When I was about around eleven or twelve, my mother and I were driving by a corn field dotted by brown stalks sticking out of the snow, and I remarked that they looked like the stubble on a man’s face. She said that my observation was a simile. A comparison using like or as. I attribute my love of poetry and writing back to that moment and pleasing my mother, a woman difficult to please. Metaphor, more abstract, came later, more gradually. When I finished War and Peace the other day, I felt as if a glacial metaphor had moved through me, the book encompassing all of life on a grand scale and also on the most intimate. And yet through all that, one image keeps coming back to me. There is a hunt for rabbits where thousand-ruble dogs compete with mongrels, and a mongrel named Rugay is the victor. Tolstoy writes, “For some after, they kept looking askance at red Rugay, who trotted along Uncle’s horse with mud all over his hunched up back, jingling the fittings on his leash, with the serene air of a conquerer.” Yes, a metaphor for the whole book, the Russian army defeating the French, but oh that phrase, “the serene air of a conquerer,” the sound and flow of it, the feeling and image it stirs, the inherent simile. And that, dear reader, is the depth of my love of writing, right there in a single phrase.
What excites you most about writing?
photo: Sky History
Filed under: Uncategorized |
Betsy Lerner 
“What excites you most about writing?”
When you see something that works — whether you do it or someone else does it, that doesn’t matter — and you think, “Wow, look at that.”
That perfect beginning sentence, the perfect analogy, simile, metaphor, that captures exactly how you feel or are thinking, what you’re trying to say. The perfect final sentence, when you know you nailed it, like a gymnast off the uneven bars, nailing the landing, two feet planted firmly on the mat. Boom!
This. And another great simile. First attempt, I usually stumble off the mat and land on my ass, but a few dozen rewrites, a bit of luck, and boom!
Oh yes, that!
Thinking about other writers writing.
A rainy morning on the porch, sipping tea and watching hummingbirds zooming around the red bee balm flowers, pausing for nectar then zipping off again. From somewhere, a thought emerges, a line, an image. It has nothing at all to do with hummingbirds or red bee balm, but it’s something I’ll be turning over and expanding on for the next few days, maybe longer, until it sounds right and I figure out what to do with it. Like an abandoned wet hungry dog, it will follow me home, keeping a safe distance until it trusts it has found a home.
“It’s tempting to assume these are confusing and embarrassing times to identify as Republican.”
I like it because it has an element of truth (I think) and it will piss conservatives right the fuck off.
The turn of a phrase, when it’s original, and you nod with respect and even awe, and wonder how in God’s name the writer thought of it, and. wish you had
Exactly this. The thrill of the single sentence that leaves me undone.
Fitting the words together in a way that makes me tingle. I read War and Peace over the course of a few years, stopping and then starting at wherever the bookmark was. I don’t remember any specific details, only that it was an amazing work of art!
Onward.
As a reader, it’s how writers are able to create characters that jump off the page. As a writer, it’s how the perfect solution to a particular issue (that I may not even be aware of) often comes to me unbidden, and often in the middle of the night.
when I get into it and writing doesn’t seem too terrible.
I relish the moment when a character comes up with a metaphor or simile that fits who THEY are–a ranching one for my protagonist; a rugby one for the villain, etc. Because it shows I have gotten into their heads completely.
or in my case, that they’ve taken over mine…
Finishing.
Oh, to finish a book! To bask in that feeling a moment.
But also, I love, respect and admire any writer who’s foolish enough to begin the next book soon after.
If we had any sense, surely we’d quit while we’re behind.