Let's go short: Creative Nonfiction's Tiny Truths Daily Contest

Creative Nonfiction magazine has really spruced up its looks and contents, and they are currently running a micro essay contest on Twitter that's fun to watch: Tiny Truths Daily Contest. Once you watch, you start thinking about what story you could tell in 140 characters. It's a similar challenge to the Six-Word Memoir. Daily winners and favorites end up in an issue.

Our world is going short short but maybe that's appropriate for summer?

Read to Write

About a year ago I was discussing where we write with my memoir class. One student, a flight attendant, said that he often wrote on the plane during his break on long distance flights, but that he always read before he wrote to get into the mood.

I haven’t been that systematic about reading before I write, but I remembered his recommendation because I’ve noticed lately that reading Lia Purpura's work makes me want to write. I had printed out one of her essays from Orion Magazine and read it on a Sunday morning, and next thing I knew I had spent the day typing furiously into my laptop. I put her essay collection On Looking on my Amazon wish list, and a friend gave it to me for my birthday. Now I read snippets of her lyric essays and I’m off writing.

Reading her play with words and being exposed to her magical powers of observation somehow make me want to do my own creative thing. She’s not a writer I would read to be absorbed in a story, to find out what happened next, or to see how someone dealt with adversity. That kind of reading is, in a way, counterproductive to my own writing because it pulls me into its world rather than prodding my own. Poetry will inspire me to a degree – it offers me a little lens to see the world differently, to nudge, and it gets the mechanics of words going. But poetry also often requires a good deal of concentration that leaves me contemplating rather than producing.

Lia Purpura is a poet. Thankfully, along with her poetry, she also creates lyric essays that invite me along, effortlessly, to immerse myself in her unique view of the world, to see with her “jeweler’s eye” (as Luc Sante puts it so perfectly on the back cover of On Looking) and that, without fail, always inspire me to work to create my own. That is, I believe, what you call a muse.

Is there a writer who inspires you to write?

The Joy of Working with Editors

I spent this morning and most of yesterday going through the comments and suggestions two editors made on two different texts of mine. The first piece was an essay that has been around for a while, that I had worked on many times, and that was already pretty polished. And yet, this editor found spots to prod for more emotion: “Something about how the narrator feels witnessing this?” Or more specificity:

My original line: “…the gastroenterology cubicle where Harry lies groggy from the anesthesia.”

Editor’s comment: “Something extra here? Something even more concrete?”

My rewrite: “…the gastroenterology cubicle where Harry lies under several cotton blankets. His bed is elevated so its railing reaches my chest. His forehead glistens; his voice is thick as he says: “Hi.”

The jury is, of course, still out on whether this rewrite is any better. Let me know what you think!

The second piece I reworked with an editor’s help was an article for a parenting magazine that I wrote last week, based on a bunch of interviews. It was a first draft, and so my colleague, who edited it, gave it back with a lot of “red,” i.e. lots of changes and comments. As I went through it, I accepted almost all of her changes because she truly ironed out my clunky wording and cumbersome phrasing. Then I printed it out for a final review, found some more phrases I could cut et voilà, a streamlined article that is 200 words shorter than the first draft.

Through all of this I was reminded again what a joy and what a privilege it is to have someone pay that much attention to your writing, and work that hard to improve it. I am always amazed just how much an editor’s probing can make my work so much better. So here’s a big thank you to two wonderful editors!

Writing Letters to my Children

Now that my kids are all away at camp, I’m doing an odd thing: I’m writing them letters. It’s an unfamiliar thing. It feels awkward to recount my daily activities in a letter to my children because usually they are part of my daily life and whatever happened in a day will be retold at the dinner table or on the ride home. An added oddity is that they want me to write those letters in German, at least the older two do, because then their bunk mates won’t be able to spy, and they will come off as cool. Not that it’s odd for me to write letters in German; well, letters maybe, but emails no. But it is odd to write to my children in German when ordinarily any written communication between us is English texting abbreviations.

I can send my sons emails through the bunk1 system so that feels a little less out of the ordinary but my daughter’s camp is still old school: Letters are the only way to communicate. So letters we write. And in the end, those letters are precious. Seeing my daughter’s handwriting on an envelope in our mailbox warms my heart like few other things do. And her quirky German spelling is endearing.

It strikes me as noteworthy that in this day and age, when communication is supposed to be instantaneous and intangible, I am left to await the clonk of the mailbox to perhaps get word from my children. I can email our boys but they can only write letters back, so another oddity was to actually slip paper, envelopes and stamps into their suitcases. My hopes aren’t up that we’ll receive a lot of letters from them; they are having too much fun, and the obligatory two letter writing sessions imposed by camp will probably yield the only ones are going to get.

The parent-child letter connection isn’t the only one that camp promotes. Today I got an email from the mother of one of my daughter’s friends with that girl’s camp address because the girls had agreed to write to each other. So here we have two fifteen year olds who are writing each other old fashioned letters to keep in touch over the summer. This has something endearing but also timeless to it. Even though writing letters is more cumbersome, and I have to make sure I plop my letters in the mailbox before the 10 a.m. pickup, there is something wonderfully everlasting about that way of connecting. Maybe because more effort went into it in the first place.

Submissions: Submitting is Like Dating

If you’ve been lucky enough to receive “ink” from an editor on a rejection slip – ink meaning a handwritten note saying something like “nice work, send us more” – what do you do? Do you immediately send the next manuscript you’re trying to get published?

I must confess I used to do this, following up right away on such a wonderful note of encouragement. I wanted to be prompt and professional. Then I heard an editor (I’m sorry I can’t remember who it was) say, on a publishing panel at an MFA alumni conference, that receiving another manuscript quickly was a letdown. What? we eager-to-be-published alumni groaned, you mean you don’t want us to send something else right away? No, he said. He wanted to feel special, like he was getting our best work, like we were toiling away to polish the next manuscript and weren’t just sending out the next one. In a way, he said, getting published was a lot like dating. You don’t want to seem desperate. You wait a day or two after the date before you call, or before you return a call. You’ve got other things to do, other people to see, you’re not waiting by the phone, and you’re not waiting by the mail box (for the rejection slip), and you’re not checking your emails every five minutes to hear back.

Aha, one of my friends, Brenda Wilson, said out loud, submitting is like dating without the dinner. We all roared with laughter. But ever since, that editor’s missive has stuck in my mind. I don’t send something else right away after I receive “ink.” I note the “ink” in my submissions log and put a reminder in my Outlook calendar one or two months in the future to submit to the publication again. Because, after all, I'm not that desperate.

Writing Exercise: Smells of Summer

Today is the first day of summer, so I was thinking of all the smells that mean summer to me. Smell is purportedly the sense that brings back memories the fastest, and thus can create meaning in an instant, a powerful way to create a multi-dimensional world with words. So which smells mean summer to you? Add to the list, please. Here are mine:

Charcoal grill and my neighbors' nasty habit of lighting it with fuel
Sunscreen lotion
Peonies
Roses

Submissions: Agent Insight - A Memoir is not the Story of Your Life

Wonderful clarification from Katie Shea of Caren Johnson Literary Agency on what memoir is not: a story of your life (that would be an autobiography). Here's her answer regarding memoir manuscripts from the May 26 interview at Guide to Literary Agents:

GLA: Where are people going wrong in their memoir submissions to you?

KS: One of the worst things I see with memoir is when the writer starts from the beginning of their life to where they are now. Memoir should be only a chapter of your life. I have been pitched memoirs that could be divided into three books!
     For memoir writers, choose your strongest or favorite theme and then work from exactly when it started to exactly when it ended. Do not include the before and after. I do not want to be reading a book from when you were two years old up until you are 43. It just doesn't work. 

My Six Word Dad Memoir

In honor of Father's Day, here are my six words on Dad:

"Died too young. Found in pictures."

Feel free to add yours!

What Goethe and Packing the Kids off to Summer Camp Have in Common

Goethe's parental home
in Frankfurt, Germany.

I’m in the midst of packing three kids off to summer camp as I am sure many other parents are as well. Every year the sheer amount of clothes, linens and supplies irks me. The packing list advises that each child should have 15 pairs of underwear, 15 socks, 15 short-sleeved shirts; enough for a three week session during which laundry is done only once.

This is the second time all three of our kids are going off to camp and thus, you would think, we’d have enough of all that from last year. But no, kids grow! The only one who has almost enough is the youngest as he does inherit some clothes from his brother. But not socks, for instance; those don’t survive.

So off we go to Target. We get 3 tubes of aloe (most other kids don’t bring this and my boys rule become master suppliers  because they’re the only ones with cooling agent for sunburns, which all the kids get, no matter how much sunscreen you pack…), 3 bottles of shampoo, lotion, liquid soap, bug spray, anti-itch spray, etc. What the kids bring back will last the whole family into the next summer. I still have some personal items left from last year, neatly labeled, and we are reusing those!

Frankfurter Schrank in the Goethe Haus

My daughter buys 7 sports bras (she’s going horseback riding) and I cringe at the cost: $16.99/each. The rest of the year she needs two. Because we do laundry. And that reminds me of the Goethe Haus, Goethe's parental home in Frankfurt where he was born in 1749. I visited this stately house in downtown Frankfurt as a kid with my grandmother who lived in nearby Wiesbaden. I remember how astounded I was at the big closets they had (armoires actually). My grandmother explained that this was necessary because they needed to have enough linen for several months. Laundry was only done three times a year. It was, after all, a big and cumbersome job. The maids would have to schlep all the dirty laundry down to the river, swish bed sheets in the flowing water, scrub everything on washboards, rinse it again, spread it out on the meadows to dry in the sun. Not to mention the hauling back, the ironing and the folding. It was a huge production.

Our linen closet isn’t stuffed with linens for four months, but it is stuffed with old scruffy sheets, mismatched pillow cases, and fraying towels. I should have thrown those out years ago but last year, as I was packing three kids off to camp, I was happy I’d never gotten around to purging it. We wouldn’t have had two pillow cases, two sets of sheets (equals four), three bath towels, and two beach towels per child. We are not living in the 18^th century like Goethe’s family. We do laundry several times a week.

Third Rule for Literary Magazine Submissions: Don’t Give Up

...or as the director of my MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte, Fred Leebron, likes to say:

“Writing is a game of attrition. Don’t attrish.”

This means don’t give up as you submit your writing for consideration at literary magazines. If you believe in your piece and are sure it’s the best it can be, keep sending it out as the rejections pour in. Follow the process I outlined in my post on having a system for submissions.

I just had another piece accepted for publication (It was, however, solicited, which is another nice milestone to reach.), and that prompted me to average how long it has taken my pieces to be accepted for publication. Take a deep breath, here’s the number: My average is 38 times. My lowest number is 17, my highest is 73. That means I sent a piece to 72 literary magazines before it got accepted by number 73. If that doesn’t prove that point that you shouldn’t give up and just keep going, I don’t know what does. I’m not counting freelance pieces here that I’ve pitched and been able to publish, that’s an entirely different process. I’m talking strictly about getting published in literary magazines.

It’s an arduous process, and takes a lot of persistence and patience, but thankfully there are a lot of literary magazines out there, and they are where new writers typically get a foothold in contemporary literature. They are the stepping stone to bigger national magazines like The New Yorker, and they are read by agents looking for talent. So get out there. Remember that all you need is one yes, and all the drudgery will be wiped away. By the way, if you have an average number, please share. It’s always good to hear what the parameters are.

Writing Exercise: Hot Verbs

It is raining and thundering again in Chicago this morning, and more wetness and cool temperatures are forecasted for the rest of the day, so I'm feeling rather un-summery and am thinking it's the right day for this writing exercise. A friend inspired me to think of verbs that capture hot when he used the word "skewer" recently to describe my daughter's ability to decimate opponents in arguments. That word "skewer" struck me as such a strong verb that I thought it might be a good exercise, given that summer will be upon us, even in Chicago, to think of verbs that capture hot. I started this list, help me to add to it:

blister
burn
scorch
sear
skewer
steam

Six Words on Dad

Dad's love: "Checked your oil lately?"

(As posted by DrumHeart23 on SMITH Magazine)

The quote above is my favorite six word memoir contribution so far on SMITH Magazine's dad project. Similar to their six word Momoirs Project for Mother's Day, SMITH Magazine is now running a six word memoir project in honor of dads and fatherhood. Contribute your own six-word dad memoir on your relationship with your dad or on being a father yourself. I'm tinkering with mine; will post later this week. Feel free to share yours!

A Memoir-Related Giveaway

Here's a little memoir fun to be had: Think about the following question:

What memoir that you have read mattered to you, and why?

Then head over to Margarget Roach's blog and leave your comment there (feel free to let me know, as well, I'd be curious) for a chance to win her sister Marion Roach Smith's new book The Memoir Project, mentioned in my Friday post.

Handwriting

I just handwrote three thank you notes to friends who had been kind enough to remember my birthday with gifts sent in old-fashioned bubble envelopes, the address handwritten on them. One of my oldest and best friends had sent a handwritten letter along with five cards featuring her art. Then one of our former au pairs visited a few days after my birthday and gave me an old-fashioned fountain pen and another stack of cards. I decided that events were conspiring for me to take the time to write elegant thank you notes with that fountain pen. I hadn’t written with a fountain pen in more than a decade. It felt odd and easy at the same time; after all, I grew up learning how to write with a fountain pen. Who had what kind of fountain pen in grade school was a big deal. Penmanship was a big deal. Now, after writing three notes, my hand hurts!

I also realized, once again, holding my friend’s letter, how much I miss her handwriting, and anybody else’s for that matter. A person’s handwriting is such an expression of personality – when you see the envelope, you know who the letter is from. It’s like a person’s voice: you know who’s on the phone before they even announce their name. Thankfully, I have shoe boxes full of the most important correspondences of my life but sadly, even though some of those correspondences continue to the present day, I rarely add anything to those collections anymore. All correspondence has now been relegated to my email inbox where everybody’s message looks the same.

Do you still write by hand, at least once in a while?

Two Sisters Talk About Writing Memoir

Listen to this insightful conversation (aired yesterday, June 9, 2011 on blogtalkradio) between sisters Margaret Roach and Marion Roach Smith on writing memoir. Find out why Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project, calls memoirists the "cheeky birds of writers." Margaret Roach, former Martha Stewart executive, wrote a memoir about how gardening saved her after losing her high-powered career: And I Shall Have Some Peace Here. Each sister appears as a character in the other's book, and it's quite interesting to hear their take on writing about the same family from different angles, especially since family reactions are a major concern for memoir writers.

Listen to internet radio with HBGFeatures on Blog Talk Radio

And by the way, Marion Roach Smith, in The Memoir Project, is totally against writing prompts. I tend to agree with her but I've found that my students love them, so I do them now and then. They are one reason I like Abigail Thomas's book Thinking About Memoir. Her prompts make me think of things I would never have dug up otherwise, often good for a standalone piece here and there. I would love to hear your views on writing prompts!

Best Online Literary Magazines for Nonfiction

My listings of the best literary magazines for nonfiction as well as the second and third best focused on print magazines. Of course some of these also publish content online but their main outlet remains a print journal.

Following I am listing the best literary online magazines for nonfiction based on my personal ranking. I still consider online magazines a separate category because there is content that works well online, and there is content that doesn’t. It mainly has to do with length, and you will note that many of these online magazines have word limits in the submissions they accept.

My ranking is also derived a bit differently as it is based on Best of the Web 2010, as well as the Pushcart 2011 and 2010, and the Best American Essays 2010 anthologies. The top magazines listed here received at least two if not three recognitions: honorable mentions or a Best of the Web. Blackbird is the only one to receive a Pushcart in 2011. Magazines in tier 2 received one of these recognitions. Following my rationale, magazines not accepting simultaneous submissions are not listed. I will publish a separate listing for those soon.

Top tier:

Blackbird

TriQuarterly Online

Wag’s Revue

Second tier:

Ascent

Blood Orange Review

Carte Blanche

Cerise Press

Front Porch

Journal of Truth and Consequence (currently not accepting new work)

SN Review

Swink

The Smart Set

The Best Writing Advice I Ever Got

Today I’m sharing with you the one piece of advice that was the key to me becoming a writer. Many years ago I took an online travel writing class taught by Richard Goodman, and one essay he posted rang a bell with me: Wake up and write.

Richard's essay helped me realize that writing first thing in the morning was the only way I could commit to becoming a writer while holding a corporate consulting job and raising three small children. I finally started getting up at five and writing even though I am absolutely not a morning person.

Some days I would only get in half an hour, or push around a few sentences before the pitter-patter of little feet down the hallway announced that my writing time was over. But no matter, I knew the next morning would come around, and at least I had done something for myself already, something that I cared about. The day had begun well.

I’m happy to welcome Richard as today’s guest blogger and to share this essay with you. Richard Goodman is the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France and The Soul of Creative Writing. His most recent book is A New York Memoir.

And let us know, please, how you fit writing into your life!

WAKE UP AND WRITE

By Richard Goodman

WRITING IN THE MORNING

I write in the morning.  I always have.  I always will.  I'm sharpest in the morning.  Or at least I'm as sharp as I'll be that day in the morning. Even if I didn't write a word, I'd love the morning.   Morning is a metaphor for youth.  It is the youth of your day.  Everything lies before you.  I love the morning's newness, its sense of possibility, and the optimism it provides.  In the evening, or in the night, it's easy to feel pessimistic or depressed. You're at the end of your day.  It's a metaphor for age—old age.  You've lived your day.  There is little future to it. In the morning, though, the sense that your day (life) is what you can make it fills the air.

    I'm aware there are people who don't share my enthusiasm.  Some people hate the morning.  It's their enemy.  They hate everything it stands for. They'd rather have a spiked enema than get up at 5:30 or 6 and write for an hour.  Fair enough.  However, in teaching writing for over ten years, I've found two things to be constants among people who are trying to write.  The first is, that they can't find the time to write.  The second is that whether you're a night person or not, most people have told me they're too

tired to write when they come home.

     And why shouldn't you be tired?  You've worked all day.  Whatever job you have, it's bound to be tough.  Whether you're a truck driver, surgeon, housewife, lawyer, real estate salesperson, teacher, social worker, secretary or minister, you've put in a long, hard day.  I know, because I've had all these people as my students.  So, in the evening, after the kids have been fed and you've looked at their homework, after the dog's been walked, after the dishes have been washed, and after you've talked about the latest family crisis with your spouse, you may be a night person, but you only have so m much to give.  Chances are, you'll be nodding off by the fire in mid-sentence, your head snapping back and eyes popping open and then closing again.  You probably can't even read three pages of a book, much less write.

     Now, you could do what Balzac did.  You could sit down at your desk and drink the first of 20 or 30 cups of arsenic-strength coffee and write all night.  Balzac did that for twenty years straight, catching a few hours sleep every afternoon.  He died at 50, leaving behind 90 novels and, through them, gained his immortality.  Most of us are probably not up to that.  So, what's left?  The weekends.  Sure, the weekends.  Most anyone can grab a few hours on the weekend to write.  But a few hours every weekend does not a writer make.  It takes consistent effort.  If not every day, then nearly

every day.  So, as I see it, we're left with the morning.  The morning, after you've had a decent night's sleep.  When your body and brain have been restored.  By morning, I mean that uninhibited time before your outside demands begin.  An hour or so earlier than normal.  That's when you can write.

     The morning is quiet.  You need quiet to write.  It allows you to concentrate and to put yourself into your work.  Noise can break that spell easily.  Your censor or critic is still half asleep, too.  Get in there and write before it wakes up and starts sabotaging your work.

     "No, no," you reply, "I can't. I can't function in the morning.  I'm a vegetable until noon.  I'm comatose.  I'm useless."

     Well, maybe so.  But take a good look at your progress in the last year in terms of your writing.  How goes it?

     Sobering, isn't it?

     An hour every morning.  You need at least an hour.  You have to get up early enough to give yourself at least an entire hour to write.  Now, some people I know get up early and then go directly to work.  They work at the office before anyone arrives.  If that works, that's great.  An office empty of people is a quiet place, that's for sure.  Staying at home is fine, of course.

     Looks like you may be a morning person after all.

ONCE YOU'RE UP IN THE MORNING, RESISTING THE NOT-WRITING MUSE

    We all seek a Muse, ("Artists pray to be obsessed by something," as W.S. Merwin says), but sometimes it appears we have a Not-Writing Muse.  Not writing is seductive.  The Not-Writing Muse sings to us provocatively, like the Sirens did to Ulysses in the Odyssey.  It wants to lull us, and to draw us from our desks with alluring tunes.  What does this dark Muse's song sound like to you?  Well, since it's early in the morning, the Not-Writing Muse promises you sleep.

    "Come with me, and you can sleep.  Beautiful, carefree sleep."

    Sounds tempting, doesn't it?

    That's why you should be wide-awake-or as close as possible-before you sit down to your desk.  Then, if you're like me, once you're up, you're up, and the Muse's call for sleep has no allure.

     The Not-Writing Muse might try and lure you to the TV or to the radio.  You can probably resist television, but what about the radio?  What a great time to listen to NPR, the Not-Writing Muse softly sings!  You never have enough time to listen to public radio, do you?  True enough.  But think about it. Most of the time, the news seems all bad.  It IS all bad.  Terrorists, Atomic weapons, global warming, tornados. You may find yourself getting a bit depressed.   Do you want to start your day with this?

    The most seductive song the Not-Writing Muse has to sing, the one with the most insidiously attractive tune, is the Internet.  How we can while away the time so easily on the Web!   So, the Muse starts to sing:  "Why not hit the Internet?  No harm in answering a few e-mails, is there?  Or writing a few.  You might be able to get a handle on some of those problems at the office, too.  Yes, e-mail the client.  Let him know you're on top of things. He'll notice you've written him at 6am, of course.  That's bound to impress him.  'Hey, Phil, I'm thinking about you 24/7,'" your early e-mail declares.

    My advice?  Don’t connect.  Or, even more radical, don't use a computer at all to write.  Write in longhand.  If that's impossible, turn off the sound/volume of the machine.  Whatever you do, don't log on to gmail, or whatever provider you have.  Do anything you need to do to thwart the call to the Internet.  It's the most insidious thing we've ever invented.

    But the Not-Writing Muse hasn't quite given up yet.  It's got one more card up its sleeve.

     "When it comes down to it," it croons, "the real world is the real world.  Bills have to be paid.  The kids are going to college soon.  Where's that money going to come from, anyway?  So what the hell are doing here wasting an hour trying to be a beatnik artist when you should be helping out in the trenches?"

    Ok.  Calm down.  Take a deep breath.  Remember this: you knew all of this going into this thing.  You knew about the bills, the kids and college, and the boiler that needs replacing.  But you opted to take the time to write.  In spite of all that, you made that decision when you were sober, and rational-and wide awake.  Why are you going back on it now?   The real insidiousness of the Not-Writing Muse is that part of you wants to hear what it has to say.  Part of you wants to be drawn away from your desk, especially if the Muse is telling you you'll be doing what's "really right" if you don't write.

    They don't call them Sirens for nothing.

    So, go back to the feelings behind your original decision.  Drink them in.  Try them on again.  Live inside them for a few minutes.  That will give you the strength you need. 

    You don't need this particular Muse.

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Withdrawing a Manuscript Submission

The next best thing after having a manuscript accepted for publication is withdrawing it from other magazines you’ve submitted it to. I’ve been doing that today and I must say there’s a unique satisfaction in being able to say:

Dear Editors,

I am hereby withdrawing my essay “[title]” from consideration at [name of magazine] because it has been accepted for publication elsewhere.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Annette Gendler

Now in many cases I don’t even get to say that because of an online submission system. All I have to do is log on and click the Withdraw button. That’s short-lived satisfaction, but still there’s a sense of accomplishment when the screen refreshes and it says “withdrawn.”

The last chance to enjoy the withdrawing process is entering the date when I withdrew it into my submissions log, and of course typing “Accepted!” into the row of the magazine where it will be published.

In a way it’s sad that I should take pleasure in petty details like this but happiness is in the little things, and with the path towards publication being as arduous as it is, one needs to take delight in any little success.

Writing Exercise: Practice Dialogue - The Singing Cab Driver

One advantage we nonfiction writers have over fiction writers is that we have a plethora of voices at our disposal if we manage to capture those voices of the people in our lives that we want to portray in our writing. Now many fiction writers actually do the same: They don't invent people, they use people they've come across and turn them into fictional characters. One of the ways to bring a person to life on the page, and to describe his or her personality is to capture the voice.

Many years ago I took a writing class in which the instructor asked us to eavesdrop on a conversation in order to practice writing dialogue: Listen to real people to capture their way of speaking. I didn't like the idea of eavesdropping and procrastinated. Eventually I did go to the local diner and tried to eavesdrop but nothing interesting was forthcoming. I was about to pass on that assignment when, on the very last day before it was due, I had to take a taxi from work to pick up my daughter on time. It was the oddest cab drive ever, and only later that evening did it dawn on me that I had been handed the perfect conversation to practice writing dialogue.

I've never been able to place the resulting story, so I'm sharing it with you here with the little nudge to keep your eyes and your ears open - you never know what treasure of a character life might hand you! And if you do come across such a treasure, write down those snippets of speech before they escape your memory.

THE SINGING CAB DRIVER

My watch shows 5:05 p.m. I’m supposed to pick up my daughter at 5:15. No way I’ll make it, but with a taxi I’ll get there fifteen minutes earlier. I dash out of my office building. A fat yellow cab is pulling out of the Holiday Inn driveway across the street. The driver beckons. I get in.

“Come on lady, this is cab you want. Not only is this the cab you want, I’m the driver you want.” Boy, does he have a loud voice. I decide to be congenial: “Yes, you are.”

“Where are we going?”

“Hyde Park. 53^rd Street exit.”

“Then it’s probably best to get on the Drive here, since Columbus is closed?”

“Yes, that will be quickest. I’m already late to pick up my daughter.”

“Where’s she at?”

“What do you mean?”

“She at Lab School?”

“No, no, she’s at the Hyde Park Art Center.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s seven.”

“I remember when mine were seven.”

“You got daughters?”

“Yes, two daughters from two ex-wives. All very different from me.”

“So you have lots of women in your life then.”

“Sure do.”

“How old are your daughters?”

“One is 21, the other 16, but I remember those days when they were seven.”

“I can’t believe mine is seven already. I’m actually picking her up to go to a yoga class together.”

“Kid’s seven years old taking yoga? What’s the world coming to? What else they’re taking these days?”

“No, no, it’s a good thing. You know, she has a lot of tension and it’s good for us to do this together.”
”She’s got a lot of tension? What’s a seven year old girl gotta have tension about?”

“Well, you know…”

“No, no, it’s a good thing. I’m just kidding. You noticed you’re riding in cab number one today?”

I glance at the cab number sign right in front of me on the partition wall. Indeed, a stamped-out black and white ”1” is stuck on where normally a four-digit cab-number would be.

“Wow! How did you get that number?”

“Scratched it off. No, I won the cab rodeo.”

“The cab rodeo? What’s that?”

“Just a fun thing we cab drivers get to do every year.”

“So what do you do?”

“Well, they’ve got an obstacle course and you’ve got to drive through it, steering with your knees and eat a hamburger and balance a beer in the other hand. Then a whole lot of luggage and a bunch of odd shaped suitcases that only fit into the trunk a certain way. And they’ve got that car where you ride in the trunk and have to steer through the back window with ropes attached to the wheel.”

“Wow, good for you. Sounds like a lot of fun.”

“No, no, I’m just kidding. I scratched it off.”

“No, no, no, but I liked that story! That was a good story.”

“Well, there’s something else you don’t know.”

“What’s that?”

“Not only have you landed in cab number one, you’ve also got the Singing Cab Driver.”

“You sing? Good for you.”

“Want me to sing you a song?”

I shift in my seat, but decide to go for it: “Sure.”

“Love! Sex! Social Significance! Dreams! Other!”

“Other.”

“Movies. Working. Playing. Talking. Commercialism. Shopping. Driving. Dancing.”

“Driving.”

“Alright. You’re the second passenger today to request that. This song’s been performed with my band Chameleon World, on Wild Chicago, as a one man musical, used to be available on cassette, now on hounddog. As I say, leave urban transportation to the professionals. When you find yourself in my backseat, you know your karma is due!”

I stare out the window. The Loop’s Skyline zooms by, windowpanes glittering in the sunset. This guy starts to sing, slapping the steering wheel to create a rock-and-roll sort of beat:

Turn the key, start the motor and roam

We’re in a hurry, just don’t want to be slow

No destination, we just go baby go

Because I love to drive

Go baby go

I really love to drive

With you by my side

Go baby go

It’s late at night, put the city to sleep

Hush all the lights, the city’s a blur

I stayed ahead, forgot where we were

Because I love to drive

Go baby go

Cruising the empty interstate, just follow those signs to the dawn

Your head on my shoulder, my hand on your leg

Tank full of gas and we’re gone

Clinging to the wheel of my automobile

I hit those curves

I love how you feel

Follow the bright lights, leave the city behind

It’s not a highway

It’s a state of mind

Because I love to drive

With you by my side…

Go baby go, go baby, go baby, go!

I shift a few more times in my seat, figure it might be impolite to stare out the window the entire time, so I move my glance in his direction. His head is somewhat rectangular. He sings quite well.

“Well, thank you very much. That was a very nice song.”

Traffic is moving along nicely. Maybe I won’t be too late. We exit the Drive at 53^rd. It’s 5:30.

“Could you let me off right before the light?”

The car stops and I hold up a $20 bill. ”Change for 17?”

“Here you go. Here’s my card.”
”Oh, thank you. Have a good evening.”

I stuff his card in my bag, slam the door and dash towards the Art Center. Later the cabby’s neon-green card falls into my hands again. I finally pay attention and realize I happened upon a Chicago legend. A self-proclaimed legend perhaps, but my fifteen minutes with the singing cab driver won’t vanish into the heap of all the other fifteen minute cab rides. Rides bought to rush me from one spot to another, bought to save time, not to savor the journey.

In case you're wondering, this is indeed a true story: Check out The Singing Cab Driver.

Rules for Writing: Don’t Tell If You’re Going to Show

I often find, in student manuscripts, instances where the writer tells me something, only to go on to show it. And then tells me again what she’s already shown me. (Mind you, I also catch myself doing this.)

Example:

THE PARAGRAPH BEGINS: I could smell the man before I saw him.

TELLING: It was a rough and rugged street smell.

NEXT SENTENCE, SHOWING: Major body odor, not the kind you get from skipping a shower, but the kind you get from skipping many, many showers.

NEXT, TELLING: Rank and rancid.

There’s no need to do this. In fact, it weighs down the prose. The writer here "shows," in fact let's us smell, what this person smells like. We get “rank and rancid,” before the writer tells us it’s rank and rancid because we’ve all smelled such a person before. The description, the showing, conjures this odor. That is good writing. It creates a three-dimensional world.

If you’re skilled enough as a writer to show like this, then you don’t need to go on to tell. You’ve accomplished what we all strive for in showing: to bring the reader into the story, to have the reader smell what the narrator smells.

Submissions: Insights from a Newly Minted Nonfiction Editor

My friend Tracy Crow started as nonfiction editor at literary magazine Prime Number a week ago. Click here to read her insights now that she's on the receiving end of literary nonfiction submissions.

Here's to not worrying about cover letters!