With the change in circumstances that accompany the end of the semester, I find myself at a place where I can try a little different approach to this blog. I want to put more time into a book length project, but I don’t want to post too much from it here.
However, it’s important to practice writing, and not just by throwing words on a page and seeing what sticks. To that end, I’ve picked up Ursula K. LeGuin’s Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. LeGuin is one of my favorite authors, her stories are forward thinking, and her prose is beautiful. Just look at the opening description in The Telling.
My goal is to work my way through LeGuin’s guide while revising (or really finishing) a single short story. I want to see how much the story is transformed when I tend to her suggestions for practice. The story I have chosen to work with is a piece—really a badly assembled skeleton with a lot of loose, flappy, flaking dialogue—called “Old Ghosts”. Here it is:
Old Ghosts
They sat on the log across the stream, each clutching a slender branch with a line tied to the end. I had never seen them before.
The first, a large, greasy man, wore overalls and no shirt. His head covered with a straw hat. The second, hungrier-looking fella wore a white tee with a flannel tied around his waist. A bucket of worms sat between them.
I waved. My right, of course. They were on my property.
“You there!” I called. “How’s the fishin’?”
They nodded. The fat man doffed his hat.
“I said, ‘how’s the fishin’?'”
They ignored me.
“You’re on private property, you know.”
Tee-and-Flannel got a bite. A little tug, a stronger tug, and a trout popped out of the stream. It flailed in the air. The big man punched his shoulder. They continued to act as if I wasn’t there.
“Now, look here,” I called. “I don’t mind you–“
The younger fella released his catch, and the pair sat down on the bank again.
I picked up a stone and skipped it across the water toward them.
“–I don’t mind you–“
“Hey,” Straw Hat called out. “Who are you?” He stood up and pointed at me with a sausage finger.
“I might ask you the same question,” I said. “Since you’re on my property.”
“Excuse me?” he said. “This is my property.” He motioned to his fishin’ buddy. “Get me the rifle, son,” he said. the younger one dropped his makeshift pole and ran up the path.
“You’re gonna get violent?” I asked.
“When you try to steal my land from me, damn right I will,” he said.
“But it’s not your land,” I insisted.
“Like hell,” he said.
I reached down into the water and pulled up a skipping stone. I played a bit of shortstop in high school. I thought I could peg him in the thigh. He was a big target anyway.
Several seconds of glaring silence passed. His boy reappeared with the gun.
“Mister,” I called out. “You touch that gun and I’ll break your hand with this stone.” I palmed it like a baseball.
He grabbed the gun. I chucked the ball at his hand. It hit him square. Then it passed through his hand, his gun, and his son on the other side.
Well, shit.
He raised it and fired. Then he stared. His boy turned white.
“Son–“
“Right through him, Pop, I swear to God.”
I kept walking toward them. They turned and ran. I chased after them, but they disappeared up the path. Somewhere beyond the trees I heard an engine turn over. I dropped into the big guy’s seat on the log. The wood had been worn; it was well used. I looked into the pail. It was empty. Rusted through.
So this is where I sit, waiting for the guy and his kid to come back. Seems like it’s been a while. I should probably head home soon. It’s my property after all.
*****
I’m not sure that the piece has much value—I’m not sure yet what it’s trying to say, but I have a few ideas. It’s part of a collection of gothic tales set in Pennsylvania, USA, but it still needs work.
Before I roll out lesson one, if you’re part of the #WriteLGBTQ and #WritingCommunity groups on Twitter, maybe you’ll join me on this excursion. If you have something you’d like to practice with, let’s practice together! Share your ideas as a response to this post on Twitter! Use the hashtag #steeringthecraft
Lesson #1. Being Gorgeous
LeGuin writes “Part One: Write a paragraph to a page of narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect—any kind of sound effect you like—but NOT rhyme or meter.
I want you to write for pleasure—to play. Just listen to the sounds and rhythms of the sentences you write and play with them, like a kid with a kazoo. This isn’t “free writing,” but it’s similar in that you’re relaxing control: you’re encouraging the words themselves—the sounds of them, the beats and echoes—to lead you on. For the moment, forget all the good advice that says good style is invisible, good art conceals art. Show off! Use the whole orchestra our wonderful language offers us!”
So here’s the line I’m working with from draft one:
They sat on the log across the stream, each clutching a slender branch with a line tied to the end. I had never seen them before.
And here’s my first stab at “being gorgeous”:
A spring wind whipped the woods to life. Daffodils lifted yellow faces to the sun, and blossoms blown from the trees speckled the stream in pinks and whites. Mountain ridge snowmelt strengthened the headwaters. The stream swelled; muddy banks submerged, lost until summer. The peepers chirped away the sun each night. Bullfrogs croaked. Little furry things scuttled beyond the rushes. Snakes slithered over bent logs and wound their way across the surface. Shad and trout returned. And with them came the people.
I happened upon a pair the other day, just after dawn. They set up camp on a fallen oak, a beaten metal pail between them. The older man was scruffy; his hat brim frayed from weather. His trousers were patched in one knee, the waistband taut around his girth.
“Like this,” he said, and cast his line again.
The waif was a scrawnier, smaller version of his teacher. From the muddy, waterlogged state of his overalls and the dirt on his face and hands, it seemed the natural lack of grace in boys that age had already taken its toll that morning.
The fishing rods seemed antique, perhaps forced back into service? Bamboo rods had gone out of style even before I was a boy, and their lines were too visible, too thick to be modern.
Works Cited
Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story (p. 8). HMH Books. Kindle Edition.
Nicanor Abbott 