Write It Down

November 12, 2013November 12, 2013 / Lisa / 6 Comments

1866 homesteader, image from wikicommons

I walked by a penny today. Under the umbrella, listening to the rain, enjoying the woods, and didn’t even pause when I saw that bright copper in the dirt. But it did bring back memories. I lived in Seattle until I was nine, and a few blocks from our house was the corner store, run by a grumpy old man. Well, he was old to my kindergartener eyes. And back then, finding a penny was a huge, huge deal because Joe’s carried penny candy. You could get a lot for a penny. If you were really lucky and found a nickel, you could walk out with a small lunch sized paper bag of goodies.

When I moved to the mountains in 1988, the general store there still sold penny candy. And little kids still got excited when they found a coin. My son, however, will never value a penny the way we did. And some day, if he ever has kids, it may be that the dollar bill went the way of the penny. We always think things will last and they don’t.

This evening a friend told me that some things her husband collected for years were stolen. Each piece had a unique story behind it. I suggested she get him to tell her those stories so they would at least still have that. Which reminded me of the penny candy. These tiny little things that seem so unimportant in our lives will some day be looked back on as antique.

Think about the historians. The best ones wrote about the day-to-day, seemingly trivial things in a person’s life. Yet now, those are the exact things that give archaeologists a clear view of how people lived and died.

Now think about your life. The little things you do that seem unimportant when weighed against news headlines. Something you cooked for dinner that was an old family recipe. A decoration you’ve pulled out for Thanksgiving that no one but you remembers where it came from. I’m willing to bet if you give it some thought, you’ll realize that many things you do throughout the day have a story or a memory attached.

If you don’t write those down, or tell those stories to someone, then eventually they will be forgotten. I don’t mean everyone needs to suddenly become a writer or start keeping a journal. Just think about passing on those stories that seem trivial or unimportant. Talk into a tape recorder. Jot things down on recipe cards. Tell your kids. Tell your friends. Talk to each other. Don’t say ‘yep, that’s a good idea. I’ll do it one of these days’ because one of these days may never come around.

Because some day all of us right now will be gone. And what will be left will be the stories others remember. Well, okay, the plastic water bottles and pampers will be left, too, but you get my drift.

Last week I somehow got into a conversation about the westward movement and told the person I was talking to about a relative coming out on a wagon train as an infant and how a couple wanted to buy him for a silver dollar. He’s been gone a long time, but that story lives on in descendants. And probably lives on in multiple dramatic variations, knowing my family.

A final thought. I’m not talking about going on Facebook and posting what you had for dinner for posterity. I’m talking about the things that make you who you are, recorded somewhere tangible for those who follow.

It’s more important than you know.

Pick the pen up; someone, someday, will be glad you did.

Branding

November 6, 2013 / Lisa / 3 Comments

I have to say I’m struggling with this concept of a brand, as it relates to marketing books and authors. I attended a conference this past week, and in one panel, Whitney Keyes (a very nice lady and author of Propel) said that a brand is not a logo.

That made sense. Up until that moment that’s exactly what I thought a brand was. As in branding a cow. In the two books I have out, there’s a cougar paw print. I’ve used that as my mark, so to speak, and plan on having it in each book. I thought of that as a way to easily identify the series, by having that mark on the spine. A brand, right?

Apparently not. It seems a brand is actually more like a theme, if I’m understanding correctly. How do I want to be perceived, how do I want the books to be perceived. A suggestion was made to think about how you describe yourself as a writer, and pull the key words from that, which then gives you an idea of what your brand can be. I haven’t been able to do that.

This evening a friend and I had a great visit, and during that we talked about an author we both like. Elly Griffiths and her Ruth Galloway series. One of the things I said was that the author has such a sense of place. And I realized that place, land, setting, is vital to me as a reader. It’s also something I’ve always wanted to be able to do as a writer. I want to be able to sink into a place so completely, that the mountains and rivers and forests come alive in the imagination.

That’s the kind of writer I want to be known as. One who has that sense of place, one who can connect a reader to the mountains, through a story. I don’t think I’ve reached that place, but that is what I would strive to be.

I have a vague sense that somewhere in that is a brand. I just haven’t been able to pull it out yet. Until it does, I will have to stick with the cougar print.

How do you perceive brand vs. logo? What would you consider your brand, your sense of self to be?

Bear Descriptions

November 1, 2013 / Lisa / 2 Comments

People around here joke that we measure rain in feet, not inches. I walk to work. Add those sentences and you see why I use an umbrella. Recently, I had to order a new umbrella. This one is not the kind that folds up in my backpack. It’s old-fashioned, long, big, and sturdy. (Somewhere, the shade of Amelia Peabody is nodding in approval).

This time of year there is a lot of bear sightings because the bears are stuffing themselves before hibernation. My husband calls me a bear magnet because of all the interactions I have with them. When you think that to get to work I walk one-and-a-half miles through their habitat, it’s not surprising.

So as I walked along this morning, my mind wandered like usual, and I wondered how a bear would perceive an umbrella. Since it’s black and long, would it scare him, make him assume it’s a rifle? I doubt he has a word for ‘umbrella’. I doubt he has a word for ‘color’ or ‘black’. I started trying to figure out how I would describe something, if I had to break it down to its barest minimum. A stick like night?

Sometimes in writing, description can carry on too long, or be too much. I think we writers have a tendency to not trust the reader to understand what we are saying, so we repeat ourselves, rewording slightly, to make sure readers get it. That can kill an otherwise wonderful description.

Thinking about the bear made me wonder if describing something from the eyes of an animal might make a challenging writing exercise. Like the umbrella. But then I realized I’d drive myself insane. I suggested a ‘stick like night’ above. But the bear wouldn’t have a word for ‘night’ any more than he would have a word for ‘black’. Yes I know, bears don’t have words, but for the purposes of writing challenges, I’m continuing with the analogy. So ‘bear’ with me please.

In some ways it would be like trying to describe something to a person who speaks a different language. I think it would end up looking like a game of charades. Back to the bear. Would he understand that the umbrella is not a rifle, if I opened it? Well, that would probably be equally terrifying for him. But can we describe more accurately through action? There’s another writing challenge. Instead of having simple narrative in your story that describes the scenery, bring it alive through action or interaction.

I like the idea of taking an object and trying to strip it down to the most basic, simple description. I’m going to try this with a few things lying around and see what I come up with. I challenge you to do the same.