It’s another harsh morning here in the Pacific Northwest. We’re still digging out from an arctic storm and brutal winds blasting in from the Columbia River Gorge. The region has a staggering number of trees down crashing into roofs, flattening cars, and taking out power lines. While main thoroughfares are driveable, many roads are still impassable or closed, neighborhoods and thousands of homes without power. Burst pipes all over the place.  Note: the trees here that are crashing over are significantly larger and older than the ones in this photo–I can’t find a good image.

I’m homebound, but my power remained on, thank God. It’s going to stay below freezing today and tomorrow afternoon freezing rains are arriving before it warms up–so I’m not putting away my battery-powered lanterns, flashlights, and candles yet. I’ve been wearing layers, working on an editing project, writing, reading The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (highly recommend), watched the Green Bay Packers defeat the Dallas Cowboys in an especially fun and satisfying victory, and using my oven to help heat the house.

Lands of Belief

Let’s talk about story openings. I believe in the power of stories to enlighten, heal, and transport readers to lands of belief.  Developmental editing focuses on the fundamentals of creating a publishable book or story such as structure, pacing, dialogue, character development and arc.  It’s collaborative and the suggestions I supply are detailed, doable, and sometimes profound.  And I take my role as teacher seriously. I use Track Changes to line edit, insert, and message the writer.  I create detailed memos and answer follow-up questions. Thus the changes needed are illustrated in the manuscript.  This is how to deepen viewpoint. This is how to write crisper sentences. This is how to bump up dialogue. This is how to slow down for impact and emotional resonance.

This is how you pull readers into the first pages and world of the story and nail them there.

So here’s a little trick: Imagine your readers have arrived at your story as if they’ve traveled far to reach their destination. And are severely jetlagged. You know the feeling: weary, limp, disoriented, overwhelmed, thick-headed. Far from home. Your instincts might be to gently take the reader’s hand and nudge them into the story with a pontification, or murmur, or a vague sense of reality. A featherbed sort of introduction.

Nix. Nein. Non. Instead  immerse your reader via sensory proofs of the story world, with smells and sharply-drawn details, sounds–because sounds are linked to emotions, and, of course, through indelible sights. The more exotic the setting, the more specific and thoughtfully rendered proofs are needed. Readers are witnesses and participants in storytelling. So think layers and texture and complexity woven from your first sentences.

By the time the jetlagged traveler trundles up to his or her hotel room to unpack and freshen up, he or she might be debating if a nap is the best course of action.  But no naps allowed. Your tourist-slash-reader needs to leave the hotel, gape into into the harsh morning light, and struggle to hydrate. Maybe browse through a market spotted on the taxi ride from the airport. Or find a cafe for a stomach-settling meal, caffeinated beverage, or people watching. Maybe a stroll along the inviting sea.

And yes this works for stories set in the ordinary world too with or without corpses. If your character is ripped off by a pickpocket upon arrival, the police station might indicate an inadequate budget and outdated equipment. Or it might be be well-lit, efficient, and  accomodating to the public.  Cops need technology, the building needs an emergancy exit, and the layout will suggest the hierarchy in the department.

Same with the crowded apartment or bungalow, seemingly boring office, or small town.

Winter’s Bone, Ree Dolly

This also means your opening contains tension–a tantalizing sense of unease. Perhaps a surprise or two. This doesn’t mean the reader {via the character} needs to trip over a corpse or  encounter a villain. Although come to think of it, if she strolls along the inviting sea and stumbles over a corpse with his head bashed in… You get the idea–someone or something needs to disturb the opening. It needs threat.

However, your first pages don’t always need an opening salvo, as in bombardment or barrage.  Fictional (and memoir) openings might suggest or even whisper that things are not quite right as might happen in literary fiction. But there are underlying disturbances in play. Disturb is a good word to remember about openings. No matter your genre.

Or you could portray a seemingly perfect or delightful situation that goes haywire–after you’ve supplied a brief honeymoon. You’ve got endless options to shake up your reader.  And no matter that your  jetlagged reader needs a wee nap. Or to drop onto the bed and succomb to dreamland.  But not yet. Not yet.

If you’re read my post from January of 2013 you might have rightly concluded that when January rolls around I’m usually simply tired while longing for snow and quiet. And what lies ahead in the new year–taking down my magical Christmas tree and decorations is one of my least-favorite tasks. So many delicate trinkets to pack away tucked into tissue paper. So many needles to vacuum.

It’s difficult to convey how much simple joy these seasonal enchantments bring me year after year. How small things like serving a meal on a Christmas plate is so satisfying. How gazing around at the little forest diaramas I’ve created fills me with pleasure. {I’ve been collecting  minaturee trees since the ’80s, think replicas of the Scandinavian variety.} How much I miss my sweet tree decorated with strands of gold stars and cranberry and gold  orangments once it’s lugged outdoors to be chopped into bits for the recycling container. I’m light candles as dusk falls to compensate for the missing spangles and soft tree lights.Try to appreciate how clean my house can be–it does afford a sense of a fresh start.

And don’t even get me started about sending and receiving Christmas cards. The past few years I haven’t sent them to everyone I intended and in early January I’m still trying to make amends as more cards arrive in the mail. Few things are lovelier than cards in the mail, right?  And since it’s the one time of year I allow myself to eat cookies I’ve baked like a greedy child {without going too crazy} I’m also bloated and thick-feeling. So the month is about setting things right, moving my body in new ways, and reaching out to old friends and family.

Might I add, typically as I start digging into my writing projects with anticipation. Which leads us to finding our mentors wherever we may.

Because what always sustains me year round is the wisdom and common sense of  novelist Richard Bausch. His missives on the writing life, on what it takes to create luminous prose, and how to sink into and trust the process always enlighten.  He’s written eleven novels and eight short-story collections. The Los Angeles Times has this marvelous article/interview with Bausch, “How Richard Bausch was able to stop worrying and trust his instincts.” The novel is based around a Memphis production of King Lear, one of Bausch’s obsessions it seems. Isn’t the cover marvelous?

I’m pointing out Bausch today because he’s a writer who has been transforming anxiety, loss, and pain into stories for decades. And teaching and reassuring writers for decades. He’s learned from the greats which is something we can all do even if we cannot hang with them at literary cocktail parties. {I’ll post more of his learned tidbits here this year.}

Let me add more gladdening news about Bausch–he’s writing a Substack column.

Oh, and a bit more good news here from the rainy Pacific Northwest–snow is in the forecast. Color me delighted and hopeful because our forecasts can shift faster than a pickpocket.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart

Ten years ago seems worlds and lifetimes away. That said I published this column January 4th, 2013 and agree with my own points here–that’s supposed to be funny.

What’s Next is about January, slow beginnings, and  a proposal to ease into the year. And why not? Surely we’ll need to reserve stamina for the final months of this  year.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, go deep

Like many people I’ve been thinking about resolutions and goal setting for this new year. I’ve got two: move more and write more.

And I’ve been thinking about my niece Naomi who died almost three years ago at 42 from cancer. It was a brutal, horrible death, in the midst of the  Covid pandemic so she was going to endless appointments alone as the cancer spread to her liver and bones. Her mother, fiance’, closest friend, and dogs were with her when she died smiling. A fashionista, she was cremated with her favorite heels and her never-worn wedding dress hanging in her closet.

Typing this I’m shedding fresh tears at the memories of how ravaged she was in the end, how few people were able to be with her since her immune system was so compromised, how she wanted us to remember her as she was–young, beautiful, funny, kind, talented. Alive.

When she was dying–it was about 15 months between her initial diagnosis and death–I couldn’t read anything that required focus because I’d open a book and words just sort of swam around. It wasn’t until the summer of 2021 that I began devouring books and welcoming that solace.

And I couldn’t write much because it was as if there was no more  sky.

And discovered the tenacity of grief.

I still cannot believe she is gone.

So my resolution to write more is intensely meaningful.

I’m hoping that your resolutions around writing don’t stem from loss, but that they are still deeply meaningful.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart.