Write Away Day Three Review

With world-class writing coach, Adair Lara

Want to keep writing after Write Away?

Hi Campers!

Are typing fingers cramped? The words you have put into the world (and added to your own inventory of writing) this week! Thursday gave us stories about becoming a single mother, an accidentally poisoned family dog, a heart attack, getting pregnant in law school. Don't forget, even while giving us a narrative, put in lots of images and details so that what happens happens to us, too -- so we're there with you. Several of you came up with narratives that managed to be compelling and funny, and poignant, and complete. I'm in awe.

Congratulations to all for three days of wonderful writing. I will be back soon to post the grand wrap-up.

tananarive tells us how, to her surprise, she became a single mother at 37. Here's a line I particularly like: "And as my elders were fond of pointing out, the best way to remove one nail was with another one."

Anne Gordon's narrator, Lydia, is pulled from a trip in India to a job with a band in San Francisco, where she falls in love with the bass player, showing how seductively random lives really are. It began with a letter:

"Her sister-in-law was excited about the music scene in San Francisco . 'You have to come!!' she wrote. 'Your brothers in a band and I am too and it's too much fun. We have a job for you as a manager and booking agent. Sorry if this is messy, I'm eating a bagel and lox.'"

The idea of a lox and bagel pulled her across the continents just as enticingly as any man could have done. "Her first night, she would look into the eyes of the bass player and fall in love. They would go on to marry and have four children. Lydia always says, its because of lox and bagels."

A great device to telling a story is through a series of objects -- cars I've owned, apartments lived in, T-shirts. kle618 does it through the family tradition of lining the kids up on the first day of school -- until, many years later, they are all launched and she is the one going to school. Very nice!

"Fall of 2007 was when, after all the kids had grown, this mom was finally able to return to college. The night before my first day of class, I received three phone calls telling me to be sure to have someone take a 'first day of school' picture."

Spuff, what's a reiki? Love to have more image and detail about the actual visit to the psychic. Amazing, that cookie business.

lostmutt has a heart-clenching line about divorce: "All in all it hasn't been too bad. Except for not being with my children on a daily basis, a loss that won't ever be recovered, a hole in my heart that can't be closed."

marilyndevine shows how to get a job from someone even if you don't know his name:

"Gary came running into my office. 'I just talked to the creative director at MBNA. He said he met you yesterday'...

"'Why not call him right now?' Gary said, 'I hear they're looking for writers.'

"So I did. Acted like I knew who he was all along. Sent some writing samples. And landed a job that paid twenty-five grand more than I'd been making."

The next three entries show that while you should start your story anywhere, you will often, on the second draft, find the real opener to your piece a few paragraphs down from where you started.

Kristin Seeman's lovely piece on a dying friend illustrates this. Her present lead is: "'I don't buy green bananas,' my friend Tyzoon was fond of saying as he sucked in oxygen from the thin silver tank he wheeled behind him on a golf-bag cart. Tyzoon was born at St. Elizabeth's hospital in Breach Candy, on the oceanfront in Bombay -- the same place my daughter Kiran spent her first month of life. He grew up in a large family compound behind the Taj Hotel near the Gate of India, in a traditional Muslim household littered with relatives."

But I would start the piece here, where the trouble begins:
"It was a few years ago when I was attending one of the French School's many kitchen tours, when I asked Tyzoon, without thinking what I was really saying -- as we all do -- 'And how are you?' We were standing next to the swimming pool of a big house in Piedmont, and there was a rhododendron bush blooming beside us.

"I was drinking a glass of orange juice and eating a chocolate croissant. There was a steel band playing Caribbean music on the lawn.

"'There is some news, actually,' he said. 'It seems I have a disease.' He coughed.

"I must have said something. I know he did not tell me what the disease was. I thought at the time that it might have been lung cancer."

Lafaymom's story of almost poisoning her dog made me stop reading and whip out to my own back yard with a sign that said: "No rose fertilizer! Will poison the dog!"

This story, too, I'd start later in, with the dog inexplicably not barking to come in: "I go outside and find her hiding in the back of the property, her body is limp and she is breathing heavy with a strange odor to her breath..."

"There is bone meal in the fertilizer mixture I use. The bone meal is non-toxic but it smells like 'bones' to dogs so they dig it up, but they also get fertilizer and that is lethal. When I first let her out she ate the mixture around the roses. That is also why her breath smelled odd. The Vet told me that, when animals are dying they like to be alone, that is why she went to the back of the property."

We got a sweet piece from TraumaGoddess on her three unexpectedly tall sons. I'd start it with the line: "I am a short woman." (Almost all pieces start too far back.) As a mother of 5'7, who has to stand on a chair to embrace her 6'3 son properly (meaning I am in mom position), I do understand. Nice last line: "I still had their love and respect, and I was still the mom. But things had shifted, somehow. They were young men; strong and capable young men, and I was no longer their protector. They were now mine."

Four Honorable Mentions

My favorite part of Adrienne's story of being pregnant in law school is this dialogue:
"I went in to my advisor, a motherly type with four grown boys herself, and told her my plan:

"'I'll be back in January,' I said.

"'Umm, hummm,' she said with a warm smile.

"'And I should have no problem with studying. I only have three semesters left and the baby won't be walking until.'

"'Ummm..hmmm.'

"'I can bring him with me.'

"'Ummm...hmmm.'

"I laid out my entire plan. 'OK, see you in January!'

"'Umm-hmmmm...bye dear.'

Then later she's giving directions to her house to the nanny she's chosen from a miserable (and funny) field of applicants:
"'OK, you go down Lincoln till you hit 12th Avenue.'

"'Wait,' she says. 'How do you spell that?'

"I gulped. 'L I N C O..'

"'No, 12th'

"'12th? It's the number.'

"'Right,' she answered. 'How do you spell it?'"

LeeAnna also earns for a wonderful story about a last race. Wonderful, the way she's constructed it, so it almost runs from place to place itself. A complete success! Nice lines:
"On the tarmac at Mira Mar Air Force Base in beautiful San Diego County... I felt good -- James Brown good. The heat painted mirages on the concrete runway, my racetrack. During the second mile, I realized the man behind me was staying put and mirrored my speed exactly. Well into the third mile the guy yelled, 'Nice pace.' My hot pink shorts fluttered in the wind and I smiled to myself in agreement."

nclovely1 came up with an astonishingly complete essay about the bumps (creeps) life gave her on the way to a happy married life.

Number one husband:
"The baby-hating hubby and I eventually divorced, and not amicably. (By the way, he's been married six more times since then. He left five of the wives when they got pregnant.)

Number two:
"We went for consultations; I took fertility drugs, did the ovulation kits. Nothing. Finally, the doctor checked hubby's sperm. On the verge of death, it was. The nurse took me aside and told me the only reason such a healthy man his age would have that problem was most likely drugs. Turns out, it was drugs; he was a clever and sneaky cokehead. Once I made that discovery, he found his stuff on the front porch that evening, and divorce quickly ensued."

Third one's the charming one:
"The mechanic and I had the most gorgeous wedding, right at sunrise on our favorite beach. Our beautiful five-year-old son is in his bedroom right now, watching his favorite Disney movie and building a Lego masterpiece."

Otter wrote a heart-stopping poem. You gotta send this out somewhere! Here it is in full:
"I have a quarter and a penny, and the rest is in the grave, resting on my mother's chest. It's kept company by her salmon pearls and lacy blouse, and the rustle of the insects stirring in her vacant heart.

"Here's what I didn't know before she died: I didn't know my soul was trapped, held tight within her chest, lashed to the bow of her being.

"As she took her last breath, I fainted.

"When I woke, everything was different: my arms weighed a hundred pounds and my legs a thousand. I rolled my eyes: they were as smooth as marble and just as clear.

"She was gone.

"The coins are my insurance, a pickle jar of shiny dimes and nickels, brazen pennies, weighing her down, just in case."

The Winner of the Day for Thursday, April 10 Writeaway Camp

vwomack has a great story, told with great humor and detail, about having designs on an incoming manager at the company get-together. (Good angle for publishing: this could be the talks of mergers between Microsoft and Yahoo). I loved every word of it, but here are some of my favorites.

One: She begins by putting us in the picture -- I like stories that begin by telling me when and what and where, so I can settle down and enjoy them:
"The whole thing started with a purple dress and a guy named Al. When the huge company I worked for bought out its competitor, Management decided that the annual sales meeting would have to be a Blow-Out to impress all the newly-acquired salespeople with their opportunities with their giant (and voracious) new employer. Accordingly, the annual meeting was set up at a resort near Fort Lauderdale in conjunction with an industry trade show. All four hundred of us wore logo shirts and kakis on the show floor to show competitors and vendors that our company was IN THE HOUSE."

I love that image of everybody in logos, and the line that comes next: "Whenever we weren't all bussed to the Show to intimidate vendors and competitors, there were seminars, training sessions and motivational speakers and whatever else to make sure we knew we existing and new employees were Special as Hell to The Company."

When she dolls herself up for the incoming manager, we get some surprising detail: "The facial felt so good I hated to even put on makeup, but I did and wrapped myself into the purple dress, slipped my feet into glittering gold pumps and stuck some ID, insulin and syringes into my vintage gold evening bag...

"The Party featured lots of rich food, open bars and a very loud band with speakers that would have serviced a football field. Though most of the sales reps for the company were middle-aged women, the musical theme of the evening was 'WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!' The whole building vibrated, and my ears went mercifully numb from the din. Some of the drunkest attempted to dance."

It?s when she slips out of the conga line that "I felt the sharp, stabbing pain in my chest and tightening in my left arm. I felt hot, sweaty and nauseous. I don't know who called the EMTs, but suddenly they seemed to be all around me. They slipped a plastic thing into my nose, a stethoscope under my elegant purple dress and loaded me onto a gurney.

"Al and the Company President were there saying things to me. Out of the fog of nausea and pain and the realization that I really was having a heart attack, I saw that Al was wearing a wedding ring."

Cheers!
Adair