What we've learned...by Helen DePrima and Liz Flaherty


Helen and I discovered we were both on vacation this week, which had us cyber-mumbling about what to write. Her idea for this month’s blog was “mulling how much I learn about writing from reading other writers' novels, both good and not…” What a great thought, and one I’ve been mulling ever since. Our posts took divergent paths, which was the fun of it. – Liz

by Helen DePrima

I’ve attended many writers’ workshops, but I’ve taken only one writing course, a series of journalism classes taught by an AP reporter in conjunction with our local newspaper. Writing for column inches taught me to prune ruthlessly, to identify essential information and jettison surplus words.  More important, I hark back to great teachers in high school who focused my wandering mind and set my imagination free. Back in the days when perfect grammar was expected, I had the good fortune to have the same demanding teacher for both my junior and senior years: English lit, composition, and journalism. One of her more challenging assignments was diagramming the Gettysburg Address. She never had to bully; it never occurred to us to give her less than our best work. I had always been a reader, but Mrs. Kirwan awakened my desire to become a writer.


I don’t know if geography is taught in high school nowadays even though knowing the wider world is more important than ever. Mr. Kemp – F. Pennington Kemp, fresh out of college – made his class much more than memorizing capes and crops and national capitols. I still have the hand-drawn and water-colored map I created to illustrate a flight from London to Hong Kong over green river valleys, ochre deserts, snow-capped mountain ranges, seas and oceans complete with tiny ships. Sometimes he assigned us to bring in food from the places we were studying or to lecture about traditions our families had brought from their countries of origin. I’ve been lucky enough to visit many sites along that route, and later I pointed out exotic lands to my kids on an antique between-the-wars globe, one of my dearest childhood treasures. My passion must have been contagious – my daughter is a globe-trotting editor and travel blogger for Fodor’s.

Other valued teachers have been people I’ve met or observed, often never knowing how they’ve influenced me. A few days ago, while traveling through Vermont, I saw a young man limping along a country road carrying a guitar. His image became superimposed on a character who’s been clamoring for attention as soon as I finish my current project. The guitar has morphed into a banjo and the greening Vermont countryside into the Flint Hills of Kansas.

I strive to build on these foundation stones, to write clean, clear, and colorful stories. My best reward is having readers ask, “When will we see your next book?”

by Liz Flaherty

I read a new book this past week, by one of my very favorite authors. I loved it, although it’s probably not in my top five of hers. She has so many MORE than five, that doesn’t really mean a lot. But I noticed, for the first time in all the years I’ve been reading her, that she uses the word “though” a lot. As in, “as though…” or “even though.” It didn’t bother me—I’m fine with it; if anything, I thought it enhanced her voice. However, one of my best friends hates the word “though.” Hates it! She thinks my using it 200 times in a manuscript is just too much. (She’s also a copy editor, so I listen to her. Grudgingly.)

I run into problems sometimes. Another favorite author is an auto-buy for me, I don’t read her books until I’ve reached the end of my own work-in-progress. Because I’m afraid I will find myself trying to sound like her. I still suffer guilt because I wrote The Girls of Tonsil Lake—a girlfriends book with four protagonists—too soon after reading Robyn Carr’s The House on Olive Street. Although the stories aren’t alike and those two books are far from the only ones within that trope, I still wonder if I’d have written my book if I hadn’t read hers first.

Mostly, when I think of the influence of other writers…other books, it always comes back to Louisa May Alcott and Little Women. She gave me the yearning to become Jo March, and I’m so grateful.

Comments

  1. Thanks for the posts--funny, I saw a young man with a guitar and a baby limping along a road in New Hampshire and always wondered about him. And that was...gulp...a few decades ago. I can honestly say other writers' work has taught me more about both fiction and nonfiction than any teacher I ever had all through school. But then I joined RWA and began taking amazing workshops given by living, breathing, working authors whose books were published and admired. Talk about great teachers!

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    1. I kind of strayed from original idea for this month's blog, but I surely have profited greatly from reading other writers' work. And my own! Right now, I'm rereading my first Cameron's Pride novel, mostly pleased but cringing at my too-frequent use of semi-colons. I love Craig Johnson's Longmire mysteries, but I despair of ever reaching his quality of writing.

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    2. I agree-and I've learned a ton from other Heartwarming authors!

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  2. Reading others' writing teaches me so much. There are the specific examples like how to (or how not to) handle conversations with multiple people in the room, and how to set up a flashback. More importantly, reading so many books gives me a sense of flow, of what a story is. I always look forward to the first of the month when I get the 4 newest Heartwarming stories. I confess, I generally don't analyse them for writing tips. Instead, I fall into the stories and keep reading until I sigh over the well-earned HEAs.

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    1. I agree about becoming absorbed in the story, but sometimes it's hard if the writing is awkward. I've recently been enjoying, more or less, a series with engaging characters, good plots, and superb settings, but the technical flaws intrude on my reading pleasure -- too many POV's, not enough dialogue carrying the action, and no-no attribution: she grumbled, he snickered . . . When in doubt, say "said." But I'm a hopeless would-be editor.

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    2. Good writing will absorb me even when a story does not--which gets me into trouble with my own writing!

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  3. I always felt lucky to have a library in the small town where I grew up. It was launched on donated books and kept up by volunteers for many years. My sis and I were voracious readers and fortunately no one ever said we had to stay within our age-range of books. I've seen school librarians do that and felt they were stifling kids who wanted to read more and more. I love going to workshops or even hearing writer process from speakers at our monthly RWA meetings. Nice blog, ladies.

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    1. Small-town libraries are the best and come in all shapes. Ours was the front room of little frame shotgun house shaded by a big maple. Hours of operation were erratic, but the librarian, who lived in the back rooms, would open if she happened to be at home. There was a rule about children checking out books from the adult section, but my grandmother wrote a note that I should be allowed unlimited freedom of choice. One of my favorite authors growing up was Frank Yerby, definitely not pre-teen reading. Of course, a lot of the situations went over my head, but I loved his detailed descriptions of the Old South.

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    2. I love libraries. They are the best classrooms anywhere.

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  4. Great posts, ladies! I'm a life-long reader and try not to too closely examine a book I'm reading for technique. lol I like to get lost in the story...harder though with some of the courses I've taken.

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    1. I wish I weren't such a fussbudget about technique. I took violin and later viola lessons all through high school. I didn't have the passion to follow my two uncles into a professional career, and I developed a hypersensitivity to notes played or sung even a tiny bit out of tune. Too much training isn't always a blessing.

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    2. Hi, Pat. I don't think I'm a "fussbudget," but certain things do bother me a lot.

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  5. Great post! It was recently pointed out to me that I use 'well' and 'though' a lot, as well as some other words, so I am trying to get out of that rut! I do sometimes notice word repetition in books I read, but mostly I just get lost in the story! I do learn a lot from reading really great romances, even in other genres like historical.

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