Sunday Style: Beginnings and Endings February 7, 2010

I didn’t manage to post a Sunday Style last week — I was wiped out from my four-week intensive memoir/personal essay workshop with Lisa Romeo. Our last week was about beginnings and endings. One of the key points for me about beginnings is to start in the middle. Forget all the set-up at the front, you can go back and fill in later. Instead, begin in the action where you will grip the reader.  Check out these first sentences, they drop you right in the action:

After two nights in a row of insomnia, I finally got to bed the other night at a reasonable hour, only to be shaken awake at midnight by my 15-year-old son. My first thought was that we had an intruder, and I reached for the tennis racket I keep by my bed in case I needed to kill someone. “No, no, Mom, I just can’t sleep,” he cried out plaintively. (Anne Lamott, What She Gave)

***

Her name was Ann, and we met in the Port Authority Bus Terminal several Januaries ago. I was doing a story on homeless people. She said I was wasting my time talking to her; she was just passing through, although she’d been passing through for more than two weeks. To prove to me that this was true, she rummaged through a tote bag and a manila envelope and finally unfolded a sheet of typing paper and brought out her photographs. (Anna Quindlen, Homeless)

Both of these show how when a writer jumps right in, the reader wants to follow. And, not to mention the tennis racket detail. That is priceless!

And, on the other side, don’t write past the ending. When you’re revising, ask yourself: did your essay actually stop a paragraph or a sentence before this ending?

Here’s an example from one of my in-progress essays:

For the sake of this other, mystery mother, I wipe down the counters not once but twice. The lemon scent from the wipes stings my eyes. I am careful to place my used paper towels in the trash can.

I hope that somehow following her instructions will help.

This is a good example of where less might be more. Do I really need that final sentence? After feedback from my instructor, Lisa, and my writer-friend, Jenni, I don’t think I need that final sentence. It’s a case of writing past the end. Try re-reading this ending and leave out the last sentence. What do you think? Now try it with your own writing –  maybe the beginning is really the end, or maybe your last parapgraph should really be your first? Maybe not, but if you mix it up and try, you’re likely to find out a few things in the process that will help your writing in the end.

Lisa’s workshop was excellent. She’s offering more online workshops in the near future. For information, check out her blog here.

Essay in Portland Family January 31, 2010

I have an essay in Portland Family’s February issue (page 8). This essay, Number of Pregnancies? Three. Live Births? Two, is about my experience having a tubal pregnancy about four years ago. It was good to write about and good to re-read the essay.

When it happened, I remember my dad’s friend Jin saying that people have miscarriages and lose babies more than we know. It’s one of those things that we don’t talk about, I guess. The editor at Portland Family mentioned the same thing when she accepted this piece. I know that writing about losing a pregnancy was healing for me; I hope that maybe other women who read my essay will find some solace in a shared experience.

Image courtesy of Portland Family.

Q & A with author Gayle Forman January 26, 2010

I came across Gayle Forman’s most recent novel, If I Stay, by chance thanks to the blogsphere. And, I’m so glad I did. I read this heartbreaking, funny and thoughtful YA novel in one day (a record for me). The story is about a high school girl named Mia who lives with her mom, dad and younger brother in a small town in Oregon. She’s a gifted cellist and has a boyfriend who plays in a band. Everything changes for Mia one day when her family goes out for a drive in the snow; If I Stay is about the choice Mia must make.

Intrigued by the story, the connection to my home state of Oregon and by Gayle’s gift as a YA novelist, I reached out to see if she’d be willing to have a virtual interview. Read on to find out more about her experiences writing this novel, her thoughts on YA and also key details about who she is — including her astrological sign! Gayle will be stopping by to respond to questions, so please be sure to post your thoughts in the comments for this post.

If I Stay is such a captivating story as well as an emotional one. What originally brought this story into your mind?

It’s partially based on a true event, a real accident, that left me wondering what would you do if your family had been obliterated in an accident like that, and you yourself were hovering between life and death and were aware of what had happened to your family. If you could choose to go with your family—to die—or to stay, what would you do? I thought about that for years and years and then out of the fog of that persistent question, one day, this 17-year-old cello player arrived to answer the question for me.

Did you always know what Mia’s choice would be, or did that change as you wrote the book?

I didn’t know until about halfway through the book what her choice would be. I knew when I started writing that her decision would be the point of the book, but I wasn’t sure whether she’d live or die until I was deep into her story.

What kind of research did you conduct to make this story as real as possible (e.g., did you spend time at a hospital, did you attend cello concerts, etc.)?

The majority of the research falls into two categories: medical and musical. I’m lucky in that I have a friend who is an emergency-room doctor, so I called her up a bunch of times and interviewed her about the kinds of injuries Mia would’ve sustained, how the medics would’ve talked, treated her on the scene, etc. How the surgery would’ve gone. I didn’t visit any hospitals, but I’ve spent time in enough waiting rooms and ICUs that apparently, I’ve absorbed those details. When Mia showed up in my head as a cellist, that required a huge amount of research because I know nothing about the cello or about classical music. All the indie-rock references in the book, those came naturally to me. Those are my tastes. My husband is a musician. Easy. But the cello I had to research. I mostly listened to a lot of music: Yo-Yo Ma, Alisa Weilerstein, Jacqueline Du Pre. I read basic, Idiot’s Guide To Cello type books, and watched cello concerts on the net. I didn’t go to any live concerts (not before the book was written anyway; I have since) because I wrote the book in such a frenzy that there wasn’t time.

Because I grew up in Portland, Oregon, I’m curious about the setting for If I Stay. Why did you select Oregon as the backdrop for this story?

I went to college in Eugene, and lived there for five years. I spent time all over the state and I guess Oregon implanted itself in my literary DNA. The main character from my first novel, Sisters in Sanity, was also from Oregon. I didn’t set Mia’s hometown in If I Stay in any particular place in Oregon; it’s sort of a pastiche of Eugene and Astoria and Corvalis and Ashland—and somehow about an hour’s drive from Portland. The hospital scene is Portland—it’s a stand-in for OHSU, where my doctor friend went to med school—and all the Portland references are real.

This is your third published book. How have you changed as a writer since your first book (non-fiction) was published?

I should hope so! I was just writing a blog post answering reader questions about query letters and how I can’t really read my first book without cringing. Partly I think that’s because I hadn’t found my genre. YA is where I’m meant to be. But we grow as writers, hopefully throughout our careers. But I think I’ve probably changed in that I’ve owned my voice, owned my genre, am writing to my strengths now.

Your career began as a journalist reporting on young people. How did you make the transition from journalism to fiction?

I learned to write a narrative by being a journalist. Because I wrote long-form magazine pieces, and because I wrote stories for young people, a large part of the reporting I did was telling people’s stories—and then providing the context for young readers to understand what those stories meant in the larger world. I don’t think I could’ve become a novelist 13 years ago when I first came to New York and started my career because I hadn’t learned how to tell a story yet. By telling other peoples’ stories, I learned to craft a narrative. When I was younger, I never thought I’d be able to write fiction. Without the parameters of facts, and interviews, etc. it just seemed too hard. Where did you start? Now, it’s liberating. As for writing for young people, I sought out to write for a teen audience; it didn’t happen by default. This has always been the demographic I was interested in talking to, whose stories I wanted to hear, to tell, whose language I could write in. So it was totally natural that when I started writing fiction it was for a young-adult audience.

What tips do you have for mother writers on how to manage the balance between motherhood and writing?

I only started writing fiction after I became a mother and it was because I could no longer do the kind of journalism I’d been doing and stay home with my kids. I didn’t want to be traveling one week a month anymore. But I had to earn a living. So I just started writing this novel and backed into my calling. It can certainly be hard to find the balance and the time and I think that I’m fortunate in that for me—especially compared to doing magazine work—the fiction feels like an escape, so whenever I get a spare moment, I eagerly dive right into it just like I dive right into a good book that I’m reading. You have to be disciplined like that, to steal the moments when you can, to let the laundry pile up, to take advantage of nap times—though that said, I don’t think it’s an accident that If I Stay was written when my first child started 5-day-a-week preschool and my second hadn’t arrived yet; I had time to dream. Sometimes, when I’m deep into a novel, I can be a little preoccupied with my kids. I’m with them physically but mentally I’m elsewhere. But you know what, I’m home with them, and this is my job so I try not to beat myself up about it. I have made a rule of no internet time after school until bedtime, though. Because that’s not work. That’s just time suckage.

Please share a little about your writing process. Do you use an outline? Do you have the end in mind when you begin your stories? How long does it generally take for you to draft a novel?

It’s a little different every time, but I don’t use outlines. I let the book take me where it needs to go and one of the great joys of writing is the process of discovery, the twists and turns and doors and windows you had no idea you’d find. With If I Stay, I had no idea I’d use the flashback structure until I wrote the first one, which I only wrote as a break from the intensity of the present-tense narrative. I do generally have an end in mind, even if I’m not sure of the particulars. But I know where I’m writing myself to. A draft of a novel generally takes me about two to three months, but the revision time can vary hugely. With If I Stay I had a relatively clean draft in almost three months and then it went through a batch of  not very major revisions with my agent and then with my editor. The book I’m working on now, I have been revising on-again-off-again for more than a year and it’s with my editor now, awaiting her notes.

What has been the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer?

That you can take the wildest flights of fancy and make up crazy stuff but your story must have emotional authenticity or it will not resonate or ring true with readers.

What are the differences (if any) to writing YA novels versus novels intended for an adult audience?

I think those lines are getting blurrier and blurrier in terms of readership. Teens read Jodi Picoult just as avidly as adults do. Plenty of moms out there are reading Twilight. I get mail from 12-year-old girls, 50-year-old bachelors and 70-year-old grandmothers all of whom read If I Stay. I will say that I think, having recently read several YA and adult books in one gulp, I have noticed a couple of differences in writing, and reading YA: YA lit is much more streamlined. You don’t tend to get four-paragraph descriptions of what’s in the fridge or so much, I would say, extraneous, detail. And YA books tend to end with a sense of hope. Not necessarily a cheesy happy ending, but some kind of redemption.

Please share (if you can and wish) what you’re currently working on. (Side note: how exciting that Summit Entertainment has optioned the rights for If I Stay – congratulations!)

I’m staying mum on my current project until my sage editor has read it and given it her thumbs up. I’m being prudent because I already wrote a new novel that I thought would go next, revised it, turned it into my editor and after one conversation with her, realized it wasn’t the right next book. It might be a book for later, but not for now. So, until Julie speaks, I don’t. And yes, super exciting about Summit. If readers are interested in movie details, and about the next book, I should have some news about both in the coming month or two on my blog at gayleforman.com/blog

What question haven’t I asked that I should have?

Gemini

Creme Brulee

Fake redhead but everyone thinks it looks real!

Many thanks to Gayle for sharing her thoughts, experience and insights with us here at Motherlogue.

Sunday Style: Narrators January 24, 2010

This week, the workshop I’m taking was focused on the narrator. One key learning for me about the narrator is to actually refer to the person in a personal essay as the “I” narrator. Duh! In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense. And, I find it really helpful. Somehow it makes it easier for me to allow the narrator to be flawed if I’m not thinking, “Hey…the person in this essay is ME!” It also helps me in not worrying about whether or not people like that narrator (aka me). Finally, it makes it easier to treat the narrator as I would any other character (allow the reader to see the narrator, paint the picture of who that narrator is).

One technique that Lisa shared with us for how to differentiate the writer from the narrator is to make a list of the ways in which the I narrator is different from the current-day writer. This was a useful tool for me as I drafted a brief, personal essay about an experience I had in Japan. Here’s the list I made:

Ways in which the “I” narrator differs from the current-day writer

The I narrator…

• …was not yet a mother.
• …was afraid of conflict.
• …was working in her first job.
• …was actively trying to immerse herself in another culture and another language.
• …enjoyed drinking beer and singing karaoke with her colleagues.
• …worried about being an obtrusive American.
• …hesitated to speak her mind.
• …loved teaching ESL, though she had no training in how to do so.
• …taught at a new school each week.
• …wondered if she would ever fall in love.
• …was easily swayed by the opinions of others.
• …spent excessive amounts of money buying CDs and calling home to the United States.
• …felt tired from the energy it took to communicate in a foreign language every hour of every day.
• …didn’t drink Starbucks coffee.
• …stored her food in a refrigerator only slightly larger than one made for a child’s play kitchen.

This helped me a) get closer to the narrator and b) get some perspective that will hopefully make the personal essay more universal.

Please be sure to stop by on Tuesday for my Q&A with Young Adult Novelist, Gayle Forman!

Sunday Style: Keep Talking! January 17, 2010

This week the focus in my workshop with Lisa Romeo is on dialogue. We read Rhoda Janzen’s wonderful essay, The Tractor Driver or the Pothead? in which the dialogue did so much for the story. It revealed the characters. It provided humor. It set the scene.

And, it made me nervous. What was I to do with dialogue in my writing? In the case of dialogue in my essays, I just kind of throw it in when I recall it happening and hope for the best. Add some salt and pepper and it’ll all be fine. This week’s lesson helped me see that I need to be intentional with dialogue. How is it moving the story forward? How can I use dialogue to show rather than tell? (Oh, not THAT pesky writing advice again!)

Based on the lesson, I revised an essay that I wrote (and submitted to no avail) a few years ago. Here’s an example of some changes I made using dialogue:

BEFORE:

After living in Japan for two years, I made my way back to the United States via a stop in Okinawa.  My destination was the carefully selected island of Zamami.  Saito-san, my travel agent, said Zamami was her favorite of all the islands in Okinawa and assured me that it would be the perfect location to nurse my broken heart.

The one-page brochure in English read: Zamami beach is a perfect picture; one look beneath the waves reveals a tranquil world filled with multi-colored tropical fish. It is a place that will fulfill children’s dreams and transport adults back to childlike innocence.

“Sign me up,” I told her.

An avid scuba diver, Saito-san also told me that I could even do something called “keiken diving”.  Experience diving.  “It will heal your heart,” she smiled at me.  “The fish, they will make you forget him.”  Even if it didn’t heal my heart, I would be able to return home and tell my friends and family that after being gone for two years I had not only learned to speak conversational Japanese but I was able to scuba dive as well.

AFTER:

“This place, Zamami, it helps broken heart,” Saito-san, my travel agent, said handing me a brochure.

After living in Japan for two years, I was planning to make my way back to the United States via a stop in Okinawa.

“It is my favorite island,” she nodded at me.

“Sign me up,” I told her.

“There you can try experience diving, the beautiful fish will make you forget him.”

—————————-

This revision, and focusing on the dialogue, helped me in a few ways:

• I got closer to the story (took out the unnecessary info about what I would be able to tell my friends I’d learned)
• I let the character say it for herself (instead of “Saito-san, my travel agent, said that Zamami was her favorite island,” I changed it to a direct quote, “It is my favorite island,” she nodded at me.)
• Adding dialogue changed the pace…whereas the “before” version is moving to the same point, I think the “after” version gets to the point much more directly and (hopefully) more powerfully

In fiction and in personal essays alike, I’m encouraged to take a deeper look at what dialogue can do for my stories. And, to keep a close ear on what people say to help me create realistic dialogue.

Who knows, my eavesdropping skills might just finally pay off.

Sunday Style: Flaws January 10, 2010

I’m taking a four-week online workshop, Creative NonFiction Four by Four, offered by Lisa Romeo. Monday was our first day of class and I’m so glad I signed up. It’s a great group of writers and Lisa’s online lecture, reading assignments and writing assignments are excellent. My Sunday Style posts for the next four weeks will be dedicated to one thing I learn each week.

This week’ s discussion focused on details. For one assignment, I submitted a portion of an unpublished essay about being the wife of a stay-at-home dad. In my revision, I focused on increasing the details…the right details…and it helped immensely. Lisa’s feedback noted improvements in the essay and she gave me some excellent advice:

I know it’s tough, but try to allow yourself to be a narrator who is completely human – which means FLAWED – not always right, positive and upbeat, but sometimes unlikable, contrary, wrong or negative.

She is so right — oh no, I’m being positive, but in this case it’s true. I have a tendency to want to wipe up the crumbs and sweep them under the carpet in life and now I’m realizing this is also the case in what I write. I think I do this subconsciously so that an essay can flow or have a nice, tidy ending or to demonstrate that the narrator is a “nice, shiny, happy person”.

However, in the essays that I read, the ones that stick with me or that help me learning something are those in which the narrators really shine because of  their imperfection and their humanness. I think of Anne Lamott and how in her essays she admits to mistakes, to fumbles and to real emotion. For example, as she writes in an excerpt from her book, Plan B, that was published on Salon.com:

There are times when [my son] Sam is so mouthy that all I can do is pray for a sense of humor and absurdity, even the size of a mustard seed. Otherwise, I look at C’s on progress reports, and see him at 30 taking orders at Taco Bell. If, with his handwriting, he could even get that job. Or he gets sent home from school for participating in a mud fight, and I think, Tim McVeigh. Or I realize, I don’t like this child, I shouldn’t have had kids, and it’s all hopeless. All I can do is pray: HELP!

That is so vivid in part because of the details and in part because she’s flawed, she’s not a mother writing, “I love my son. Even when he is a hellian, he’s an angel to me.” No, instead, she says, I’m a real person, a real mother, he’s a real kid and we are making it through all of this mud and yuck and beauty, together.

As I continue to work on my essay, I’m going to do my best to let the flaws, and the details, hang out. I’m betting that I’m going to be a lot happier with it and so will my readers.

Q&A with Jennie Shortridge January 6, 2010

In November, I met with author Jennie Shortridge for an interview about her most recent release, When She Flew. During our discussion, I was primarily focused on the how and why behind Jennie’s decision to write this novel which is based on the real-life events of a Vietnam veteran and his daughter who were found living in Forest Park in Portland, Oregon. You can read that interview in the January 2010 issue of Portland Family Magazine.

After I took a workshop that Jennie taught at the Write On The Sound conference in 2009, I was intrigued by the bio she has posted on her website. Her experience of burnout with the corporate world and her desire for a more reflective life is a common thread among the people I meet:

“By age 35 I’d become director of sales and marketing for a Denver firm, but I was burned out. I realized I wanted a less stressful, more reflective life. With [my husband] Matt’s support, I left my job and began to write and learn about the business of writing. I considered this period my apprenticeship, the college education I’d missed. Within a year or so I was regularly publishing in newspapers and magazines in the Rocky Mountain region, as well as getting the odd article placed in national magazines such as Mademoiselle, Glamour, Southwest Art, Natural Home, and various inflight publications. I’d also had a short story published and was working on a novel based on it.”

At the end of my interview with Jennie about When She Flew, I was happy to have the opportunity to ask more about her experiences as a writer and about her writing life. I’m posting our discussion about those topics here as I know Jennie’s advice and insight will help not only me but other writers as we all try to make our way in the writing world. Jennie will be stopping by over the next few days to answer questions from Motherlogue readers, so please be sure to post your questions and comments for her below.

How do you not let publishing four books in six years go to your head?

That’s so funny, I still feel like I haven’t done enough. Publishers would like for you to publish a new book every 12 – 15 months. If I think about publishing the books realistically, I think, “That’s pretty amazing.” But I don’t think about it that way, of course I think about it with my own filters. Right now I’m so focused on the path, the momentum and continuing to stay published because that’s really difficult right now. It’s a busy, busy lifestyle and a bit stressful. I am really proud of it, once I published three novels, I felt like my work here on earth was essentially done and anything after this, I’m fine with. I do feel fulfilled by it, that’s for sure.

When you draft your novels, do you use an outline or not?

My first three books evolved from personal experiences or stories and the next three are inspired by true stories that I will re-interpret. The next three all have guideposts that I will follow; I know the beginning, middle and end. For my next book I actually wrote an eleven page synopsis for the first time. I’ve always written knowing the end, I know where I’m headed and the target.

How do you think of your titles?

My titles always come last, at the very end. They are the most difficult part for me. I had a list of 40-45 possible titles.  You try them out. I have a post card of a Brian Andreas print that I got years ago and this one said, “She flew only when she thought no one else was watching.” I got permission from him and that’s exactly where the title for When She Flew came from. I liked it because I thought it was applicable to all the female characters in the story. I wanted it to evoke more than just one character. It was about all these women trying out different flight.

In your Question Everything workshop at the WOTS conference, you said youyou’re your characters questions to help flesh out who they are. What questions did you ask of the character Jess in When She Flew?

For Jess it was all about her family values from her upbringing, losing her dad when she was young, having a mother who wasn’t capable and becoming the mother of the family. It was about how all of that influenced her as a parent. A big part of forming her was also about dealing with “bottom feeders” all day. As a police officer a lot of what you deal with is the bad stuff and how does that impact you? Does that make you become someone who only does stuff by the book and loses the human element? What is it like to wear a duty-belt, especially as a small, female police officer? I was interested in seeing the clash between being a police officer and a mom.

Are you working on a new book and can you share what it’s about?

Yes, it’s based on a true story that happened in Olympia, Washington. There’s a disorder called dissociated fugue in which people who experience an emotional trauma have a fugue episode and develop amnesia. With this type they run away and leave their environment and ditch their identity. They come to somewhere far away and don’t know who they are and develop a new identity. Sometimes they get some of their memory back and sometimes they don’t get any.

That’s what happened to a man in Olympia. Six weeks after he left his fiancé in Olympia, his picture showed up on TV in Denver as a John Doe who couldn’t remember who he was. His fiancé’s brother-in-law recognized him and she went to get him. He didn’t remember who he was, but he came back and was going to start again. Where did his identity go? Why did it go? What would happen in the situation? I think of it as an amnesiac’s love story.

What is your advice for those who want to write a novel?

Every writer starts with things that are way too hard for us and they end up in the drawer.  I started one that I got 39 pages into and had six viewpoint characters. It ended up in the drawer. It’s a horrible thing to say, but what most people who want to write a novel should understand is that very often the first one you write might be your master’s thesis. It might get filed and not published. And it’s still worthwhile because you need to learn how to write a novel. What comes out of the process might not be a publishable novel.

It’s often really hard to change it because it’s your first one. And you’re really attached to it. It’s like your baby. That’s not always the case…some people publish their first novel. But it’s more often not that case.

It’s always easiest to write something very close to your experience – something about which you feel deeply. You need to have emotional involvement in the story and in the characters. It’s easier if you do know it intimately. A lot of people want to distance themselves from emotions and the truth of their lives so they try to write something completely outside of themselves and it’s not that compelling.

Many thanks to Jennie for her time, support and for serving as an inspiration. I look forward to your next release!

Interview with Jennie Shortridge in Portland Family Magazine January 1, 2010

My interview with author Jennie Shortridge appears in the January 2010 issue of Portland Family. Check it out here (page four of the .pdf, page six of the magazine). And, tune in here at Motherlogue on Wednesday, January 6 for my Q&A with Jennie about writing.

Forthcoming Blogged Novel by Fiona Robyn: THAW December 29, 2009

Fiona Robyn is going to blog her next novel, Thaw, starting on the 1^st of March 2010. The novel follows 32 year old Ruth’s diary over three months as she decides whether or not to carry on living.

To help spread the word she’s organising a Blogsplash, where blogs will publish the first page of Ruth’s diary simultaneously (and a link to the blog).

She’s aiming to get 1000 blogs involved – if you’d be interested in joining in, email her at fiona@fionarobyn.com or find out more information at http://www.fionarobyn.com/thawblogsplash.htm.

Sunday Style: Question Everything December 26, 2009

The last session I attended at the WOTS conference, Question Everything, was led by Seattle author, Jennie Shortridge. It was a fabulous session not only because of what I learned but because of the connection I made to this gifted author.

At the end of the session I told Jennie, “I hope I don’t become a stalker.” She assured me that if I was mentioning being a stalker, I wouldn’t be. Since then I’ve read all four of her published novels, friended her on Facebook and had the wonderful opportunity to interview her about her most recent release, When She Flew. (She might be reconsidering my stalking status!)

The basics behind this technique of asking questions is to question everything in your creation of a story. Question the characters, question yourself, question the narrator, question the place, the culture, the time to reveal more of the story to you as the writer. Jennie used this technique with her most recent novel, and it helped her uncover themes as well as to dig deeper into her characters.

Jennie designated four types of questions to ask your characters and yourself to reveal more of the story:

1. Fact Finding: These are details you need to use in order to convince the reader that this character is real. Jennie’s example was if your main character is a plumber, you need to ask questions of that character so that you can reveal to the reader that he/she is really a plumber. Example: What kinds of wrenches does a plumber use?
2. Emotional Depth: This is where you hook the reader with emotions. How would the character feel or act in this situation? Example: How do you feel about being a plumber? Why did you begin this work
   
3. Relevance to the Human Condition: Get out of the personal and into the universal with this level of questions — what are you trying to convey by telling this story? Example: With whom or what does your loyalty lie?
4. Metaphorical Revelation: This is where your subconscious comes into play and if you allow these questions to surface, you are able to more openly share your truth with readers. For example, Jennie’s most recent book captures a lot of metaphorical meaning around flight. She didn’t set out to put that metaphor in her work, but it came out through her writing process and through the asking of questions. Example: If you had to live alone for a month on a mountain, on the ocean or anywhere in a foreign country, where would you pick?

We broke into pairs mid-way through the session and interviewed our partner. We began by asking that person one question. I was partnered with a man named John who was probably in his sixties. I asked him a question, something about what was the most difficult thing he’d done in his life. It was a good start and I learned that I needed to keep digging to get to the full story. If I’d stopped with his first response I wouldn’t have learned nearly as much about him. That’s something to keep in mind when working with a character in a story or book as well.

I liked John’s first question for me, “What is your biggest secret that you don’t want anyone to hear?” I thought this would be a great place to start with the character in a novel. Some of the other questions that people shared after the activity were:

• What makes you cry?
• What haven’t I asked you that I should?
• What makes you get out of bed?
• Is there anything you believe that you wish you didn’t?
• When did you fail? What did you learn?

I could go on — the list of questions you can ask your characters or yourself are endless. And, through this workshop I saw that questions as a writing tool are invaluable. Even if the question doesn’t directly link to a piece of writing, it will lead to greater depth in characters and in plot.

In January, I’ll be posting a Q&A with Jennie about writing and she’ll be dropping by Motherlogue to answer questions. Be sure to tune in for more details.