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By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 3/20/2008
In trying to pack everything into that last post, I neglected to say that a PDF of my presentation on genre and voice, "Will Someone Please Tell Me What to Say?" is now available at my public folder. The file is aptly titled: "This is Just to Say."
Oh! and I included my notes for each slide this time.
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 3/20/2008
(Part of my series of posts about the workshops I led at the CNU Writers Conference this past weekend)
What was I thinking, trying to cover both genre and voice in one workshop session? Let me try to explain...
I began with an overview of age genres for the children's/YA field, giving a brief summary of each category: Early Childhood, Middle Grade, and Young Adult. I read from two examples in each category (list posted here), hoping to show how the voice chosen matched the intended audience. (I love reading out loud from fellow authors' books. Must be the drama geek in me, but making that connection with an audience is so much fun, and "selling" beloved books to them is even more so.) I also jazzed up this portion of the workshop with audio clips of music for each age genre, and funny pictures of me from each stage. So far, so good.
Now the transition to that elusive creature, Voice. No matter if you are writing a picture book, a middle grade novel, or a young adult book, voice is the natural expression of you, the writer, talking about something that is never trivial, never easy, and is slippery to define: Truth. But what is that? To get a start on it, I took my favorite quote and broke it down:
"Truth," says Parker Palmer, "is an eternal conversation about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline."
Eternal: Voices in books live on. They connect to one another throughout the years. You can converse with someone from hundreds of years ago, taking themes from great writers like Shakespeare (The Wednesday Wars), Emily Dickinson (Feathers), or Homer (Leepike Ridge.)
Conversation: Voice leaves room for the reader. When you read A Sock is a Pocket for Your Toes, for example, the child (and the adult) immediately wants to participate in the conversation. What else is a pocket? Why? What makes something suitable for holding something else? This is a book that doesn't end when the last page is turned. It invites the readers into the conversation.
Things that Matter: To discover what mattered to my workshop participants, I had them do the 100 questions exercise, which I blogged about here. My feeling was that you raise your hand and dare to speak because the question matters to you; therefore, the secret to knowing what you should write about (and your voice) is finding out what those questions are. This is an exercise that anyone can do at home, and works better if you have more time than I did at the workshop!
Passion: You would think that if you were talking about things that matter to you, that passion would be natural. But sometimes, we get too choked up to speak. But it's important to observe the other passions in your life and see how you behave there---do you quilt? Fix cars? Climb mountains? Be as enthusiastic about your writing.
Here's the quote I used: "I once met a man who told me that I always had an exaggerated idea of things. He said, 'Look at me, I am never excited.' I looked at him and he was not exciting. For once I did not over-appreciate." ---Robert Henri, painter (That got a good laugh, and deservedly so. If the speaker (writer) is not passionate or enthusiastic, then why should the reader be?)
Discipline: Each genre requires a different discipline. (Fitting a story to the 32 page picture book format, for instance.) Projecting and maintaining your voice also takes discipline. But I prefer to redefine discipline as "serving the work" as Madeleine L'Engle does so brilliantly with her quote: "To serve a work of art, great or small, is to die, to die to self." (The extended quote is here.) I did mention that serving the work is difficult, because you're not always sure what it wants. Wouldn't some direct orders be nice? One suggestion I offered was to make a mechanical drawing of your story idea, or of the dilemma you were wrestling with. I did this with my frustration over not knowing how to transition from short story writing to novel writing, as shown below. (You can click on it to make it easier to see.)
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 3/18/2008
Hotwash: "after-action" discussions and evaluations of an agency's performance following an exercise, training session, or major event
OR
How did the workshops go?
Great, thank you. I had outstanding participants who played along with most of my slightly out-there exercises. The only bumps were:
...the part where I realized that Cord A plugs into cute little MacBook, and Cord B plugs into industrial-sized projector setup, but Cord A and Cord B refuse to.....how to put this delicately?....mate. All cords, including a third one never even opened, will be returned to the Apple Store today, along with a note that all three cords are not suitable matches for each other and should not be allowed to leave the store together, ever again.
....the part where I threw all my heavy bags into the trunk of my car, grabbed my just-the-essentials purse, and ran back into the building for the writing contest awards ceremony. As I lowered myself into my seat, I suddenly gripped the purse, which felt ominously thin. I unzipped it to find that my keys were not in it. They were, instead, locked inside my car trunk inside my jumbo tote bag with all my other things. Luckily, Pop-a-Lock responded quickly, and the cheerful woman who deftly broke into my car told me that she herself had once locked her keys in her car FOUR times in a three month period. On the fourth visit from Pop-a-Lock, the manager had said: You really should learn to do this yourself. Would you like a job? (That was three years ago. She says she answers between 15-20 calls a day. I would like to make 15-20 people happy every day, wouldn't you?)
...the part where I asked my workshop participants to do the 100 Questions Exercise, and told them they had 10 minutes. That's 10 questions every minute! One every six seconds! Yes, it can be done, maybe even should be done that quickly, but I'm lucky they didn't throw their pencils at me.
...the part where I concluded my presentation with a slide which read "What am I tyring (sic) to say?" One kind writer told me she thought it was a clever play on words.
But I don't mean to leave you with the impression that I didn't have an amazing day, because I did. Despite all the unexpected bumps, I was surprised the most by how willing the other writers in my workshops were to share their fears, struggles, and joys. Unlike laptop cords, we know how to connect. And while we sometimes lock ourselves out, we almost always let each other in. We're willing to try the impossible, and we look at mistakes as creative play.
I'm going to tweak my presentations to improve upon them after learning so much this first time. I will find the right laptop cord. I'll wear my keys on a string around my neck. I can't wait for the next time I get a chance to share "what I'm tyring to say" with so many writer friends.
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 3/13/2008
Remember those workshops you helped me with? Well, I'm in the last stages of polishing them.
I'm practicing my two Keynote presentations---that's Keynote as in the Mac version of PowerPoint, not Keynote as in keynote, important speaker---obsessively worrying that this new software will freeze on me, buying adapter cables to make sure my laptop hooks up with the external display, backing up the presentations to PDF files that I'm emailing to myself, and other geeky computer-related activity.
I'm also printing out lists of books mentioned in my presentations, gathering my props, and marking passages to read aloud in the books I'm featuring.
Later, I will pick out clothes which make me look professional and yet, approachable and casual. Shoes that are cute, but don't hurt. Lip gloss that matches my slide background color. (Oh, wait. That would be green.)
Even later, I will allow myself one small crazy moment of panic. What if they HATE me?
I like talking to other writers. I'm usually comfortable speaking in front of groups. I'm looking forward to my workshops. But the prep stage goes on too long for me. In a way, I'd rather be thrown out there with no prep, and be forced to make a connection based on the raw fear and vulnerability that all writers face every day and would completely relate to. But that wouldn't be wise. I must prepare, and then connect.
I trust an audience filled with writers, you know? I really, really, do.
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 2/19/2008
Next month, I'm leading two writing workshops at the 26th Annual Christopher Newport University Writers' Conference.
WORKSHOP ONE
Growing a Novel: How to Keep your Ideas, Manuscripts, and Hopes Alive
Why is it so hard to turn one Great Idea into one Great Novel? How do you prevent your own expectations and doubts from killing the thing you're trying to grow? What specific techniques can you use to nurture ideas, plots, and characters so that they transform into actual words on a page, and then pages in a book? Start to finish, we'll look at what it takes to wind up with a living, breathing novel.
WORKSHOP TWO
Would Somebody Please Tell Me What to Say?
Are you better suited to writing a YA novel about teenage sex or a counting picture book called Ten Aged Socks? This is a look at the various genres in the children's book field, and a discussion about that elusive creature, Voice. Is it possible to write however and whatever the market demands? Or are we, thankfully, only required to write what we can?
What do you think? Useful? Interesting? Rather pick lint off your pants than attend either of these?
If you have suggestions about anything I should include---resources, books, websites, strategies, etc.--- please comment! (I promise I'll credit you at the workshop and thank you in my heart of hearts many, many times over.)
By: Susan Smith,
on 6/20/2007
Oh, but what a worthwhile 'too much' this is! What a hoot that whole day must have been. And I LOVE the This Is Just to Say book for kids -- adding that to yet another one that I WANT -- because I love the original poem so much. What fun to really talk forgiveness and apology with kids. What a way to begin them on the 'eternal conversation.' Very cool.
Thanks for sharing all this, and for making the workshop stuff available online. I am so impressed!
A kick-ass presentation - and some KICK-ASS shoes (those high heels you're wearing in the second to last slide)
And thanks again for your support of my work, Sara.
Thanks, all. Glad to know posting all this, and rehashing it is worthwhile.
Barbara, I LOVED reading aloud from How to Steal a Dog. Such a natural, compelling voice you have in that opening scene...
And I should have taken a picture of the shoes I was wearing during the presentation...I get compliments on them in elevators. Really. :)