Adele's Blog

When Loss Inspires

04/05/2013 14:10:00

When sorrow and loss come, they don't have to have the last word. Often, they provide the first words of a new chapter in life. Pain and the intense emotions that come with it force people, writers especially, to make tough choices. What do I value? Where should I invest my time and energy?

Pain also tends to slow the writing process, sometimes to a crawl. What do I really want to write about? What do I want to say — since the time I have to devote to this work and life on earth is fleeting? What do I need to say, and how do I say it? What legacy do I want to leave? How do I want to be remembered?

Pain begets tough questions that deserve answers. In a question reminiscent of John the Baptist's observation of Christ — "I must decrease, and he must increase" — how do I, as the writer, recede and the work shine?

Sometimes pain most expertly teaches us not answers, but how to ask the right questions.

The Poetry of Writing

01/16/2013 13:15:00

Sometimes in hard times, and even just creative times, poetry speaks to the soul in ways that other forms can't.

Living in Weather

Lavish sea on outstretched shore

Gentle sands aglow in splendid sun

light the soul

so long in darkness,

like sleeping limbs, awake

in pain of stirring.

Awake, beauty,

to this poor but heartfelt word,

of dark and silent mourning.

Here's a great comment that somehow isn't making it into the Comments list:

Essay Writing Tips

Yes agree. Poetry really reads the soul.

The Joy of Stolen Moments

11/28/2012 17:02:00

It's hard to take time to enjoy — anything. It feels just as the phrase implies —that the time was taken, stolen from a more worthwhile pursuit. Yet, joy gladdens the heart and frees the spirit, not to mention the mind, to expand the limits of appreciation. And that expands the soul. When did you last take time to appreciate what gives you joy? Also see my Online Writing Workshop, and my Word for Words blog on editing.

Pushing Plausibility and Going Far Enough in Writing Fiction

09/17/2012 14:22:00

I had a great opportunity to hear the super children's picture book editor Patricia Lee Gauch, editorial director of Philomel Books (now part of Penguin) for nearly 25 years, speak at the New York Public Library this past Saturday, and although I don't write for children, I learned a lot about writing. One talking point Ms. Gauch repeated more than once was that children's book illustrators need to go far enough in depicting a story. It made me think of my writing and pushing the limits of what I might think of as plausible in a story. It's a matter of considering the what-if, of cultivating a childlike imagination, like an act of childlike faith, to embrace the outrageous. In a time where outrageous rules, this is less about shock value and eyeballs, and more about a broader horizon, not a matter of nonsense, but of a child's sense of what could be. Children aren't afraid to ask why — often, ad nauseam. Maybe writers, even of literary fiction, can ask, why not?

The Writer's Internal Weather and the Role of Change

08/24/2012 12:34:00

In a spiritual writing workshop at Fairfield University's low-residency MFA in creative writing, spirituality was described as internal weather. It got me thinking about the role of weather, its propensity for change and how it can act as a catalyst for writers. If one aspect of spirituality is what's happening within us, then we can see that change is important. Just as the earth needs the rain, and sun and wind to flourish, and the varied seasons to produce vegetation and landscapes, we need spirituality, internal weather, to produce fruit as writers. Uncomfortable as an inner change of seasons can be, it's necessary in order for us to bear fruit. Even the process of internal alteration, which is often palpable, can be a catalyst. It's usually when we feel strongly about something that we write about it, and the more strongly we feel about a topic, the more likely we are to write about it well. Stuck for something new to write? Take Mark Twain's advice as he applied it to New England weather. If you don't like your internal weather, wait a few moments; it may change.

The Freedom of the Creative Writer

08/17/2012 16:11:00

It's hard to be mindful of the freedom we enjoy until we lose it. While we most often equate the cause of lost freedom with war, tyranny or terrorism of one sort or another, we can lose our freedom just by succumbing to the desire to please. "Even granted the presence of inspiration, there is no creativity without freedom," says H. R. Rookmaaker, in The Creative Gift: Essays on Art and the Christian Life. "If a person always has to ask himself, 'What will people think?' or 'Have I taken this or that into account?' he will achieve nothing for he will be relying on laws and rules made by others rather than those belonging intrinsically to the thing he is creating, the possibilities already present in God's creation." Perhaps the most important aspect of creative freedom is the freedom to fail. The freedom to not be perfect, and to learn from mistakes — others' and our own.

A Writer's Unexpected Emotional Journey

08/03/2012 07:04:00

When I started Fairfield University's MFA in creative writing,

I was generally prepared for the workload, for possibly being the oldest student in the program, even for the financial responsibility. I wasn't prepared for the emotional journey. Fairfield's proximity to my home in Connecticut, the great friends I made on the first day and my company's reinstitution of tuition reimbursement all made for a great start. I even lightened my freelance workload to prepare for the many reading and writing assignments. Yet, the emotional journey, which seems to include at least one crisis a residency and during the semester, too, was a surprise. You think you know yourself exhaustively until faculty mentors and other writers make observations about your work that say something about you, too, and not just as a writer. The encouragement is that there are still things to learn about writing and yourself, at any age, and that growing pains mean you're still alive. And, honestly, even if somebody had warned me all this would happen, it's still no substitute for experience. What's that comment Bob Dylan made about creativity having as much to do with observation, imagination and experience as anything else? It's that last, experience, that fires the creative process, and life, too.

What Fear Reveals in Life and Fiction Writing

07/28/2012 11:50:00

I often struggle with a fair amount of anxiety, and one thing I have to keep relearning is to face my fears.

In a spiritual counseling session some years ago, my advisor said, "Fear is a good thing. It tells you what you really desire." He taught me to turn over my fear as you'd turn over a stone along the seashore to find what's living beneath. It's a discipline not unlike exercise — initially painful, ultimately rewarding.

The latest example is my company's move to a newly renovated building. I thought I'd hate the low, white cubicles, ambient noise and fluorescent lighting. In essence, I thought I'd hate everything. As it turns out, the cubes aren't that low, the new environment is lots cleaner, and my location is comparatively quiet. The novelty also jumpstarted my creativity.

My main fear about the new digs was alienation. I was on vacation when the move occurred, and I feared being the only one whose equipment wouldn't work, and being left out of relationships already forged. Turns out I'm not the last person on-site, and others are still acclimating, too.

My assumptions were generally unfounded, but they revealed what I'm concerned about — isolation and lack of connection, which also figure prominently in my writing. It really is all fodder.

The Use of Longer Narrative in Moravia's "Conformist"

07/12/2012 16:42:00

Timing and placement are everything in the use of longer narrative in the epic World War II era novel The Conformist, by Italian writer Alberto Moravia. An author and a journalist, Moravia details the life of Marcello Clerici — a man who seems to have it all. With deliberation and patience, the author draws out key scenes to allow readers to acclimate to plot shifts, and to be drawn in to the world he creates, regardless of how uninviting. By placing longer stretches of prose between Clerici's life as a boy and a young man, the author varies the pacing and progression of the work. Longer narrative also can add layers, especially when one or two main characters are featured. The technique provides a literary feel, but to enrich the story and not bog it down, longer sections must be appropriately placed. Moravia uses longer stretches of prose especially to unfold the main character of Marcello Clerici so that the end of the story is satisfying, and in this case, a relief.

The Use of Historic Events as Backdrop in Morante's "History"

06/27/2012 07:27:00

Award-winning Italian novelist Elsa Morante captures the events of an era in a journal style that grounds her seminal work of long fiction, History.

The novel opens with a kind of year in review and an ominous citation that the atomic century has begun. In each of the dozen or so entries that set the stage for the novel, the focal point is the war that is coming to every part of the world, and will continue to come like a great tide that ebbs and flows but never ceases.

Morante's persistent selection of global events provides an invasive backdrop for the novel. Unlike some Italian writers who tend to exclude the rest of the world, Morante opens the flood gates. From the setting comes a mood, a sense of inevitability, as if there is nothing for the characters but to be caught in history's great wake, thinking, hoping, for awhile they might survive only to be engulfed.

Global events and their effects on people provide context, and the second draft of a novel is just the place to layer the work with details that create a realistic setting, and inform the characters and their choices. For more on Elsa Morante's work, visit Steerforth Press.