Lisa Romeo Writes (the blog)

This week, I am asking my creative nonfiction MFA students, to consider poetry. To read about poetry. To read poems. To ask themselves what they can learn from the poet and from the poem. Then, I'm asking them also, to write something that feels like poetry to them. Prose poetry. A narrative poem. Free verse. Maybe something lyrical. A haiku.

That's also why I am so pleased to be participating in the first StorytellersSummit, taking place right now, online, at no cost. At the site, you can choose to listen to any of the 22 creative folks in conversation with Decoding Creativity founder Julia Roberts.

It's Prompt Project time again.

For those who are new here, the nutshell: A few times a year, I email a daily writing prompt to anyone who signs up. It's typically a short prompt (sometimes even just one word), and useful for writers of most any genre. There are no rules, expectations or guilt: You get the prompts, and do with them as you like. Unless you tell me or anyone else, no one need know whether a prompt inspires an award-winning piece of work, or if they all molder in your email inbox.

The next Prompt Project begins September 7 and will run until October 31. If you want to join the prompt mailing list, contact me. You can opt out at any time. I'd love it if you would include your real name in your email, but it's not required.

For those who haven't worked with writing prompts in the past, some tips and my personal reasons why I love prompts, can be found here, here and here.

By the way, if you have a writing blog, or are connected with other writers via social networks, I'd love it if you would pass on this post.

Most of the time, writers strive to eliminate cliches from our work, because they speak to a lack of original creative expression. They're generally vague and nonspecific. They seem to shout: this writer can't be bothered to write exactly what she means, so this overused hackneyed phrase will just have to do.

However.

I DO think cliches serve a purpose, and so that's why when I'm writing a first draft, I let them fly. I'm not the sort of writer who can sit, fingers poised above keyboard, for long periods until I come up with the most interesting word or phrase -- at least not when I'm trying to get down the bones of a first draft.

I do that later.

When I'm making a first draft where none existed before, I tend to move quickly. So I write the danged cliche into the piece, and move on. And keep moving. Yeah, I know those stupid cliches have to go...but not now. Now, I'm busy getting a first draft out of my head and onto the page.

For now, that cliche is a place-holder.

Soon enough -- when I get the first draft to resemble something at least partially intelligible -- I will print it out, and grab my highlighter and mark each and every horrible cliche. (I do this for for adverbs too, but that's another blog post.)

Meanwhile, while they are still in place, I think about those cliches (figures of speech, euphemisms, etc.) and I ask myself what I really mean to say instead.

What is it I mean, precisely? When I can begin to understand and to answer that question, I can delete that horrid stale place-holder with something (I hope) more elegant, accurate and interesting.

Cliches can be a writer's friend, if only we can think of them as having found their way into our messy first drafts because they tell us something about an elemental truth we are trying to convey. They are good markers. They tell me - Hey, you over there, writer: here's a hint about what you mean to say, but egads, you can do a whole lot better than this!

I'm curious what others think. Readers, do we see eye to eye on this?

When, on a writer's blog, things get quiet, it's usually either a very good sign, or we should be worried for the blogger.

Radio silence on the blog of a writer/editor/teacher can mean she is busy, busy, busy writing, editing, teaching. Maybe she's struck a creative vein and is on a productivity roll on her memoir manuscript, or maybe she's caught up with teaching, critiquing and interacting with the writers in her class(es), or she's prepping future lectures, or she's editing client manuscripts like mad, or fulfilling a paid writing assignment, or getting that interesting new writing coaching client launched.

Or else -- she's in a funk, is avoiding her keyboard, feels as if she has nothing meaningful to say to other writers (and maybe never will again), isn't interested in her own long-term creative projects, is letting student work pile up unread, is dangerously close to not meeting a deadline. Heck, maybe she is even looking for a job at a shoe store.

Happily for me -- although I've been acquainted with the latter scenario – it's the former which has been the reason I've been absent from the blog a bit lately. Lots going on, all burners firing on high, feeling professionally motivated, engaged, and energized. You know those weeks – everything seems to be working out at once. If you're like me though, that's both wonderful and a bit dreadful.

Oh, yes, I'm a "waiting for the other shoe to drop" kind of gal….wondering when the freelance work will slow down, if an editing client will pull a long range project, if the next class will get enough enrollments to run, whether a magazine will yank an assignment, when the older computer will crash.

Years ago, a therapist I was seeing (to deal with postpartum depression) once put a shoe next to the tissue box every time we had a session, as a reminder that most of the "shoe dropping" I kept waiting for was the product of my own outlook. Before I left, I had to pitch the shoe into the wastebasket. With enthusiasm.

I'm thinking of putting a shoe on my desk.

For a little while yesterday, while northern New Jersey turned white and my husband and sons ran the snow blower and shoveled, I took a break and cracked open a book I picked up, sort of on a whim – The Art of Writing Great Lyrics by Pamela Phillips Oland.

Did I mention that, when I was 16, my piano teacher asked my mother to let me stop lessons? That my husband – who has a lovely voice and once sang in a major choir – thinks I'm tone deaf? That when I watch American Idol I have no idea weather the contestants are pitchy? (I wait for the judges to weigh in and then just nod sagely.)

And yet, I bought the book. Song lyrics intrigue me. I love the condensed nature of the storytelling. When I hear what I think of as a great narrative lyric, I want to ask, "Hey, how'd they do that?"

I am completely aware that most lyricists have musical gifts; indeed that perhaps the best lyricists are also songwriters and trained musicians.

Still.

Halfway through the first chapter, I was excited to learn that there is a means to differentiate poetry from lyrics, that purchasing a rhyming dictionary only sounds childish, that a chunk of what I understand about prose narratives is directly related to lyric writing, while the little I thought I knew about lyric writing is completely off the mark.

If I never write a single line of lyrics, I know already that I'm going to enjoy this book and any lyric "writing" I attempt. I seem, periodically, to need some form of literary craft experience from way outside my writing comfort zone, to shake me up and re-energize my writing – or perhaps I should say my feelings about writing. Last fall, I took a four-week online fiction writing class. Yes, it taught me a lot about setting scenes, building backstory, and dialogue, all of which carries over to nonfiction, but more importantly, it seemed to challenge me: Oh, you think you can write? Well here, try this! I did try. I may never publish a short story, but something shifted.

Now a few chapters into the lyrics book, I'm getting that buzz writers get when we discover something new about words or language or syntax or vocabulary or rhythm (prose-wise, not music-wise!). Plus, I'm coming across some great tips about writing titles, uncovering hidden hooks, and other writing advice that cuts across genres.

Chances are, I'll probably never write lyrics that get set to any music, except maybe for the notes I hear in my head (which are likely out of tune anyway). That's okay. We writers are such a strange species. We persist in places we have no business. We go down dark alleys. We waste time on things which seem to come from nowhere and don't promise any payoff. But something leads us. Lately, I just follow.

What about you? Are you going in any new writing direction lately you never anticipated? How's that working out?

"I don't care what they say. Ain't nobody's business..."

In some shots it's a body double. The production company is milking a dead man's profit-generating popularity. Parts of some songs are dubbed with old tracks. Too much movie-making craft obscuring the real story. It's all a hoax, he's living in an Eastern European castle, pulling everyone's strings. All hype, no history.

Say what you like (and the Internet is saying everything possible), I'm still going to see This it It, the Michael Jackson documentary film made from concert rehearsal footage. I'm fascinated by creativity, by the energy and process behind a multi-talented artist, by what occurs behind the scenes of any major event, and by film-making in general.

I don't think, as the conspiracy-theorists do, that it's a convenient coincidence there was so much high-quality rehearsal footage available, for the same reason I'm no longer shocked to discover that an author's 350-page award-winning novel has a backstory involving an unused 100,000 words, 4,000 pages, and 18 drafts.

To my mind, it's not so much about the "real story" of the run-up to Jackson's cancelled London concerts, but an opportunity to glimpse how the work of so many artists -- including musicians, choreographers, lighting technicians, dancers, etc. -- comes together to transform the original creative impulses of the singer/songwriter into a carefully intended experience for a particular audience.

Because isn't that what writers try to do every day (okay, maybe without pyrotechnics) -- to leave an audience (of readers) feeling differently than before?