Verbiage

By Ellen Blum Barish
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imagesTense choice creates the scaffolding of building art with words. Whether it’s past or present impacts your verb choices throughout the construction process.

When you complete a draft, stand back and compare the tense you selected with its opposite. Read them out loud. Ask yourself which does the more authentic job of saying what you want to say and moving the piece along.

Then, look at your verbs.  These are the nails, glue and cement that hold the structure together.  How these connect the bigger structural pieces will indicate what the writer wants the reader to see.

Compare this active version of the verb “to bake:”

“My mother-in-law baked chocolate chip mandel bread for the dessert table at the bar mitzvah.”

With this passive version:

“The chocolate chip mandel bread was baked by my mother-in-law for the dessert table at the bar mitzvah.”

 

In the first sentence, the main subject reads as the mother-in-law. We want to know more about her than we would the mandel bread (unless the reader is a pastry chef, I guess.)

The second sentence highlights the mandel bread. The mother-in-law is second in importance.

We’ve got the same subject and verb in both sentences. The same mandel bread and the same mother-in-law. But a mother-in-law who bakes mandel bread and mandel bread that was baked by a mother-in-law are different enough to shift emphasis. Be it planned or unplanned.

Take charge of your subject matter by staying mindful of its active and passive versions, just as you would the set up and rearrange the objects in the interior of a room in your home.

The Sound of Your Voice

By Ellen Blum Barish
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Oh the power of a story told by the human voice.

I may be focused on words for the page, but for me there’s nothing quite as thrilling as hearing someone telling or reading a story.

Fond memories of bedtime stories  (Goodnight, Moon and The Bundle Book come to mind) and hours listening to Burl Ives records may have something to do with it, but I think there’s more here. There’s something intimate about our voices. Something uniquely us.

And perhaps because I feel this way, I always encourage my writing students to read their work out loud. Even if there is no one in the room. Reading aloud gives the writer clues to her natural voice. The music of her voice. The rhythm. The pace. The intervals. The accents. The allegro and the non troppo.

When a writer trips over a sentence,  this often means it’s one to revisit. Something about it isn’t working. On the other hand, when you are reading a passage and it just moves along gracefully, you just know how right it is.

The beauty of hearing your words is that you are  listening to the sound of your soul. The words had to come out first onto the page, then into your ear. Which may sounds backward. But this is the artistry of writing. Making something out of nothing. The clay has to come first. Then we shape it.

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Object Permanence

By Ellen Blum Barish
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Every January for 25 years, my friend Mary Ellen hosted a women’s luncheon in which  she served a flavorful winter soup and a few side dishes.

As guests, our task was to bring an appetizer, champagne and an object that represented  the year that has just ended. The afternoon was spent in an adult version of “Show and Tell,” taking turns telling the stories that animated the items.

Over the years, I’ve forgotten many of the women’s stories but I remembered what they brought. I can still see the magnifying mirror from the woman who just turned 50. The basketball, soccer ball and baseball from the mother of three athletic sons. The photographs from the woman just back from Cuba. The Mary Oliver poem from the woman who had lost several friends that year.

Some years into this ritual, I recognized the value of keeping a record of my own luncheon artifacts. The large box pictured above is filled with envelopes, marked by year, with the object or record of it inside.

What’s interesting is how quickly the sight of these items reconjure the year in question.

Objects are concrete. Tangible. Understood.

When we work them into our stories, people can see them. They provide visual heft. They can be a shorthand for larger ideas and feelings. Perhaps a metaphor. An object offers a way to move time without referring to literal time. They age; show wear and tear but can be refurbished.

A well-selected object makes your stories pop. Your message will remain in the screen and hopefully, heart of your listener or readers’ mind.

Photo by Ellen Blum Barish

Scenic Views, Ripe for the Picking

By Ellen Blum Barish
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I’ve been sending out print or electronic family new year’s greetings since 1992 when my youngest daughter reached her first birthday. Every year, I struggle with what to say. I have yet to get into the year-in-review highlights letter (but never say never I always say) so I usually stick with one or two lines.

Here are some examples:

2011 family foto

In 2011, under a photo of my husband and two daughters standing in front of a range of Colorado mountains:

May you reach your mountaintop with views that take your breath away in the year to come.

2000

In 2000, under a photo of my husband and two, much younger daughters, bundled up in winter coats in our backyard:

Hoping this season finds you – and keeps you – warm and cozy. ‘Til we see you again…

1995

In 1995, the four of us in an apple orchard:

Wishing you all things colorful, juicy and ripe for the picking this holiday season…

You get the idea.

In each of these, the season, setting and/or  stray details steered the language to link the photograph to the wish.

To help the reader, see.

That’s what we want to do with our writing. Go from the abstract to the concrete and back to the abstract again.

Here’s what I mean by that: Wishing someone a happy new year is in some ways an abstract concept. In what way do you want them  to be happy? What could that look like? There are so many choices!

It’s more concrete to wish them the chance to “reach their mountaintop” or stay “warm and cozy” or the option to pick things “ripe and juicy.” But these are also images that are imbued with multiple meanings. Metaphor.

So think about the abstract-concrete-abstract idea when you are looking to layer your pieces. And let me know how it goes. I’d love to post examples in this space.

Water and Heat Trump Wire and Metal Every Time

By Ellen Blum Barish
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IMG_0385There’s a lot of talk these days about our over-reliance on technology.

But that crazy, twenty-minute rain storm last week and the scorching heat this week here in Chicago have got me thinking that each time we get bent out of shape over how tangled up we are in our electronic devices – the laws of nature always show up to straighten us out.

Because my home had power, mine was the go-to house last week. Neighbors charged their cell phones and laptops, stuffed our frig with milk and yogurt and our freezer with meats. One neighbor came over to blow dry her hair. Arranging this meant actual knocks on the front door and chats on the grassy lawn.

The storm had may have pulled up tree roots and taken down branches, but it also brought my block together like the backyard fence conversations of yore.

After the storm, when it started to get really hot, I was sitting outside and reading the newspaper on my smart phone when the screen beeped and went blank.  A warning message popped up saying that the phone would soon overheat. Those casings may appear to be indestructibly thick, but the heat of the sun wins over plastic and metal every time.  I went inside and read a book.

On the second evening of her darkened, post-storm quiet home, a colleague of mine  told me that she lit a few candles and sat quietly in her living room enjoying the silence. Her college-age daughter strolled in carrying her guitar and, without a word, started to play. They sat together like that for a long while. The other options for the evening, unavailable. A moment, she said, that would not have happened if the power had not been outed.

Before we could exit from the present moment by checking email, surfing the web or texting a friend at super fast speed, quiet moments of clarity could occur. My friend tells the story about how it took one of those moments for her to realize that the guy she was dating was the One. It was in the pre-cell phone 80s. They got their signals crossed and she went to his apartment while he went to hers to meet for dinner. Waiting for him in the front hall of his Chicago apartment building, my friend thought process went a little something like this:

Hmm, he’s not here. I hope nothing happened to him.

Then: hmmmm… something better not have happened to him.

And finally: Wow. I really really like him. I think I may even … love him!

Something similar was happening to him over at her apartment. They were engaged soon after that hallway epiphany and have been married ever since.

I’m not implying that this love story would never have come to a happy end if they had working cell phones in their hands. What I am suggesting is that without the option to plug in – the option that Mother Nature has recently been taking from us with these electrical outages – we have fewer moments like they did. Or like my colleague had sitting, lit by a candle, with her guitar-playing daughter. My phone refusing to provide me with the contents of the newspaper, forcing me to read a book. A neighbor blowing her hair dry in my upstairs bathroom.

We may be dependant on technology – addicted even – but summer rainstorms and excessive heat waves will keep us from completely losing ourselves in wire and metal.