For some time I have been working in corporate communications.  What the heck is that you might ask.  I make sure each and every marketing piece (website, brochures etc.) say what the client means them to say.  Most often I see the wrong emphasis placed in these marketing materials.  Is the client wanting to emphasize service? Follow-up? Easy answers to questions? After speaking extensively with the client, I go through each piece word by word to see where the emphasis is placed.  Then I rewrite the pieces so they say exactly what the client wants/needs to say.  It makes a huge difference in their business by attracting and informing clients at the same time.

Moving is a daunting affair not for the faint-hearted, but like all things we haven't done in a long time, who knew it would be both challenging and expensive. Yet here we are in our new surroundings both excited by its great beauty offered in generous amounts every day.  And it is a literary state full of great people writing marvelous things.

It is disorienting to live in another state - but slowly it becomes your new reality and it is exciting to find new places to go to for even ordinary things. Where is the hardware store?  Oh, it is a few blocks away.  Really?  Aha now I can find one place.  Groceries?  Over there?  A better one a few blocks which way? Ok. Now I know.

Gosh what did I do with the mailbox key? How could it possibly be we have so much stuff we have to store it in two lockers plus a mountain of boxes in our condo.  Embarrassing, really it is. Not to mention even in a 1200 sq. ft. condo with 2BA and 2 BR there is not enough storage for all the stuff.Here are a few tips to help:  

• Decide well in advance where you want to move to.  It took me two years to decide to move to another state.  I grew up in Chicago and lived there all my life and moving to another state was a challenge I needed to accept.  Sometimes, in life, even in a terrible economy, change is what you must do.
• It is expensive to move. Donate, sell, give away as much as you can. Movers calculate costs based on mileage, weight of items on their truck, fuel, insurance, packing costs etc.  The costs initially quoted will be much lower than the final bill based on those variables.
  
• Get competitive moving quotes. Get recommendations for good movers.  Not all movers care about your things. We relied on a mover highly recommended by everyone in the area we were moving to who worked nationwide.  They were very careful, considerate and honest. We had much more stuff left to pack than they anticipated but they packed it all without complaint.
• Exhaustion. It is exhausting physically, emotionally and logically.  Your brain gets tired of making decisions, your body is tired from packing.  Get some sleep whenever you can.
• Plan what you will take yourself. There are some things you take with you: financial information, safes, real estate papers, wills, etc. Set those items aside with a large sign "DO NOT PACK".  If you have told the movers to pack everything - even if you have packed a lot of boxes - they will pack EVERYTHING.  I mean everything, I found a baggie with some torn off, unused paper towels in it.
• PACKING. Books go into small boxes, LABEL THE BOXES WHAT BOOKS ARE IN THE BOX.  This will save a lot of time on the other end.  In fact, label each box with what is in it.  If you have time, number the boxes, keeping your own inventory so you know what is where. Remember, papers are heavy too - put files in boxes and label the boxes what files are in them.
• TAPE SCREWS AND PARTS TO DISASSEMBLED ITEMS. Or you will never find the screws or the other pieces when you want to put things back together.
• PLASTER WALLS vs STUDS.  If you lived in a place with plaster walls and had no problem with putting things up on them and move to a condo look for studs in the walls to put things into. 
• MAIL. You can have your mail forwarded by USPS and sign up online for $1 fee, or go to the post office and fill out a form for free.
• DISORIENTATION. If you have kids you get them enrolled in school or preschool or other programs and slowly you meet other parents and the kids find friends.  Adults face a different issue:  disorientation - a disconnect from what was familiar - and uncertainty about reconnecting in a new place.  The new place is like a photographer trying to adjust the lens of a camera to take a close-up photo when the camera lens had been adjusted to a long-shot before.  This can produce some anxiety and excitement all rolled into one. Do one new thing a day: find a park, grocery store, go to a lecture, eat at a local restaurant, find a doctor, a dentist, a vet. Making new connections will allow the anxiety to recede and confidence to grow.

More to come...

WRITERS ON WRITING; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially HooptedoodleBy ELMORE LEONARD


Published: July 16, 2001These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather.

If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's ''Sweet Thursday,'' but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: ''I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.''

3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said'' . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words ''suddenly'' or ''all hell broke loose.''

This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use ''suddenly'' tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories ''Close Range.''

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's ''Hills Like White Elephants'' what do the ''American and the girl with him'' look like? ''She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.'' That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in ''Sweet Thursday'' was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. ''Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts'' is one, ''Lousy Wednesday'' another. The third chapter is titled ''Hooptedoodle 1'' and the 38th chapter ''Hooptedoodle 2'' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: ''Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.''

''Sweet Thursday'' came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

Writers on Writing

This article is part of a series in which writers explore literary themes. Previous contributions, including essays by John Updike, E. L. Doctorow, Ed McBain, Annie Proulx, Jamaica Kincaid, Saul Bellow and others, can be found with this article at The New York Times on the Web:

www.nytimes.com/arts





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We have been cleaning out the basement and garage of our house and I am reminded of the power of objects in our writing.  You pick up a piece of a now adult child's artwork, hold it in your hand remembering little fingers holding crayons working intensely to create something we all can see.

The same thing is true in our fiction writing.  A character picks up an object, won't leave the house without a talisman, needs to touch base with someone, plants a certain kind of flower, works hard to hold on to an object no matter what, has a comforting restaurant they must go to in times of stress. 

Each of those character traits imbue the object with human characteristics " I have to plant lilacs in honor of my Mom" the woman says as she leaves her childhood home ringed with lilac bushes her Mom planted one by one. Or maybe its a dish, photo or keychain screwdriver.

It is these objects that tell us something deeper about a character: what they value, the meaning they imput to an object.  A child might have a special blanket, or teddy bear - but adults have plenty of their own special, comforting things.  Or, on the negative side, maybe objects they hang on to because they need a reminder of something terrible that happened to them so they can get even or seek revenge or defeat an enemy.

Look around you, somewhere you store things to sort out later, pick up an object and write about it - write fast for four minutes then see what you have written.  Enjoy how your unconscious mind allowed your creativity to flow.

Now do the same thing for your character's object.  You will be surprised and pleased about how this adds depth to your story. Only one or maybe two objects count in fiction/non-fiction - not a dozen objects or the reader gets confused and it brings an unnecessary clutter to the story.  Like our basement and garage too many things does not a clear pathway make.

Non-fiction writers humanize their work through the inclusion of an object -  "Fishing poles, especially the well-worn one given to him by his father, count."

This focus on one or two objects works for poetry too - for all you poets out there - choose an object and write about it - remember "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats   http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173742
Or "A Letter" by Amrita Pritam http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/242026