Amy Tan’s book The Opposite of Fate brings a unique perspective to the writing life. Her bi-culturalism and bilingualism allow her to assess her experiences as a writer in an insightful and sometimes humorous way. She terms the work a “book of musings.” The book comprises a collection of pieces of varied lengths that she wrote over time. Many of the short pieces describe family and life events that have informed her work.

She begins with “A Note to the Reader” in which she mentions that as she compiled and assembled various pieces written for different purposes over the years, she realized that she had always been obsessed with “questions of fate and its alternatives” and that “Hope has always been there.”

In the first section, Fate and Faith, Tan discusses “The CliffNotes Version of My Life,” noting that on one occasion she was surprised by an admirer asking if she was “a contemporary author.” Tan came face to face with the idea that if she was not contemporary, she was dead! Thus, her days of authorhood were “time-limited.”  One of the problems of being a “contemporary” author she notes, is that you come face to face with others’ views of you and your work. Her discussion of finding herself on the shelf of the Cliff Notes Section of the bookstore is amusing. Tan goes on to clarify and correct many of the wrong assumptions in the publication creating her own “Cliff Notes” of her life.

The second section, Changing the Past, presents her thoughts on her mother’s complex life as a young woman in China and her life and death in the United States. The title The Opposite of Fate comes from her mother’s confusion of “faith” and “fate” because she didn’t pronounce the “th” of “faith.”  In this section, Tan also writes about her grandmother and her own realization that writing about the past was one way to change the present and potentially the future. In “Thinly Disguised Memoir,” Tan chuckles about her readers assuming that everything she writes is about her, even though the books contain many things she has never done. She is also amused by individuals offering to share their own personal stories with her so that she can write about them. She ends by emphasizing, “When I write my stories, I do not use childhood memories. I use a child’s memory.” “Persona Errata” is an interesting discussion about the amount of misinformation written about Tan on the internet which gets repeated and requoted broadly. One of the most amusing and stupid errors individuals make is misquoting ages and dates. She ends this section with a short piece called “Scent” in which she recalls the perfume of gardenias and its different meanings throughout her life.

In the third major section of the book, American Circumstances and Chinese Character, Tan’s wry humor is evident as she talks about the experience of growing up in a Chinese family in the United States. “Fish Cheeks” is about her embarrassment when a white family comes to partake in a Chinese dinner. “Dangerous Advice” details some of the warnings her mother offered as she grew up. In “Midlife Confidential,” Tan discusses her life as a successful writer spending time on the road giving talks on book tours. In “Arrival Banquet,” she summarizes a trip taken to visit family in China with her mother and her realization of her Americanness. In “Joy Luck and Hollywood,” she relates her experiences with turning a book into a movie. She ties her visual imagination to her habit of placing herself in her “character’s shoes.” She would look down at the shoes and start walking: “When I looked up, I would see the scenery in front of me, say China in the 1920s.” She thinks this visual imagination helped her work with the movie crew. In In the fourth section of the book, Strong Winds, Strong Influences, Tan reminisces about experiences and individuals who influenced her writing. In “What She Meant,” Tan realizes how differently her mother views her past when she asks her about the war and her mother answers, “I wasn’t affected.” Tan then realizes that she needs to examine how hope affects one’s responses to circumstances. In the short piece “Confessions,” Tan discusses a time when her mother flew into a fury and threatened to kill her. Years later when she asked her mother about it, her mother answered, “You always good girl…” This statement allowed the daughter to hear “what was never true yet now would be forever so.”  Tan compares her own looks to her mother’s beauty in the chapter “Pretty Beyond Belief” and realizes as she ages that she still wants to look like her mother. “The Most Hateful Words” addresses the difficulty of mother/daughter relationships. When her mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s, she called Amy to apologize for hurting her and asked her to forget the bad things that had happened. As a fiction writer who “uses memory and imagination,” Tan chose to know “in our hearts what we should remember, what we can forget.” In the chapter on “My Love Affair with Vladimir Nabokov,” Tan details various literary influences on her work. She had the rare experience of living near Nabokov when the Tan family lived in Switzerland. She never met him but loved his writing style. She also states that she learned not to read reviews of her own work.

The section on Luck, Chance, and a Charmed Life is a collection of personal ghostly experiences that have had an impact on Tan’s adult writing life. “Inferior Decorating” discusses her approach to decorating her home with objects related to her Chinese culture. In “Room with a View, New Kitchen, and Ghosts,” she discusses her home in San Francisco from which she had to have a Chinese man expel the ghost of a former inhabitant. In “Retreat to Reality,” Tan focuses on acquiring a cabin inhabited by invasive squirrels. In “My Hair, My Face, My Nails,” she discusses having to be rescued from a flood that destroyed the bridges to their property. And, in “The Ghosts of My Imagination,” she delves into the incredible coincidences that occur to her when she is working on a writing project. It is as if forces from beyond are aware of and supportive of the story she is writing.

The section on A Choice of Words includes several essays. The first, “What the Library Means to Me,” Tan wrote when she was a child. In “Mother Tongue,” Tan discusses the types of English she grew up with, the difficulties her mother had communicating with white Americans, and the benefit she derived from her own personal linguistic history when she became a writer. In her discussion of the differences between Chinese and English in “The Language of Discretion,” Tan explains how difficult translation is and how each language represents an entirely different social world. Being bi-cultural, she learned to understand and navigate two languages and two cultures. “Five Writing Tips” is the text of a speech Tan gave at a graduation ceremony. She suggests that aspiring writers avoid clichés and generalizations, find their own voice, show compassion, and ask important questions. In a poignant discussion “Required Reading and Other Dangerous Subjects,” Tan reveals her reactions to academic examinations of her work, usually in a multicultural context. She says that she experiences “shock and embarrassment” at what individuals write about her and her work and feels distanced from their appraisals. In “Angst and the Second Book,” she talks about the anguish she felt when told that authors’ second books tend to be worse than their first ones. Subsequently, she wrote several unpublished stories and finally published her second book which was a success. In “The Best Stories,” Tan discusses her own writing of short stories and her judgment of short stories. She summarizes that she likes stories that have a strong narrative thread that leads to a feeling of change in both the characters and the reader.

In the last section of the book, Hope, Tan reflects on “What I Would Remember,” a short piece on her relationship with her mother. In “To Complain Is American,” she talks about cultural differences and accepted or unaccepted behaviors in Chinese and American culture. Finally, “The Opposite of Fate” is a long detailed discussion of her extended, ignored, long non-diagnosed bout with Lime’s disease, and her discovery of an online Lime’s disease group that led her to a doctor who accurately diagnosed her condition so she could write once again.

My Writing Goals for 2023

Publish my second book of poetry:

This book is off to the publisher. I also received some royalties from my first book, Moon Chimes, which is available on Amazon.

Finish, request feedback, and send my first novel out for review:

This month, my critique group workshopped around 2000 pages of this novel.

Continue to work on my other novels:

This month I investigated potential agents and presses for these books.

Continue to develop a network of kindred spirits in the world of writing and publishing:

Boulder Writers Alliance: 

This month I attended the BWA Happy Hour and enjoyed meeting new members. I participated in the Writers Who Read group and the following social evening. I also presented on writing Ekphrastic Poetry for the BWA Poetry Circle. Additionally, the editor of our newsletter and I worked on our November BWA Newsletter.

Denver Women’s Press Club: I read the newsletter but had no time to attend any meetings.

Women Writing the West:  The national conference was online. I particularly enjoyed the panel with agents and publishers.

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers:  I read the newsletter.

Document my writing progress through my blog and post it on the seventh day of each month, one blog per month in 2023:

Today is November 7, 2023, and I am posting my eleventh blog of 2023. This year seems to have passed by so quickly. Fortunately, fall is always an invigorating time for me. I love sitting by the fireplace and writing in the evening.

Today in History:

Ruth Pitter, a British poet, was born on November 7, 1897, and died in 1992. The winner of the Hawthornden Prize in 1937 for A Trophy of Arms and of the William E. Heinemann Award in 1954 for The Ermine, Pitter authored eighteen volumes of poetry over her long career.

Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian novelist, nonfiction writer, dramatist, and literary critic, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. Llosa was also the recipient of multiple and diverse awards granted by around fifteen countries. He wrote more than twenty works of fiction over a sixty-year period including A Fish in the Water, The Language of Passion, The Temptation of the Impossible, Wellsprings, and The War of the End of the World which critics consider an essential work in the western canon.

Llosa published Letters to a Young Novelist in 1997 in Spanish, then translated and published it in English in 2002. The short book (about 135 pages) contains twelve sections and an index. Llosa addresses the letters to an unknown young writer, “Dear friend,” who aspires to be a successful novelist. Llosa’s voice throughout is that of an encouraging older sage. He ends each letter with the familiar valediction, “Fondly.”

In the first section, “The Parable of the Tape Worm,” Llosa compares the urge to write professionally to the invasion of a worm deep in the writer’s body and soul.

In the second chapter, Llosa borrows the image of “The Catoblepas” to describe the novelist. Pliny described the mythological African creature as having a head so heavy it must look toward the ground. But the catoblepas is dangerous because its stare, if it happens to look up, can kill. Llosa uses the image to portray how he believes novelists look to their own past experiences and their interior demons to construct their literary works.

Llosa’s chapter on “The Power of Persuasion,” discusses the inextricable relationship of form and content. Saying “…the story a novel tells is inseparable from the way it is told.” Such a novel exhibits “the power of persuasion.” He emphasizes that “Good novels—great ones—never actually tell us anything; rather they make us live it and share in it by virtue of their persuasive powers.”

Llosa’s chapter on “Style” is revelatory. He eliminates the idea of “correctness,” saying “…what matters is that it [the style] be efficient or suited to its task, which is to endow the stories it tells with the illusion of life, real life.” This sentence struck me because I had just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger. In this novel, McCarthy wrote without punctuation in, for example, contracted words. Thus, he writes “dont” for don’t. I found the style aggravating at first but adjusted to it. Llosa goes on to emphasize that the success of a novelist’s style depends on “its internal coherence and its essentiality,” giving Molly Bloom’s monologue in Ulysses as an example.

A long discussion ensues in the chapter “The Narrator and Narrative Space.” Llosa begins by commenting that the works of fiction that dazzle the reader do so because “the magic of their prose and the dexterity of their construction” create an illusion. He discusses how the elements of the novel are constructed and how the novelist uses specific techniques: the narrator, space, time, and the level of reality. His description of the narrator is “a being made of words and not of flesh and blood.” Thus, he distinguishes between the narrator and the author. He points out that the first problem an author must resolve is “Who will tell the story?” He goes through a lengthy discussion of the attributes and weaknesses of the first, second, and third-person narrator. He ends by stating that “The shifts in point of view can enrich a story, give it depth…or can smother and crush it…” This chapter is the best explanation of how to use the narrative voice that I have read.

“Time” in novels is the subject of the next chapter. Llosa begins by dispelling the naïve distinction between “real time” (the chronological time inhabited by writers and readers) and “fictional time” (the imaginary time the narrator and characters are trapped in) and what he calls “the temporal point of view” of the novel form. He goes on to demonstrate different authors’ varied uses of time. Llosa defines “the temporal point of view” as “the relationship that exists in all novels between the time the narrator inhabits and the time of what is being narrated.”

After delineating his presentation of the two points of view just presented—spatial and temporal, Llosa tackles a more difficult subject that he terms “Levels of Reality.” He defines “levels of reality as “the relationship between the level, or plane, of reality on which the narrator situates himself to narrate the novel and the plane of reality on which the story takes place.” Although there exist multiple planes, he goes on to lay out the recognizable differences between two that are distinct: “realism” and “fantasy.” After discussing several authors’ works, Llosa concludes that authors’ uses of “levels of reality” often define their originality.

In “Shifts and Qualitative Leaps,” Llosa describes how some novelists use alterations or shifts in any of the three points of view—spatial, temporal, or level of reality—as they tell their story. His view of effective spatial shifts is that they give “a broad, variegated, even global and totalizing vision of a story.” He cites Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and James Joyce’s Ulysses as examples. The example he gives of a temporal shift, The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas, shifts from a realist to an imaginary, ethereal, spiritual plane. Llosa suggests that shifts in levels of reality give authors an opportunity to create complex or original work. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando uses a shift of character from man to woman which Llosa calls a “crux or central upheaval in the body of the narrative.” Llosa concludes that shifts in and of themselves do not indicate anything and their success or failure depends upon the ability of the writer to strengthen the novel’s power of persuasion.

“Chinese Boxes” includes a discussion of novels that contain nested stories, such as Scheherazade told in The Thousand and One Nights. Llosa explains that this narrative technique fits stories inside of stories through narrative shifts in time, space, and the level of reality. He also demonstrates that Cervantes used such shifts in Don Quixote. The chapter ends with Llosa explaining how a contemporary novel, A Brief Life by Juan Carlos Onetti uses the Chinese box or nested storyline very effectively.

In the next chapter “The Hidden Fact,” Llosa discusses how some successful novelists, such as Hemingway, use a narrative technique in which a crucial element of the story is simply left out or not explained, allowing readers “to fill in the blanks with their own hypotheses and conjectures.” He explains how Hemingway used the technique of  “narration by omission” in both The Old Man and the Sea and in The Sun Also Rises. He also describes how Robbe-Grillet used the hidden fact technique in Jealousy and Faulkner used it in Sanctuary. Llosa also delights in sharing that a book he keeps by his bedside, one dating back to the days of chivalry, Tirant Lo Blanc by Joanot Martorel is an exquisite example of the nested story.

In his last, short chapter, “Communicating Vessels,” Llosa discusses novels that use parallel stories which may be from contrasting times or cultures yet seem to float and interact with each other. He mentions Flaubert’s scene contrasting the fair with the love scene between Emma and her suitor. He explains that what makes it work is that the two episodes “communicate with each other.” Using Cortazar’s novel, The Idol of the Cyclades, he shows how “linking two different times and cultures in a narrative unity, the communicating vessels of both stories cause a new reality to be born.”

In the final short postscript, “By the Way of a P.S.” Mario Vargas Llosa suggests to the recipient of his letters that despite the general interest in books on writing, “…you should forget everything you’ve read in my letters…and just sit down and write.”

Mario Vargas Llosa’s Letters to a Young Novelist is a jewel of a book on writing. My suggestion is to sit down and write but also to sit down and read this book carefully. Llosa does an excellent job of unlocking the keys to understanding the use of the narrator, space, time, and the level of reality in the novelist form.

My Writing Goals for 2023

Publish my second book of poetry:

Over the past month, we worked to acquire endorsements for this book. I also worked on marketing material.

Finish, request feedback, and send my first novel out for review:

During this past month, my critique group gave me feedback on this novel.

Continue to work on my other novels:

I have not had time to devote to either one this month.

Continue to develop a network of kindred spirits in the world of writing and publishing:

Boulder Writers Alliance:  I attended Gary Alan McBride’s Writers Who Read in person for an invigorating discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s Stella Maris. And I also offered a BWA Poetry Circle.

Denver Woman’s Press Club: I attended a talk by Sandra Dallas, an award-winning novelist whose last book, Where Coyotes Howl, came out this year. Her talk addressed how to arrange your writing life to support your success. Dallas, who is in her eighties, just signed a contract to have two more books published.

Women Writing the West: In September, my critique group’s comments on my work included: “I’ve read enough that I am starting to get a sense of the whole story arc. My mind is ordering it up in a way. I can see the beginning, the middle, and the end,” and “Sometimes you present the solution to a problem that I didn’t know existed. Then you move through the solution. You need to have more conflict and emotions. If you show the reader that, then the reader feels it.”

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers:  I read the newsletter and watched postings of the Colorado Gold Conference on Facebook.

Document my writing progress through my blog and post it on the seventh day of each month, one blog per month in 2022:

Today is October 7, 2023, and I am posting my tenth blog of 2023. September produced threatening weather around the globe, even in my area. October is off to a good start so far here—the pumpkins are starting to move from the fields to neighbors’ doorsteps. Since the squirrels like to eat them, I keep mine indoors until Halloween.

Today in History

Amiri Baraka (Everett LeRoi Jones) was born on October 7, 1934, and died on January 9, 2014. A poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright, Baraka received the Pen/Falkner Award, the Langston Hughes Award, and the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama.

This month I read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life—an honest, amusing, and personal book. I also watched the documentary film Freida Lee Mock made in 1999 called Bird by Bird with Annie: A Film Portrait of Writer Anne Lamott. Now I would like to meet Annie and have a personal discussion with her!

The book Bird by Bird is a 238-page treasure in six parts: Introduction, Writing, The Writing Frame of Mind, Help Along the Way, Publication—And the Other Reasons to Write, and The Last Class. In each part, Anne Lamott shares her personal views, experiences, and challenges, while offering guidance to aspiring novelists. The title of her book refers to her dad’s advice to her brother once when he was trying to accomplish a large project. It means to work on the first thing first and then on the next, taking one step at a time.

In the twenty-page introduction, Lamott discusses growing up in a family who read constantly. Her father was a productive and well-known writer who often invited his author friends over. Her father taught her to focus regularly on her writing and to read poetry. A poem she wrote in the second grade won an award. The award had a strong impact on her, as she had the experience of thinking “You are in print, therefore you exist.” She went on to write, publish, and teach writing, and produce this helpful book for aspiring writers.

In the longest chapter of her book, Part One: Writing, Lamott approaches the topic in the way she teaches her writing classes—with a sense of humor and a grounding in humility. She begins by saying that “good writing is about telling the truth.” She teaches her students to write the truth by having them write about their childhood and their lives. She recommends sitting down at the same time every day and writing to clear “a space for the writing voice.” She discusses her gratitude for good writing and suggests that the way to write well is to write what she calls “short assignments” and “shitty first drafts.” She talks about the dangers of perfectionism. She suggests that developing characters leads to the story and that the plot grows out of character. She explains the difference between writing good and bad dialogue. She expands on what she calls “Set Design.” Her section on “False Starts” lays out how often she thinks a story is going one way but as she writes it develops differently. She talks about the difficulty of responding to editors’ suggestions or requirements. She ends this chapter with “Knowing how you’re done.”

In Part Two: The Writing Frame of Mind, Lamott devotes twenty-seven pages to how authors need to approach their own minds and their own observations of others to communicate effectively with their readers. She emphasizes respect, reverence, and openness to other individuals and how they operate in the world. She also highlights the author’s need to be clear about her own moral compass while realizing that reality is complex. She also discusses the importance of intuition and quieting the critical rational mind. She ends this section with a witty discussion about how to process your feelings of jealousy in the face of other writers’ successes.

Lamott explains in “Part Three:  Help Along the Way” the techniques she uses to support her writing. In the first section, she goes into detail about her use of index cards to jot down ideas, words, occurrences, or conversations that appear at unexpected times. She talks about always having index cards handy, in her back pants pocket, her wallet, or her purse. She demonstrates through personal vignettes how she has used her index cards. The next section explores “Calling Around” or reaching out to individuals who might be experts in something you would like to use in a story but feel uninformed about. She emphasizes that individuals are happy to share their knowledge. She illustrates how one call she made inspired her to write about wineries and grapes, talk to a friend to explore more about grapes, and in the process find out what she had set out to learn, the term “a wire hood.” The next section of Part 3, “Writing Groups” addresses writers’ desire to receive feedback on their work. Lamott discusses the pros and cons of writing conferences, classes, and support or critique groups. She suggests clever ways to present feedback and discusses the friendships and productive relationships that often are the result of participation in a writing group. 

Lamott devotes twenty-five pages to a discussion of the pros and cons of publication in Part 4: Publication—And the Other Reasons to Write. She starts the chapter by saying, “Publication is not going to change your life or solve your problems…make you more confident or more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer.” She goes on to add, “In the meantime, let’s discuss some other reasons to write that may surprise a writer….” Annie goes on to explain how she wrote two books based on firsthand experiences of death saying, “I wrote for an audience of two whom I loved and respected, who loved and respected me.” Her goal was to write stories for the dying so they would know that their lives would live on in the text and be useful to others going through similar experiences.

The next short section of Part 4, addresses “Finding Your Own Voice.” Lamott mulls over her students’ tendency to copy the style of writers they have just read. She encourages aspiring writers to find their own voice by finding their own truth, stating “…the truth, or reality, is our home.” The next section of Part 4 is a discussion of the writer’s need to learn to be a giver: “You have to give from the deepest part of yourself…and the giving is going to have to be its own reward.” In the last section of Part 4, Lamott discusses the trials and tribulations of going through the publishing process and her personal reactions throughout the process. 

Anne Lamott ends her book with Part 5: The Last Class. She summarizes what she likes to tell her students saying, “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.”

My reaction to Bird by Bird was one of delight, appreciation, and a sense of colleagueship with the author. I enjoyed her quirky sense of humor and approach to life. I appreciated her honesty, her examples, and her stories about her own and her students’ writing. And I felt like she was talking directly to me in an encouraging and supportive voice. My hope is that I will be able to write the truth as I know it and that my stories will resonate with potential readers throughout my writing career. Thank you, Annie Lamott!

My Writing Goals for 2023

Continue to work on my poetry.

My second book of poetry is scheduled for production in October 2023.

Submit poetry to contests/awards:

I submitted a poem for potential publication.

Finish, request feedback, and send my first novel out for review:

 This novel is currently in draft shape. I need to rearrange the sections and fill in what is missing.

Continue to work on my other novels:

I must decide if I am going to submit one of these drafts to my critique group this year to get outside viewpoints on it.

Continue to develop a network of kindred spirits in the world of writing and publishing:

Boulder Writers Alliance: In August, we hosted the first Summer Social since the onset of COVID-19. Thirty people attended and had a wonderful time reconnecting and making new friends. We also had a vigorous discussion about Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger in our Writers Who Read group. I am also working on the schedule for our fall 2023 Poetry Circle.

Denver Woman’s Press Club: I read the newsletter and attended the Garden Party this week with a friend who would like to join the group. Amusingly, the entertainment team had gone to the trouble to have a DWPC Barbie created, dressed professionally, and boxed with the label “DWPC Barbie.”

Women Writing the West: I met with our critique group. This time their feedback included: “I liked seeing the scene from Jack’s point of view. I would have liked to see some inner conflict. I liked the part where he beats himself up about it.” “What is your timeline? Is it about the Depression? Does the Depression affect their need to make money?”

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers:  I read the newsletter. I also listened to Mark Stevens’ podcast interview with Aimee K. Runyan who writes historical fiction. Her latest novel, A Bakery in Paris, focuses on social issues in Paris.

This year I plan to monetize my blog:

No progress on this goal this month.

Document my writing progress through my blog and post it on the seventh day of each month, one blog per month 2023:

Today is the seventh day of September which is the ninth month of the year. I am posting my ninth blog for 2023. Extreme weather in the US and abroad has been on the news lately. So far my area has been blessed with a temperate summer and just enough rain to keep the hillsides and the lawns green.

September 7^th in Literary History 

John Greenleaf Whittier, one of the “fireside poets” of New England in the nineteenth century was born on December 17, 1807, and died on September 7, 1892. Whittier was an abolitionist who spoke out against slavery.

Stein on Writing

Sol Stein, the author of Stein on Writing published in 1995, produced around ten published novels and was a playwright. He also served as editor for popular fiction writers in the twentieth century for more than thirty-six years.

Throughout the three-hundred-page book, Stein shares his craft techniques and writing strategies. The book contains seven major sections: “The Essentials,” “Fiction,” “Fiction and Nonfiction,” “Nonfiction,” “Literary Values in Fiction and Nonfiction,” “Revision,” and “Where to Get Help.” He also includes a “Glossary” of terms for writers.

“The Essentials” contains three chapters. Stein starts off Chapter 1: “The Writer’s Job May Be Different than You Think” by saying that he is presenting a book “of useable solutions” for writers. He also states that a writer’s correct intention should be “to provide the reader with an experience that is superior to the experiences the reader encounters in everyday life.” He goes on to say that the fiction writer’s primary job is “creating an emotional experience for the reader.” These statements resonated with my personal experience as a reader. I much prefer reading to watching films because the soundtracks force an emotional experience. I prefer to experience the story from my own center of emotion.

In Chapter 2: “Come Right In; First Sentences, First Paragraphs” he addresses the importance of the first sentence and the first paragraph, giving ample examples to make his point clear: writers should engage not bore readers. He suggests that to catch the reader’s attention, writers characterize a curious character or action by introducing something surprising or unusual.

 In Chapter 3, “Welcome to the Twentieth Century,” Stein emphasizes that readers raised on film and video want to read novels that focus on scenes rather than long descriptions. He suggests that narrative summary sections be short and limited to setting up immediate scenes and the transition to the next scene and that writers avoid “off-stage” descriptions while focusing on characterization and action.

In the second section, “Fiction,” Stein devotes almost 15 chapters to how to write effective fiction. In Chapter 4, “Competing with God: Making Fascinating People.” Stein reminds the reader that we all love fiction because we love and remember the characters. He discusses the difference in writing for plot and writing for characterization. He remarks that when he reads, he wants to fall in love with the characters in the books. Writers can achieve this effect if they use characterization effectively. Stein suggests characterizing through action or exaggeration rather than description. He also suggests that characterization should convey a visual image.

Stein tackles how writers use differences to introduce taboos, reveal the unspoken, and discuss the slippage between what people think they are and how they act in Chapter 5, Markers: The Swift Key to Characterization. He states that “differences can be the source of high feeling and high drama.”

Chapter 6 deals with “Thwarting Desire: The Basis of Plotting.” Stein mentions Kafka, Fitzgerald, and Flaubert to demonstrate characters whose desires form the basis of the novels they wrote. Stein points out that desire can mean wanting or not wanting something but is essential to writing a readable novel. He says, “…the want and the opposition to the want need to be important, necessary, and urgent. The result should be the kind of conflict that interests readers.”

Stein discusses his work with the Playwrights Group of the Actors Studio in New York in Chapter 7, “The Actor Studios Method for Developing Drama in Plots.” He suggests that novelists use a script technique devised there to build interest and conflict into a scene. In effect, the author should give each character in a scene “a different script,” which will create immediate disagreement and conflict as well as dramatic action.

In Chapter 8, “The Crucible: A Key to Successful Plotting” Stein discusses how to create tension throughout the novel, rather than in just one scene. He quotes the author James Frey who defined the crucible in fiction as “the container that holds the characters together as things heat up.” If a plot is successful, the characters are unable to escape the situation or “their motivation to oppose each other is greater than their motivation to run away.”

“Suspense: Keeping the Reader Reading,” is the topic of Chapter 9. Stein suggests that “suspense needles the reader with a feeling of anxious uncertainty” which builds interest in the story. He recommends that authors use a scene outline that includes location, character, and action to help them sort out how to alternate the scenes for the most effect. Stein states that “architectural suspense” is a technique to be “overemphasized.”

In Chapter 10, “The Adrenaline Pump: Creating Tension,” Stein begins with “Writers are troublemakers…Their job is to give readers stress, strain, and pressure.” Stein defines the difference between suspense and tension thusly: “Suspense can last for a long period, sometimes for an entire book. Tension is felt in seconds or minutes.” He mentions that an easy way to create tension is to introduce a “chilling fact,” “dangerous work,” “a deadline,” “an unfortunate meeting,” “a trap,” or through dialogue.

Stein introduces “The Secrets of Good Dialogue,” in Chapter 11. He asks authors to consider the differences between normal “talk” which is “full of rambling, incomplete, or run-on sentences” and written dialogue which “…has purpose…stimulates the reader’s curiosity…creates tension…build(s) to a climax or turn of events…or a change in relationship.” He also points out that fictional dialogue is often deliberately oblique. He ends with the fact that dialogue on a page seems to make the story move along faster because of the increased white space.

In Chapter 12, “How to Show Instead of Tell,” Stein gives multiple examples of transition from “telling a story” to “showing” what is happening. Showing is visual in that it helps the reader “see” what is happening. Showing involves conveying emotions through the characters’ actions.

Stein discusses the importance of the author understanding how to use point of view in Chapter 13, “Choosing a Point of View.” Careful selection of one’s point of view in the novel is important because it affects the reader’s emotions: “…the reader wants to know whose story this is.” Stein provides an excellent POV checklist for writers to use to examine their own stories.

In Chapter 14, “Flashbacks: How to Bring Background into Foreground,” Stein points out that flashbacks can create problems for readers. He recommends writing the information that would be covered in a flashback into a foreground scene.

The topic of Chapter 15, “The Key to Credibility,” asks the writer to address the fact that characters must be real, their motivations must be credible, and what happens in the story must be believable. Credibility can be built into the story by careful “planting” of certain details. He recommends avoiding the use of coincidences.

“The Secret Snapshot Technique: Reaching for Hidden Treasure” discussed in Chapter 16 is designed to help writers learn that “Probing secrets is a key to writing memorable fiction.” Stein suggests that writers need to be brave and explore territories from their past that have been hidden from public view.

In Chapter 17, Sol Stein details “How to Use All Six of Your Senses.” He provides examples to show how to use touch, smell, vision, hearing, and taste while adding a discussion of intuition as the sixth sense. Notably, he insists that characterization of the senses be shown through action, not description.

“Love Scene” is the topic of Stein’s Chapter 18. Stein reminds us that a love scene is not necessarily between a man and a woman. It could reference love in other situations: human and animal, parent and child, but his main topic for the chapter is romantic and sexual love between adults—a topic he says is often among “the worst written scenes.” He emphasizes that in a good love scene, the reader understands “the relationship between the lovers better than the lovers do.” He suggests that the two most essential aspects are “tension and tenderness” and that “interruptions can be useful.” Stein also suggests that the writer let “the reader’s imagination do a lot of the work.”

The last chapter in the section of the book, “Creating the Envelope” addresses the need for writers to be “specific, particular, concrete” but at the same time allow for readers to exercise their own imaginations. When “creating an envelope” for the reader, Stein suggests that the author “…trigger the reader’s imagination.”

In the rest of the book, Stein on Writing, Sol Stein discusses fiction and nonfiction, which I will not address in this blog. However, I highly recommend Stein on Writing to beginning and aspiring novelists. His knowledge, experience, and guidance are impressive and could save you hours of revision by guiding you to do it right the first time through. I definitely intend to rely on this book as I rework a second draft of the novel, I am currently workshopping in my critique group.

My Writing Goals for 2023

Continue to work on my poetry.

I continue to write a poem each day. The process grounds me in the present as I write about what is most important to me at the moment. I have been attending monthly Zoom meetings with Bardic Trails to listen to the featured poet and others who read. This month I found a website where I can publish poems.

Submit poetry to contests/awards:

I have still not heard the results of the poetry contest.

Finish, request feedback, and send my first novel out for review:

I am workshopping this novel with my critique group.

Continue to work on my other novels:

This month I completed more research for one and spent time pondering about the other one.

Continue to develop a network of kindred spirits in the world of writing and publishing:

Boulder Writers Alliance: 

In July, I attended a summer happy hour event at a local venue. I also attended the early August Writers Who Read GabFest hosted by Gary McBride at a local watering hole.

Denver Woman’s Press Club: I read the newsletter. I also watched a biopic about DWPC member Mary Coyle Chase, From Housewife to Pulitzer Prize—one of four “Great Colorado Women” films nominated for a Heartland EMMY this year. Mimi Pockross, who is a current member of DWPC and featured in the biopic, wrote Chase’s biography Pulling Harvey Out of Her Hat: The Amazing Story of Mary Coyle Chase.

Women Writing the West: In July, only three members of the critique group met. The feedback my colleagues gave me on my pages included: Make sure each detail is relevant to the passage. Readers will jump to conclusions, so make sure they jump to a potential solution. There are a couple of spots where the content and tone change too much between paragraphs. Transitions are too abrupt.

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers:  

I read the RMFW newsletter.

This year I plan to monetize my blog:

I did nothing to work toward this goal this month.

Document my writing progress through my blog and post it on the seventh day of each month, one blog per month 2023:

Today is the seventh day of August which is the eighth month of the year. I am posting my eighth blog for 2023. Four celebrations of life of close friends and family marked the month of July. It has been a sad summer for me but it was heartening to experience the love and support of friends and family.

August 7^th in Literary History

Garrison Keillor, author of the Lake Wobegon series, is a writer, radio personality, singer, and humorist born in Minnesota on August 7, 1942.

In her book on writing published in 2019, Meander, Spiral, and Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, Jane Alison, a novelist and professor of creative writing, discusses design and pattern in narrative. She divided the book into four main sections, including a 24-page introduction. Drawings illustrate the narrative patterns discussed in most sections of the book.

In her long and scholarly “Introduction,” Alison explains how she came to develop her ideas on narrative. She begins with a discussion of Eileen Gray’s organic—that is life to art— approach to furniture design and architecture (which aroused Le Corbusier’s jealousy). Alison describes writing and reading as following a textual path. Based on research she has done examining texts, she suggests that aspiring novelists look beyond the “masculo-sexual” arc or wave of storytelling to engage with other story patterns reflective of life, for example, spirals, meanders, and explosions. Jane Alison’s “Introduction” to her thought process is one of the most novel that I have read.

Alison begins the chapter on “Primary Elements” with a close-up view of text, addressing, Point, Line, and Texture, examining the way a reader moves through a story “word after word until the end.” Echoing a statement made by Ursula Le Guin, she points out that as we read, we “hear” the words in our heads and we see “pictures” in our mind’s eye. Her analysis explains how the black and white of letters, words, sentences, punctuation, and white space on a page produce this effect. She gives examples of varied styles of literary writing to demonstrate how the author’s style affects the reader’s “seeing” and “feeling” as they progress through a text.

In the second part of this chapter, Alison addresses “Movement and Flow,” discussing how authors can magically shift the reader’s perception of time, giving the example “A story covering millennia can flit by in six minutes.” She goes on to analyze the relationship of text time to story time, giving quotes drawn from novels as examples.

The third division of this chapter adds Alison’s thoughts on “Color.” She references musicians, painters, and writers as models for how to use color in writing text. She provides a color analysis of Tobias Wolff’s novel The Barracks Thief in which “color words appear just forty-seven times in ninety pages: one color-word every other page.”

The chapter on “Patterns” begins with a discussion of the derivation of the word itself and goes on to include eight identifiable writing patterns derived from nature. The first pattern Alison discusses is the “Wave” which resembles a dramatic arc. She defines the wave as having a rising and falling symmetry. As examples, she first analyzes sections of Phillip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and secondly, sections of The Lovers by Marguerite Duras—both examples of rising and falling love affairs.

Her analysis continues with a discussion of “Wavelets,” that is “narrative rippling” which she defines as smaller repetitive and circulating ripples or oscillations. As she searches for this concept in the text of novels, she traces how Carver uses a pattern of dry/wet/dry in his novel Where I’m Calling From, a story about alcoholism. Then, she returns to Wolff’s novel, to demonstrate how he used oscillation in scenes and in characters’ actions.

In the chapter on “Meanders,” Alison explores how some narratives seem to wander, following what appear to be detours along the way, but in a way that continues to move the story forward. The author might create “deliberate slowness, a delight in curving this way or that.” To demonstrate, Alison discusses Eucalyptus, a delightfully complex and modern fairy tale set in Australia by Murray Bail. The book is designed to highlight “the needs of the plot and the delights of telling…get to the end, but not yet.”

In the section on narrative “Spirals,” Alison points out how the spiral is constantly present in our lives as galaxies, winds, and water currents swirl around us. She states, “A spiraling narrative could be a helix winding downward …or…wind upward, around and around to a future.” One of her example texts is Sandra Cisnero’s House on Mango Street which Alison views as “…a spiral staircase revolving with many small polished steps around a single axis.”

The chapter on “Radials and Explosions” focuses on works of fiction that seem to emanate from a core, “energy starts from the center and radiates out” either in the form of spokes or circles. Alison discusses Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold which she describes as taking the form of a pupil and iris, saying that the murder forms the pupil and the lines of the iris equate with all the characters who saw it coming. Alison also describes other variations on the form.

In the chapter “Networks and Cells,” the reader is presented with Alison’s view of a spatial form. Patterns from life that she gives include a beehive, a layer of cracked mud, or a foam of bubbles, all of which form a connected or disconnected type of puzzle. When a narrative takes such a format, the reader is forced to figure out the puzzle and connections as the novel proceeds without chronological order. One example Alison gives of a novel of his type is Susan Minot’s Lust which she describes as “more a catalog of like moments than a drama.”

The chapter on “Fractals” uses the mathematical concept of a system that involves splitting and splitting again, as in the way a tree grows and continues to form branches while the branches form smaller and smaller branches. Fractals may appear to be almost symmetrical but are not. She notes that Woolf, Joyce, James, and Bolaño all create fractal-type sentences. Alison defines fractal narratives as those in which “an initial segment is more likely to be compacted like a seed and generate the rest.” Among other examples, she discusses Clarice Lespector’s The Fifth Story which involves a series of connected stories.

Alison presents her chapter “Tsunami?” as a question mark. She gives one example, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. A tsunami is similar to a wave but more complex and powerful. Her analysis of Cloud Atlas seems to suggest that the form has a 12345 then 54321 alteration as though the big complex wave flows in and out but creates a whole.

In her “Epilogue,” Alison encourages the reader to pay attention to patterns that exist in nature and to watch for them or to create them when writing fiction.

I think I have learned more about the structure and the creation of an author’s style by reading Jane Alison’s book than I have ever learned from other books on writing. This book is a treasure that every aspiring or currently published novelist should have on their bookshelf.

My Writing Goals for 2023

Continue to work on my poetry.

I have continued to write a poem each day. A participant at our BWA happy hour invited me to meet her at a local poetry reading in an art gallery. There, she introduced me to Beth Franklin who maintains the online Colorado Poets Center, a listing of poets who have published in five venues. This month I have attended four poetry readings at the Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program whose faculty and students exhibit extraordinary talent and energy.

Submit poetry to contests/awards:

No news yet on my poetry book submission. I did read up on other poetry contests.

Finish, request feedback, and send my first novel out for review:

I am workshopping this novel with my critique group.

Continue to work on my other novels:

These stories have been percolating in my mind even though I have not been working on them on my computer.

Continue to develop a network of kindred spirits in the world of writing and publishing:

Boulder Writers Alliance: This month I held a Steering Committee Meeting on Zoom. I also hosted a BWA happy hour event at a local venue.

Denver Woman’s Press Club:  I listened to a Zoom presentation on producing audiobooks by Scott Ellis, of Scott Ellis Reads (https://www.scottellisreads.com/). Scott has narrated one hundred audiobooks at present. He stated that the audiobook market will continue to grow exponentially. He discussed how to find a narrator to create an audiobook and the process involved. Scott narrates books for authors but also collaborates with authors who prefer to produce their own narrated books.

Women Writing the West: This month three members of our critique group met. One commented on my pages, “I understand why you sent the long section because it fits together. It was fun to read. There are big sections with no paragraph breaks, I would have liked to see the dialog broken down into paragraphs.” The other remarked, “I just read Stephen King’s book, and I think you understand your characters. But you need to tell the story. What is the story? Where is it going? Why are you telling me the story?”

About twenty local WWW members also met locally for a social event and shared updates on their current work via a round-robin discussion.

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers:  I read the RMFW newsletter.

This year I plan to monetize my blog:

I still have not figured this out.

Document my writing progress through my blog and post it on the seventh day of each month, one blog per month 2023:

Today is the seventh day of July which is the seventh month of the year. I am posting my seventh blog for 2023. After a rainy month of June and, so far, a cold wet July in our area, our reservoirs are full and the foothills are such a vibrant green that I expect to see a leprechaun hop out at any moment.

July 7^th in History

Margaret Walker, a member of the South Side Writers, a group of African American writers in Chicago during the 1930s, was born July 7, 1915, in Alabama. Her works include the 1966 novel, Jubilee and This is My Century: New and Collected Poems, among others.