Guest Post by Nancy Parker

How Music Affects My Writing

I am a writer. That’s my job, my passion, my hobby. I love to write. Ideally, I’d be able to write in serene silence. Unfortunately, silence is a rare and elusive nymph. I must counter the idea-interrupting chaos with music. Frequently, that music is instrumental because I have the bad habit of accidently sprinkling my writing with lyrics. But that’s another issue.

The point I’m trying to make here is that what I listen to affects my writing. I can’t tell you how often Pandora has changed songs on me and the point I was making suddenly shifted. This is not a bad thing. Often, I get stuck in a rut and my writing becomes boring and repetitive. The sudden shift is a godsend.

I’ll give you an example. When writing fiction, it is often difficult to know whether to write in first or third person, especially at the very beginning. I was going along, writing a perfectly decent piece of fiction in third person, when suddenly the calm yet invigorating piano of LudovicoEinaudi’s “Ora” took over. I’d reached the tipping point, actually that was the name of the chapter I had just started, and the piano started speaking the character’s voice. All of a sudden, my story was first person and she was most strident in her demands to express herself. Instead of the meticulous dialogue of the previous chapters, this chapter was convoluted, complex, incoherent at times, completely lacking in punctuation appropriateness, full of run on sentences, and absolutely eye-opening. The song seemed to capture her helplessness, her rage, her fear, and her reasoning. It was as ponderous and yet strategically injured as she was. Her train of thought jumped with every pause in the piano, moving from acceptance to embitterment to rage to spite and finally, to a calm, careful hate.

I pulled away from my keyboard, startled. How could one song, eight minutes long, create such a character? Everything I’d never known about her had bubbled to the surface, startling me with its intensity and yet oh so right. I put the song on repeat and finished the chapter. Whenever her character returned, that was the song I used. Until after the climax of the story, that is. When her rage had been spent and revenge gotten, it no longer fit her. I sat there, puzzled. It wasn’t as if I HAD to have music to inspire me, it certainly hadn’t been needed for the other characters, but she seemed to call for a different song now. With a sigh, I returned to Pandora’s random mix… and it played Secret Garden’s “Sometimes When it Rains”.

The stringed instruments were gentle and mournful, quiet and sad. Everything about it whispered loneliness and regret. It was perfect. The dénouement of the story was all about turning away from her past, even the good parts. Walking away and leaving everything behind. And yet, there is still strength to the music. It is not running away from problems but rather, having faced them, choosing to leave them behind.

I completed her part in the story, sitting back when it was completed and wondering just how it had resolved itself like that. I’d certainly not planned any of this at the beginning of the tale. It wasn’t as if the music had changed the story but rather it had exposed the internal complexities of the character, and SHE had changed the story. Who knew that music had such power to reveal?

Author Bio

Nancy Parker was a professional nanny and she loves to write about wide range of subjects like health, Parenting, Child Care, and Babysitting, find a nanny tips etc. You can reach her @ nancy.parker015 @ gmail.com.

On Sentences Part 1: Tips for Revising

Sometimes a sentence needs to be clipped.

Sometimes a sentence needs to dance and juke, moving first in one direction and then another, perhaps exploring the white face of a blue jay after noting its dominant blue color, and then coming to a finish in a flourish, perhaps by describing the characteristic flat flight of the bird.

Most sentences need to be medium, with a basic structure and only one additional phrase or clause, set off by commas.

Of course, when writing a first draft you shouldn't worry about the play of your sentences. You should just get it out there.

During revision you should consider a number of things.

• Does this sentence say what I mean it to say?

Consider the following: "I went out to eat feeling sad." This sounds as if the subject of the sentence ate a dish at the restaurant called "feeling sad." The sentence should read, "I felt sad, but I went out to eat, anyway" or "I felt sad, but I still went out to eat." There are other good options, as well. How do you know which to choose? It depends on what works best in the paragraph and what you want to emphasize.

• What is the central action being described? Do you use it as the central verb?

Consider the following: "He is old and walked down to the lake." This sentence could work in some paragraphs, but generally it should be revised to read, "The old man walked down to the lake." The verb "is," in this instance, does nothing more than link "he" to "old." This can be accomplished much more efficiently by simply dropping the word. Some people want to ban the "to be" verbs: "am," "are," "is," "was," and "were." These claims go too far. During revision, you need to look at how each sentence is put together and ask if attention is being drawn to the central action. If this central action involves the use of a "to be" verb, then leave it.

Part 2 will discuss nouns and phrases.

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jphansenediting.com

Editor's Questions For Novelist, Part 2

Point of View

Is the story best told from first person? If so, should the major character or a minor one tell it?

Is the story best told from the third person? If so, what sort of third person? limited to the perspective of one character? omniscient? merely reporting facts with no description of the inner life of any character?

Should the story vacillate between a first person and a third person point of view? Should it vacillate between various third person or first person perspectives?

What do you learn when you rewrite a scene from various points of view? Can this exercise help you even after you have settled on a point of view?

Paragraphs

What is the purpose of this paragraph? to focus on a description, idea, or feeling? or to provide rhythm consistent with what occurs in other paragraphs? Whatever the case, does it fulfill its purpose?

Is the paragraph actually needed?

What do you gain by leaving a particular paragraph short, long, or medium? Should you break up a paragraph into two or even three shorter ones? Should you combine paragraphs into a longer one? What is gained by any of these actions? lost?

Which parts of a paragraph are extraneous? Which need developing?

What is gained by this particular paragraph break? lost? Should it be handled differently?

Sentences

What is the purpose of a sentence? How well does it fulfill that purpose? How could it be reworked?

What do you intend with this sentence? Is it what you technically say?

What is the true verb of this sentence? Do you make it the grammatical verb? Did you place the verb in the most effective place?

How else could the parts of a sentence—phrases, clauses, and so on—be ordered? What works best?

Is a sentence better off being broken up into smaller ones? Are a couple or several sentences better off being combined?

Is there variety in the types and lengths of sentences?

Words

Are you using this word correctly?

What is the most appropriate word?

What word might work better?

What is the connotation and denotation of this word? Are they consistent with the way you are trying to use it?

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J.P. Hansen Editing Services

Editor's Questions for Novelist, Part 1

Scenes

How do you visualize this scene taking place? Are your images consistent with this vision? Do your images ask you to alter your vision?

What are the minimum number of characters necessary to make this scene work?

What is at the center of the scene—actions, ideas, interior thoughts, or something else? Are they contributing to setting, plot, characterization, or something else? How? On the basis of the answers to these questions, what should be changed, dropped or enhanced?

How does writing style contribute to the scene? Are your figures of speech relevant and coherent? Are your word choices consistent with your overall design?

Character
What expressions and word choices in a specific character's dialogue are consistent with and develop that character?

Are your characters delineated not only by how they speak, but by their characteristic actions, habits, feelings, movements, and ways of thinking? Do characters help to develop each other by offering opinions about each other, behaving in specific ways toward each other, and talking to each other in specific ways?

How does each character look?

Do you sprinkle in details about your characters, for the most part, in phrases clauses and asides rather than standing back and telling and explaining your character?

Plot
What question animates the main plot? Is it brought to a climax?

As the book unfolds, what other questions are introduced to supplement the main one? How well do they work?

Setting

What are the benefits of the book's historical setting? the drawbacks? Is it the most effective one? Are the details and scenes described consistent with that moment in history?

What are the benefits and drawbacks of the novel's physical setting?

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J.P. Hansen Editing Service

Editing Genre vs. Literary Novel

Recently, I had the privilege of editing a fantasy novel. The job, it turned out, was fairly easy: I had to make suggestions about the delineation of characters, creation of vivid scenes, and formation of quality sentences.

Why was this job easy? Because it involved a genre novel which conforms to clearly defined characteristics. The novel's very category provided me with parameters for editing. What are the expectations of fantasy? The characters need to seem larger than life and involved in epic-like dramas.  The scenes need to convey intense drama and action. And the sentences need to be clear and plainly written.

Next, I edited an experimental, mixed-genre manuscript, and all parameters went by the wayside. In fact, experimental literature by definition is writing in search of parameters, writing that establishes its own particular forms and means of approach. Sometimes, experimental writers, as did the author I was working with, even play with grammatical and spelling norms. At the level of proofreading, I needed to discuss with her whether or not some misspellings were intentional.

How is an editor to approach such a work? The only answer I can come up with is through empathy. My approach was to read through the manuscript once simply to catch on to the norms, forms, and expectations she was establishing. While I do something like this with all manuscripts, only in mixed-genre or avant-garde work does the first read-through involve trying to understand how this writing asks to be read.

In such a situation, I rely less on traditional editorial apparatus—the publicly accepted rules and expectations for good writing—and more on instinct and aesthetic taste. My feel for the piece of writing, and my feel for language in general, must be in deep accord with the author's. For instance, I can't just learn that she desires a certain "misspelling"; I need to understand why she wants it and how it partakes in her larger writerly palette.

The difference between editing genre work as opposed to experimental writing comes down to degrees. In genre work, editors are much more involved in honing the final product for public display.

Editors of experimental work are more involved in working with the writer to realize an artistic vision. We act as sounding boards rather than skilled and knowledgeable conventional language workers. This distinction is not, of course, absolute. Genre editors get involved with artistic vision, but not to the extent they do with experimental works.

As a general activity, the goal of editing in both works remained the same—to help make writing sing—but the feel of the work I did differed greatly.

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J.P. Hansen Editing Services

Editor & Creative Writer in Same Person: the Conflict

One of the worries I have about my editing is how it affects my own creative writing. An editor by definition must internalize and work with standardized language. As a creative writer, I need to get outside such standards, to develop some unique ways of manipulating and forming words and sentences. If the role of editor gets too deeply embedded in me, I will not be able to think and create outside of its narrow confines.

What are some exercises I can do to prevent myself from losing my creative edge to standardization?

1. Write prose without punctuation. Doing this exercise helps me to see various ways of organizing language in addition to the standard one. New ways to use sentence fragments might suggest themselves. Unusual and useful syntax (word order) might reveal itself. New rhythms and polyrhythms might appear.

2. Write sentences vertically, one word on top of another. Isolating words in this way helps me to hear the sound of each, see the look of each, and ascertain the assumptions behind word order. The latter occurs because the exercise creates an easy way to shift words around, from one level to another, to observe the way meaning shades and alters. 

3. Use various games derived from the work of the OULIPO poets, among others. Here's one example: I open a novel; note the part of speech of the first word; look it up in the dictionary; and go down from it to the next word that is the same part of speech, which I write down and then work through a number of words, perhaps 20. Finally, I connect these words through phrases and sentences. This exercise forces me to work with words outside my typical vocabulary. Doing so breaks up some of the ingrained habits formed by editing.

4. Tap the subconscious. I pick out an image, any image, in a poem. Then, before thinking at all, I write down an image of my own. I repeat this several times. Then, I connect my images (not the originals) with phrases and sentences. I don't worry about being "true" to the subconscious source of the language. Rather, I attend to how I can turn the raw material found there into new ways of forming images, phrases, and sentences.

These are just a few examples. In each, the goal is the same: to provide a gentle shock to the editor's staid linguistic habits. For editors who are not creative writers, doing these exercises may help them develop empathy for creative writers and their processes of composition.

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J.P. Hansen Editing Services

Editing the Discussion of Controversial Topics

In a discussion with a friend the other day, he seemed to state that an editor has no business helping an author bring up sensitive social topics in ways that will not alienate a lot of readers. If I understood him correctly, he holds that it is the artist's job to do what she needs to, regardless of the consequences. What role an evaluative editor should play in this scenario he didn't make clear.

Perhaps he believes that evaluative editors get in the way of the writer's true articulation in ways that copyeditors or proofreaders do not. He may feel that artistic creation should be left wholly individual.

I don't agree with this. My sense is that in one way or another almost all writing, including great writing, is collaborative. For instance, I think Shakespeare "wrote" his plays, but it seems reasonable to assume he got a lot of help from his fellow players in The King's Men.

When editors and writers collaborate on discussing social issues, it is the editor's job, I believe, to point out the possible consequences of certain choices. To do so, editors need to keep on top of current sensibilities and sensitivities in the social sphere. They need to negotiate between these public standards and a writer's individual artistic impulse.

On the one hand, neither editors nor writers want to strip a work of its uniqueness. Who would want to publish or review such a bland work? On the other hand, if the work unnecessarily steps on some toes, it will run into trouble in a variety of ways—from finding a publisher to getting reviewed. 

Writing is an irreducibly social act, with many people involved other than the person listed as an author. These include readers, editors at all sorts of levels, publishers, and reviewers. 

Another such group is other writers. Each individual writer thinks about or approaches an issue in a different manner, thereby providing their colleagues with openings for alternative perspectives and angles. In this way, reading precedes writing.

Certainly, editors should not tell writers what to do. But they need to make writers fully cognizant of how certain choices may affect a large proportion of potential readers.

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J.P. Hansen Editing Services