During weeks like this, when I'm juggling a lot of commitments, I think a lot about work-life balance and how freaking hard it is to achieve.
I got some perspective from a very unexpected source recently. I got my epiphany at work.
Many of you know that I do adult education by day and I currently work with a group of accountants. You wouldn't think an accounting firm would be a hotbed of sexy thought-provoking concepts... I sure didn't.
Yet, in the four years I've been working with them, I've learned more about writing and work-life balance than I ever expected to know.
THIS quote came up in a prep session for Not-For-Profit Corporations:
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends, and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.
But the other four balls – family, health, friends, and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same.
You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
~ Brian Dyson (b. 1935) CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises
I've had that quote on my mind all week.
I can't tell you what a freeing concept that was for me, after the many times I've gone far past my limits for work. So many of us have the notion that work defines us more than the other four balls.
[Newsflash: It doesn't!]
Here's a story from a writer who learned this lesson the hard way and wrote a lovely post using this same quote. And if that wasn't enough magnificence about "the balls," check out this video (watching this guy juggle mesmerized me).
Incidentally, here's the quote that headlined the Not-For-Profit workshop I mentioned above -- it mirrors our philosophy here at WITS:
You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.~ John Wooden
What are your thoughts on the "five balls?" Do you have a quote that you live by? How are you at achieving a good work-life balance? We'd love to hear about it down in the comments!
About Jenny Hansen
By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.
When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA or at Writers In The Storm. Jenny also writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.
Okay, I admit it. I’m prejudiced against dialogue tags. Yes, I know they say, ‘He said/she said’ are invisible to the reader.
They're not to me.
Even if you don’t share my pet peeve, why settle for something so boring? You write a sparkling line of dialogue, and slap ‘he said’ on the end? Why not continue the sparkle instead?
But first, a few rules of dialog you may or may not be familiar with:
1. The ONLY time you need a tag is if the reader wouldn’t know who was speaking otherwise. I’m always surprised by how many NYT authors have tons of unnecessary tags. If there is only a man and a woman in the scene, and someone says, “Excuse me, I have to go to the ladies room.” do you really need a tag? Many times the dialogue itself cues the reader.
2. Names. I’ll bet you need them a lot less often than you think. Of course they’re essential at the beginning of the scene, because we need to know who’s in it. But unless there are more than two people, you probably never need use the names after that.
3. Tags slow the conversation. In conflict, nothing kills the tension like unneeded tags.
4. Adverbs after tags make my teeth grind. This is the worst offender, and it's seen as a newbie error. Yes, I know you could pick up a book in your library that has a line like, “How dare you?” She asked indignantly. Turn to the front of the book. I’d be willing to bet that the book was published before 1970. Nowadays, readers are much more sophisticated. Easy way to edit them out? do a ‘Find’ for ‘ly’.
Stephen King said, “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Word, Steve.
You're thinking this would be a lot of work? No way! This is where the fun is!
My favorite writing teacher, Margie Lawson, suggests using what she calls Dialogue cues. I’m not going to go into huge detail, because I want you to do your writing a favor and take her Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist, course. If you miss the class, you can always purchase the lecture packet.
You’ve heard that rich writing serves dual purposes, right? A dialogue cue does that as well. It cues the reader in as to whom is speaking, but then goes much farther, telling the reader how the line of dialogue is being said. It can add body movement - and give a glimpse into how a POV character, or better yet, a non-POV character is feeling. It adds richness.
Here are some examples of my recent release, Nothing Sweeter, before and after adding the dialogue cues. You tell me if they help:
BEFORE: “We don’t need your boyfriend’s charity,” Max said.
AFTER:“We don’t need your boyfriend’s charity.” His voice sounded like a peach pit in a garbage disposal.
BEFORE: “I’ve hunkered down here for years with my hard, silent Dad. I held on tight, trying to keep things from changing,” he said.
AFTER: “I’ve hunkered down here for years with my hard, silent Dad. I held on tight, trying to keep things from changing.” He looked down at his bloodless fists.
BEFORE:“But if you don’t know all this about yourself, it doesn’t matter what I think,” He said.
AFTER:“But if you don’t know all this about yourself, it doesn’t matter what I think.” He shut his mouth, closed his eyes, and grabbed for all the guts he had.
BEFORE: “Oh, Bree,” Wyatt said.
AFTER: “Oh, Bree.” His words trailed off, as if he’d run out of breath.
Do you see how the dialogue cue not only tellsyou whom is speaking, but showsyou how they’re saying it? It’s a perfect opportunity to get the reader on a deeper level, and to write fresh at the same time.
So, what do you think? have I convinced you to weed out dialogue tags?
A WITS reader challenge: Read over a dialogue sequence you've written. Did you find any extraneous tags? Have you thought of any way to jazz them up and write them fresh?
Share the 'before' and 'after' in the comments, so we can all learn!
Laura's debut book in her Sweet on a Cowboy series, The Sweet Spot, has just been chosen as adouble RITA finalist!
Publisher's Weekly review of Nothing Sweeter: “The second entry in Drake’s Sweet on a Cowboy series (after The Sweet Spot) is another character-driven contemporary western with more heart than heat. Rancher Max Jameson, stunned by the unexpected death of his father, is determined to keep the family spread in Steamboat Springs, Colo., despite pressure to sell to a greedy neighbor. His brother, Wyatt, tries to help out, though the sibling relationship is strained due to Max’s discomfort with the fact that Wyatt is gay.
Bree Tanner is scarred physically and mentally after being wrongfully convicted of and imprisoned for her ex-boss’s shady financial dealings; now exonerated and free, she decides to start over by helping to raise rodeo bulls on the Jameson ranch.
Max’s tough exterior masks relatable fear, his relationship with Wyatt is handled gracefully, and Bree’s genuine shame about her past makes her sympathetic. While Max and Bree’s romantic relationship is secondary to their internal and interpersonal struggles, complex characters and some fun full-riding scenes balance out the seriousness.”
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliatenney/3281242614/">juliatenney</a> via <ahref="http://photopin.com">photopin</a><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>
Hot News Flash! Multi multi Margie Grad, Laura Drake, has just been announced as a double RITA Finalist (for those who don't know, that's the Oscars for Romance)! See what a little Margie can do?
By Margie Lawson
A big THANK YOU to Laura Drake and Fae Rowen for inviting me on WITS , and hugs to Sharla for loading it on the blog.
Do you watch NCIS?
I love giving my brain a weekly dose of NCIS. Millions of others love the show too. The stories are intriguing. The characters are deep and quirky. And Jethro Gibbs, aka Mark Harmon, has rules.
Gibbs has lots of rules. Over 50 rules.
I’m spinning-off Margie-Rules from Gibbs’ rules. My next fifteen (or fifty) blogs will feature a different Margie-Rule.
I appreciate the NCIS writers for their award-winning writing, and for giving Gibbs rules.
Gibbs’ Rule # 8: Never take anything for granted.
Today’s Blog: Margie-Rule #1: Never Take Any Word for Granted.
Writers like words. Writers like how words sound, how they look, how they roll. They select words for their connotations, their subliminal messages, their power. They choose words that fit their characters like “that ain’t no matter” fits Huck Finn.
Writers also play with word-play.
Snicker, snicker. That last sentence was a SHOW and TELL sentence. I played with words in my word-play sentence.
Yep. I’m playing with you.
I just talked to you. Talking to the reader is what I callIntentional Authorial Intrusion.
I’ll share an example of Harlan Coben playing with words, and playing with the reader, in an Intentional Authorial Intrusion.
Terese Collins. Imagery flooded in—her Class-B-felony bikini, that private island, the sun-kissed beach, her gaze that could melt teeth, her Class-B-felony bikini.
It’s worth mentioning the bikini twice.
Hear Harlan talking to you?
Harlan Coben shared two Humor Hits too.
Gaze that could melt teeth
It’s worth mentioning the bikini twice.
Now that we’ve had some fun, we’ll dig deeper into never taking any word for granted and we’ll have more fun.
These authors used just the right words to make their writing strong.
The shiny, pink baby-doll dress hit her upper thigh, and her clunky heels made her feet look like canapés on the ends of toothpicks—tattooed toothpicks.
Fresh writing! Humor Hit! Strong visual!
The Sweet Spot, Laura Drake, Immersion Grad
Disaster had hit them like a Kansas cyclone, and instead of her and Jimmy hunkering down together to weather the storm, it tore them apart. She’d poked her head in a Valium bottle, and Jimmy’d lit out for another woman’s bed. Worse yet, a girl’s bed.Frozen frame pictures of Jimmy, knocking boots with the little blonde shot through Char’s brain like machine gun fire.
Deep Editing Analysis:
Laura loaded that paragraph with psychologically powered words and phrases: disaster, cyclone, tore, apart, Valium, another woman’s bed, worse, girl’s bed, knocking boots, shot machine gun fire.
She contrasted what could have happened, hunkering down together, to what really happened, it tore them apart.
She used three rhetorical devices:
1. Simile: like a Kansas cyclone 2. 2. Simile: like machine gun fire 3.Parallelism: She’d poked her head in a Valium bottle, and Jimmy’d lit out for another woman’s bed.
She used story-themed words:hunkering down, poked, lit out,knocking boots
1. The lightning-fast change in topic nearly gave me whiplash.
Jaye could have written something predictable like:
He changed the topic too fast.
But she gave the reader a line that carries a Humor Hit and lots of energy.
2. A quickening began in my middle and expanded outward, heating my limbs and hardening my resolve.
Deep Editing Analysis:
Jaye opened that sentence with a fresh visceral response: A quickening began in my middle
She amplified that basic visceral three times:
1. Made the visceral larger: expanded outward 2. Added another visceral response: heating my limbs 3. Added what I call a Power Internalization: hardening my resolve
Jaye Wells used three rhetorical devices:
Parallelism: heating my limbs and hardening my resolve. Alliteration: heating, hardening Zeugma: heating my limbs and hardening my resolve
1. One of those emotions must have busted past my logical self because, in the corner of my brain, it jumped and clapped its hands at the notion of “get together soon.”
2. He mirrored his mother’s one-size-fits-all face, and between the two of them, I could have been on a tour through the wax museum.
3. My mother and her attitude arrived close to ten o’clock as expected. She must have asked Cam what to wear because she looked uncharacteristically unfrumpy.
4. My anxiety elevator went to the tenth floor, but left my stomach on the ground floor.
Four paragraphs later:
My heart constricted and the elevator swooshed to the penthouse, leaving me in the basement. Her news torched the hopeful future I’d built and placed under my pillow every night. I was collateral damage, and no one was going to come to my rescue.
Rush, Joan Swan, NYT Bestseller, 3-time Immersion Grad
1. That damn fire had destroyed everything good in her life—stolen her husband, split her team, annihilated her sense of security and purpose.
2. His voice curled around her, as soft and warm as the room.
3. A hole pricked in the bubble of her serenity. Her peaceful inner world pulled away from the walls of her mind like ripping wallpaper.
4. Whether dream, alternate universe, or reality, he wasn’t in it alone. And his gut told him he wasn’t safe. His team wasn’t safe. Jessica wasn’t safe.
5. Q didn’t know if it was the words or the emotion behind the words, but something reached in to his gut and yanked hard. Then something else swept in. Overwhelming affection. Crushing gratitude. An awesome sense of brotherhood.
Wow. Talented writers.
I recommend reading all those examples again, out loud. The cadence in every example is incredibly compelling.
BLOG GUESTS: NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!
Post a comment and you could win an online course from Lawson Writer’s Academy!
1. Story Structure Safari -- Instructor: Lisa Miller
2. Taming Twitter and Facebook Too! -- Instructor: Julie Rowe
3. From blah to beats: Giving Your Chapter a Pulse -- Instructor: Rhay Christou
In May, I’m teaching A Deep Editing Guide to Make Your Openings Pop.
I’ll post the name of the winner on the blog on Thursday, 8:00 PM Mountain Time.
About Margie
Margie Lawson —psychotherapist, editor, and international presenter – teaches writers how to use her psychologically-based editing systems and deep editing techniques to create page turners. Margie has presented over eighty full day master classes in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Writers credit her innovative deep editing approaches with taking their writing several levels higher—to publication, awards, and bestseller lists.
To learn about Lawson Writer’s Academy, Margie’s 4-day Immersion Master Classes (in Colorado, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, San Antonio, Houston, and on Whidbey Island), her full day Master Class presentations, keynote speeches, on-line courses, lecture packets, and newsletter, please visit www.MargieLawson.com.
