Jim Butcher and CE Murphy Provide Masterclasses

By Kate Phillips

As a reader, I always love finding books that appeal to me. As a writer, I am twice as pleased when the authors also provide masterclasses within their books.

        Masterclasses take place when performance artists and musicians work one-on-one with students. Writers don't generally have this option, but I have found some books to be masterclasses for characters, backstories, plots, settings, voice and/or creativity.

       

Since it is October, I'm recommending fiction that relates to Halloween. The paranormal genre may not appeal to everyone, but I've found reading strong writing in any form helps improve my writing. Both of the series I'm recommending show excellent examples of all of the reasons I listed in the introduction plus humor and action scenes.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series features Harry Dresden, the only wizard Private Investigator in Chicago. He has made his share of mistakes and enemies, but is always willing to work hard when hired or help when needed by friends or the police. However, he's having a tough time making a living at the moment.

Human residents live their lives discounting most things magical, but the police know better. To keep order in the city, a Special Investigations unit has been set up led by Lieutenant Karrin Murphy who calls on Dresden whenever the inexplicable plays a role in a crime.

The series, beginning with Storm Front, works well on several levels. There are new crimes for Harry and friends to solve in every book, but there is also an over arcing theme of the greater battle of good and evil.

Butcher's writing is so gripping at one point in the series I was shaking from fear and had to put the book on a solid surface so I could continue to read. I generally don't enjoy being scared—for the most part these books are more exciting than scary—but the anticipation of one magical creature's entrance into Harry's life took me back to the vibrating water cup scene in Jurassic Park, the movie, announcing the arrival of the terrifying T-Rex.

There are 13 books in the Dresden series currently. I didn't like Book Three as much as the rest of the series. I'm reading Book Ten now.

C E Murphy writes The Walker Papers series. The captivating eight book series centers around Joanne Walker, a police officer who discovers she is a shaman. Along with friends, family, fellow cops, and some supernatural allies, she defeats foes to save Seattle and, at times, the world.

It's hard to put these books down with the author's signature page-turning pace, twisty plots, and fearless, funny, and frightening characters. The romantic tension between Officer Walker and her boss, Captain Morrison, offers another layer to this series that begins with Urban Shaman.

        One of the most endearing characters we meet is Gary Muldoon. He is gallant, loyal, recently widowed, and ready for anything—the perfect sidekick for a shaman-in-training who needs all the help she can get.

Summed up on the back of his own book, No Dominion, ninth in the series: [Since meeting shaman Joanne Walker] "Gary has trifled with gods, met mystics, slain zombies…But now Gary must…fight a battle only he can win…because it becomes clear that it was not illness that took his wife's life, but their enemy's deadly touch."

        Enjoy becoming a better writer by reading!    

Sandford Lyne Provides a Masterclass

By Kate Phillips

 

As a reader, I always love finding books that appeal to me. As a writer, I am twice as pleased when the authors also provide masterclasses within their books.

        Masterclasses take place when performance artists and musicians work one-on-one with students. Writers don't generally have this option, but I have found some books to be masterclasses for characters, back stories, plots, settings, voice and/or creativity.

 

        As soon as I read a book that immediately gets me writing, I want to share it with every writer I know.

Before I go into more detail, I want to stress I am a writer, not a poet. However, I think poets have a lot to teach all writers as they capture minute details and moments in time using gorgeous turns of phrases.

Author, poet, and teacher Sandford Lyne believes everyone is a poet so they should start writing poems now. "With courage and honesty you initiate yourself as an artist-seeker, a lifelong learner, a worker in depth, in vertical perceptions, in discovered truths."

 

In his book Writing Poetry from the Inside Out: Finding Your Voice Through the Craft of Poetry, Lyne advocates poem-sketching (as) "it is a playful, open-ended approach; it draws upon and uses the wealth of our experiences, provides a vehicle for the specialized intelligence and expressiveness of the emotions, occupies the mind with simple puzzles to solve (the mind enjoys puzzles), and, finally is built on and requires the use of our intuition. And all of this happens in a blink of an eye; simultaneously, naturally, without having to think about it."

The key to beginning poem-sketching is to look at the over 50 pages of four-word groups until one grabs your attention. Then write phrases or sentences incorporating those four words. Sounds simple, and it is, and it works.

I was hesitant at first thinking I am not a poet. This is not going to work for me…and then I saw four words that inspired me. I flashed back to when I was nine and then a poem poured out of me. It was in rough form, but I worked on it until I was surprised with the satisfaction and joy I felt with my finished poem.

Lyne also encourages writers to make up lists of words for more advanced poem-sketching. He gives specific directions for different types of words to include in each four-word grouping to make them powerful, attractive, and inspiring.

This is another way for writers to hone their craft. It's crucial to find exact words. To notice specific details, feelings, actions, and surroundings. It forces us to use and expand our observation skills and vocabularies.

Then we use our original voices to combine the words into poems. "One function of poem-sketching is to awaken your ability to produce images in words…writing poetry is about playing with words, exploring the possibilities of combining words into sentences and fragments, rearranging lines into finished poems."

Lyne notes: "…the happiest, most successful, most fulfilled people I know are the ones who, over time, gave themselves the most permissions—in all areas of their lives…The best writers give themselves the most permissions."

Give yourself permission to try poem-sketching. "Along the way, each person on the path of the poem finds his or her own vocabulary, his or her own metaphors for recognizing and naming the experiences."

Poem-sketching makes us better writers. It's also fun!

Beth Kephart Provides a Masterclass

By Kate Phillips

 

As a reader, I always love finding books that appeal to me. As a writer, I am twice as pleased when the authors also provide masterclasses within their books.

 

Masterclasses take place when performance artists and musicians work one-on-one with students. Writers don't generally have this option, but I have found some books to be masterclasses for characters, backstories, plots, settings, voice, and/or creativity.

 

 

        Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir by Beth Kephart is both a memoir of becoming a writer as well as an instructional book encouraging other writers to write memoirs. This is not a tell-all book, but a beautifully written show-all book.

 

        Kephart reveals how she became a National Book Award Finalist author. "A closet writer from early on with boxes filled with poems and submissions of short stories returned unpublished," she reads a memoir that changes her life in 1990, Road Song by Natalie Kusz.

 

        Enraptured with this book, she writes Kusz a letter through her publisher. In the reply… "I hadn't read memoir, hadn't written it, and then there was Kusz unveiling its mystery for me, explaining, by way of a thank-you, what a book like hers was designed to do. Writers are in the business of attempting to expose the human condition in such a way that our description resonates in the souls of other humans…Yes, I thought. I want to be in that business."

 

To get in that business, Kephart attends her first writing workshop while in Italy for a family vacation. "What I learned in Spoleto, what I chose to value or come to believe about myself, would shape the way I thought about stories made and lived every thereafter day of my life. It would make me want to find a way to pass the knowing down."

 

Kephart found her voice and a way to pass the knowing down. Author of eighteen other books, she illustrates this memoir with excerpts from memoirs she loves, views of other authors, and assignments from the writing students she now teaches. She sets the bar high for writers who want to get into this business, but also provides support, a few prompts, and numerous inspiring examples to help you along the way.

 

Her most important advice: read memoirs if you want to write memoirs. Kephart includes a 52-page in-depth appendix listing memoirs of note.

 

Handling the Truth is my favorite type of read. It stands on its own as a well-written book; it tells the story of a writer believing in herself; it includes insights, suggestions, and goals for other writers; and it recommends many other well-written books—a gift that keeps on giving!

 

 

Please recommend your favorite reads.

       

 

Daily Rituals by Mason Currey

By Kate Phillips

 

        I'm a writer so I should love to write—and I do—but I hate getting started. Call it resistance or procrastination, but I have to force myself go to my desk unless I am on deadline. It's nice to know I am not the only one as I found out when I read Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. He shares the creative routines of 161 well-known writers, composers, painters, choreographers, playwrights, poets, philosophers, sculptors, filmmakers, and scientists.

 

As Currey writes in the Introduction:

"…most of the people in this book are…committed to daily work but never entirely sure confident in their progress; always wary of the one day off that undoes the streak. All of them made the time to get their work done. But there is infinite variation in how they structured their lives to do so.

This book is about that variation. And I hope that readers will find it encouraging…"

        Writers work morning, noon, and night depending on who you ask.

On page 6, Simone de Beauvoir shared with The Paris Review: "I am always in a hurry to get going, though in general I dislike starting the day," [Simone de] Beauvoir told The Paris Review in 1965. "I first have tea and then, at about ten o'clock, I get under way and work until one. Then I see my friends and after that, at five o'clock, I go back to work and continue until nine…"

On page 122, Maya Angelou stated "…I keep a hotel room in which I do my work—a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes, if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it is going well, I'll stay as long as it is going well. It's lonely and it's marvelous…"

On page 133, Currey wrote: [Joseph] Heller wrote Catch-22 in the evenings after work, sitting at the kitchen table in his Manhattan apartment. "I spent two or three hours a night on it for eight years," he said. "I gave up once and started watching television with my wife. Television drove me back to Catch-22…"

I loved learning about the routines of some of my favorite writers like Agatha Christie (page 103) and Mark Twain (page 173). I loved what Philip Larkin wrote on page 130. But my favorite one was about Jonathan Franzen (pp. 227-228) as it is romantic, sad, and inspiring, too.

The daily ritual entry for each person ranges from a paragraph or two to a page or two. It's a good book to read when you have a difficult time getting starting. Look at all these 161 people accomplished because they got their work done. Get your work done and see where it takes you.

 

What are your daily writing rituals?

 

The Modern Library's Writer's Workshop by Stephen Koch

By Kate Phillips

 

        As much as I love solitude and writing, I also enjoy feeling like part of a team. Since authors are not dropping by my home every day to discuss writing, I read books quoting them about their writing habits and advice. 

        Recently, I finished The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction by Stephen Koch. The chapters covering Beginnings, The Writing Life, Shaping the Story, Making Characters Live, Inventing Your Style, The Story of the Self, Working and Reworking, and Finishing are filled with examples and quotes from authors famous and new-to-me.

        On page 34: "Writing a novel is gathering smoke," says Walter Mosley. "It's an excursion into the ether of ideas." [Stephen Koch adds] Most people dismiss most of their imaginative life with amused indifference, and maybe a little contempt. That is where you must part company with most people. Your fantasies are a resource…you must catch them, hold them, and exploit them.

        On page 42: [Stephen Koch writes] Read for love. Every writer ought to fall in love with some new writer or work with fair regularity, and the passion should hit with a fervor that makes each new book a hot date and every stolen fifteen minutes of browsing an intoxicated rendezvous... "being swept away," says Stephen King, "by a combination of great story and great writing—of being flattened, in fact—is part of every writer's necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you."

        On page 86: If you begin with a character, Ray Bradbury advises that you "find a character like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with all his heart. Give him running orders. Shoot him off. Then follow as fast as you can go. The character, in his great love or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story."

        On page 115: [Stephen Koch writes] Many writers tune their ear for prose by starting their day with a prose stimulant—a good, hot, steaming cup of strong, perfect prose… "I'll read something," says Maya Angelou, "maybe the Psalms…something from Mrs. Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson…Mary Gordon has an elaborate ritual: "Before I take pen to paper, I read. I can't begin my day reading fiction; I need the more intimate tone of letters and journals."

        On page 205, there is a chapter entitled Postscript: Writing on the Craft that lists with descriptions recommended reading of authors and books from the Ancients to modern times. I have read many of these books. My favorites include: Bird By Bird; The Writer's Chapbook; Zen in the Art of Writing; On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft; One Writer's Beginnings; and The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers.

        Stephen Koch's book is a terrific resource for inspiration. I have underlined and marked pages in half the book roughly. This is always a sign to me that the book should be recommended to others.

 

Please let me know if you enjoy this book, too.

Barbara Kingsolver Provides a Masterclass

By Kate Phillips

 

As a reader, I always love finding books that appeal to me. As a writer, I am twice as pleased when the authors also provide masterclasses within their books.

        Masterclasses take place when performance artists and musicians work one-on-one with students. Writers don't generally have this option, but I have found some books to be masterclasses for characters, backstories, plots, settings, voice, and/or creativity.

Barbara Kingsolver's High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never is a wonderful book to read any time of year, but summer may be the best season for it. The essays are short enough to finish them on car trips between children's squabbles, but deep enough to give you plenty to think about while schlepping all the accoutrements from the car to the shore for a day at the beach.

        The author shares glimpses into her life along with asides and insights that cement the need for good writing in our souls. As a writer, she shares her experiences and the benefits of this profession. I find great encouragement as a writer when I reread this book. Some favorite examples are:

(page 36) …because in the valley between real life and propriety whole herds of important truths can steal away into the underbrush. I hold that valley to be my home territory as a writer.

(page 97) I can hardly remember how I wrote before my child made a grown-up of me, nor can I think what sort of mother I would be if I didn't write. I hold with Dr. Steinberg: by working at something else I cherish, I can give my child room to be a chip off any old block she wants. She knows she isn't the whole of my world, and also that when I'm with her she is the designated center of my universe.

(page 244) Writing is no curse. The writing life has incomparable advantages: flexible hours, mental challenge, the wardrobe—you can go to work in bunny slippers if you want to. The money, well, that is sometimes a snag, but if you keep your nose to the grindstone the benefits accrue.

(page 250) The artist's job is to sink a taproot in the reader's brain that will grow downward and find a path into the reader's soul and experience, so that some new emotional inflorescence will grow out of it.

        Some of the taproots in this book for me include:

(page 15) Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home; it's impossible to think at first how this will all be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living.

(page 53) If there is a fatal notion on this earth, it's the notion that wider horizons will be fatal.

(page 156) How is a child to find the way to her own beliefs, unless she can stuff her pockets with all the truths she can find—whether she finds them on a library shelf or in a friend's warm, strange-smelling kitchen.

(page 202) Where does it go when it leaves us, the memory of beautiful, strange things?

        This book is funny and sad and full of wisdom. Enjoy!

 

What book of essays do you love?

 

Summer Reads

By Kate Phillips

 

As a reader, I always love finding books that appeal to me. As a writer, I am twice as pleased when the authors also provide Masterclasses within their books.

        Masterclasses take place when performance artists and musicians work one-on-one with students. Writers don't generally have this option, but I have found some books to be Masterclasses for characters, backstories, plots, settings, voice, and/or creativity.

       

When summer arrives, I want to read some lighter stories. But I still want to read Masterclass-level books as my writer side wants to continue learning about great characters, strong plots, and good writing.

The most popular post I have written is about JD Robb's In Death series. (See post dated October 22.) If you enjoyed these books, you will probably enjoy Suzanne Enoch's Samantha Jellicoe series. It is not as gritty and graphic, but still well done.

While Nora Roberts as JD Robb has written close to 40 books,the Samantha Jellicoe series is only four books—Flirting with Danger, Don't Look Down, Billionaires Prefer Blondes, and A Touch of Minx—a perfect amount for a vacation week.

Like the In Depth series, the male lead, Richard Addison, is a brilliant and wealthy business man, but has no criminal past. Unlike the In Death series, the female lead, Samantha Jellicoe, is not a police lieutenant, but the world's best cat burglar. In both series, people are murdered, crimes need to be solved, and love will win out although there are many obstacles and humorous situations along the way.

        As a writer, I love how these complex characters react when they meet, interact as they get involved in each other's lives, and transform to solve the many dilemmas in the multi-layered plots.

        I am also recommending two books by Pauline Baird Jones. They have radically different writing styles which fascinates me.

        The Last Enemy is the first in a trilogy, but this one is by far my favorite. The plot: Romance writer Dani Gwynne witnessed a murder and is placed under protective custody. However, the protective custody is not as safe as promised. Marshal Matthew Kirby and his team are determined to find out what happened that left three US Marshals dead and the witness missing. They learn not to underestimate a romance writer hunted by a hit man who is leaving them a trail of gruesome crime scenes.

        Dani makes excellent use of her plotting skills and, with help from fellow writers, fans, and Internet friends, saves herself time and again until the Marshals catch up. But can they stop the hit man or can Dani only trust herself?

        On a much lighter note, The Spy Who Kissed Me is a funny murder mystery. My favorite lines on page 7 introduce the main character and narrator:

Isobel. Picture someone petite, fragile, and blonde, done in soft pastels, lusciously formed—and you'll know how I don't look.

        Isobel Stanley, Stan to her friends, writes children's books about the antics of a cockroach which her mother considers tacky. Stan also plays the organ and gets roped into covering for the regular organist at a church function. Lost in her thoughts on her way home, she takes a wrong turn, witnesses a shooting, and then a dashing young man dives into her open sun roof. What's a girl to do next?

        I admire the author's numerous funny turns of phrases—highly creative.

What beach books do you enjoy?