Owen’s Prompts

At the end of the school year last year, Owen brought home the writing journal that he kept for his second grade class. I didn’t know that he kept a writing journal, so I was interested to read his work.

And how pleasantly surprised I was! He totally cut loose as far as story goes. There were no limits. He responded to prompts with verve and attitude. I think this is something that we all should do as writers. He wasn’t writing for publication, or even a grade, and his ideas were fun and fascinating (though maybe a little violent….).

A sample or two (with corrections for spelling, etc. from Mom):

1. “If I was a giant I would eat kids alive. I would also destroy buildings I touch. that would be cool. I would actually be green. I also want to step on people.”

2. “The rusty key fit in the lock and a dead man fell out. ‘This is a mystery’ I said to my friends. We went to the next door in the house. It was locked, so we used the rusty key. It fit! We saw a light in there….”

3. “The silly dragon had two dogs that breathe fire. Weird. He also has a rat that flies. He also has lots of stuff.”

Not too shabby for a then-seven year old. Mixing up genres. Introducing interesting characters and plotlines. Shifting POVs. All in all, I think a nice start to the writing gig.

jenny maloney2 Comments

The Artist At Work

I’ve been trying to keep in mind that this year my focus is: “Stuff I Learned From Other People” and who better to learn from than my very own little girl?

She’s two and precocious and doesn’t care what other people think–not yet anyway. Which can be frustrating in restaurants, but is wonderful in life. She creates things with reckless abandon and that’s refreshing. There is no inner editor or heckler or anyone to tell her no (except her mommy when she sticks a finger in a light socket). Here is a small sampling of her art and her method. We should all embrace such reckless delight:

jenny maloney2 Comments

Mentor of the Month: Joyce Carol Oates: Punctuation As Art Form

In the spirit of Learning Stuff From Other People (part of my New Year’s Resolution) I point you toward Joyce Carol Oates–someone I’m sure you know.

Recently I finished reading Zombie, a short novel by Oates, that covers the mind of Quentin P___–a serial killer in the spirit of Jeffrey Dahmer. Here’s a small quote to get you in the spirit of things:

“Dr. E___ asks What is the nature of your fantasies, Quentin? & I am blank & silent blushing like in school when I could not answer a teacher’s question nor even (everybody staring at me) comprehend it.”

Here is the lesson to take from that: Punctuation is an art form.
Throughout the book, Oates creatively uses punctuation to get us into this killer’s head. Here is a man who has no regard for human life, why should he have regard for human grammar? The punctuation of this novel is comprehensible and rebellious at the same time–just like her main character.

What does this mean for us as writers?

1. It means that we need to know the rules first. Yes, that means we do need to know what ‘fragments’ and ‘dangling participles’ are, and we need to know where to put a comma–or not. If we don’t understand the rules, then we have no command over what we are actually saying. We think we’re saying A but we’re really saying B and it confuses the reader. As Lincoln said: “Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.” I’m not gonna go into the rules here, there are plenty of books on the subject. Yes, they’re dry. Yes, they may put you to sleep. But yes, we must read them and understand.

2. Use puntucation to add to the story. Once we know the rules, we can break them to make a point, to emphasize elements of the story itself. (Sorta the way poetry works). In Zombie Oates uses the & symbol to replace every single ‘and’. To me, this signifies a character who is 1. lazy, because he doesn’t even spell out a three-letter word and 2. doesn’t give a crap, because he uses it throughout, flaunting language and rules–which he does in his character actions as well (killing people is definitely against the rules).

Challenge: Go over something you’ve written and see if changing a comma here or there doesn’t mix it up. Throw in some parentheses. Use periods to make more fragments. Take out periods to make longer stretches of words. See what happens to the voice/tone of the story when you do that.

jenny maloney1 Comment