2014 North Iowa Writers Workshop

"Words are sacred. They should be treated with respect. If you use the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.

-- Playwright Tom Stoppard
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Do you like to write?

Would you enjoy the opportunity to learn from professionals?

Would you enjoy spending a few hours with others who share your interest in writing?

Three good questions - one easy answer!

The 25th North Iowa Writers Workshop will be held on Saturday, Sept. 6, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Mason City Public Library.

This year's speakers include:

 John Skipper, newspaper reporter and columnist and author of 14 books.

JoAnn Lower, storyteller who will inspire you to make your own stories come alive.

Retired Judge Gerald Magee, a master at writing and teaching the art of writing short, short, short stories!

The day will be filled with discussions, fun in-class writing exercises and plenty of time for you to ask questions and receive guidance.

All of this for a $10 registration fee. Send your check to North Iowa Writers Workshop, 707 Sixth Street SE, Mason City, Iowa, 50401.

Farewell

     From time to time over the past year, this space has been devoted to how to write a good ending - how to "stick the landing" as they say in gynastics.
     If a story doesn't have a good ending, just as if a journey doesn't have a good ending, it leaves its audience unfulfilled.
     Knowing that full well, that is the chance I take today as I tell you this is the last post I shall do of "The Writing Life." In all journeys, there is a time to move on and I find myself in that situation. Maybe someday I will take the 97 posts of "The Writing Life" and put them in the form of a little book. That would be yet another journey.
     Good luck to all of you in your journeys. Au revoir.

Your lighthouse

     There is a wonderful passage in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" that offers great advice to writers.
      Here is the passage: "One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. `Which road do I take?' she asked. The response was a question: `Where do you want to go?'
`I don't know,' Alice answered. `Then,' said the cat, `it doesn't matter.'"
     As writers, if we know where we are going with our work, we'll never be puzzled by the fork in the road. We need to stay focused. Billy Wilder, the late, great screen writer, put it this way: "If you are having trouble writing the third act, the problem is probably in the first act."
      The best way to handle the ending to a story is to know what it is before you begin. The ending is the lighthouse in the sea as you go to your keyboard and begin your voyage.

Be a trouble maker

     The best book for writers on writing is Sol Stein's "Stein on Writing." Every writer should have it on their bookshelf. Stein, an author, playwright and publisher, provides many tips on writing and tells why they work. I purchased the book many years ago and get it out every once in a while and thumb through it, reading only the parts that I underlined the first time through. Here's one example.
     "Writers are trouble makers. A psychotherapist tries to relieve stress, strain and pressure. A writer's job is to give readers stress, strain and pressure. The fact is that readers who hate those things in life love them in fiction."
      The same holds true in factual writing if it is a story about a dramatic experience in someone's life. So, be a trouble maker.

Endings

      Endings are important because if they are not satisfying to the reader, the entire story may be deemed a failure.
      When my kids were toddlers, I would occasionally sit on the edge of their beds and tell them "bed time" stories to help them get to sleep. I recall a time I was doing that with my youngest daughter -making up a story and providing vivid detail until I thought it was time for her to go to sleep. So I ended the story abruptly and told her good night. And she said, "That wasn't a very good story." Had she been older and more succinct, she would have said, "That was a lousy ending." And she was right. But to her, the whole story fell flat on its face.
     Whether it be fact or fiction, novel or speech to the local Lions Club, pay as much attention to your ending as you do to the rest of the work.
      Strive to do what gymnasts must do - stick the landing.  

Why we write

     In the late 1980s, a writer named Isaac Singer gave a lecture at a university. Afterward, a student asked him what's the purpose of literature. He did not hesitate. "To entertain and instruct," he said. Notice that he said entertain first, then instruct.
     Too often we think of entertainment as funny or a lack of seriouness. What Singer was saying is that if the reader is not entertained - if he or she is not engaged in something they enjoy - then all possibilities of instruction are lost.
     A person who receives a gift and enjoys it is entertained. A writer's job is to give a gift to the reader. Author Richard Russo puts it this way: The writer "comes bearing a gift he hopes will please. He starts out making the thing for himself, perhaps, but at some point he realizes he wants to share it, which is why he spends long hours reshaping the thing, lovingly honing its details in hopes that it will please us, that it will be a gift worth giving and receiving."
     In other words, it must be entertaining.   

Something to think about

   A 17-year-old high school student wrote and directed a short film that was shown at an independent film festival. The youngster was asked what he thought were the secrets to producing a good film. Read what this teen-ager said - and then let's all think about how his youthful words can apply to our own writing.
   The young man said, "Rope the people in at the very beginning; keep them attached; and give them something to think about afterwards for hours, or even days."