Writing|Emotions|Images

Writing: Beyond Words and Sentences

What Lives between the Lines?

Above my desk is a small shelf where I keep my collection of books on writing. Ones that I have read a dozen times until their admonitions and pleadings have settled down into my subconscious and allowed me the freedom to focus on other things.

These other things are what this article is all about.

We’ve all read the books, taken the classes, endured the edits and endless revisions and have stepped back bleary-eyed from our creations, with a little bit less love for them than we had when we started.

We are easily bruised while being creative. Easily diminished in our love for the written word. Having the wind ripped from our sails, leaving us idle and alone in calms waters is not a whole lot of fun. But it is part of becoming a writer. But only a part.

It’s the life we lead between the lines that keeps us going. Ducking between the nouns and prepositions. Stepping aside to let the verb clause whiz past, as we go about crafting the perfect sentence that allows our thoughts, our humble images to make the leap from our minds to those of our readers.

VOICE

I believe I was in the second grade when I first heard the term voice used to describe how a person spoke or communicated his ideas to another. My teacher was a passionate and clever woman and while reading one of our “interesting” stories, she tried to get this concept across. The message was a little steep for most of us in class, but I loved her for trying.

And I remembered what she said and eventually, it stuck and became my own.

Voice, is the process a writer uses to distill who they are, how they feel and what they think about life and the world around them into words and sentences, that carry a little bit of them in every syllable.

It helps to translate the mundane into the weird and exceptional so that the reader begins to know who you are and how you see things around you.

When I write, I want all my life experiences to echo through each paragraph. I will give a telephone or a toaster a name and a personality, if that little bit of literary magic, will help get the idea and image I have in my head to migrate over into the reader’s.

Voice is passion and purpose and whimsy, carefully woven into our words and sentences and lovingly sent on their way.

MESSAGE

What’s on your mind, is another way of putting it.

I turned an experience with an English ghost, in a place called, Blackwell’s Hollow, into a story that I eventually sold to a children’s magazine years ago. I wanted to convey the idea that we don’t know everything of the world around us. Somethings are unexplained. Somethings are magical, and believing in magic, is totally okay.

There’s the story or article and then there’s the reason for telling it, which is different. And in my opinion, usually more important.

The reason you want to share something; the impetus for getting that first and fourth draft done, will come across if you give it rein enough to do so. Let it show you the way, and the right words will follow.

IDEAS & IMAGES

Back in the day, on the street corners of Brooklyn, I met some great storytellers. These fellas could talk for an hour about the bus ride they took to the dentist and have you sitting on the edge of the curb, waiting for the next line. Filled with images and laughter and mimicry, each story was a journey through their perceptions.

You got a chance to see the world as they saw it and experienced it, as if on a guided tour. They shared their feelings, their fears, the joy they felt and the anger that came when being alone.

When I write, I try to paint an image inside the reader’s mind. Not full and complete, there’s no fun in that. But an image clear enough to know what it is, but incomplete enough for the reader to spend their valuable time putting the finishing touches on it.

I can tell them what color the old house was. But I’d rather express the loneliness that drifts through me every time I walk past it; the faded gray shingles, like tombstones, too long in the sun. The door that creaks in the wind and forces people to look away.

It’s the art and it is one, of painting that idea or image into their mind from a thousand miles away.

TRANSFERENCE — FROM MY MIND TO YOURS

I think of the Vulcan Mind Meld and Mr. Spock, when I talk about this concept.

When I look into the eyes of a painting done by Rembrandt, I am drawn in fully and willingly. I can hear the tired breath of the old merchant exhaling as he waits patiently for the master to finish.

When I stare into The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, I can feel the cool breeze blowing against my face. I sense the darkness, not just in the sky, but in the artist’s heart and mind. I ache just a little. In part from my knowledge of his life, but mostly from the emotions that were captured and held in the paint itself.

I struggle in my own efforts to be like these artist — I can dream. I want my words and my sentences to perform the same task. To transfer what I’m thinking and seeing into the reader’s mind. If I can achieve this from time to time, I am happy. When I do it well, I know at that moment, why I write.

BUILDINGS BLOCKS AND TRAIN TRACKS

A bullet train goes nowhere without the tracks laid before it. A building goes nowhere as well, without a solid foundation beneath it.

All the books on writing that I mentioned above, should be read and reread and when traveling to Grandma’s house in Boston — read yet again.

These provide the building blocks, along with constant practice, that allows the writer the eventual freedom to cast seeds into the wind, knowing with some sense of certainty, that they will eventually take root and bloom.

Writing is all about communicating. The same as with fine art, music, photography and every other form that allows the free expression of our dreams and ideas.

The great gymnast, Simone Biles, does not think: left foot, right foot, knees bent, leap, land with both feet together…. She just does it with amazing grace and strength because she has done it a thousand times before.

Practice might not make perfect, but it will make it easier to live and write between the lines.

Joe Luca is writer and editor for ILLUMINATION and a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.

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