Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair

Someone who should know told me today that my manuscript looks "very, very capably written but not with a tremendous amount of beauty." She encouraged me to scour my draft and mine for beauty.

My style is direct and journalistic. My personality style is direct, and I am, or was, a journalist. I appreciate aesthetic writing, but it does not come naturally to me.

Oh, woe, this work of writing is work indeed.

The analyst of my work suggested I look at a memoir like "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt for beautiful writing. Here's a passage from McCourt's Chapter 1:

My father, Malachy McCourt, was born on a farm in Toome, County Antrim. Like his father before, he grew up wild, in trouble with the English, or the Irish, or both. He fought with the Old IRA and for some desperate act he wound up a fugitive with a price on his head.

When I was a child I would look at my father, the thinning hair, the collapsing teeth, and wonder why anyone would give money for a head like that. When I was thirteen my father's mother told me a secret: as a wee lad your poor father was dropped on his head. It was an accident, he was never the same after, and you must remember that people dropped on their heads can be a bit peculiar. 

Because of the price on the head he had been dropped on, he had to be spirited out of Ireland via cargo ship from Galway. In New York, with Prohibition in full swing, he thought he had died and gone to hell for his sins. Then he discovered speakeasies and he rejoiced.

One reviewer describes McCourt's voice as having "originality and immediacy" and another describes his memoir about his poverty-stricken childhood and alcoholic father as having "astounding humor and compassion." McCourt's writing is, of course, superlative; he got a Pulitzer Prize for his work. Pulitzer Prize winners are like that -- with a bit, or a lot, of clever language, they can turn a tale of sorrow into a humorous redemption story, a classic.

"Because of the price on the head he had been dropped on" is both beautiful and funny. McCourt deserves the kudos.

My story is a tale of sorrow -- and redemption -- and my editor said I write "fairly objectively about a highly emotional, subjective experience," which is perhaps compassionate, but I am not astoundingly humorous or even sort of funny. I am the straight man in any skit. Wry maybe. But funny is out. I must aspire to beauty.

"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair,
offering us for a minute a glimpse of an eternity that
we should like to stretch out over the whole of time."

~ Albert Camas

Show, don't tell

As a journalist, I have a propensity for telling. But the gold standard advice in storytelling is "show, don't tell."

I found some notes taken while I was at Printer's Row Lit Fest earlier this summer which read, "Not 'my heart was so full I could burst' or 'I was so angry'; put description of my body, mind, jaw, hunger; avoid putting feeling on the page."

Thus, I attempted to follow this advice throughout my manuscript, including this passage:

The revelations in Detective Oxton’s investigation file seemed to go on and on. By now, I had spent a couple of days sifting through the interview transcripts. I curled up in the cushiony upholstered chair in the living room with the big stack of papers on the floor beside me; my shoulders hunched over whatever I was reading, and more than once the leg I tucked under me fell asleep. Colin was almost always nearby, either agreeing with my muttered analyses or scoffing at my accusatory inquiries. Sometimes he would sneak outside for a smoke, to alleviate his stress. I was vaguely aware of his escalating depression, but I was in no position to want to do anything meaningful about it. 

Errors of notorious proportions

Quick! What's wrong with this paragraph?

Colin Lloyd Skorupski. His whole name including middle. Like John Wilkes Booth, President Kennedy’s assassin. People sometimes marveled at how notorious criminals are always known by three names. It was no conspiracy. It was no uncanny coincidence. It was a function of a reporter’s accuracy. By using an accused criminal’s full name, a newspaper avoided accusations of libel from some poor John Booth or Colin Skorupski who had nothing whatsoever to do with assassinations or sexual misconduct.

If you spotted it right away, you're better than the seven people who read my manuscript before my editor. Find it? John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln, not Kennedy. I knew that, but it's not what I wrote. I edited my own work and didn't catch it. This is yet another reason why even great writers need good editors.

My editor changed the paragraph thusly:

Colin Lloyd Skorupski. His whole name including middle. Like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassins of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy. People sometimes marvel at how notorious criminals are always known by three names. It’s no conspiracy or uncanny coincidence. It’s a function of a reporter’s accuracy. By using an accused criminal’s full name, a newspaper avoids accusations of libel from some poor John Booth or Colin Skorupski who had nothing whatsoever to do with assassinations or sexual misconduct. 

You'll notice he changed the verb tense, too, which makes perfect sense. 

Well done.

What good editors do

A good editor sees through your hack jobs.

One of the stories in my book features seven characters -- a lot of voices to keep track of. When my husband read that chapter, he was confused. This is an early chapter in the book so I knew confusing the reader that early would be deadly. But rather than rewrite the chapter, as I should have, I just deleted two of the characters and changed a few plural verbs to singular.

But a good editor sees through short cuts like that.

My editor kindly suggested that chapter was one of my weaker chapters. "You kind of lose the reader," he said. "You need to get to the point quicker."

Other readers had mentioned other problems with the chapter, but my editor explained it in a way that convicted me. As he spoke, I knew he had a point because I knew how that chapter got there. And I realized why the other readers struggled with it.

My clumsy fix had been revealed for what it was: Lazy.

This is why even the best writers need good editors. Good editors look at writing the way readers do, but they are able to articulate clearly what's wrong. And very good editors gently point this out in ways that even the most territorial writers concede the point.

Book trailer in the works

In the end, or perhaps in "an" end, I sent the manuscript off to an editor with 77,442 words. The evolution will continue, I expect, to include numerous revisions and cuts and possibly additions, though I feel like I opened my soul with all the revelations in my memoir and I'm not sure how much is left to tell.

This morning, on Independence Day, I filmed a YouTube video to launch this memoir to the world. It combines the book pitch and footage of the author (me) explaining why she wrote it. I couldn't swing the pro videographer, but I have confidence my brother-in-law can put together something fabulous (and he worked for French toast and scrambled eggs). Apparently, book trailers are all the rage nowadays. We'll see.

Stay tuned.

'Happens Every Day" covers familiar territory in a fresh way

"When people describe a room spinning after something unthinkable happens, like the death of a parent or news you have lost your job, it's because you have lost the context of your life and your eyes literally are looking for things to ground you, to remind you that you are still in your life. The room started spinning, but my eyes found the side of the counter. ... I held on to the counter and felt the groove under my hand, reminding me that we had built this house. We had chosen colors and fixtures and a life and that was more, must more than this blip with Sylvia."

As author Isabel Gillies describes discovering her husband is having an affair with a professor colleague, she does a masterful job of turning clichés like "the room was spinning" into something new and descriptive and meaningful.

In her book "Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True" Story," Gillies recounts how the love of her life and father of her two toddlers fell out of love with her and left her. The story revolves primarily around four months in 2005 when her marriage literally slips through her fingers. One reviewer describes Gillies' breezy conversational style like the reader is her best friend, and she's answering the happy hour question, "So, tell me what happened." Lots of candid details here for the reader to soak in but like the title says, it happens every day. There's nothing too special about this infidelity or divorce.

I picked up her book because I'm powering through memoirs that are like mine. I already read Julie Metz's "Perfection" (and reviewed it in my other blog) but you might be surprised how many women have written accounts of marriages to cads. Perhaps most astonishing after reading Gillies' story is that she says in her epilogue that the other woman -- who eventually married her ex-husband -- is "a thoughtful and kind stepmother, and it's funny, I like her now very much, in the same way I did when we first met."

Wow. If that isn't being the bigger person, I don't know what is. On the other hand, the book was a New York Times bestseller so maybe she who laughs last, laughs loudest.

Writing groups provide valuable feedback

Writers, in general, are loners. We sit in front of a computer (or, rarely anymore, with a pencil and notebook) and think and type. Sometimes, I even have to turn my radio off in order to get a thought down on paper. But in order to get to our best work, we need feedback.

I've always said even the best writer needs a good editor, but before the editor, a writers group can be invaluable. 

"Get other people to evaluate your writing -- to tell you what's wrong with it, what's right with it and how to fix it," sayArielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry in their book, "The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published."  "The more input you have, the more you'll know about how to make your book better."

I have been part of a couple of great writers groups in the past. Both were memoir writing groups; one was a weeklong workshop, another was a group of people who met weekly for a while. Both groups provided kind but valuable criticism to help me improve my writing.

In addition to the five people close to me who are reviewing my manuscript, I looked up a person I met about four years ago at a local book festival. The extent of her knowledge of me is a lunchtime conversation, but she was willing to take a look at my book if I'm willing to reciprocate, which of course I am.

But I am motivated to find myself an in-person writing group (or start one). I think a group will keep me writing, and I know they would help. I believe I shall begin where it seems everything begins these days: Google!