Use the Longer Days of Spring to Try Shorter Types of Writing

Writing Inspiration

If you're like me, the sunshine and warmer breezes of early spring call you away from your desk more often than they should. Writing is hard work and you want to play. Use the new vigor that spring infuses into its longer brighter days to fuel your writing. Take your writing inspiration from the early festivals, fairs and sporting events emerging on your calendar. Experiment with shorter pieces. If you write poetry revisit the haiku form or write a shorter piece of free verse; challenge your self to say the same thing with fewer lines or words.

May is unofficially short story month. Try to write one or a few. The beauty of short stories rests on two elements, they're an exercise in discipline. They are also a more limited time commitment when compared to writing a novel.

This month is also National Runners Month. Write about your fitness practice or goals. A healthy body allows us to keep a healthy mind; don't neglect exercise in favor of your keyboard or pen. Better still, try taking it with you. Get a digital recorder, so you can keep track of ideas as you walk. If you run, it's still great thinking time. I've done some deep thinking on the treadmill.

Craft

The challenge of the short story is to get it right with less--fewer words, fewer characters and fewer events. The form forces a writer to discipline themselves and still convey an engaging and complete story. The short story is being re-embraced all over the Internet on Twitter and and in newsletters and on websites from publishers and authors. They are an effective and fun way to test drive ideas. On occasion a short story can become the seed of a longer piece, a novella or novel. 

Read a few of my short stories here. I'd love to receive comments.
Scribbles
Going Out


Resources

Oxford Bibliographies
Author Marketing Toolkit

On My Book Shelf

Click on the cover to learn more about the book or pick up a copy.

I'm reading this book at the moment, and it is a page turner. I'll review it next month. It's about a grisly murder in New York during the 1800s.

This tale about the relationship between an old man and a young woman in late adolescence proved intriguing and disturbing. I recommend it.

Action, adventure, science-fiction/fantasy and a little romance make this well written book a weekend read worth making the time.

Book Review: Husband and Wife

Husband and Wife: A Novel by Leah Stewart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Husband and Wife opens on a common domestic scene, but it's not tranquil. The baby sitter has arrived to attend to the two young children of Sarah Price and her husband, Nathan, as they prepare to go out for the evening. Sarah is searching for her husband's shoe and resisting the urge to go breastfeed her baby son when Nathan shatters this contained chaos. He confesses that his pending publication titled, Infidelity, holds somebasis in fact. He had an affair the previous year while attending a writers conference. Ironically, they are getting ready to attend the wedding of two of their closest friends.



When Sarah and Nathan met, they gravitated to each other. They shared a passion for the written word, him as a fiction writer and her as a poet. They explored the joys and difficulties of their art together. Then they married and had their first child, and then a second. Nathan continued to write while Sarah drifted away from her poetry into the role of mother and provider. She did not mind so much, or at least she believed that she didn't, until Nathan's tearful revelation as she hands him the missing shoe.



The pages that follow paint a lyrical exploration of the aftermath of infidelity. Stewart renders a believable and empathetic telling of Sarah's journey to reclaim her personal identity which she allowed to be subsumed by responsibility and self-doubt. She rediscovers her poetic voice and the thrill of writing by revisiting the path that she did not choose. This path is personified by Rajiv, a handsome filmmaker and college chum, who expressed deep affection for her several times, over several years. She always declined his advances and returned to Nathan. Did she make the right choice?



Stewart keeps this common story fresh with her well developed and quirky characters. Alternately sad, insightful and comical, the end result is a very real story that could be anyone's experience rather than the hyperbole that often accompanies tales about infidelity. The novel is also full of literary references made by the characters, several writers themselves. As a writer and a reader, I appreciated the additional depth provided by the references. Sometimes our words are not enough to express what we feel, and sometimes, someone else said it better first. Sarah uses the words of other writers to give depth to her own and when language fails her.



Stewart also gives a glimpse into Sarah's writing life. She inserts poems authored by Sarah into the text as she rediscovers her ability to write. Nathan's writing also makes an appearance as a short story. Stewart accomplishes this without breaking the rhythm and flow of the novel. Husband and Wife almost reads as a poem itself; it has a cadence, is told in three parts or stanzas, and loops back beautifully to the opening of the book, just before it ends.



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