Tuesday Tidbit: Sounds, rhythms, and fragrances

Here's your 15 seconds of inspiration, your Tuesday Tidbit:

Look over your rough drafts and study your vignettes' settings: 

• Have you written so readers will get a sense of place?
• Have you included the words—the lingo, the vocabulary—of that region?
• Have you captured the place's philosophy? Include that if it's relevant to your story.
• Have you included the area's passions and culture—those unique activities or beliefs or traditions that characterize the place?

Take time—make time—to recognize the "sounds and rhythms and fragrances" (L.L. Barkat) of those places and write them into your vignettes.

And have fun!

Of Haida art, smoked clams, and tsunami evacuations routes

Oyster Bay

Salish

Oyster farms along Hood Canal

Hood Canal

low tide

high tide

inlets

Skookum Creek

Haida art

shellfish

madrona trees

rhododendrons

logging trucks

Kapowsin

Skokomish

smoked clams

fish hatcheries

Lilliwaup

oyster farms

green: Douglas fir green, pine green, salal green, madrona green

blue: sky blue, saltwater blue, Hood Canal blue

I recently added those “crackly” words to my lexicon for a place I’ve driven through many times in my many years on earth: Hood Canal in western Washington.

At Priscilla Long’s delightful urging, I’m gathering words and phrases for stories about where my roots grow down deep.

I collected those words while driving along Hood Canal toward my destination, the north end of the Olympic Peninsula. Here are entries in that lexicon:

Discovery Bay

Sequim

Lavender Festival

Dungeness Spit

Port Angeles and the Olympic Mountains from Ediz Hook

Port Angeles

salty cool air

City Pier

Hurricane Ridge

salmon

the Crab House

smoked oysters

Olympic National Park

Hama Hama Oysters

Swain's General Store

“Where the mountains greet the sea”

tsunami evacuation route signs

rugged, snow-capped, forested Olympic Mountains

World-class ships 

Gordy’s Pizza

Chestnut Cottage

border patrol agents

KONP

Scooter Chapman

Sandy Keyes

M.M. Fryer and Sons

logging trucks

waterfront trails

world-class ships

MV Coho, Coast Guard station, and Vancouver Island in the distance

Ediz Hook

U.S. Coast Guard station

U.S. Coast Guard helicopters hovering low

seagulls

waterfront

fog horns

Vancouver Island, B.C. in the distance across the Strait

marinas

wild blackberry vines in bloom

Frank Prince

Pete Rennie

Peninsula Daily News

Peninsula College

Canyon Edge Drive

Roughriders

Little League baseball

Dan Wilder’s car dealerships

The MV Coho

maritime history

dense, tangled undergrowth

Dungeness crab

Hartnagel’s

farmers’ market

green: cedar green, fir green, wild blackberry green, bracken fern green, ivy green

blue: sky blue, saltwater blue, Strait-of-Juan-de-Fuca blue

If you haven’t already gathered what Priscilla Long calls“crackly” words, now is a good time to compile your own lexicon, or, more likely, several lexicons.

Do away with boring, generic, ho-hum words.

Instead, gather words and phrases from the unique eras and places and people and experiences in your memoir’s vignettes.

Doing so can be loads of fun, and using those words will add richness to your memoir and leave your readers involved and charmed within your stories.

The power of your place

“To understand my family,” writes Sarah White, “you just have to understand Winona Lake.…”*

Sarah’s referring to the power of place.

The places of our lives mysteriously shaped us and now define us and still anchor us and live in us. The places of our lives nurtured our souls and spirits.

Because of that, place plays an important role in memoirs.

In an interview over at Tales from The Reading Room,* Dinah Roe, London-based author of Rosettis in Wonderland, said,

“Good biographies are as much about time and place as they are about individuals. I love biographies which evoke a sense of place.… Hilary Spurling’s Burying the Bones: Pearl S. Buck in China does this brilliantly. She really makes the case for how important China was to Buck’s writing and to her identity. I had thought of Buck simply as an American writer until I read this book, and then suddenly I realized how wrong-headed this had been. Spurling evoked the place so beautifully that I felt I was right there with the missionary community in China.” (emphasis mine)

I still remember the sense of place David Guterson created in Snow Falling on Cedars—even though I read it over 13 years ago—because of his mastery of writing place into his novel. (Here at SM 101 we’re not writing novels, but, whether fiction or nonfiction, compelling writing is compelling writing.)

Part of his success came because, behind the scenes, all unseen to the rest of us, Guterson practiced what Priscilla Long* recommends: he gathered words.

He collected words about places that, coincidentally, mysteriously shaped me and now define me and still anchor me and live in me, places that nurtured my soul and spirit.

Guterson collected words that describe his place and my place, words like: 

creosoted pilings

ferry terminal

sea cucumbers

anemones

tube worms

alder sticks

geoducks

bonfires

steamer clams

mussels
the odor of salmon bones

oysters

kelp

purse seiners

one-man gill-netting boats

Guterson writes, “They had passed autumn afternoons when they were nine years old in the hollowed-out base of a cedar tree, where they sprawled on the ground looking out at the rain as it pummeled the sword ferns and ivy.… They already had a history together that included this beach, these waters, the very stones, and the forest at their backs, too. It was all theirs and always would be.… She knew where to find matsutake mushrooms, elderberries, and fern tendrils.”

He also writes: “The path looped around the head of the bay, then down into a swale … ground fog shrouded its thimbleberry and devil’s club, such was the clammy, low wetness of the place—then climbed among cedars and the shadows of spruces before descending….” and “… there was a wall of honeysuckle just past blossom, salmonberries hanging in among it and a few last wild roses blooming—Hatsue cut into the cedar woods.… through a dell of ferns where white morning glory blossoms dotted the forest floor. A fallen cedar log hung with ivy.…” and “green-tinted light entered from the cedar forest. The rain echoed in the canopy of leaves above and beat against the sword ferns, which twitched under each drop.”

I encourage you to invest a little time in what Priscilla Long calls The Lexicon Practice—a “deliberate, ongoing gathering of words and phrases.”* (from The Writer's Portable Mentor)

Last Saturday we discussed collecting words that describe a particular era in your memoir’s stories. Today, begin a lexicon (word book) with words that describe important places in your memoir—places that mysteriously shaped you and now define you and still anchor you and live in you.

Remember, you’re looking for “neither big words nor pompous words nor Latinate words,” says Priscilla, “but mainly words [you] like.” Words that don’t require a dictionary. Words that will help your readers smell, feel, hear, see, and even taste your places, those important places that nurtured your soul and spirit.

P.S. Hop on over to Rhonda’s blog post, Giving thanks for heritage, roots centered on the prairie,* to see how she crafted a sense of place. 


Note, too, that Rhonda created not only a physical, geographical place, but also an emotional place in her Aunt Esther's home.


Get out your WIPs (works in progress) and add words and phrases that will enhance your stories' sense of place.

*Links and references:

Sarah White,

http://truestorieswelltold.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/the-power-of-place-in-your-memoir

Dinah Roe’s interview at Tales from the Reading Room,  

http://litlove.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/the-art-of-writing-biography

Priscilla Long, and my blog post, Gather “crackly” words for your memoir,

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2012/01/gather-crackly-words-for-your-memoir.html

Priscilla Long, and my blog post, How long will your memoir’s readers stay engaged, charmed, and beguiled? 

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-long-will-your-memoirs-readers-stay.html

Priscilla Long’s book, The Writer’s Portable Mentor,

http://www.amazon.com/Writers-Portable-Mentor-Guide-Writing/dp/0984242104/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326830003&sr=8-1

Rhonda’s Giving thanks for heritage, roots centered on the prairie, http://momof4braves.blogspot.com/2012/01/giving-thanks-for-heritage-roots.html

How long will your memoir’s readers stay engaged, charmed, and beguiled?

Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

Pop beads. Pedal pushers. Poodle skirts.

Full skirts, straight skirts, pleated skirts.

Car coats and cat-eye glasses.

Bobby socks and saddle shoes.

Girdles. Nylon hose with seams up the back, held up with garter belts.

Sputnik. Transistor radios. Rock 'n' Roll.

Friendship rings. Going steady.

(Pssssst. You're reading one of my lexicons.)

Remember lexicons? Last Wednesday I said I've been working on a second type of lexicon Priscilla Long recommends,* a word book for an era. I've listed those words in my 1955 - 1962 lexicon.

My lexicon from another era, 1950 - 1955, lists air-raid drills, pocketbooks, halter tops, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the GI Bill, trikes, two-wheelers, and penny candy. Unicume's Variety Center at North 4609 Nevada. Woolworths. Tea towels made from cotton flour sacks. Barrettes. Bobby pins. Spit curls.

Collecting them is so much fun! I'll enjoy working some of them into my WIPs (Works In Progress—rough drafts).

But such words serve a function beyond fun.

They have to do with keeping readers "engaged," according to Priscilla in The Writer's Portable Mentor, and keeping them "charmed, seduced, and beguiled." 

Last summer I wrote, "Your story is important, but will anyone read it?"*

Here's the issue: Your memoir's potential readers have many distractions.

Consider the lure of the Internet, texting, tweeting, and TV.

And hobbies.

And how many of us have a stack of books on our bedside tables just waiting to be read?

So what can you do to entice people to read your memoir?

You can write stories readers want to read more than—or at least as much as—they want to play with Facebook, iPods, and Smartphones.

You can enhance people’s reading experiences by doing away with ho-hum words and, instead, choosing descriptive words, specific words that create images in readers’ minds and help them step into your world alongside you. You can immerse them in your story.

“Every childhood has a lexicon,” Priscilla says. Such words capture a specific time and place.

“Place names, certain trees and buildings, the toys of 1934 …,” Priscilla says, “they all make vivid a particular place, a particular era, a particular person, a particular experience.”

Here are words from Priscilla’s childhood lexicon: “greenbriar, dirt road…, 4-H Club, teats, stanchions, silage, milkers, mastitis, calf barn, gutter, manure pile, manure spreader, marsh grass.…”

You have to admit those are good words: they capture a specific place, images, and even smells. 

Now it’s your turn! Compile your own childhood lexicon. Choose words that will engage, charm, seduce, and beguile. Choose words the describe "a particular place, a particular era, a particular person, a particular experience. " 


Look over your WIPs and find places to include words from your childhood lexicon because they will enrich your memoir and keep your readers reading.

You’ll find fun resources and memory-awakeners at the following:

Melissa Marsh’s blog, The Best of World War II, at http://bestofww2.blogspot.com

Reminisce magazine online (1930s through early 1970s) at http://www.reminisce.com

I Remember JFK includes photos, most of which you are free to download, at http://www.irememberjfk.com

“The Libraries of Our Childhoods,” from I Remember JFK, http://www.irememberjfk.com/mt/2011/04/the_libraries_of_our_childhood.php

Touching reflections on family life in the 1960s, from the Winston-Salem Journal,  
http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/nov/17/wsopin02-circus-of-family-values-ar-1617072

The Graphics Fairy has 2500 free images and vintage printables that will (a) help your old memories to surface (b) provide fun illustrations for your memoir. Here’s the link: http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com

Share some of your lexicon’s words with us: leave a comment below.

And if you know of additional resources that will help others create their childhood lexicons, leave a comment below.

*Resources and links:

Priscilla Long, and my blog post, Gather “crackly” words for your memoir,

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2012/01/gather-crackly-words-for-your-memoir.html

“Your story is important, but will anyone read it?” 

http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/06/your-story-is-important-but-will-anyone.html