Writing To Be Read

            As writers, the first question we have to ask ourselves is who are we really writing for?  Are we writing just because we love to write?  I’m sure that some of us are, and that’s fantastic, but most of us have hopes of someone reading our writing beside ourselves.  The next step then, is to determine who our audience will be.  In some cases, that’s a fairly easy thing to do, but in other situations, it can be a little tricky.To a some extent, the genre that you are writing in will determine who our readers will be. 

            For instance, if you are writing children’s books, then you know what age range you are writing for and you wouldn’t want to make your writing too technical or your scenarios too complicated.  On the other hand, you don’t want to talk down too much to your young readers either.  Kids are sharp and they can learn a lot from reading, but you want to talk straight with them; tell it like it is, don’t sugar coat it.  Children will be quick to identify a snow job when they see it, so don’t even try to snow them.  Tell it in terms that they can understand, but at the same time you must remember that they sometimes a lot more than they are given credit for. 

            It gets a little more complicated when you’re writing for adults.  In most of the fiction genres, the content will be determined by the genre that you pick.  So, how do you know what type of person reads science fiction, or horror, or romance?  You don’t, but each genre does have a few generalizations that you can usually assume safely about its readers.  For instance, as a general rule, romance readers are female.  That’s not to say that a male won’t ever pick up a romance novel, but the majority of romance readers are female, so romance will have to have a lot of mushy love scenes, with colorful language interspersed: “Her heart throbbed as he traced down from her cheek to her collarbone with his strong, calloused hands.” 

            With horror, we can assume that the reader is looking for a thrill, so building suspense and then delivering a climax that does not disappoint is vital.  Using very descriptive language to help the reader picture creative monsters or to show just how evil the villain really is can be one way to do this: “Yellow slime oozed from his lumpy, flab as the monster slithered toward her.”

            Clear descriptions are crucial in science fiction, where made up people and locations will not be familiar to readers until you make them familiar.  It can be helpful to relate the imaginative place or item with something or someplace similar that would be more familiar to the reader: “The thing looked like a blender gone haywire, with different colored tubes and wires coming out of it every which way.”  Of course, clear descriptions are important in any writing, but they take on a new importance when the circumstances and locations exist only in the mind of the writer. 

            The language that you use can make all the difference.  In the above science fiction example, new and unique places and situations may require that you create new words to describe things more accurately than is possible with words you will find in a dictionary or thesaurus.  Stephen King has been known to do this in his novels.  Were he to write a sci-fi novel about Mars, in using their language, he might create new words and then refer to them as ‘Martian-speak’.  (The ‘-speak’ thing has always been one of my favorites.)  Science fiction features all kinds of made up gadgets and gizmos that are open for the author to use made up words to name or describe them.

            With non-fiction, identifying your audience might be a bit easier.  If you are writing a simple how-to article to inform laymen as to how to perform a certain task, using a bunch of technical jargon is sure to loose your readers before they even get started.  On the other hand, technical language may be quite appropriate if you are writing an article for a professional community that would be familiar with such terms. Take for example, “The biota exhibited a one hundred percent mortality response.”  In an article written for the scientific community, there may be no problem with this sentence, but in a piece written for the general public, the language may be above the knowledge of the reader and so the reader goes on to something else.  It would have been much better to have simply stated, “All the fish died.”  This, the reader from the general public can easily comprehend and they may go on to read the rest of the article.   The main purpose of writing the article, after all, is to explain something to your readers, not to prove how smart you are.  

            It all goes to show, once again, how important word choice is.  Knowing who you are writing for only assists in that choice.  By identifying who your audience is most likely to be, you can narrow down word choice and be more likely to write something that will both capture and hold the attention of your readers.   

            Just for fun, I will conclude today’s post with a poem that I wrote, in which I used a word that I created myself.  This poem is humorous, but I never said that science fiction was the only genre in which made up words could be used.  If I did my job right, you won’t have any trouble figuring out what a Poker-Joe is.

To the Slow Motorist 

I don’t mind if you want to be a Poker-Joe,

It’s fine for you to go so slow,

Just pull over and let me go.

It’s not that I mind being last,

Or even that I want to go so fast,

Just please, pull over and let me past.

It won’t hurt you to let me ahead,

My speed will not be in the red,

Just enough to get there before I’m dead.

Maybe you have got all day,

But I don’t.  That’s why I say,

Get your car out of my way!

Copyright ©2009  Kaye Lynne Booth 

            Inspiration.  It’s that elusive little thing that prompts us to create.  Whether you’re an artist, a musician, a dancer or a writer, inspiration is where your work originates.  Inspiration comes in many forms.  It is different for each one of us, but without it, we would stagnate and be unable to produce anything of quality. 

            In his blog post “31 Ways to Find Inspiration”, author Leo Babauta lists many ideas for where we might look for inspiration, including: blogs, (such as this one),  books, overheard dialog, art, music, magazines, nature, children, newspapers, dreams and people watching, to name a few.  These can all be good sources of inspiration, and we need to have many in mind.   The source of inspiration for one person won’t be the same for the next, likewise the source of inspiration that works once may not always work again, even for the same person.

            The one thing that I’ve found to be consistent about inspiration is that the best writing comes when we are inspired by something that we feel passionately about.  (This is probably why there are so many love poems and love stories out there.  It can’t be denied that people in love, or who have lost a love are very passionate and feel the emotions of love and loss very strongly.)  When we are emotionally moved by something, the words can flow out onto the page almost effortlessly and the writing is usually good, sometimes even exceptional.  In fact, it is very difficult to write about something that does stir emotion within us, and our readers can tell the difference, because it is obvious. 

            For instance, if you Google my name on the Internet, the very first thing that comes up is a poem that I sent in to Poetry.com several years ago.  This is really unfortunate, because it is not one of my better works.  It is just a poem that I threw together on the spur of the moment when they were looking for Halloween poems.  I wasn’t really inspired to write it and you can see this as you read it:

Halloween. Halloween.

                                                           Ghosts and ghouls.
                                                          Goblins and dwarfs.
                                                        Witches and black cats.
                                                          Bats and broomsticks.

Halloween. Halloween.
It’s the best time of year.
You can be anything you want to
And no one thinks your strange.

Angels and devils.
Monsters and heroes.
Ghosts from the past,
Sometimes distant, sometimes near.

Halloween. Halloween.
There is nothing to fear.
It’s so much fun
To make each other scream.

Kaye Lynne Booth            

           Sort of blah, huh?  This is definitely not one of my best works and quite frankly, I’m sorry that this is the first thing that comes up under my name.  I really didn’t think that they would take it, but that is what I get for submitting to a vanity publisher.  (Sometimes we writers will do anything to get published.)  Using this as an example, you can see that this piece doesn’t pack a whole lot of punch.  As a reader, you can not detect a whole lot of emotion in it, because I did not feel passionate about what I was writing.  I sent it in and then forgot about it, to be quite honest, because I did not feel very strongly about it.           

            You can see the obvious difference when you read a piece that the author was emotional about.  It is easy to see when something has been written from the heart.  Last Christmas my daughter sent me a portrait of my two granddaughters holding hands and looking at each other.  They are in two cute little chiffon type dresses, with bare feet and each had a headband of roses around her head.  Looking at that picture, the phrase ‘two little fairy princesses’ popped into my head and I knew there was a poem there.  I was inspired.  I thought about it for a day or two and then I sat down for about fifteen minutes and wrote the following poem.  As you read this, you will see not only that it is of much better quality than my previous example, but you will be able to tell that it came from my heart; that it was inspired with feelings and emotion; that the author was passionate about what she was writing.  In this example you should be able to see that the feeling is what makes the difference, and that’s what inspiration is all about. 

Two Little Faerie Princesses

By Kaye Lynne Booth 

Two little faerie princesses

Dancing in the night,

A flitting and a fluttering

Making the forest bright.

They illuminate the evergreens

As they dance from limb to limb.

Happy little faerie princesses,

Their auras never dim.

With them, the forest is never dreary

They dance and sing all night.

The forest creatures never have a fear

Because of faerie light.

When dawn arises in the east,

They rub their little faerie eyes

And one last flitting faerie dance they do

Before saying their goodbyes.

They flutter to their faerie beds

High in the trees and then,

After a day of restful slumber,

Two little faerie princesses dance again.

(This poem is dedicated two my two granddaughters, Sheryle and Patience)

 Copyright ©2009  Kaye Lynne Booth 

Babauta, Leo. “31 Ways to Find Inspiration for Your Writing”. 3 March 2008. Write to

       Done. 12 Feb. 2009.

http://writetodone.com/2008/03/03/31-ways-to-find-inspiration-for-your-writing/     

            What is writing, except putting a bunch of words on a page?   Well, yeah, but there’s more to it than that.  It’s the words that you choose to put on that page that are important, because it’s the words that tell the story or get the point across.  Using the wrong words can mean that your readers won’t get your point or that they will loose interest and not even finish reading the piece.  Using the right words can mean portraying a clear, concise point or writing a story that your readers will want to finish.  So, how do we know what the right words are?

            Words can be tricky little things to be sure and a writer’s best tool may be a thesaurus.  The first step to choosing the right words, is to decide exactly what it is that you are trying to say and then saying it in language that your readers will understand and be able to easily follow.  There are some writers that think that they have to use big, fancy words to impress their audience and make everyone think that they are so very smart, but throwing out a bunch of big fancy words could be on of the quickest ways to loose your readers, because people won’t continue to read what they don’t understand.  For example:

                        It is thought in some quarters that fraternities do not contribute to campus life as much as expectations have set to be required.

                     Could just as easily be written as:

                        Some people think that fraternities do not contribute as much as they should to campus life.

                     Or in an even better example is given in Readings for Writers, 6^th Ed., by Jo Ray McCuen and Anthony C. Winkler:

                        “It is absolutely necessary for the person employed as a marine fireman to give the matter of steam pressure his undivided attention at all times.”

                      This means the same as:

                        “The fireman must keep his eye on the steam gauge”

            This is something that has been a problem for me, because I tend to be long winded, even on the written page, but it is more than a matter of cutting out all of the unnecessary words, it involves word choice, as well.  To simply remove unnecessary words on your revision could make for some very dull and boring writing indeed.  As a writer, you need to speak eloquently without being overly wordy, so choosing your words wisely can make all of the difference in allowing your writing to grab the reader’s attention and hold it.

            Words that do not serve an obvious purpose within the sentence and those that talk above the audience should definitely be avoided, as should words that carry with them little or no meaning as descriptors, such as slang adjectives like cool, smooth and nice.  These words are used so often and applied to so many different circumstances that their original force has been lost and they really describe nothing at all. 

            The goal should be to put your readers in the story and allow them to visualize what it is that you are describing.  Words are the foundation of a writer’s work and the material that is used to build it must be chosen carefully.  Colorful, descriptive words are one of the best materials that can be chosen, because these words are intended to create a picture or stir emotion.  Why have a heart that beats when you can have one that pounds or flutters, or even throbs, which enable the reader to relate to the feeling of that heart in their own chest?  Everyone knows that heat is hot, but it takes on another aspect totally when it is blistering, which makes you almost feel the pain, or suffocating, which makes you long for a dip in a cool pool or perhaps just steamy, where you might almost reach for a towel to wipe away the sweat from your brow.  Some words carry with them certain connotations in our minds.  Advertisers take advantage of this knowledge and associate their products with words that they believe will have pleasant and desirable associations in the minds of their consumers.  If writing a work that has the purpose of stirring emotion, emotionally packed words can be very effective.   

            Poets know all about this concept, as poetry requires that you strike chords of emotion with very few words.  (Which is not to say that there are not some very long poems to be found.  Some are even of epic proportions, as are the classics, such as The Illiad and The Aeneid, proving that this is the form in which poetry was born and shorter poems are, but literary evolution.)  Minimalist poetry and flash fiction narrow the boundaries even further, requiring the author to focus on saying as much as possible in the absolute minimum number of words.   This can be a very tricky thing to do.  A writing exercise that can be very illuminating as to just how difficult this can be is to write a minimalist poem, or even a Haiku, which limits the number of syllables instead of words.  Try it and you’ll see what I mean.  To this entry, I’d like to share a poem that I feel uses words that are colorful and emotionally packed to portray the feelings that it carries.  Although it is not a minimalist poem, it is rather short and I think that it carries a big impact.

A Single Heartbeat 

A single heartbeat.

Alone on a deserted street,

Utterly desolate in solitude,

Overwhelming grief and despair

Anger, rage, crying out into the night

For that which was lost,

Stolen away in the darkness.

No one to help,

Nowhere to turn,

Pleas heard only by a lone gravestone.

No purpose left

No reason to continue on

The end only a single squeeze away.

A single heartbeat.

Copyright ©2009  Kaye Lynne Booth 

McCuen, Jo Ray and Anthony C. Winkler. Readings for Writers, 6^th Ed. San Diego:     Harcourt  

         Brace Jovanovich,1989.

            I remember the day when all my work was written in longhand, with a pen and paper before I sat down to peck away on a manual typewriter, with plenty of white-out on hand, until I had a manuscript that was ready to be edited.  Then, after numerous revisions, which all required retyping, eventually I would come out with something that resembled a submitable manuscript, which I would then stuff into a manilla envelope with ample postage and a S.A.S.E. and send off to possible magazines or publications that just might be interested in what I had written.  More often than not, I would either recieve a rejection slip, usually with nothing constructive as to why this piece wasn’t right for their publication, or months would go by with no response at all.  Okay, so I’ve really dated myself here.  Just remember that with age is supposed to come wisdom.

            My point here is that times have changed and things are very different for writers today.  While I don’t know that it’s any easier to get your work accepted, it is much easier to open up the laptop or switch on the pc and type out a piece, knowing that if something needs changing, a few clicks of the keypad and the desired revision is done; no whiteout, no retyping the whole thing, just simple edits where they are required.  We even have spell check to find our mistakes for us, although it can miss things, so a good proof reading is still advised.  If you think a piece will sound better in a different voice, you can make a new document with a simple copy and paste, and then make the needed changes and compare the two versions side by side to determine which one you like the best.  Submissions are easier, as well.  Instead of sending everything off via snail mail, many publications and publishers accept electronic submissions; as simple as putting an attachment on an e-mail and sending it off.

            Computers and the Internet have brought about these changes which make our lives as writers a lot easier.  Their rapid development have also opened up new avenues with which we might get our work published.  Market information and submission requirements can be found at our fingertips, through websites such as write4kids. You can get published fairly easily by meeting a few simple guidelines through electronic publishers, such as Triond, Field Report and ehow.  Newsletters packed with loads of information about the current markets that can be delivered right to our inbox, such as elance, FundsforWriters and Writing4Dollars.  Electronic media has created new markets that didn’t exist in the past.  E-zines, writing social networks, blogs, (like this one), and self publishers, such as Infinity Publishing which produces AuthorNation.com are new and exciting avenues where we can publish our writing electronically and have it read throughout the world. 

            What’s difficult today is finding the avenues that will pay off for you.  If you’re writing just for the love of writing, then any of the above mentioned places to publish will do, just choose the ones that meet your personal preferences or dabble in them all.  However, if you’re trying to supplement your income, you have to be a little more discrete.  Electronic publishers do pay if your writing generates enough traffic, and there are blogs like this one, that also pay in accordance with the traffic generated. (You can get your own blog here, on the topic of your choice by clicking on the link on my About the Author page.)  For better money, you might try subscribing to one or more of the writing market newsletters, which list markets that are currently accepting subscriptions or freelance opportunities that are currently available.  Often, to apply for the freelance jobs, you must follow their link to their site and make a bid on the position of interest.

            While it is easier to get published in e-zines than it is in good, old fashioned magazines, most of them are low budget, (or no budget), so they don’t pay a lot, if anything at all. They are excellent sources for getting your work out there and building a readership and are fairly easy to locate submission guidelines by simply logging onto the main page of the site. Even though they don’t generate an income, the non-paying options, such as social networks and self publishing sites do have advantages as a means to an end.  These sites can be used to build a readership, make connections with others that might be beneficial to the production or promotion of your writing, and direct people to other sites where your work can be viewed.  Many of you may have found your way here through one of the many social networks in which I have membership, through a personal message or the link posted on my page.  If that’s the case, then I’m probably not telling you anything that you don’t know already. 

            The bottom line is that the Internet has opened up many avenues by which you can get your writing out there and maybe even make a little money while you’re at it.  This doesn’t mean that traditional publishing no longer has a place in the writing world, but even traditional publishers and their submission guidelines are easier to find on the Internet.  Of course, the downside might be that the Internet opened up these avenues to everyone, so there is probably a lot more competition today than there was in the pre-Internet era.  The sites, newsletters, and self-publishers that I’ve mentioned here are by no means all that are available, but they will give you some good places to start.  Good luck and happy writing!   

Early Morning 

Birds chittering in the trees, interrupting the quiet solitude. The sun edging it’s way over the horizon, replacing the early morning chill with warmth.The wind whispers an early morning greeting through the pines.Golden blades of grass shush in the breeze, bending low to the ground,Then rising and stretching to greet the sun once again.Dewy moisture slowly dissipating as the air warms and the day brightens.

            Why do we write?  The answer to this will be different for every individual, but most of us, who call ourselves writers would probably say that we write because we have something to say.  Some of the luckier writer types can even say that they write to make a living, and hopefully most would say that they write because it is what they love to do.

            Recently, I have discovered another reason to write.  Writing is supposed to evoke emotion; love, hate, pain, despair, joy, anger, fear; all of the emotions that we feel most intensely come out in our writing.  For me, this is true, especially with my poetry.  I find that the things I write about are the things that stir the strongest emotions within me and for several months after the loss of my son, it seemed that was all that I could write about.  It’s not surprising, since it occupied my every waking thought, as well as my dreams.  I missed him so much, (and still do), and the pain was so wrenchingly deep that I needed to express my feelings to others, and since I’m a writer, writing was the natural avenue in which to do this.

            I felt the need to express my feelings of grief so deeply that writing became more than just a way to express myself.  It became a sort of therapy for me; a catharsis, if you will.  I found that my writing was an outlet for all of those emotions that were riding just on the edge, threatening to overflow and pour out onto those around me, especially at times when I found myself in  public and it would not have been appropriate for me to allow the flood gates to flow freely.  At those times when I had to hold things back, I found that I felt relieved when I could get where I could let my feelings flow out onto the page, even if what I wrote was very personal and I would probably never share what I had written  with anyone else.  More often than not though, my emotions expressed themselves in the form of a poem.

            I guess, now that I think about it, I’ve been using writing as therapy for many years.  I can think of several times when I was angry or hurt and I wrote a letter to the person that had caused my pain, with no intention of ever sending it, but just as a way to get my feelings out.  When you put your feelings down on paper, sometimes you find that you have feelings that you didn’t even know that you had.  When they are all there staring back off the page at you, it forces you to acknowledge and deal with them, whereas if you keep them all inside, it’s easy to deny that they are even there.  Just writing them down can make you feel better and helps to put them in perspective.

            I would have to say that I am not the only one that uses my writing as therapy.  I think that there are a lot of people out there that use writing in this way.  Keeping a journal or diary is a pretty common practice and a form of writing that must be a means of sorting out one’s thoughts and feelings, because no one else reads it.  How can you claim expression for any other purpose in something that is intended only for the author’s eyes and no one else? 

            Today, the Internet has brought journaling to the public domain in the form of blogging.  Although not all blogs are personal daily journals, (this one included), there are many out there that are just that.  I have one that is only available to my friends and family on Windows Live Spaces, although I do not make daily entries and I find that what I do post there is mostly my poetry, which expresses my feelings of the moment, rather than journal entries.  I can’t imagine doing a daily journal blog that was available to the public, because I don’t think that my life is that exciting.  No one wants to hear about my latest trip to the grocery store or the laundry-mat.  I guess some people do though and if that is their way of expressing themselves, then far be it from me to stop them.

            As a reader, you can tell when something has been written from the heart.  It is obvious when the emotions on the page have been written as an expression of the feelings within, because this is writing that has passion.  I think that the writing that stems from these intense emotions is better writing than someone trying to write about something that they do not feel strongly about.  So, don’t hesitate to put your feelings down on the page.  You will feel better for it and probably be a better writer because of it. 

            As an example of therapeutic writing, I would like to close this blog entry with one of the dozens of poems that came out of my grief.  Whether you like it or not, you will be able to see that it was written from my heart.  I know that it was helpful to my healing for me to write it.  Am I a better writer for letting my emotions flow through my pen?  I think so, although I have been told that rhyming poetry is not in fashion today, I like traditional rhymes and much of my poetry does rhyme. But, I’ll let you all decide for yourselves.

Life Without You 

When I sit down to write

My mind is just a blur.

I listen to our music

But the sounds are not as pure.

The colors aren’t as bright

Without you in my life.

My days are filled with emptiness,

Wondering and strife.

You probably never realized

How much you meant to me.

From where you’re standing now

I’m sure that you can see.

You turned my world upside-down

When you chose to leave this place.

I watch your slide show constantly

I can’t bear not to see your face.

And yet it hurts so badly

To know that this is the only view

I’ll ever have, I’ll never

Again see the real you.

I’ll never get to hug you

Or share a favorite song

Those days are gone forever

You didn’t even say so long.

You’re all that I can think about

The tears so freely flow

All I can do is keep on asking

Why you had to go.