Category: Inlet Inspiration

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Tall tales and big truths

This summer, I woke to loon song on the shores of a freshwater lake, tried grilling a panini over an open fire (almost successfully), reconnected with old college friends, got stung by a bee, met a man who shot a giant fish between the eyes, and survived a hiking encounter with a skinny black bear barely fifty feet from our group. “Does skinny mean hungry?” someone asked when my brother and I returned. Fortunately the bear was only hungry for corn in the field near our hiking trail, the bee sting itched but didn’t swell, and I learned a life hack: if you want to eat a panini grilled in a grilling basket be sure to secure the basket tightly.

I also sharpened my storytelling skills. As I retold the stories of my summer, they got taller. I didn’t just wake to loon song, I swam alongside loons. The big fish shot by the man I met wasn’t just big but a shark. And my brother says the bear was normal-bear-sized, but I remember it towered over us, especially when it paused in its slow amble away along the westward ridge and rose up on its hind legs, taller, skinnier and hungrier.

It’s a well-known truism that the secret to good storytelling is embellishment. But would you believe that when we returned from our bear encounter, shaken, and my brother brought out a bottle of whisky he’d meant to give our dad as a gift, the bottle read, “When facing a great bear, don’t play dead, or try to outrun it. Rather, make light of the situation, keep eye contact, and pour a drink for two.” Believe me, I couldn’t make that part up.

Let’s face it, sometimes true stories are too unlikely to sound true, and sometimes a story’s fantastical hyperbole makes it feel more true—whether true to life or not.

The truth itself can sound stretched or too on-the-nose, manufactured or too coincidental, while fictionalized embellishments—overstatement or understatement, metaphor, allegory, exaggerations of facts—may make the story resonate more fully, even if it’s not more factual. The best “embellishments” don’t obscure but enhance. The more I tell the tale, the more colorful that bear story gets, and the more real the bear encounter becomes—for the audience, I hope, but even me. Though I’m calibrating as I retell it, testing to see if another detail, and yet another, makes the bear story too tall, so tall it topples over. That happens when ornamentation or wordplay or excess details or unnecessary digressions—factual or not—detract from the truth at the core of the story. (FYI, seriously, that whiskey bottle detail is true, I swear.)

As writers, what matters the most is the ring of truth that comes from the whole, that makes our writing true to life. Whether turning fact into fiction.  creative nonfiction, or poetry, when you write bearing detail to help uphold the truth, you’ve got to be selective, even at times leave out some facts to serve the greater truth—or incorporate the narrator’s incredulity so the interpretation of what’s hard to believe is true true gets massaged into the tale-teller’s greater themes.

So, how do you strike the right balance? You get to be choosy. Use good details as a guide, a kind of beacon that focuses what matters. As Michael Ondaatje said, “Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumors and tall tales were a kind of charting.” Choose facts and details that work like marks on a map and that bring you closer and closer to your true destination—a true story well told.

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Appreciating Flourishing and Failure

Summer’s in full bloom here in Madison, Wisconsin, and there’s no better time to relish productivity than in the midst of much flourishing. Yes, relish it. Appreciate the plenty. Have you indulged?

The cliché is “stop to smell the flowers.” But have the flowers ever stopped you in your tracks—their fragrance so strong you can’t help but notice? I entreat you to treat yourself while you’re deep in constructive creative work, too.

You’ve probably relished a sentence or line until it’s just the right intoxicating mix of melody and meaning. Or appreciated the tension in a scene you’ve revised so the pages are packed to bursting like the skin of ripened fruit.

Keep relishing.

Galway Kinnell describes the deliciousness of creative burgeoning in his poem Blackberry Eating:

lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths and squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well

Ah, yes. The splurging. Word to word, sentence to sentence. Plot point to plot point. Are you splurging well?

When we splurge well, we’re appreciating not only the fruits of our labors, but the process behind those labors.

I’m not talking about heady jolts of brainstorming’s lightning, quick thrills of first draft revelations, or boons of insight that come from a benevolent muse’s fickle offerings. I’m talking about your slow nurturing, from seed to stalk, from bud to blossom to fruit, over time. Because you, dear writer, have nourished that work into form.

Don’t shirk the chance to appreciate that burgeoning. Reflect on its harvest, the way you might reflect on the sun that ripened grapes into wine—the presses that pressed, the barrel that held, the people that processed and the seasons and minutes that ticked down until the wine now poured into your glass touches your tongue.

And as you appreciate, don’t be surprised if you chuckle to yourself, recalling a faux pas or series of failures before your work reached its peak ripeness. You probably spent a week slogging through abstract phrasing that fell flat until you gave it dimension through sensory imagery. Or when a reader winced at wooden dialogue during critique, you worked harder until you unearthed the true subtext of the scene. Maybe a secondary character fell into a plot hole, and rescuing her opened up a new direction for your plot. Or perhaps you left her behind, a sacrifice that sealed up a structural gap.

It may have felt cruel. But we know the entreaty to kill our darlings rings true. After all, plants flourish in compost, and so can our creations. To grow and ripen our writing takes not only time and nurturing, but innovation and humility. Our successes only reach their peak because we plow through bad choices—often embarrassingly bad. Which is actually a good thing.

Some days we know this. Others days we’re so enamored with the popular myth of the perfect draft that reworking feels like a slap in the face of creative prowess. But the reality is that good writing— what’s good, plump, and packed to bursting—requires good work. And a little savoring of that good work.

May you splurge well, in this season of ripening.

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The Resilience of Rooting & Writing

Trees are visible emblems of natures’ steadfast resilience. Weather has literally shaped their eager growth, tempered by light and shadow, while underlying thirst keeps them rooted to the source of their sustenance.

But we often overlook what their mere presence can teach us. If you ever find yourself in need of inspiration, simply look out the window, pause while on a walk, or gaze at the saving grace of a screensaver, and you can read resilience in their forms. Trees teach us of journeys taken without seeming to go anywhere. Their branches bare the arc of seasonal transformation. Their broad canopies remind us how time spreads and expands growth up and outward. Their whip and sway remind us of steadfastness in the face of a harsh firmament, and standing firm.

Writers, too, know something of taking journeys while rooted in one place—planting ideas in stories or poems and growing them on the confines of the page. Our work is shaped by the twists we’ve taken on our life’s journeys, and the turns we take to apply what we learned. Those twists and turns guide our ideas as they branch toward the light of illumination to find form, as we tap into our deepest underlying themes, bolstering stability.

And as we build our writing practice, we rely on support and guidance along the way. Trees have wisdom to share in this department, too. Trees may seem separate, independent, even when filling a forest, yet Peter Wohlleben, in The Hidden ln Life of Trees, writes that they communicate underground through a smart network of roots that entwine and help their neighbors find what they need to survive.

So when you see a tree standing graceful and gnarled, seemingly apart from the rest, remember that they’re not in it alone. Their sensitivity to underground travels & connections help them stand tall as they reach up and beyond themselves, and outward to each other—to grow stronger and more true.

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Writer’s Block-Buster 101: The Fourth Step Is Deepening the Waterway   

Writer’s block can feel personal—as if your writing is giving you the cold shoulder, because you deserve it, you bad writer you. Sound silly? Good. Because you don’t have to take a block so seriously. Sometimes taking it too seriously is part of the problem.

So call it what it is: a block in your thinking. That’s all it is. It may be a fear, a resistance—one that’s been there for a while or popped up yesterday. Either way, that block is a mindset barrier that can be cleared. Use these three steps to work through it:

Identify, lower, dredge. These three steps to channel-clearing mimic the literal act of dredging a waterway, so the flow can go back to normal—or even better than normal—and everything can move freely again.

Here’s a good visualization you can use to get a feel for it: Imagine you’re a dredge-boat captain. You set your craft upon stagnant waters, identify what’s in the way, then go low. Yes, you’re scraping the muck where the bottom feeders lie. That’s how you remove silt and sediment and break the block.

And as you dredge and scrape away, grabbing the gunk, whatever and wherever it is, accepting it for what it is, the flow increases. The channel may even expand and widen.

Then, as you feel that flow moving again, you no longer need to collect the muck. Your priorities shift again.

In that increased flow, find new depths.

Go from freeing the channel from gunk and shallow waters, to deepening the waterway.

Hemingway might say that on your way to those depths, you’re working for what he calls that “one true sentence.” Or it may be one word, then one true phrase, leading to a sentence that brings you to your story’s (or poem’s) true source–and the form it needs to take on the page.

That probably sounds familiar. Even intuitive. Though I’m setting out a step-by-step pattern, I’m not revealing anything new—all I’m doing is bringing your attention to what you already know, and already do.

This is you, shoring up your thoughts, going with that familiar feeling of sorting through the bad material and finding good material, moving through thoughts that slosh about as you write, and again, zeroing in on the good stuff, and this flow of movement.

A part of you knows, in the tips of your fingers on the keyboard, in the synapses of your brain: I’ve been here before. And I know how to test the waters to find that one true word, phrase, or sentence, and use it to go deeper, get to the true source, and clarify my concept. And I can do it again.

The blocks just trick you into thinking you can’t do it again. They may have different names, and come in different shapes and sizes, but they’re blocks just the same.

Just keep working through it, as you’ve done before. Every time you hit a block, follow this pattern of thinking, this process, and you clear a channel for your craft.

Restart, and adjust the flow of your thinking: identify, lower, dredge—then the deepening.

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Writer’s Block-Buster 101: The Third Step Is To Dredge a Channel (Under a Full Moon).

So after you’ve identified your writer’s block and given yourself permission to write the worst stuff you can dream up, do some dredging. Hard to feel good about that? Well, you should. You are doing the hard work of slogging through the muck, to get what’s wedged unwedged, what’s backed up flushed. It’s unglamorous, but necessary. You’re cutting a channel through what’s got you stuck.

Your efforts scribbling might feel feeble, like the efforts of those spindly cranes we all saw clawing at the sandy banks of the Suez Canal to free the 200,000 ton Ever Given cargo ship where it wedged lengthwise in the waterway for over a week (back during the first year of the pandemic).  But that digging wasn’t as futile as it seemed. Take it from the folks on the Ever Given—every little push and pull helped. 

Persist. Do whatever it takes, from digging, pulling, dredging, tugging, reorienting, again and again. And take help from wherever you can get it, and whatever: including the high tide and the full moon, which is what helped the Ever Given get unstuck. Yes, whether you’re a poet or a 200,000 ton cargo ship, the moon, that great influencer, can help free you from what binds you.

And a little necessity doesn’t hurt either. Fortunately you’re not dealing with the pressures of the entire international community expecting their Amazon deliveries on time (and then some). But heck yeah, it’s important to get the flow of your writing back on track so you can keep that supply of good ideas and glorious sentences moving forward, to produce your best work.

Get that inlet between idea and execution free again. You’re cutting and widening the channel between your ideas and the page while holding to the lowered standards you’ve set to keep the flow moving. As William Stafford says:

To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can’t keep from thinking. Maybe I have to settle for an immediate impression: it’s cold, or hot, or dark, or bright, or in between[…] If I put down something, that thing will help the next thing come, and I’m off.

Ah, yes, indeed. It’s as simple and as hard as that: One thing helps the next thing come—and you’re off. “These things, odd or trivial as they may be, are somehow connected,” Stafford adds. “And if I let them string out, surprising things will happen.”

That’s the goal. Dredge out what’s in the way and get traction where it’s needed—not mooring where it’s not. Whether it takes a few minutes, hours, or days, soon, what follows is the payoff you’ve been hoping for: something new.

Right before you, now, is movement. What’s moving the fastest? What’s nimble in the channel before you? Name it. It may be a word or phrase that rings true. An idea that lights up as the words flow. A plot twist, character tension, an unmixed metaphor, the right rhyme the sonnet’s argument turns on.

And here’s some more good news: if it draws you back into your piece, if it helps it make sense, it’s a word or phrase or sentence or idea that’s a part of a whole. It captures something essential about what you’ve been after after all—not just a way back in, but a hint of coherence, a nod towards completion.

Whatever it is that allows you to say “and I’m off,” put it in the place that needs it most. That might be page one, or a link between chapters, or the end of the line.

Then move on to the word, next sentence, and the next. Don’t look back on what blocked you right now—let it float away, towed by tugboats to the Bitter Lakes to meet its fate. Your forward focus is what matters, so you can make sure the channel will be free for the next idea in the supply chain of your writing’s inspiration—and the next, and the next.

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Writer’s Block-Buster 101: The Second Step Is To Lower Your Great Expectations.

Is writer’s block real? There’s no brick wall between you and the page, but the barrier can sure feel as imposing, if only in your imagination. And that makes it real enough. 

If you’re afflicted, then you’re stuck, wordless, idea-less, perhaps with pen and paper in hand. You’ve shown up to the page with the right equipment—but not the right approach.

You’re there to find the best words and ideas and turn them into something that goes somewhere. What else would you want to write–your worst work? Mediocre work? Of course not. But here’s the kicker: when nothing is forthcoming, when you and the blank page are in a staring match, it’s fine to blink. Accept something. Any something. Even mediocre words. Even bad ideas.

So to bust through writer’s block, give yourself permission to lower your great expectations. You need to get your fingers moving. Tickle the keyboard until it giggles up something silly. Until it burps something wretched or embarrassing. Sputters or moans something drab or funky or weird. Great. Tell your keyboard, thanks, I’ll take it. Ask it to cough up some more. And more.

Yup, this is a “shitty” writing phase, though not quite what Ann Lamott talks about in her “shitty first draft” entreaty. A block can happen if you’re on draft one or twenty-one. In fact you don’t even need to be drafting a thing, and poof, there’s a big pre-draft block preventing you from getting to it.

The solution is the same though: lower your high expectations. Even if they’ve been raised because of years of experience, the draft number you’re on, or that good day you had last week. No matter. Drop back to beginner’s mind: anything goes. Return to exploration mode. Get anything down right now.

Even Pip from Dickens’ Great Expectations, who got what he thought he wanted—wealth and education and a name for himself—came to realize that the humble life he lived before achieving all that greatness, which he looked down on back in the day, wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d thought.

So clack away, even if it just feels like typing. It may be just that. But you may later find it’s not nearly as bad as you thought. And there’s something great about that.

What’s the first Writers’ Block Buster? Find out here:

Writer’s Block-Buster 101: The First Step Is To Identify What Got You Stuck.
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Writer’s Block-Buster 101: The First Step Is To Identify What Got You Stuck.

Are you rusty? Maybe it’s been a few days, a few weeks, heck, a few months (dare I say, years?) since you’ve written. And you’ve returned to the keyboard, but something feels funny. You place each index finger, respectively, over the trusty “f” and “j,” then the rest of your digits follow, but settle uneasily. You’re not quite sure you can push down all the way.

Has your keyboard calcified into stone? No, it has not.

But can you really do it? Push through any built-up problems? Return to write something good again? Yes, you can.

You can write even if you’re rusty–or blocked. I’ve done it. My students have done it. My writing friends have done it. Pulitzer Prize winning writers have done it. And you can do it too.

Writers, unlike musicians or dancers, don’t need to literally recondition their muscles for weeks and months to get their technique back. For us, it just takes a little time, and a little attention, to work out the kinks and clear the gunk. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes.

Over the next few weeks, I’m offering a series on the Writers’ Inlet newsletter on how to bust through rust and break through writer’s blocks.

By the end of this series, you’ll have a set of block-buster techniques that will help you clear just about any blockage that stands between you and your muse. Plus, I’ll post each step on www.writersinlet.com, so you can return to review each, and use these block-buster steps to get back to the page any time you feel hindered by a writing practice that’s been out of use.

These tips will help you whenever a blockage starts to build up—or, let’s face it, even after residue has built up over a while.

After you break those blocks I can’t guarantee you’ll go on to write a blockbuster, but you’ll be better able to tap back into the wellspring and reenter that good old flow the way you’ve done before, and will do again. My hope is that your writing will even become more purposeful and focused once you work your way through the steps.

So let’s get started.

Step one: Identify the problem.

When Tin Man needed a little help from Dorothy to get his joints moving after the forest rains did him in, the first thing Dorothy did was oil the rusty hinge of his jaw. Why? He mumbled a directive: Oil can. Mouth.

He needed to open his mouth articulate what was wrong, and what he needed to loosen up next.

Unlike the Tin Man, you don’t need Dorothy. You can do this for yourself.

Ask yourself, what’s got me stuck? Articulate it—or more than one “it.”

If you have a hard time identifying it, look closer. It’s right there, between your fingertips and the keyboard. Name it.

For many folks, it’s fear of failure, or judgement. In the form of self-doubt or jealousy or an attachment to certainly expectations.

Or it may be distraction—spring’s ants in your pants. The dish pile. The never-ending stories in your Netflix queue.

It might be a big life issue—a top fiver: stress of losing a job, loved one, a home (moving), a relationship, your health (or a loved one’s health issues).

Or other life pressures—the kids, the dog, the drip from the ceiling, the call from your long-lost aunt.

It could be the doldrums of the pandemic, or other inner angst that has nothing to do with writing itself. Old patterns like that lurk and murk of depression. That bugaboo of ADD.

You may be transitioning writing phases, from first draft to deep revision. From research, back to the page. And you’re having a hard time getting back into that pen-to-page flow you know and love. The wellspring seems to have dried up in the interim, and you’re anxious about getting it started again.

Or, let’s be honest. Maybe you just don’t feel like it.

Being honest—that’s a big part of this first step.

Now that you’ve identified the problem, what’s next?

Over the next few weeks we’ll discuss ways to ease back into writing when it resists. As Wallace Stevens once said, the best poems resist the intelligence, almost successfully.

The worst parts of your writing practice may try to resist your entreaties to return—almost successfully. But you won’t let those voices be successful. It’s all a matter of mindset.

Have you ever prepared to go swimming, and stood before the water, weighing your two options: ease in or just jump right in? The block-buster steps offer ways to ease. But you can skip all of them at any time.

You know what you really need to do. You go to the diving board, or the raft in the middle of the lake, or the rope swing tied to the tree along the river. You acknowledge the resistance to the chill of the water, then look at the flow of what’s before you, what you really want to be part of, the glinting possibilities undulating before you, and you jump right back in.

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Call On a Poet to Find Your Muse.

Has something like this happened to you? You’re staring at the blank page and it’s winter there. Blank as a fallow field under snow. Everywhere else is spring. The window. The book on your desk by your writing pal. The kittens mewling on your Facebook feed.

Some call it writer’s block but the feeling could be called by other names. Envy. Doubt. Boredom. Impatience. Lack of inspiration, you settle on.

Why does everything else seem so new and your writing, well, it seems so old or trite or simply lacking. Literally.

That answer doesn’t matter. Only the solution to the problem does. You need a fixer. Someone who can bottle what the spring promises and pour it over what’s fallow and frozen on the page. And make something good grow.

You need a muse. They’re mighty hard to find, you’ve heard. But is it true once they come round, writers’ pens glide like blades on ice, like wings in the air? That’s the kind of muse you want.

Poets have those, don’t they? And you know a poet. You text her your deep desire.

How do you find your muse? she repeats back. You call her.

Like, on the phone?

You call her by her many names.

Many names. Okay.

How about the name of your first pet.

Matilda the fish?

The first pet who died on you. Tell me about that pet.

Okay, Ms. Macabre. Still Matilda. She had a rainbow on her back when she died.

Good. Now name your last car.

Ouch. Totaled Taurus.

Nice alliteration. Keep going.

Let me find my pen. Did you know I met my finance at the doctor’s office after that accident?

What’s her name.

Beverly.

What does she call you when it’s just the two of you together in the dark?

Heart sweet. She likes things backwards sometimes. I think there’s a pen here somewhere.

What do you call your heart when she’s gone.

Unsweetened.

The feeling when she’s back.

A giant cookie from the bakery, with frosting. Lots of frosting.

Tell me the name for your favorite cookie during the pandemic.

Lemon meringue. I baked it myself. Grated the lemon rind myself.

What do you call a grated lemon rind.

Wait, I found my pen. Let me write this down. It’s zest. Zest, zest, zest!

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The S.A.D. of Revision and the Light at the End of the Tunnel

My cat is in energizer-bunny mode when she looks out a window these days—nose, face, back, and tail all atwitch with the thrum of what’s stirring under the melting snow. Then she runs to another window, and another. Something is happening out there she can’t get to but gosh darn it she needs to get there.

I feel that stirring, myself. With the change in light and warming temps, the allure of the spring melt is so energizing I’m still on a sunlight high at midnight.

I get a second wind after getting in bed, and blow through a few chapters in the book I’m reading, or dream up a new workshop for fiction writers who want tips on deep revision. Maybe writing about tunneling through the revision mines will help offset the brightness of the sunlight here above ground, I think to myself, while dark is staring at me from the window. But I keep seeing the sunlight of the day, even when my eyes finally close.

I’m no longer dragged down by winter’s drear but I’m still affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder, it’s just taking on new character. Now I’m supercharged by the early spring’s brightness, buoying me to keep working, working, working. And it’s hard to put down my pen.

Is this what migrating birds feel—that push to keep moving? Or the chipmunks burrowing in thawed ground who can’t stop won’t stop. Well, then, I’m in good company.

This desire to work hard may be a familiar feeling to the revisers reading this. But so, too, might the classic S.A.D. of darkness and despair—that desire to push your project away. You may even experience a S.A.D. of revision season, a period when everything in your work is gloom and doom, and it seems like nothing will ever come together. Until it does.

That’s when the conditions change. When you’ve been writing in what might seem like the dark but the light is imperceptibly brighter. And without realizing the exact moment it happens, you’ve worked your way out of a corner, and turned another, and suddenly you’re moving and making and building and the story’s coming together and the revision’s truly working.

That’s because you’ve worked through the darkness, and didn’t stop. The darkness lifted in part because you broke through blocks and made room for the light at the end of the tunnel. When you persist, when you stay attentive and keep the pen moving, the writing moves forward and you do too. It’s is simple and as hard as that.

Soon, you’ll be done—really done—and ready to start a new draft. And the next phase is upon you. Either another revision pass, or new work. It’s almost spring after all. And you’re a writer. Every ending invites you to begin again.

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How To Go With The Ice Flow

My roof is going through a transformation this week: from ice to water. And as icicles shatter on the front stoop, drips patter the porch, and drabs splatter the dining room floors (sigh), I’m cheering on the transformation. Yes, despite dining room dangers, I’m delighting in the thaw.

I’m also listening to a podcast that prompts meditators to visualize a tight place in the body and imagine it shift from ice to water, and water to vapor. My body gets it. I close my eyes, identify that frozen place in my shoulder, and via visualization, slowly unfreeze it, at least a little, sometimes a lot, every time. This metaphor has helped me through the pandemic—and it can help writers through a block, too.

My meditation coach prompts us to notice and become alert to the conditions around the block. Then gently label what we experience—whether tingling, shooting pains, aching or the like. You can do the same for your writing if you get stuck. Identify where the writing isn’t flowing. Where does your pen stop or the editor’s red pen stop you? Then zero in.

Name the experience. Exactly where does the block start. Look closer. The issue may be subtle like an ache—dialogue that drags. A title that doesn’t quite fit. Or you may feel shooting pains and know the problem right away—that character whose goals never go anywhere. So observe and name. Maybe it’s a plot level problem, where a subplot detours, a hole in character development opens up, or inner tension fizzles? If at the level of the sentence, is it a cluster of adverbs, an imprecise verb, a sequence of abstractions? Keep observing the block. Name what you see. Then you’re better able to find the solution.

On our roof, we can reach some places with our roof rake, but not all the tricky corners and steep angles of our 1930s cape cod. Those problem places produce blue-ribbon-winning icicles I would have worshipped as a child. Thick, menacing, harpoon-quality icicles that unhinge themselves and sink into the banked-up snow whale of our yard. That’s where we need to be vigilant. And stay vigilant as the ice melts. Because now we can see gaps in the roof’s flashing where preventative maintenance could have helped. Right above the bucketful of drips in the dining room.

As the literal ice thaws outside, I know that concentrating on the ice dams themselves won’t transform the ice into water vapor before it seeps into the house. But thanks to the frozen places thawing, I not only know the problem and its fix but have a crystal-clear image in my mind of a literal frozen icicle thawing—ice to water—making my meditations even more productive, my shoulders more relaxed, and I’m ready to reach nirvana any day now, I’m sure of it

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