April Newsletter

By Jessica Page Morrell

Last week I spent an hour working at a task that I rarely fit into my days anymore. My parents were coming for a week-long visit and I was in the thick of cleaning, tidying and readying my place for their arrival. I was washing loads of laundry, including a quilt that my mother had given me. It was a handmade, patchwork model, composed of many triangles and the last time I washed it some of these triangles had come loose. Now, in order to launder it again, I needed to stitch them into place.

I spent a rare hour, with the sounds of NPR and a cup of tea, tacking each scrap of calico into place. The winter-bare oak trees that line the south edge of the property were stark silhouettes at the window and the sky kept changing with hopeful blue pushing out the clouds.

During this peaceful hour, my thoughts kept ranging back to the previous week and a teaching assignment I'd finished at a middle school. I'd been hired to teach creative writing to a supposedly select group of students and the kids had taken so much from me and left me stunned at the impact of their brief presence in my life. They were louder, brasher, and altogether more difficult to handle than I'd feared. But I'd also ended up caring about them far more than I'd imagined.

As writers they were at once awkward and brave, silly and burdened with agonized ponderings. But the kids who made me laugh, who I threatened and cajoled and sat around and made up stories with, were only a part of the experience. Because I kept remembering the stream of young faces that I passed in the teeming halls, as dangerous as a war zone, as loud as a football stadium.

And one boy lingers in my memory. Because, speaking of football, this particular lad reminded me of a young Reggie White or another hulking defensive end. When I'd arrive for class he'd often be stationed at a lone desk, marooned as if on an island, in the deserted hallway. A few times I wanted to ask him about his crime, but there was something so sorrowful in his deep eyes set into a brown face that stopped me, and which still haunt me along with the particular defeated slope of his shoulders hunched over the too-small desk.

Besides the noise level, the shrill, brimming, screeching LIFE that I swam among every day at the school, I was overwhelmed by the stories that tumbled among the young lives. Of how many of my students lived with their grandparents, were once in foster care, had moved here from Texas, who smelled like urine, or talked too much about sex.

When I was the age of my students, I wasn't the sort of kid who spent time jailed alone in the hall. But I recognized my adolescent pain everywhere I looked. And I recognize now that the girl in me is always hoping that her swan self is showing, not her tangled past. Who after all these years is still stringing together words, who first felt most alive when I trying to find a way to describe a thing to a reader. Who discovered that writing gave me voice.

Now that the class is over, I'm assembling a literary magazine of their collected works and it's something, like my memories, that I'll always keep.

The Academy Awards has been staged, and again this year, I didn't agree with many of the choices and winners. But I was caught up with the glitz and drama of the gala, and the joy of the winners.

And every year as I watch and listen to the broadcast, I'm so amazed at the power of the word--in the emotional acceptance speeches, in the song lyrics, in the tributes to the royalty among them, but most of all in the screenplays. Because at the heart of most events and peoples' lives is a story ticking.

And I know that with practice, the just-right words to portray the emotions, choices and turning points in a story can always be found.. And that the right format and way into a story can be discovered.

However, what the Awards and so many large and small moments, joys and griefs of everyday life says to me and all writers is quite simple. It's as if the world whispers to us at ever y turn: Tell a story. That's it. Just tell a story.

Fiction Checklist

• Action: Are you relating the plot primarily through action, not description? Do the actions cause reactions, which cause more actions?
• Character: Does your plot concentrate on a character or group of characters whom your readers will find interesting? Have you exposed them chiefly through scenes and dialogue? Are your characters' motives clear and powerful? Have you deftly woven in descriptions of the major characters?
• Conflict: Is the conflict compelling? Does it affect the characters' lives, have lasting impact? Is it clear what is at stake?
• Ending: Did you plan the ending first and plant clues along the way? Is the ending staged clearly and dramatically? Does the ending answer the story question and tie up the subplots and loose ends in the story? Did you avoid contrivances & coincidences to end it?
• Dialogue: Is the dialogue tight and powerful? Do your characters come to life when they talk? Are your attributions short without added adverbs?
• Opening: Did you hook the reader in the opening paragraphs and provide a story question? Does the opening demand that the reader keep reading? Is it integral to the rest of the story? Does it introduce setting, conflict, tone, and point of view?
• Point of View: Have you been loyal to one point of view, or chosen a consistent or understandable pattern of alternating POVs?
• Setting: Does the reader understand the time and place where each scene occurs? Have you used weather, geography, lighting,? Objects, possessions, decor, interiors to characterize?
• Scene/Sequel: Do the scenes contain sequels-the aftermath and reactions to scenes?
• Subplots: Are the subplots necessary to the story? Do they reveal the characters, add depth and complications? Do they interweave with the main plot and also conclude?
• Time span: Have you chosen the events in the story that are the most significant portions of the main character's life?

QUOTES OF THE MONTH:

"Young readers often think of description as the parts that they can skip. Naive as that may be, that impulse recognizes something crucial-- the parts where the colors of the arroyo or the burnished glow of the furniture are described do not seem quite as . . . .

©Jessica Page Morrell
For more information contact:
Jessica Morrell | Email: jesswrites@juno.com