Hemingway kicks me in the face. Again.

So it happened again, writer-friends. There I was, minding my own business, happily reading For Whom the Bell Tolls and sipping a Corona Light (with a wedge of lime, natch), and I get to the end of this one chapter, and—I joke not, folks—I simply had to put the book down, get up, and start pacing. So I did.

But that wasn’t enough. I had something in my head, see, and I needed to work it out, to get it sorted, to grave the lesson into my neural pathways so that when I’m writing, perhaps struggling with characterization, I have this moment to fall back into, to recollect, to inspire me. I needed to talk it out; I needed another writer. I called one.

We chatted for probably twenty minutes, while I paced my kitchen and gesticulated as though I were suddenly Italian. The realization, the understanding was so powerful, so moving, that I couldn’t let it pass without digging into it, sharing it, feeling it anew.

This is why I read the greats, folks.

Here. Check this passage.

Then, having washed him and covered him with a sheet, she would lie by him in the bed and he would put a brown hand out and touch her and say, “Thou art much woman, Pilar.” It was the nearest to a joke he ever made and then, usually, after the fight, he would go to sleep and she would lie there, holding his hand in her two hands and listening to him breathe.

He was often frightened in his sleep and she would feel his hand grip tightly and see the sweat bead on his forehead and if he woke, she said, “It’s nothing,” and he slept again.

Okay, you may need more context to feel this the way I felt it, but can’t you taste the intimacy? The longing? The complexity of the characters? Can you even glimpse it?

I tell you, writer-friends: it’s stunning. It’s nothing short of breathtaking.

Look, I know Hemingway can be spotty. In this same novel, he’s already meandered through several seemingly-unnecessary digressions and political ruminations. But his characterization in For Whom the Bell Tolls, especially in the characters of Pilar, Pablo, and Robert Jordan, is magnificent. What depth he’s infused these people with! What twisted, tortured, pasts! What feeling!

Which, friends, is what it all comes down to. Write literary, write urban fantasy, write erotic comedy, write whatever you want—but by God, make your characters feel something! If they’re not feeling anything, how will your reader?

It’s precisely Pilar’s depth of feeling for the bullfighter Finito—who, incidentally, is merely a tertiary character in the novel, but who’s drawn with such intense clarity that he seems shockingly immediate—that sucks the reader in, that lets us see the man through her eyes, to empathize with her, and with him.

So, yes. This is why I read the great novelists. It’s not so I can sound pretentious when I talk about having read X book by Hemingway or Y book by Faulkner or Z book by Woolf. It’s for moments like I had last night, when the clarity and brilliance of the words transport me, teach me, make me want with every fiber of my being to be a better writer, to reach people the way I know they can be reached if only I can write truly enough.

Above all, I want to feel. And then, if I learn well enough, I can make my reader feel.

That, my friends, is what fiction is for.

A few (possibly opinionated) words about prose style.

I know. It’s going to shock you, writer-friends, but I’m about to go all opinionated on you. I think you can handle it, though. I believe in you. (Except you. You know who you are.*)

I’ve discovered something about myself, see? About my writing style. And it’s this: poetry is important.

Oh, shut up. I heard that eye roll from all the way over here. Let me explain before you express your skepticism, why don’t you?

Here’s what I mean by “poetry is important”: the sounds of words are a major factor for me when crafting sentences. It doesn’t matter what genre I’m writing in, or what style, I need the words to sing.

I’ll give you a couple examples. And understand, dear readers, I’m not sharing this prescriptively. You go ahead and write however your heart desires. This is simply what works for me, in my brain, in my writerly imagination.

The examples, then.

It is probably because he is staring at the crimson crescent of her painted thumbnail that Frank fumbles the offering plate. He barely grasps the edge with his fingertips, and as Aksana releases it, the plate tilts, spilling bills onto the floor at her feet before Frank can grab it with his other hand.

Right. This is an unedited paragraph from a flash fiction piece I wrote a couple days ago. Let’s take a look with an eye to deconstructing the prose, shall we?

First, we have “crimson crescent”. It’s alliteration; both words begin with the same consonant sound. This makes me happy. In the same sentence, we also have the assonance (similar vowel sounds) of “painted thumbnail” (repeated in the last word, with “plate”), and more consonance (similar consonant sounds) with “Frank fumbles the offering”. And in the next sentence, we have all the l- and i-sounds in “plate tilts, spilling bills”, and more f-sounds in the floor-feet-before-Frank sequence.

It’s poetry, people.

I’ll give you one more. This is from my published short story, “Silence Like Deep Water”.

You cannot rest, and lie at night listening to the ticking of old timbers cooling and the soft scratching of mice behind the walls and the sounds from the street outside.

Here, again, we have multiple repeated consonant sounds in ticking-timbers-street, and rest-listening-timbers-soft-scratching-mice-walls-sounds-street-outside. Do you see what I’ve done? How my mind works?

If I’m going to use an adjective-noun sequence, it’s more than likely I’ll choose an alliterative combination: soft scratching, crimson crescent, faint flutters. Where I have the option, I’ll almost inevitably choose words whose sounds reinforce one another. It’s just how my mind works.

So how does this apply to you, O reader? Funnily enough, it may not apply at all. Your brain may work in a different way entirely. Your imagination may trend toward anapests or iambs as opposed to rhyming word combinations. Who knows?

My point is, I’ve been at this game long enough,  and written enough words that I can speak with some confidence about how I like my sentences to lie. It takes time to get to that place, writer-friends. It takes effort, and self-analysis, and, ideally, a wide swath of reading outside your own genre. It doesn’t come easy.

But when the knowledge does arrive? It’s priceless. Suddenly, you’ll know what makes you, you—what makes your style distinct from every other Tom, Dickens, and Harriet out in the writing world.

Get out there, writer-friends. Get out there and write your hearts out. Write until you know yourself, your style, the way you like words to sit for you. And then keep on writing.

It’s the only way your stories will be told.

*I wasn’t really referring to anyone in particular, here. You can stop worrying now.

Philly Lit Night! New, Improved, and in the Suburbs!

That's right, folks, it's that time again. Time for us Philadelphia area writer-types to get together and commiserate, celebrate, or inebriate--whatever makes us happy.

I know. Posting's been scarce on the ol' blog here. But that's just because I've been holed away planning the epic evening of epicness for this coming Saturday. (And if you believe that, I have a lovely bridge for you, cheap. Connects Manhattan and Brooklyn. Bit of a fixer-upper, but it's got good bones.)

You want to know the details? Oh, fine. Here they are.

Location
Barnes & Noble Booksellers

Address

102 Park Avenue, Willow Grove, PA

Time

4:00 pm (or thereabouts)

Dinner & Drinks

6:00 pm (or thereabouts)

Stumbling Home

3:00 am (or thereabouts)

I can't give you any more details about the dinner and drinks part of this, since we're going to play that by ear. But if you can't make it to the B&N portion of the evening, hit me or Frankie up via DM on Twitter, or a quick email, and we'll give you our cell numbers so you can get the details as they develop.

Seriously, why would you miss this? Look at all these smiling faces from an earlier PLN!

Irish Pub, I'll miss you! *sniffles*

Hope to see you there, folks!