Blog #8 - Kathleen - Book Learnin'

I learned a lot in this class. I learned that an on-line course can be even more engaging than a classroom course. I already knew that to be a good writer, you had to read good books. Here’s what I learned, about life and about writing, from the books we read for this course (in reading order):

1. A Moveable Feast. If you want to be a writer, you have to act like a writer. Be more selfish. Make time to write every day and get out of the house. Seek out companions who want to talk about writing, literature, and ideas. Don’t overwrite; think about paring down your sentences. Write one true sentence. Write another one. Heck, write a true paragraph. Don’t marry a man who’s going to go out drinking night after night and leave you at home with the kids.

2. A Pearl in the Storm. As a nonfiction, mixed genre, book, Pearl was the most like the type of book I am working on for my capstone, my family trip-through-Ireland book, Sweater Weather. McClure, like Bill Bryson, inspires me to stuff my memoir with variety. Give your story a vehicle, such as a journey or quest, but weave in elements of your past, as well as interesting facts about the places or activities you are writing about. Incorporate meaningful quotations from other writers or historians or philosophers. Push yourself, as a writer and as a person, but know when to give yourself a break. Lighten up, Tori baby!

3. The Prince of Tides. Let yourself be haunted by your personal geography. Write about your heart’s own land, your terra, as Robert Penn Warren calls it in A Place to Come to. Conroy has reminded me that I want and need to write about my low country homeland, too. Write big, he taught me in Prince. Describe what you see and how you feel about it in lofty terms. (But get an editor who won’t let your story sprawl!)

4. Olive Kitteridge. Brilliant book, a multi-faceted diamond. The next great American classic. Lessons learned from it: Consider the parts of the whole. Use multiple perspectives. Don’t be afraid to tell it like it is. Write about imperfect people. Advance your story with memorable dialogue. Consider hormone replacement therapy.

5. White Tiger. Can you change the world with your book? Is there an issue, an agenda you’d like to present so that your readers can see how someone else lives-- and suffers? Adiga makes me consider going for the jugular.

6. Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange. Don’t be reluctant to describe the small details; use all your senses. String your descriptions like jewels throughout your narrative.

7. The Elegance of the Hedgehog. What’s the big idea? Put that in your book—but don’t overdo it. Don’t isolate yourself personally or as a writer. Keep searching for those moments of beauty and movement, the camellia on the moss, the rosebud that falls softly from the stem to the table. Put those moments into your work.

Where do I go from here? When the semester ends, I’m going to pick up and read Melanie’s book, The Ghost of Milagro Creek, and Ray’s book, Sorrow Wood. I’m going to email Elledge and tell him what a perfect format this course has been for the summer, how it fomented an incredible sense of writing community that I wish we could keep going. And I’m going to return to my writing with renewed enthusiasm, inspiration, and ambition. Thanks, Melanie--and thanks to each one of you.