I’m at the half way point of LeGuin’s Steering the Craft. This week: adjectives and adverbs. This is a beautiful little chapter, neatly summarizing a writer’s relationship to these parts of speech in what I think are very clear terms:
“Adjectives and Adverbs are rich and good and nourishing. They add color, life, immediacy. They cause obesity in prose only when used lazily or overused.
When the quality that the adverb indicates can be put in the verb itself (they ran quickly = they raced) or the quality the adjective indicates can be put in the noun itself (a growling voice = a growl), the prose will be cleaner, more intense, more vivid.” (43)
These sentences capture the contrast that writers often feel about these words: we are told to reduce them, cut them—do anything except use them—then we are reminded that the English lexicon has a rich array of words for capturing nuance so we should be fearless in their employ. But that second sentence captures the issue: not all adjectives and adverbs are equal. We should discern which to use based on the needs of our ideas, a task that takes time and care.
Her exercise is this: “Write a paragraph to a page (200–350 words) of descriptive narrative prose without adjectives or adverbs. No dialogue. The point is to give a vivid description of a scene or an action using only verbs, nouns, pronouns, and articles (45)”. She recommends that this work be done at home instead of in a writing group because of its difficulty.
So today I’m giving “Old Ghosts” the chop… kind of. Ins tead of completely new text, I’m revising old, hunting for adjectives and adverbs in the first part of the piece, and in the process searching for the right nouns and verbs. I’ll add a caveat. My priority will be on narrative, not dialogue, but I might add or cut a bit there as well.
*****
Old Ghosts
Clay thought his life ecclesiastical. He woke to the rooster’s crow. Fed the hens first, goats second—while he had them. In their absence, he made breakfast. Well, Clara was gone, wasn’t she? She couldn’t make his meals. Dwight, his nephew, managed the fields. Smarter than his father. He’d inherit the whole patch. Just as well. Clay had lost Clara, but he’d thrown Junior away. Junior lived in New York; they never talked. The pill tasted bitter, but Clay swallowed it every day. Afternoons belonged to the garden. He planted less each spring. Less planted, less to harvest. Less to can. Clara liked canning; he liked eating. Sometimes, after chores, he fished. The stream in the hollow beckoned. Light played on the water. Herons dropped in for trout. Well, so did he. Yes, everything had a season, and work was sacred, he still believed.
He meandered that afternoon, pole over his shoulder, tackle box in hand. Daffodils lifted their faces to the sun; wind-blown blossoms speckled the stream in pink and white. Same every year, the colors of Clara’s flowerbeds. Mums, begonias, pansies, snapdragons—he’d neglected them in the three years since. The beds had grown patchy: wild in some places, barren in others. Yes, he would have to tend them better. She would have long already chastised him for neglect. From the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of black. A darting form. He turned. Nothing.
“You are indeed losin’ it,” he announced. “Too much nostalgia. Not enough work.” He hoped it wasn’t a bear. His rifle sat secure and useless in the den, locked in the cabinet Clara insisted he buy.
The stream burbled and played. He listened to it through the trees long before he saw it. Then a glimpse, another through a break in the mountain laurel, and the trail followed the water’s edge. Snowmelt strengthened the headwaters, submerging the banks until summer. Clay would stay until the peepers chirped away the sun. So much of life was hiding. Bullfrogs croaked. Furry things scuttled beyond the rushes. Snakes slithered over logs and wound across the water. Shad and trout darted beneath the ripples. Life lived just out of view.
A brown shape passed behind the dogwoods on the other side. Clay blinked. Deer? Maybe people? It better not be people. This was his land, bought and paid for with hard cash and forty-some years of blood and tears and sweat.
When he arrived at his fishing spot, Clay found it already occupied. A father and son from the look. The waterlogged overalls and dirty face suggested the boy’s natural lack of grace. Clay pictured him tumbling off a slippery bit of trail, or sliding sideways off a rock on the upstream crossing. He was fawnish, leggy and stumbling against the world, a lot like Junior used to be. He held a bamboo rod—an antique. They had gone out of style when Clay was a boy.
His portly father sat on a log, baiting his hook. Sweat beads dripped down his face, despite his straw hat. He wiped his hand on a pantleg. They shadowed each other. The boy had his father’s round nose and basset hound eyes. The elder was a worn and overfed version of the younger.
“Like this,” he said, and cast his line. The boy watched, then pulled his line in and recast.
“Better,” his father said.
Clay waved.
“You there!” He called. “How’s the fishin’?”
END OF ADJECTIVE & ADVERB REVISION
In the old days—Clay laughed ruefully at the idea of old days—he and Junior skipped stones from time to time. He taught the boy to select the flattest stones. To flick his wrist just so on the throw—spin was everything to the skip. Skipping was an art. You had to graduate from the hollowed out bowl-sound of a plopping rock to the whispering brush of six or seven taps before the stone slipped under water for good. He selected a stone from the bank and skipped it. A five-hopper. Not bad. Perhaps he had only shown the boy once or twice. It felt like more.
They nodded. The fat man doffed his hat.
“I said, ‘how’s the fishin’?'”
They ignored me. The wind blew gently. The stream burbled. A woodpecker pecked a poplar. I could think of no earthly reason they should ignore me, so I called out.
“You’re on private property, you know.”
It was true. I hunted the woods and still cleaned the carcasses in the shed behind the stone cottage. Fished the stream and scaled and cooked that fish on red coals. Cut down the trees to keep the cottage warm in winter, to say nothing of cooking my meals. Cleared the dead wood, picked wild raspberries, planted the garden. Drove the stakes tied with white cloth to mark the corners. I worked it; it was mine.
“It’s disrespectful of you—”
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.
He thought himself patient about most things in life; like when Clara had come up with the cancer and the doctors hemmed and hawed more than he cared for, he had been patient with them, though Clara’s bony hand on his had done much ’til it couldn’t anymore; and he had been patient with Junior, who hated farmin’ from the start alright, but loved the theatre so much that Clay and Clara had given up whole evenings to watch four years’ worth of school productions, which hadn’t gotten them anything but a visit from Markley come up over the hill, bitchin’ that his boy and Junior were makin’ hog sounds in the loft and threatenin’ to sue over Lord knows what, that had required patience; even when the boy came into the hospital in mascara and lipstick like a red light hussy he had’t yelled or nothin’ just told him to go home and clean up ‘fore his dyin’ mama saw it, and that was that forevermore; but now here this bulbous man and his ragamuffin ilk sat on his log on his stream on his property casting lines and takin’ his trout without the slimmest bit o decency to say “hello, how do you do?” or even recognize that Clay had worked that land for damn near fifty years and who were they to come replacin’ him since he wa’n’t dead yet nor read his name in the obituaries like he ‘spected to one day.
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.”
The shotgun crack sent a flock of geese honking skyward. Silence slipped behind them. Suddenly I saw two Lenape women on the opposite bank: one bore a basket of plants, the other filled a clay bowl with water. A column of revolutionaries drank before marching on, muskets perched on their slumping shoulders. A weary-faced grandfather joined the man and boy. A teenager draped in a saggy black clothes sat on a log, a pistol in his hand.
A stone skipped toward the woman, its whispering hits ending in a plop. She froze. Keen eyes scanned the banks. Across the stream, a demon—a crow-colored man—brooded on fallen log suspended over the water. He hadn’t noticed her, but he hadn’t thrown the rock.
Two boys in blue skipped stones upstream.
“Four,” the taller one said glumly. He chewed a bit of honeysuckle as the other boy skipped his stone.
“Five! Ha!”
“Best of five?”
Behind them the colonel coughed. “You boys don’t want to give away our position I hope?” The men snapped to attention.
“I didn’t think so.” He scanned the water. A father and son fished on the other side, but neither paid them any mind. “You might be lucky today, but luck runs out. Don’t waste it on this.” The men—barely men, the colonel knew—scurried back to camp.
Everything converged. The women retreated into the wild. The soldiers marched onward. Grandfather, son, and grandson cast their lines as one. The boy blew his head off.
I dropped to my knees. Clutched my chest. Sweat tickled my nose. I hoisted myself up with my walking stick. They were gone—all of them. The stream dribbled along without a burble. The wind had calmed. No birdcalls. No rustling leaves. Scared, I swore to write down my experience. Just had to get home. I staggered. Shock—I’m sure it was. Yes. It was shock.
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 Clay stood on the bank, skipping stones like he did when he was a boy, like he did when he taught his son, waiting for the guy and his kid to come back. He considered going home, but opted to wait. It was his property, after all. He skipped a mother stone.
“Six hopper.” The sun warmed his face. The stream burbled along.
*****
Works Cited
Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. HMH Books. Kindle Edition.
Nicanor Abbott 