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Posts by Carol Despeaux Fawcett

Jun 23

It’s raining concrete: the #1 rule of writing, Part 2 of 2

Over the years, I’d trained myself to be an observer of life’s details and to use those concrete details in my writing. (I do have an MFA in people watching). But I’d never done the opposite—never thought about turning details into abstractions as Ayn Rand suggests we do in her book The Art of Fiction.

I’m sure at some unconscious level, the details and abstractions ran parallel lives in my mind but I wasn’t consciously aware of them. I never thought, “What do the moles on my mother’s neck represent?”

While on vacation earlier this year, I sat on a white sand beach on the island of Kauai and thought about Rand’s advice. She suggests we practice seeing the abstractions within the concrete details in order to make our minds supple and easily able to notice both the abstractions or premises in our work and how to show them through details. Read more

Jun 22

It’s raining concrete: the #1 rule of writing, Part 1 of 2

I didn’t discover I was a writer until college when I fell in love with poetry. Fortunately for me, my first poetry professor was big on concrete. No, he didn’t have a weekend job laying sidewalks or foundations. But he did pound it into us that our effusive abstractions needed to be transformed into concrete images.

Some of my first poems were pure mush and raw emotion. When I blathered on about feeling lonely in a foreign country, he asked, “What color is lonely? What does lonely smell like? Was there a specific place or location or city where you felt the most lonely?” He explained that through the right details I could evoke those feelings in my reader.

I can still remember the rush of satisfaction when I finally captured the essence of that poem into specifics. Read more

Jun 20

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What makes a good metaphor?

We’ve all heard them, read them, sometimes written them—those cringe-worthy similes and metaphors that make us wonder what planet the authors came from. Bad metaphors make for good comedy. We get emails with laugh-out-loud examples from student essays, such as:

  • He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
  • She was as easy as the “TV Guide” crossword.
  • The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
  • She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

You get the idea. During my beginning years as a writer, I confess that I too occasionally dipped into the bad-metaphor well. Embarrassing, right? But then I got better. I worked at it. I practiced. When I made the leap from writing poetry to writing stories and books, I made another major discovery about what makes a good metaphor. Read more

Jun 17

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Lost in the jungle? Five steps to move your story forward

Ever feel like your mind is a jungle and your manuscript is a reflection of all those tangled vines and spongy mosses? Ever feel stuck in a bog of your own making? In her book, On Writer’s Block, Victoria Nelson says that one of the biggest reasons writers get blocked is because at some subconscious level they know that something isn’t quite right with an aspect of their writing—whether it’s a character, subplot, theme, or even the original story idea.

Before I read Nelson’s book, I spent far too much time lost in my own overgrown and disorderly jungle, paralyzed by fear. Now when I recognize the block is happening—for me it’s when I feel like I need to do anything else but write (clean out the fridge, make another “to do” list, scoop the litter box)—I stop and ask myself a few questions.

The 5-step process below gets me back on track and allows my creative energy to spark and flow again. You can adopt this process or use these steps as a springboard to make the unconscious conscious: Read more

Jun 14

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Four ways to stimulate creativity & cure the writing blahs, part 4 of 4

Sometimes, I just don’t feel like writing.  Even after I read a poem, try to write a poem, or finish a timed write—sometimes, the words still don’t come.  What then?  It depends.  A nap might be in order, or maybe a walk. But often, participating in another type of creative activity is what will cure me.

Play the guitar or create a vision board.  One of my favorite ways to strum the strings of my unconscious is to do something creative that’s not related to writing—like learning to play the guitar.  (Emphasis on the word learning, here).  But it doesn’t have to be guitar or even music—pick anything, except writing, that moves your spirit and allows you to be creative:  painting, cooking, gardening, dancing, even cutting pictures from magazines to create a collage or vision board. Read more

Jun 13

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Four ways to stimulate creativity & cure the writing blahs, part 3 of 4

Poetry is juicy. It gets things moving. Like music, it’s verbal and nonverbal at the same time. It resonates within and without. No matter what kind of writer you are, you can benefit from poetry’s ability to inspire creativity.  And not just by reading it…

Write a poem. If you’re stuck on your current project or just can’t get your creative mojo going, write a poem.  (If you’re a poet, try another form of writing—maybe a piece of flash fiction, an essay, or some haiku).  The idea is to write something different than what you’re used to. Writing poetry is like working a puzzle.  It jump-starts our brain’s synapses. Read more

Jun 9

Four ways to stimulate creativity & cure the writing blahs, part 2 of 4

Writing feeds my soul. I do it because it makes me happy. But too often my writing time gets whittled away by other things. I have my excuses—it’s because I do so many things: run a business, keep my clients happy, take care of the house, act as servant and maid to our three cats. It’s easy to get scattered and before I know it, the day’s over and I’m asking, “What did I do to feed my soul today?”

My intent is to write first thing in the morning but that doesn’t always happen—often I end up squeezing a bit of writing in between work-related projects. So, how do I switch gears and jump-start my creative process if I only have a few minutes? Read more

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