Giving an adequate character description

Vague descriptions of characters create vague characters. "She was rich and aristocratic" is not particularly helpful to a reader. "Her shiny brown hair was pulled back in the kind of elaborate knot that only a maid could do, and the comb that held it had two turquoise stones worth more than my rent" tells us a great deal more.

Readers are counting on us writers to paint portraits both physical and moral. The moral characteristics are often best served up through dialog and actions that the character takes. Physical description comes out more directly. And it requires us to be creative. "He was fat and ugly" works, but "his shirt buttons strained to contain his belly" or "His dark eyes were so small and his hook nose so large, you just knew the kids had taunted him in the playground" tell us more.

In Weekend Novelist, Robert J Ray recommends spending some considerable time in a mall or airport or other public venue where lots of people hang out or pass through and taking notes on character descriptions. Although I never followed his whole program, that idea has worked well for me. When you see people as they are, physical descriptions of characters get imprinted into your imagination. How they look, how they move, how they dress. Their gestures, mannerisms, quirks and foibles. All of those things bring the character alive.

Some inexperienced writers believe readers would rather create their own descriptions but that is rarely true. Readers don't want to work that hard; they much prefer to leave the "portraiture" to the author.

breaking my commitment

Over the last several months, I've tried to be really good at keeping my commitment to write every Writing Friday, the day that writer friends come to spend the day writing and talking about writing. I didn' thave Writing Friday last week because I was in San Diego speaking at a conference and selling my memoir.

Unfortunately  for my schedule, I took off all four days of the trip rather than doing some work projects while I was there. I had a great mini-vacation but I came back to a slam load of editing work in my paid profession. I worked as hard as I could this week, but rush projects kept coming in and I kept saying yes and this morning I found myself really conflicted. Did I write at Writing Friday or did I move three other paid projects along so I wouldn't have to work all weekend and have a hellatious next week to boot?

I opted to reduce the stress by working today. But I also had to wonder about a secondary motivation. Sometimes I am reluctant to sit down to Writing Friday if I don't quite know where the story is going although almost always something appears if I get to it. And that wasn't the problem today as I know what comes next in the book.

However, I don't know what comes after that. My two parallel stories are about to merge and I am currently clueless as to the rest of the plot. Maybe I didn't want to sit deep in not knowing all this next week. As it is now, I still have that already thought-up chapter to work on next Friday. Ah, the games we play with ourselves.

My creativity change list

Since last month's writing group meeting when I started thinking about changing my apartment to support more of my creative endeavors, I've been making a list of possible changes to consider. I decided to share them here. I'd love to hear what ideas you come up with for yourself.

1. Get some decent lighting for my dining room table so I have an additional creative work surface in the evenings.
2. Use the lower right two shelvs of my living room bookcase (hidden by the sofa from viw) for creative supplies.
3. Keep my card table cleared off and have a small project always set up to work on.
4. Find cupboard space for the old bath mats I use for my ancient cat.
5. Move the extra copies of my memoir to the basement and out of the office.
6. Make much better use of my office storage space.
7. Follow Tamara's idea about narrowing my interests and the related craft supplies.
8. Consolidate my pastel chalks into the beautiful box I got for Christmas last year.
9. Assemble the drawing horse I got for Christmas last year.
10. Get rid of most all of the miscellaneous craft stuff (that which is not related to my priority interests).
11. Keep only the best quality craft supplies.
12. Measure the dozen old poster frames in the basement and get paper cut to go in them or collage on what's in there already.
13. Go thru the upper closet in the office and rethink what goes in there.
14. Get rid of all my old collage images (they are too familiar and stale OR go through the images and reduce by 75%, keeping only the best and resolve to use them immediately.
15. Ask my friend Mary if I can raid her collage files.
16. Seriously reduce my collection of recycled gift wrap.
17. Make all creative supplies accessible.
18. Create an inventory of creative supplies so I don't buy duplicates on a whim.
19. Do a big give-away of craft stuff I don't need.
20. Clean up the cords in the office.
21. Reduce table top clutter by giving away half my doodads.
22. Get rid of someday clutter in the office drawers.

Artist's Date

 Julia Cameron encourages writers and other creatives to do regular artist's dates, where you fill the well of creativity. My current trip to San Diego has been one huge artist's date.

The landscape is so different from home. The sky is deeply blue, the sun clear, the breeze warm. Out my hotel room window are huge (4  story) palm trees, one just unfurling a new frond right out my window. It's amazing to be at the height of the tops of these magnificent trees.
The air feels different, a bit of the desert, a bit of the ocean. I can see why people want to live here although I would find the climate monotonous, as I am used to and in love with having four seasons.

Friday I had a chance to go to Coronado Island and visit the Del Coronado, a hotel built in 1897. It's apparently the largest wooden structure in America and while it's more ornate than my taste, it was amazing to visit. We also got a chance to go to the beach for an hour. Then we went to Balboa Park, a beautiful hill top of grounds and palm trees and Spanish architecture.

We spent an hour at the San Diego Art Museum. I had wanted to see the Toulouse Lautrec exhibit and there were several new images there that I had never seen before even in reproduction. Even more wonderful was the permanent collection of 19th and 20th century work. American impressionists and post-impressionists as well as Europeans. There was also work by Robert Henri. I have a book of his ideas on art, which I'm fond of, but had never seen his work. I loved it and got some ideas for my own painting.

My well feels wonderfully filled.

Reading your work out loud

At my creativity group this afternoon, I read two long chapters from my novel. Reading to groups is a bit problematic, especially a group that meets once a month because the story goes on and they don't know the intervening chapters or events or character issues, but it does me great good to read it and hear it for myself, whether they get anything out of it or not.

I get a chance to hear the language and especially the dialog, where it works and where it clunks. Where I go on too long, where details of description seem superfluous, where I find myself wanting to skip ahead because that sentence that seemed so important--and so well-crafted--doesn't add anything and I didn't see that before.

I enjoyed getting feedback from my listeners and one had a couple of great ideas, but even more important was my own sense of the writing and the story. I also felt fully re-engaged in the whole process and eager to get back to work on it.

As a professional editor, I've encouraged my clients to do just what I was doing--reading aloud--but I hadn't fully grasped the importance of it for myself until today.

Eliminating possibilities

My good friend Tamara has spent a lot of the last week decluttering in her large home. Tamara is a woman of many talents and many interests and her stuff reflects that diversity. And it was all driving her crazy. For example, when she sorted through all the stuff in her creative space, she could sort it into 18 different interests and related projects. That's in addition to the tons of stuff she could easily let go of--throw away or give away.

She took a picture of all these interests and then started thinking about her time, her need to get proficient or expert at some of these, her desire to bring some projects to completion. And she began to analyze and reduce. She thought through each impulse, each longing, each idea and then she settled on the five that really sang to her heart. She let go of all the rest.

As creatives, I think we are easily seduced by the possible. There are so many tools, materials, classes, ideas out there. There's always room for more knowledge, for more improvement, right? And related things are of great interest. If you're a novelist, you might want to write some essays or a biography or a screen play or poetry. Or maybe doing some collage would make that next chapter of the novel come easier.

I'm all for cross-pollination. But some times, all those possibilities are big distractors from our real efforts, our real loves. So sometimes, it's good to go through the creative files or baskets or closets or rooms, sort it all out and let a lot of it go.

Honoring your writer self Part 2

A couple of posts ago, I listed Judy Reeves' ideas about honoring your self as a writer. At my Second Thursday writing group, I handed the list out and asked each person to write for a few minutes on one of the ideas. I started off writing on one and digressed and came back.

Make a comfortable place for your writing. Since I live alone and work here too, it would seem easy to turn my whole spacious apartment into a writing and art studio and I don't know why I never thought of this before. In 2000, I did a project called Zen Home and renovated the interior (new colors, new furniture arrangements, fixing what didn't work) so that my place could more easily support the kind of life I wanted. Now I think it may be time to do that again as what I'm up to has changed.

In 2000, I didn't see myself as a writer and artist. I hadn't started my memoir, I was not doing collage at all. I was just taking an occasional drawing class. Now my whole concept of my self has changed and perhaps my apartment needs to too.

I'm not sure what changes to make but that doesn't mean it can't be done. Here are some of my ideas:

• Get some kind of a light over the dining table for better illumination.
• Really reduce the clutter in the office, like no kidding.
• Get some kind of cart for creative supplies or use the lower shelves of the living rooms bookcase (hidden from public view by the sofa) for such supplies so they are handier
• Make better use of the office storage.

How might you set things up to support your creative endeavors?