park; she discovers a garden; she rolls in the grass. But with the added coloration of subordination, we get more of a scene, more of an emotional background. Neither choice is better than the other, but you can see how different writers have used these two styles to tell very different stories. Hemingway's parataxis, for example, is great for showing shocking or traumatizing scenes of war and destruction because it carries that horror and desire to distance ourselves. Jane Austen, on the other hand, might use a sophisticated mix of independent and dependent clauses in order to convey the complex social niceties of her world. Remember these techniques when you next start a writing project, and choose which one will most aptly tell your story.

Photo of the Week

Anguk Station Floor: Seoul, South Korea, originally uploaded by Aaron Brown Photography.

I like to post geometric, abstract imagery every now and then. I hope it inspires you write something.

Mailbag: Is Wasted Time Really Wasted?

In this week's mailbag post, I'd like to return to a post I wrote, wondering How Much Time Do You Waste?. In the post, I make a case for wasted time -- that for creative writers, time left dreaming or thinking idly is actually a crucial part of the creative process. I was pleased to discover a lot of readers had strong feelings about it too. So let's re-open the discussion!

Margaret Fieland said:

Sometimes not thinking about a problem is the best way to come up with a solution. When I'm banging my head against a wall, I'll often find that after I "give up" and do something like go out grocery shopping or vacuum the house I'll think of the solution.

Thanks, Margaret! It's absolutely true, and it's something that psychologists have studied, puzzled over, and proven without being quite sure of the cause: when you're working on a problem, you often solve it precisely when you stop thinking about it. Whether it's the right word for a crossword puzzle or the right way to end your latest story, sometimes putting it aside and thinking about other things can lead you to the answer. It might be because the increased stimulation enables us to put more input into the problem-solving process, or it might be because our unconscious is still able to work away on it while our conscious brains concentrate on something else. Whatever the reason, putting your story aside can sometimes be the best thing for it.

N.T. said:

Very interesting post. I've often thought about this myself -- some of that daydreaming, staring-out-the-window time ends up being highly productive. And I have noticed that when I become overly focused on being productive as an end in itself, I can wind up wasting time on unnecessary activities in order to feel "busy." I also agree with Margaret's comment that taking a mental break from a problem is sometimes the best way to solve it.

N.T. brings up another great point: that busy work isn't necessarily the best way to be productive. In today's world, we often feel pressure to be doing something productive every single minute of ours days. Elaborate systems like GTD, for example, want us highly organized and ready to fill every slice of ours days with productive activities. What that can lead to, however, is doing the easy repetitive tasks more and more just because it's work to do. In the meantime, the work that needs thought and analysis gets pushed aside. I say let's remember that the big tasks in the creative process don't need an itemized checklist.

Charlotte Rains Dixon said:

For writers, there is a fine balance between allowing the brain to wander or refilling the well, and simply wasting time. With the onset of social media and the need to spend time on the internet marketing oneself, it is so easy to get distracted and not get anything done.

Thanks, Charlotte. Here, Charlotte points out another piece of the "wasted time" problem: there are so many unproductive ways to waste time these days. So many things pull at our attention that it's difficult to shut off the inane sites and chat windows and just daydream. But I strongly urge you to fight the temptation to twitter for just a minute and try looking out a window. Your fiction will thank you.

In upcoming mailbag posts, I take on how to fight the urge to hibernate, and designing your own creative space. Don't miss it, and be sure to add your comments!

How Does Spring Change Your Writing?

Spring is finally upon us here in New York! It's been a long winter, with a stunning amount of snow and freezing rain, so I'm all the more grateful to step outside and feel warm air on my skin. I've always found myself to be quite affected by the seasons in terms of my mood and creativity, and I'm curious to hear about if my readers are the same way.

How does Spring change your writing? Personally I get a big boost of energy once I'm out in warmer weather, squinting in the sunshine. Projects that I've been putting off, such as editing an older story or starting a daunting new idea, suddenly seem more interesting. That's a big one for me: I don't have the time or energy or gumption to revise my work very much when I'm in the thick of winter. It takes too much consciousness, attention, and spirit. When I'm in the darkest days of winter, I'm often dragging myself along, living week by week. When the weather gets warmer, I'm ready to look ahead and think farther.

It's important to take advantage of these bursts of spirit when they come about. Do you feel a similar rejuvenation in the spring? If so, don't waste it! Get writing on a new project, but more importantly, try doing a little "spring cleaning" for your writing. Clear out the cobwebs on a few old stories and consider revising them. Try making a plan for the months ahead. What works are most important to you? Which ones can't be saved? Which will require the most of your time and energy in the months ahead? Try looking at your body of creative work with a long view. When you look at all of yours stories together, what's missing? What plotlines or characters do you want to try writing that you haven't before?

And most importantly, don't forget to enjoy this glorious season. Get outside. Sit on a park bench and do some peoplewatching. Get active. Take pictures. Go walking. Do springy things, and let spring shape your creativity.

New Blogging Gig!

I'm excited to report that as one of the acclaimed literary magazine Washington Square's web editors, I'll be one of the contributors to its new blog. We've been working on a brand new site design that will be launching very soon (in the next week), and I'm busy collecting blog posts for the big day. Those posts will be very relevant to what I do here at the Corner, being mostly about the literary life in New York and the world of literary magazines, so I'll highlight new posts I write there whenever one pops up. For today, take a look at an excerpt from the first post I've written, reflecting on what the iPad means for the future of small-press publishing:

These days, the publishing and writing worlds are in flux. Amazon's at-a-loss prices, the Kindle, Twitter, and a bundle of other web 2.0 forces are challenging existing publishing models. Even literary magazines like us are watching the tech news anxiously, trying to figure out what the future of literary publishing will be. But before we start panicking, let's try and look at the bright side. Just as book publishers have to adapt to new audiences and new technology, literary magazines do too, and that might mean getting cozy with the Apple iPad.

If you've been living anywhere in this solar system lately, you know the iPad came out this week, and it's supposed to revolutionize the way we read books. The reviews either love it or hate it (or for the New York Times' David Pogue, both), but one thing's for certain: it's selling like hot cakes. And it's going to bring ebooks into the mainstream. But what does that mean for the future of publishing? Here are a few things to consider.

1. Content will be more interactive. Devices like the iPad will be terrific for non-fiction outlets like the New York Times or school textbooks. If you're reading about evolution, touch a link and you can watch a video of the circulatory system. Reading an article about the economic downturn? Touch a link and look at the stock market for that day. Images, video and text will be integrated in a way that they never have before. That could also be good news for the arts. Washington Square's collaborative award, for example, wants to celebrate the mixing of media, and devices like the iPad would make that possible for a wide audience.

To read more, be sure to check out Washington Square's new web site next week!

How to Find Your Rhythm

Do you have a rhythm to your writing? What is it? Many of the great writers don't consciously write with a rhythm in mind, but nevertheless it appears in their writing. Sentences can be heavy and flat, each one like an elephant's foot. They can be light and nimble, tripping merrily down a flight of stairs. They can be wild and improvised like jazz, grand and baroque, poetic, declamatory. Sentences that have a definite rhythm stand the best chance of sticking with us.

One way you can develop your rhythm is to first figure out what rhythm you admire and want to emulate. My first piece of advice to writers for just about everything, of course, is to read. Find the authors you love and read everything they've written. Discover how their style developed over time, and listen with your sharpest musical ear. Rhythm is made up of the lengths of sentences, the use of punctuation for pauses, and the shortness or length of words. Hone in on one paragraph you love in particular and notice all of these qualities in it. Take mental notes.

Now as a bit of an exercise to grow your rhythm muscles, try a little style imitation. Write about something that is your own idea, but try imitating your favorite author's rhythm. Think carefully about word choice, sentence length, and punctuation. Remember, the pauses are as important as the beats in any rhythm, so be conscious of your commas, semi-colons, and periods. After writing a few paragraphs, you'll feel the rhythm becoming more and more natural. Practice makes perfect, just like with playing a musical instrument. Before you can compose your own pieces, you need to become comfortable with the instrument, able to operate it naturally and on an intuitive level.

Now it's time to try putting together your own rhythm. Think a little bit about how you want your own rhythm to be different from what you've just done. What feeling do you want to get across? Is this hurried and frantic, moody and somber, light and airy? Rhythm is intimately bound up with tone, so make sure you know what tone you want to convey.

Then put pencil to page and get writing. As before, it takes practice and patience. But as long as you try writing consciously, you'll begin to see and hear your rhythm developing on the page.

Photo of the Week

1013., originally uploaded by Opus104.

I love the unexpected intimacy of this image, with the two trees co-existing. Will it inspire you this week?

How to Read Like a Writer

As my professors have been saying all through college and grad school, what may be the most important part of writing is actually reading. If you read a lot (and I do mean a LOT), you're on your way. Of course, not all readers make good writers. And as it turns out, writers often read in a different way than your average reader. Today I want to offer some tips on reading with a writer's eye, so that you can glean the most possible from your reading experience.

1. Notice plot and structure.

When we begin reading, we're not saying to ourselves, "Boy, this character sure is well-developed." We're eagerly reading to see what happens next. That isn't magic -- most plots rely on patterns and techniques that occur again and again. You can learn those patterns if you start finding them in books you read. For example, you read and loved Tom Sawyer as a kid. Go back and look again, and you'll see that Mark Twain uses classic tools of suspense and drama. When you read a new book, you can see these same tools at work.

2. Observe what details work and what don't.

You can appreciate and savor a good book and also notice what makes good writing and what makes bad writing. If there's a sentence that gives you a particular sense of happiness, underline it in the book and ask yourself what makes it work. Is it a strong verb? A clear spareness of language? A well-chosen adjective? A certain verbal flourish? Whatever it is, you can do it too -- but only if you notice what is going on when an expert does it.

After the jump: two more ways to read like a writer.