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Joseph E Bird

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Joseph E Bird

Writing Tip – Coincidence?

Is there such a thing as coincidence?

Of course.  Or not.  It all depends on your philosophical or religious leanings.

The truth is, they happen all the time.  Explain them as you wish.

Example:

Heather is on her way to Houston to see her father.  She happens to stop at Galveston on her way.  She happens to take a walk on a fishing pier.  She happens to meet the very guy who was working at the pier when her mother was killed there ten years earlier.

Wow.  That’s a big coincidence.  Almost unbelievable.

But what if you knew early in the story that Heather knew that her mother was killed on a fishing pier in Galveston.  And that there are only two fishing piers in all of Galveston.  And that she stopped in Galveston for the very purpose of finding that pier. It goes from coincidence to purposeful event.  What about the guy at the pier?  Well, Heather knew his name because he provided eye-witness testimony ten years earlier.  He didn’t just work at the pier, he owned the tackle shop that operated on the pier.  An internet search told her he was still alive living in Galveston.  The odds of him working at the pier on the day she shows up?  Yeah, that takes a little fortuitous timing.  But stranger things happen all the time.

The key is foreshadowing and structuring the story in a way that dumb luck is taken out of the equation.  Be careful with coincidence.  Your credibility is on the line.

 

 

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Writing Tip: Talk it Out

writing

I’m fortunate to belong to the Shelton College Review, a small group of writers who gather once a week to offer critique and encouragement – both are enormously important for writers – on our works in progress.

In reviewing one of my recent submittals, Larry was saying that he had been so caught up in the narrative, that he forgot that he was critiquing and was simply enjoying the story.  Until, that is, I threw in heaping helping of backstory.  His engagement came to a screeching halt.

I know better than to do that.  It’s one thing to sprinkle in a paragraph or two of backstory, but I took the reader out of a dramatic moment – in the back of an ambulance! – to tell about Heather’s life in high school.  Duh.

Thanks, Larry, for pointing that out. And as painful as that was to hear (that I could be so dumb), it was even harder to fix.  I’ve spent several hours setting things right, hours that I could have been using to write something new.

How did I fix it?

First, I spread it around a little.  Backstory in small doses (a couple of sentences) is acceptable.

Then I let the dramatic scene in the ambulance play out.  After things had calmed down, I worked some of the backstory into dialogue.  Things are still happening.  There’s still tension. There’s still character development as Heather and Lucas talk.  And the reader learns a little bit more about Heather and why she is the way she is.

And then there’s the little problem about coincidences.  More on that later.

 

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chipping a channel out of bedrock

Long time writing friend, Elizabeth Gaucher, posted an essay by Loren Eaton, wherein he posits that writing is sometimes like “chipping a channel out of bedrock with a pen.”  You can’t expect the initial passion of a project to propel you to 80,000 words.  It takes hard work.  A little every day.  Especially if your writing involves something more than a Tweet or a Facebook post.

You don’t wake up on a Saturday morning and decide to run a marathon.  You’ve got to put in the miles.  Every day.

You don’t pick up a guitar for the first time and play Classical Gas.  You’ve got to practice.  Every day.

Don’t make excuses.

Write a sentence today.  It will likely turn into a paragraph.  And a page.  And a chapter.

Keep chipping at the bedrock.

 

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zeb

This, my friends from around the world, is what Appalachian music is all about.  Not that I don’t love other music.  Just check out my Music page.  (Note to self:  Post some Foo Fighters, man.)  But everything about this video speaks to my world.  Zeb in his ball cap and his very non-millennial, non-hipster, Appalachian beard. The sled leaning against the wall.  The wood-burning stove.  Even the name.  Zeb.

And how can he be so good?  So easy?

The best part is Zeb Snyder and the Snyder Family Band is coming to my little town of St. Albans in June for the first ever YakFest.  Can’t wait.

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the long walk

pier for web

There were a few people on the beach, walking slowly, their heads down, scanning the sand for surprises from the deep that always appeared after a storm. A yellow umbrella pitched in the sand near the surf caught her eye and though she couldn’t see, she knew there was an old man underneath, his skin dark and leathery from his years in the sun, his shirt – a short-sleeved button-up, despite the cool weather – bleached a pale blue. There was a tackle box by his side and an always empty creel, though surely he would catch something sometime. Surely. He would sit in his beach chair and smile anyway, as if he knew he were part of the scene, part of what the people from the city expected to see when they came with their pale flesh, soon to be pink flesh, to walk on the hard, grainy sands and evaluate their lives and make big plans that would carry them back to their tedious jobs and their monotonous neighborhoods with a feeling of hope that would last a couple of weeks, maybe three, before comfortable complacency engulfed them once again and relieved them of any responsibility of living a more meaningful life. And it always happened on days like this one, not in the bright of a too hot day where the heat and lotions and kids crying in the distance worked to produce nothing better than a brief nap, followed by a short walk to the water to cool the feet, maybe venture in up to the knees, but never farther. No, the deep contemplation happened on the overcast days where the obligatory roasting in the sun was excused and those with no inclination for inner reflection went to the mall, while those who still had hope went on the long walk to the pier.

copyright 2018, joseph e bird, from the novel Heather Girl.

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and the darkness he called night

“I guess I misjudged how quickly the darkness falls.”

— Heather Roth, from the novel Heather Girl

copyright 2018, joseph e bird

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i can’t work like this

Adena Springs

Yesterday I drove from Lexington to Louisville along the Bluegrass Parkway.  It was mile after mile of picturesque, bucolic, pastoral scenery, on what had to be the most beautiful day of the year. It is impossible to have gloomy thoughts while making this drive on a day like that.

Utterly impossible.

How can one ponder the human condition when the day is perfect?

How can a writer let his imagination wander to the struggles of mankind when the grass is so green?

Writers need the the grit of the dark alley.

Writers need the longing promise of the empty train platform.

Writers at least need some rain, or run-down barns, or the crusty old farm hand thinking about his past.

There’s another part of Kentucky – eastern Kentucky – that’s ripe for stories.  But not this stretch of highway.

No way.

Photo Credit: Walt Roycraft.  The photo is the property of GRW, my employer.  The architects of GRW design, among other things, equine facilities.  This is the site of one of our projects, the Adena Springs Horse Farm in Paris, Kentucky. Very much like the scenery I passed on my way to Louisville.

6

how to squander your right to vote

I tried to vote today.

Of course that’s not the story.  I vote in every election, if I’m able.  Last year (I think it was last year) I voted by filling in circles with an ink pen, just like I did on high school tests back in the olden days.

But technology has finally arrived to the backwoods corner of my world.  This morning at 7:15, I arrived at the polling place to find brand new touch screen voting machines.  The poll workers felt obligated to teach me how to use them.  Not that I couldn’t figure it out by myself.

So I slide in the ballot to get things going and start touching away.  I knew some of the candidates, but rather than vote for people I don’t know anything about, I’ll skip to the next office until I see a candidate in which I have some confidence. On these new machines, it meant I touched “Next”.  I did that a lot.

I finally finished and then the machine started making me review all my choices.  I didn’t have time to do that.  I had to drive to Lexington.  More on that in a little bit.  I needed to end the voting exercise.  So I hit “Exit.”

And out came my ballot.

I took it to the next station where it was inserted into the magic vote counting machine. The magic machine spit it back out.  They tried again.  Same result.

“Did you hit Exit?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t supposed to do that.”

“Oh.”

“You should have hit Print.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, Jimmy.  He hit Exit.  What do we do?”

“He should have hit Print.”

“That’s what I told him.”

“Try it again.”

“We did.  It didn’t work.”

They huddled to consider the options.

“Nevermind.  I have to go.”

“But sir.  We’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t have time.”

They were still huddled when I left.

It’s ok.  The people I vote for never win anyway.

4

this morning

fog for web

this morning the skies are gray and the air is warm and dry like a mid-summer day.

this morning i stopped at Tim Horton’s and got a cup of oatmeal and a black coffee.

this morning i sit in my office planning for a day of phone calls and emails, and too little design.

this morning when i was young i worked outside tilling the soil and tending the plants and earning callouses on my hands.

this morning the birds call out in the quiet, reminding me of the days i worked the earth and toiled in sweat.

this morning it’s quiet inside, but soon the phone will ring and my day will start and i’ll forget this thought.

this morning i want to go outside and hoe the ground and smell the richness of the compost and eat lunch in the shade.

this morning the train rumbles on the tracks two blocks away and the bus roars by and and a siren wails.

this morning, like any other morning.

copyright 2018, joseph e bird

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