Ya Got Lipstick on Yer Teeth

Lipstick is messy business; it often gets on teeth, and since I pay attention to detail it's quite distracting to me. I always want to lean over with a tissue or something and say, "Here, let me get that for you."

Of course, that would be socially unacceptable (I think. I've never tried, actually. Let me know if you have and how that went for you.).

I have a friend who says that 'girl code' is to run your tongue over your teeth, then the other lady will know you're telling her she has lipstick on her teeth and she'll do something about it. Apparently I got the wrong 'girl code' curriculum, because I would just wonder what they were doing.

It seems like it would be embarrassing for the lipstick wearer, probably lower than the 'booger in the nose,' but higher than 'your shoes don't match your belt.' This adds to my inability to say anything, because you never really know how someone will react. Presumably they'd be grateful . . . but you never really know.

Mostly I'm in a state of eternal limbo, because I'll always be distracted by lipstick on women's teeth, and I feel like I can't do anything about it.

But this isn't really about lipstick on teeth.

When you're reading a story, extra words are like lipstick on someone's teeth. They're distracting, you can't quite figure out what to do about them, and you're vaguely embarrassed for the writer.

When you're writing a story, extra words seem so easy—they make your stuff sound fancier and look cooler, and big words seem to equal intelligence these days.

But, remember, anything that does not drive your writing forward is unnecessary. It's like Strunk and White consistently drive home in Elements of Style: 

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Adding extra words is like lipstick on teeth: awkward, unnecessary, and very distracting.

Edit ruthlessly and your reader will appreciate it for the clarity, speed, and brevity—just like we all appreciate when the lady realizes her teeth are stained bright red and wipes them clean or licks them or does whatever women do when they realize their teeth are covered in lipstick . . .

Artistry—And The B & W Photo Challenge

Still reading On Writing Well, and of course, loving it—but then, how could anyone not?

To dispel some rumors about writers, some excerpts:

• If your job is to write every day, you learn to do it like any other job.
• Professional writers are solitary drudges who seldom see other writers.
• "Do you put symbolism in your writing?" "Not if I can help it," I replied. I have an unbroken record of missing the deeper meaning in any story, play or movie, and as for dance and mime, I have never had any idea of what is being conveyed.
• It had never occurred to me that writing could be easy.
• Professional writers rewrite their sentences over and over and then rewrite what they have rewritten.
• Clear thinkers are clear writers.
• The clear writer is someone who is clearheaded enough to see fuzz for what it is: fuzz.

My uncle challenged me to the black and white challenge, a social media inspired fad to take a black and white picture that describes your life every day for a week. There are only two rules: no people, and no explanation. I spent a surprising amount of time coming up with a good picture to define every day, then took every shot until I got the one I wanted, then messed with the settings so it looked exactly how I thought it should.

It's funny how a lot of artistic expression is exactly the same—you think about what you want to do, you do it (a first time, a second time . . . a twentieth time), and when it finally looks (says, sounds, etc.) how (what) you want it to after way too much time, you release it to the public. The public (as it were) thinks you just snapped a picture running past, scribbled down the sentence on a napkin, or real quick wrote and recorded that song before breakfast this morning.

But it's not exactly like that.

Producing clear content takes work, contemplation, and a lot of editing. But the outcome is worth it, because the artist who can clearly and simply communicate an idea is the artist who is mastering his craft.

PS. My 7 black and white pictures . . .

Day 1, Sunday. Rest (and a TOASTY warm office).

Day 4, Wednesday. Responsibility (and a LOBSTER bag from Ikea).

Day 2, Monday. Home (and a BLUE throw rug).

Day 5, Thursday. Productivity (and YELLOW LEMON salt and pepper shakers and COFFEE).

Day 3, Tuesday. Love (and YELLOW SUNFLOWERS).

Day 6, Friday. Celebrating Jesus (with RED and SPARKLY ornaments).

Day 7, Saturday. Curtis (he's very wonderful). I realize I broke the rule, but how could I post about my life without crediting such an integral part of it?

Smaller Bites, Dash. Yikes.

At the beginning of The Incredibles, the family sits down for dinner. Dash, a 4th grader, tries unsuccessfully to cut his slab of steak (which is at about eye level). He shoves a corner of the steak in his mouth and growls as he tries to bite a chunk off the slab. At this point, his mother's maternal instinct kicks in, and she says,

"Smaller bites, Dash. Yikes!" Without missing a beat, she continues, "Bob, could you help the carnivore cut his meat?" Mr. Incredible cuts through the plate and goes to get a new one (but really to read the newspaper), and chaos ensues in the dining room, and it's wonderful comic pandemonium that any parent immediately understands.

Sometimes you have to give up doing everything so you can do something.

William Zinsser wrote On Writing Well. In the first chapter, he writes about a writing panel he was on at a school.

"What do you do on days when it isn't going well?" Dr. Brock was asked. He said he just stopped writing and put the work aside for a day when it would go better. I then said that the professional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it. I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. He is also going broke."

It's not a good reason to not do something because you don't feel like it, you're tired, or you can't think of anything to say. Those are fancy ways to say you're neglecting a gift.

You have to do something, though.

this post is a struggle

For three weeks I've written almost nothing, because of cleaning and work and, well, life. Mostly the second two—my house is evidence that the first one has (how shall we say it graciously...) clearly hasn't been taking too much of my attention.

Sometimes writing feels like a sport, only instead of one season on and one season off a year there are six or eight of each. Sometimes it's an on season, and I'm not awake for long enough to write everything down that I have to say. Other times it's an off season, and no matter how desperately I want to write, I have nothing to say and no way to say it. The biggest difference is that sports is supposed to have an off season, but writing is like a savings account; the more time you put into it, the better it gets (AKA, no off season).

I can continue the analogies if you want, but it might become (assuming it isn't already) far fetched. I'll stop to save us both, the only problem is the less I can think of to write about, the more analogies I think of . . .

Writing is like a car—sometimes it starts alone, and sometimes it needs a jumpstart.
Writing is like a Christmas tree—it's better when it has a point.
Writing is like exercise—if you don't do it, you get out of shape.
Writing is like leftovers—sometimes it's better the second time around, and sometimes it's way worse.
Writing is like sports—you win some, you lose some, and sometimes you break a bone and have to sit on the bench for three months.

I guess my point is that sometimes writer's block is selective. It blocks all the substantive ideas and sits like a two-ton gorilla on the part of the brain that understands logic and writes it down. The past month, several gorillas have been hibernating on that part of my brain.

I'm poking them with a stick, though, because they're getting obnoxious. And like the famous lady from the internet says, "Ain't nobody got time for that."

A Three Year Anniversary

Three years ago today, I met Curtis (he's very wonderful).

He came up to me in the student dining room and sat down and asked me if I remembered him. Apparently we'd known each other in high school. I had no recollection. He showed me pictures, himself as a young boy with a baby face and braces, holding a tiny bluegill up next to his face. I still didn't remember.

He sat down next to me and talked to me for an hour and a half. I spun a red delicious apple around on the table the whole time we talked, and he leaned forward and grinned and took a genuine interest in everything I had to say. He charmed me through and through. A week later, he picked me up from the airport in the middle of the night. He had a backpack full of different flavors of sparkling water and gatorade, and a big green poster board that said, "It's Me, Curtis." We rode back on the el together and he told me about his family, and his dog, and the forest green Buick century that used to be his grandpa's.

We nonchalantly agreed to study in the library together, although we didn't get much homework done. We went on a long walk through Lincoln Park, and climbed a tree, and got bread and cheese and chocolate milk and sat by the river. The next day I helped him (by which I mean he kindly let me think I was helping him) tear down sound equipment that he'd set up for work.

A month later, after a long cold walk late at night, we sat on a bench under the big mushroom at Rainforest Cafe, looking at the McDonalds across the street. He told me he liked me.

And the rest is history.

Once, When I Was Little . . .

I could write a lot of posts about a lot of work-related subjects—interpersonal dynamics, professional relationships, keeping deadlines, the constantly losing battle to keep my desk organized, the list runs on and on. But it wouldn't be good for me, because overthinking things never ends well. And you'd think I was a broken record with bad memory. Jobs are real, grown-up life, but there's a lot more to life than work (like donuts and sleeping in and swimming in the lake in September and loving Jesus).

Instead, to spare us both the awkward pain an excess of work stories would cause, I'm following a prompt that I thought of today, although I'm sure someone smarter than me already came up with it. When I settled on it, I promised myself I'd write the first story that came to mind.

“Once, when I was little . . .”

I grew up in a yellow, rectangular house. It perched on a hill on a five acre lot, and we had everything: a pool, woods, a tree fort, a zip line, a rope swing, a tether-ball pole, a garage roof to play on, a sledding hill in the winter, a baseball field in the summer, and plenty of room for a roaming imagination. Lest I overly glamorize it, picking up sticks (what we seemed to end up doing most Saturdays) was an endless, sappy project, and shoveling the driveway in the winter could take several hours, even with four people (granted, the youngest one often ended up playing instead of shoveling).

About a quarter mile down the dirt road from our house was The Park. When I was tiny little, I think it hosted a wooden play set—but it rotted, so they tore it down, and put up swings instead. Four swings, with thick silver chains, hard black rubber seats, and sturdy green support beams that were just the right size to shimmy up.

Our community used to have a picnic at The Park every summer—there was a clown making balloon art with any color balloon you wanted, lots of people, and lots of food. We'd always go down for a while and eat, and my parents probably talked to people, and my siblings and I probably stuffed our pockets with the free candy on the picnic tables. Okay, we definitely did. We were children of true culture.

One year, when I was still small enough for my dad's deep brown cowboy boots to come past my knees, we went to the picnic in installments. I was in the on-foot group, others were on bikes. After eating our fill and participating in some neighborhoodly activities (getting a blue balloon something, chatting with strangers, and taking candy), my sister, brother, and I headed home. They'd been part of the on-bikes group.

Too small and chubby to have any chance of success in the impromptu race one of us started (competition is a fact of life in big families), I was running up the hill behind them (I like to think of it as striving valiantly). But as they kept getting farther ahead and my chubby legs got more tired, I stopped running. When a black SUV pulled up and stopped next to me, the bikers were too far away and focused on victory to intervene. Through an open window or door, the nice people offered me a ride home. I didn't know them, but I did know I'd have great bragging rights if I beat the older ones home. I nodded my blonde head, clutched my balloon close, and climbed in.

The ride home took less than two minutes, and I don't remember any of it. I probably chatted happily. What I do remember is gloating at the end of the driveway after they dropped me off, and waiting for the older ones to get home so I could proudly boast my victory. To my shock, the pride only lasted about as long as the car ride—right until my parents found out. I had my bath, then put on my flannel Winnie-the-Pooh nightgown (white, with a cotton candy pink ruffle around the bottom), then got the first (that I remember), and perhaps most severe lecture of my childhood. Any parent can imagine how it went—anyone else just needs to know that accepting rides from strangers is definitely a no-go.

Until then, I didn't know. After that, I knew. I definitely knew.

And after the scolding had ended, and they'd wiped my tears away and my mom hugged and kissed me, my dad held me as I cried off the sting of the reprimand. Even when I finished crying, he stood and held me and gently swayed back and forth. 

For a very long time.

And that's how the story goes in my mind, and that's how it ends.

What Takes My Breath Away

A lot of things in life take my breath away:

• The "Hallelujah Chorus," from Handel's Messiah. I've heard it probably a thousand times in my life—and my heart still swells with the crescendo and glory of the conclusion.
• The sunrise every morning, even though I can't see most of it through tall buildings. That's the biggest reason my heart longs for the country.
• The memory of people I know and love who are in heaven—and the knowledge that someday I'll be there too.
• Curtis's face when he buys me flowers, or does the dishes, or sees me after I've been at work all day.

There are more, many more, but then you'd be bored and I'd get too distracted.

As a writer, I'm constantly looking for other writers who can make me feel and take my breath away. I read a lot of things every day—and many of them leave me completely unmoved. Writing can be perfectly functional, but it can still leave me uninspired and uninterested. It's a consistent treat to read something excellent.

Today, I read three things that took my breath away.

The first is a casual obituary, more of a tribute, written by Jerry Jenkins about Kent Puckett. I started reading by accident, as I flipped through a 7-year-old publication looking for ideas for a project I'm working on. What began as a casual glance turned into elbows on the desk and complete absorption. I've never heard of Kent Puckett until today—but after reading a 400 word tribute, I feel like I know him. I'm happy for him that he's in heaven, but suddenly I'm missing someone I've never met. Jenkin's concluding remarks are as follows:

“Kent said, “Yeah, I’m trying to take care of myself. Who knows, I might live to be a centurion.” I only wish he had.”

This marks an outstanding piece of writing. Well done, Mr. Jenkins. (Click here to read the whole tribute.)

The second is an email from a friend. Writer's block is something I write about with relative frequency, because I experience it with relative frequency. Whenever I have it, I write about it. It's always vaguely startling when someone tells you something about yourself that you didn't know. Then when you hear it or read it, you can actually hear the thud of the hammer on the nail. Today, a friend gave me advice on writer's block—but it was really advice about life. After rereading the email a half dozen times, I printed it off to put in my special book of writing that has warmed me, cheered me, chilled me, and inspired me. It concluded,

“Those aspirational writers—the ones wearing a French beret and listening to Miles Davis and sipping lattes at Starbucks while waiting for inspiration to strike—they’ll never get it, because they don’t have the discipline to crank out 2,000 words a day, every day.”

I promptly threw out all my French berets when I got home. (Just kidding. Haven't owned one since I was a kid—my brother got me this cool maroon beret for either Christmas or my birthday one year, and I wore it every day until the Fourth of July. I think since then it's gone the way of all the world.)

The third and final is a book. For my birthday, Curtis (he's very wonderful) got me How to Write Best Selling Fiction by Dean Koontz. After opening it and seeing the font and and formatting (and because the cover is BRIGHT ORANGE with BRIGHT YELLOW letters), I checked the copyright date. It's 1981. Almost dinosaur ancient—but, my parents are proof that good things did happen in the 1900s before I was born, so I kept reading.

And it's absolutely excellent. It's a personable, humorous, helpful how-to book about writing, publishing, and editing, but mostly writing. It's spectacular. The title of chapter three:

“The changing marketplace
OR
I’m sorry, but we’re no longer buying epistolary Gothic espionage novels set on the planet Mars in the seventeenth century. Readers seem to be tiring of that genre.”

— Dean Koontz

I've added something else to my list of personal goals: I'd like to learn how to take someone's breath away (in a brief, good sort of way) with my writing.

Helplessness

My age-old solution for conquering writer’s block is what every writer thinks is the most annoying thing: writing about it. I’d all rather go get a donut, or crawl out of the closet I live in, and nap on a davenport in the corner of an empty library. Instead, I use a cinderblock for my feet and chains for my wrist, and write about how much I detest writers block. It’s like the kid that complains about eating his broccoli, so his mom cooks him an entire pot and says,

“It’s fine, darling, you’ll learn to love it.”

I’m not sure if there are parents like this out there, but I’m glad they're not mine. Props, ma and pa.

Earlier this year, I wrote about different types of writer’s block: your run of the mill, ‘can’t think of anything to say,’ the more complex, ‘all my feelings are gone, how could I possible write anything meaningful,’ and the most-dreadful-in-a-wonderful-way, ‘I do this all day every day and make money for it, so there’s nothing left in the tank.’

Writer’s block (mostly the first one, sometimes the second one, and if you’re lucky the third one) is like bad weather or the common cold. I all do things to protect against it, like tarps or sandbags or stuffing Vaseline up our noses on long plane flights, but it’s inevitable. And then I’m just sick in bed, or watching the rain out the window wishing I hadn’t left all my sidewalk chalk out there.

Always, before, writing about writer’s block has cured me. It’s funny how it works: I’ll sit down, numb and thoughtless and rant about how I can’t think of anything and writing is a deplorable sport and I should’ve played basketball in high school instead, and soon I’ll have ideas zipping along.

Even tonight. I spent two hours writing on helplessness, and only came up with seven sorry sentences, fragmented and weak at best. I think to myself, surely I have things to say, but all the evidence of my labor is underwritten, overworked Calibri size 12, seven meager lines. I stare at the screen, frustrated. I can write thousands of words a week, but here, about anything I really care about, I can’t even remember the proper construction for a sentence. Is it subject adjective? Verb adverb? Noun participle? My college Editing class professor would be so disappointed in me—but then she always was, because I didn’t know what a dangling participle was. I just wrote like words were music.

But I digress.

I cast my career into the kitchen trash can (I just changed the bag tonight and it’s already almost full again. How can only two people make so much trash?), draft up a text to my boss that I’m quitting and taking a job labeling cans in a factory on the south side, and start a small fire in my frying pan to hold a ceremonial burning of the newest draft of my next book.

And then, suddenly, as I write about how I can’t write and I’m annoyed at it and there's nothing I can do, I have an epiphany (too strong? realization).

Helplessness is hard to put on paper well. Not so the reader nods and smiles, close-lipped and complacent, but so that the small part of your heart (you know where, you’ve felt it) starts to hurt, and you think, yes, yes, I’ve been there, I know. It’s dreadful. I’m so sorry. If only you knew that I understand.

But somehow, it’s hard to write about, maybe because I chafe against feeling it. I want to be in control—I don't want to stand idly by and let things happen without my permission. It’s like having responsibility and the inability to act simultaneously, like missing the glass I bumped and knocked off the counter.

Enter epiphany. It’s come as I rant, that this is how I can describe helplessness

Today, helplessness is knowing strongly, fiercely, massively, that I have something to say—and I cannot say it. Because at this moment, I am unable.

Maybe I won’t always be—maybe I will.

Maybe there’s an antidote—maybe there’s not.

Being helpless sometimes means the only thing I can do is wait and see. And keep trying.

Chasing Humanity

I wrote a whole post about how great writers can make their readers feel the whole range of emotions—then I read it, and it didn't make me feel anything besides boredom. I tightened it up (because editing), and here are the final nuggets:

“She could make the obit of a woman who spent her life looking out the window fascinating.”

— The Dead Beat

Lots of writers go to school to learn the mechanics of writing without learning the soul of the art. Many times we miss the point of perfecting the art because we're so focused on the craft. Writing isn't about the mechanics—it's about the art.

A good writer can suppose a feeling, and write correctly about it. A great writer can feel the feeling, and make you feel it too.

Writing about people well is understanding beyond what you've experienced, feeling what you can't imagine, and taking on someone else's pain, joy, or heartache.

To be a good writer, you have to write good. But to be a great writer, you must learn how to understand people and write their feelings into your good writing.

That's chasing humanity and sketching it out.

Ps. I'm reading a fantastic book about writing obituaries right now that's prompted this mumbling jumble of semi-insights.

I Didn't Used to Like Coffee Shops

I've never been much of a coffee shop person.

I didn't wake up to the smell of coffee every day as a kid and didn't even start drinking it myself until college—and even then, it was just on the 4 a.m. mornings when there was a snowstorm that took all day to clean up (landscaping on a college campus in Chicago). I never picked up the habit of going to coffee shops because a) it's too expensive and b) frankly, I always felt it was quite boring.

Why would I want to pay to go sit somewhere (when I have a perfectly good bedroom where I can sit for free) for a couple of hours, when I could be adventuring, wandering, and probably getting lost in the dark on the wrong side of town with a dead cell phone and no protective anything?

. . . Sorry, Dad. It made sense to me.

But this weekend, I spent hours at coffee shops, because when I write at home I get distracted. I was an hour into Starbucks when I realized something:

I love coffee shops.

Not because of the coffee—it's good, but I'm not partial. I have pretty blunt feelings about $4.50 for liquid that only sticks around for a few hours. I'll keep said feelings to myself.

I love coffee shops because they're full of humans. People complain that personal interaction is leaving society, and I can agree in part—we do a lot of interacting with machines. But I realized something delightful on Sunday. We may be a technological generation who suffers from an unnecessary addiction to screens (let me tell you how I really feel...) but personal interaction is still in the running. And it's going strong.

The old man at the table in the corner with 5 newspapers spread out and too-large khakis wandered around and came in and out of the shop a lot of times. He held the door open for at least a dozen people. He smiled at all of them. They all smiled back.

The lady with hot pink rags tied up in her hair and an outfit that I couldn't even imagine in my wildest imagination talked to the baristas. Friendly, normal, everyday talk. Talk that says, "Hey, I see you're a person. Me too. Let's talk about normal people stuff."

Women met at the shop to have coffee and chat, couples came for a mid-morning pick-me-up, families stopped in before and after church—and strangers talked to each other.

I watched at least a hundred people cycle through the Starbucks and it reminded me of something. People are all the same. When God created us, he didn't dress us with the expensive clothes, the fancy nail polish, the shoes and gadgets and accessories that set us apart, once we grow up and think we need that stuff. He created us as people who need to sleep and eat, cry when we're sad, and laugh when we're happy. People are just normal people.

Think about that next time you interact with anyone you don't know, and even people you do know. They probably also do laundry and have bad days sometimes.

So, I'm sorry, Curtis. I love coffee shops, and now we have to budget for my new expensive habit.