Poetry & Pushpins

~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Poetry & Pushpins

Monthly Archives: May 2014

Narrative Intimacy, Writer’s Trust, and Free Indirect Speech

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in The Creative Life

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empathy, the creative process, writing

Last week, I wrote a paragraph’s worth of free indirect speech in a short story I’m drafting. This little paragraph made me so happy, because out of all the third person narrative techniques I’m familiar with, free indirect speech mesmerizes me the most.

Used by famous writers like Jane Austen, Goethe, and Virginia Wolf, free indirect speech is a narrative technique that blends the distance of third person speech (S.L. Woodford wrote with vigor) with the direct engagement of first person speech (I wrote with vigor).

So, a writer can write things like:

S.L. Woodford wrote with vigor and refrained from watching Tom Hiddleston teach Cookie Monster about the importance of “delayed gratificatiion” on YouTube. The restraint will be worth the effort.

Instead of :

S.L. Woodford wrote with vigor and refrained from watching Tom Hiddleston teach Cookie Monster about the importance of “delayed gratificatiion” on YouTube.

“My restraint will be worth the effort,” she thought.

Or:

S.L. Woodford wrote with vigor and refrained from watching Tom Hiddleston teach Cookie Monster about the importance of “delayed gratificatiion” on YouTube. She thought that her restraint would be worth the effort.

Free indirect speech seamlessly allows the writer to take the reader into the thought processes of a book’s characters by incorporating their voice into the larger narrative structure. And in the process, the reader’s eye is neither distracted by the starting and stopping of direct speech’s quotations, nor is it fatigued by the constant repetition of indirect speech’s reporting phrases. I don’t know about you, but I can only read “she thought,” “he said,” “it groaned,” so many times before my innards start simmering with a quiet—yet wrathful—rage.

Because free indirect speech slips intimately into the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations of a character, a reader and character can have a communion of thought, feeling, and physicality without superfluous punctuation and phrases cutting in at inopportune times. And, within this communion of thought, there are more opportunities for the reader to cultivate empathy through directly experiencing a character’s inner life.

How I love it when writers use free indirect speech well. It makes me feel like they trust me, the reader, when they make me privy to their characters’ most intimate thoughts. Through it, their character’s can be vulnerable. In that vulnerability, I can better understand their character’s actions and interactions with others.

And, how I love it when free indirect speech occurs in my writing. For its presence reminds me that I am giving up control. I am at last trusting my readers with my characters, my narrative, and my art.

 

P.S. Remember that Tom Hiddleston / Cookie Monster video I used in my grammar examples above? It is quite delightful if you like Tom Hiddleston, Cookie Monster, slight Shakespearean references, cookies, and delayed gratification (or any combination of those things). So, I’m just going to leave this here…

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Balance

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

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empathy, grief, Midwest, New England

It still sucks that our Mom died when we were both still in our twenties. But, these phone conversations with my brother are becoming some of my life’s most sacred moments.

 

“Hey, Mattie. Thanks for calling me back.”

I sit on a garden bench, behind a mansion-turned-Yale-administrative building, concealed from the casual observer by clematis vines. As I lean further back into my verdant hiding place, my “e’s” and “a’s” ascend up my nose and echo in my nasal cavities. The carefully enunciated speech I use daily at Yale—the speech that others sometimes mistake as an English person’s when I’m either very nervous, or just trying to create polite, social distance at cocktail parties—begins to relax, nestling itself into a warm, Northeastern Ohio twang.

My words instinctively know that I have no need for nerves or polite social distance as I sit concealed by clematis vines. I’m speaking with my younger brother. And, concealing myself from the once little boy, who used to wipe boogers on me, is a very unwise thing to do. Especially, since that little boy is now a competent, gentle young man.

We talk about his forthcoming visit, maritime history, human psychology, and his friends. Subjects we have often touched upon in previous phone conversations. But, now that our Mom has been dead for exactly a year, our conversations also explore something else: family management. We talk about how our Dad and our 93 year-old Grandmother are actually doing, comparing conversations, trading observations, voicing concerns, and brainstorming solutions (if necessary). We also cry (me more than him) while uttering reflections about our Mom. Reflections only we two would understand, because we were her children.

The more we speak to each other in this way, the more I believe that we are creating a form of healthy communication we shall use with each other for the rest of our lives. We will only continue to make decisions about how to maintain and ensure our family’s well-being, property, and monetary assets as Dad and Grandma continue to age. I’m glad that we’re building this strong, open report now. I find that hard decisions become less difficult if you’re making them with someone you love, trust, and understand.

It still sucks that our Mom died when we were both still in our twenties. But, these phone conversations with my brother are becoming some my life’s most sacred moments. For through them, I see time shrink, merge, and fall away. Mattie is 24, and I, 28—a four-year age gap differentiating our life experiences. A huge chasm in our youth, especially during his booger-wiping phase, that is a chasm no longer. This young man on the other end of the phone and I seem to share more and more as we age. Though he has Mom’s coloring and I have Dad’s, we share our Mom’s cheekbones, eye sockets, and weirdly Romanesque nose. Though he is a mechanical engineer that specializes in historical machines and I am a librarian who specializes in Christian theology, we both deal with creating mechanized order and preserving history in our careers. Though he was socialized as a male and I a female, we have socialized each other to appreciate compassionate men and self-sufficient women. And between us, we have cultivated a penchant for Jane Austen, the Sandman comics, video games, British sitcoms, hiking, classical literature, sailing, and history.

But, most importantly, Mattie and I share the deep pain of losing our Mom, and, the responsibility of loving our family well in her absence.

I tell Mattie this, all of this, and he is quiet for a long time. “Well you know Sis, the universe always has a way of balancing itself out.”

It is my turn to be silent as I stare up into the sky, letting Mattie’s words properly seep into my thoughts. The sky is thick and dense with flat gray clouds. Yet, a rainbow gracefully arches across those clouds, its colors made even more vivid by the stark gray background.  A spray of water hits my cheeks, I only now realize it is raining, and I look up—higher—into the sky. This rainbow has a twin. A quiet echo of itself in color and shape.

“Yes Mattie, I must agree with you. The Universe does have a way of balancing itself out.”

photo(1)

Happy Badass Librarian Day!

14 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Literature, Pushpins (Daily Life)

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books, librarians, libraries

Today is Badass Librarian Day. And since I’m a librarian, I’ve enjoyed being thanked for my badassness throughout the day. All this love got me thinking about the many ways being a librarian is, indeed, a pretty badass occupation:

1. You get to help people find shit. Like a boss. Well noted on lol my thesis.

2. Collaboration? With Artists? Patrons? Scholars? Other Librarians? We love it so hard.

3. Why yes, cardigans, piercings, tweeds, and tattoos do go together. Thank goodness the librarians of the Rhode Island Library Association helped us all to see the light with their “Librarians and Tattoos” Calendar!

No tattoos for me, though (Yet. Sometimes, I fantasize about getting strands of blue Celtic knots on the top of my right foot). But like any good Yalie, I’m rather partial to my pearl set. You know—necklace, bracelet, earrings…and nose stud.

4. We’re super into knowledge (and literacy) for all.

5. We stage creative protests. Remember this awesome campaign masterminded by the librarians of Troy, Michigan, a few years ago? Even today, watching their YouTube video gives me glee!

So, Huzzah for being a (badass) librarian!

Miss Mardle and Florian: Mr. Selfridge’s fiction within a fiction

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

England, Mr. Selfridge, PBS Dramas, vintage fashion

I have a weakness for PBS historical dramas. A weakness that’s real, slightly ridiculous, and just a tad bit embarrassing. Every Sunday night, I crawl into bed, ready to watch the latest installment of Masterpiece. The current series on air is Mr. Selfridge, a British drama about the birth and success of London’s famous department store, Selfridge’s. And, good grief, is it sumptuous, scandalous, and fairly accurate in its depiction of early 20th Century London.

Because a department store needs many people to run it, the series has multiple characters, living out their stories within and without the store’s marbled halls. I find that each storyline is rather thoughtful and interesting because it is based on the outcome and the implications of the characters’ daily actions, rather than on the characters’ responses to bombastic, shocking, barely believable plot twists (::cough::cough:: Downton Abbey). This keeps the drama in the quiet, the mundane, and the daily.

I’m particularly drawn to the Miss Mardle / Florian storyline. Miss Mardle is the the head of ladies’ accessories. She is middle-aged and unmarried. In Season One, she was entangled in a love affair with the married Mr. Grove, who, upon the death of his wife, promptly married a much younger women, while suggesting to Miss Mardle that they continue seeing each other. Miss Mardle was able to tell Grove to stuff it, with all the gracious firmness of a proper Edwardian lady, but the event left her deeply wounded, unsure of her own worth and lovableness.

Then comes Season Two and earnest, sweet, handsome Florian. A young Belgium violinist, exiled from his country due to the beginning of World War I, travels to England and becomes Miss Mardle’s lodger. It isn’t long before the two develop a mutual attraction and admiration for each other. And there are plenty of longing looks, blushing, and abruptly ended conversations. Basically, all the things that make a British love story so awesome and awkward.

Yet, even more compelling than romantic awkwardness, is how Miss Mardle responds to their mutual attraction. Though it is a shared experience of mutual attraction, her past experience with Mr. Grove, and the stories she’s learned to tell herself about how that experience defines her life, keep the mutual attraction from being shared. I find this beautiful and sweet scene to be an excellent example of her struggle and her self-realization:

Miss Mardle cannot see the goodness, the honesty, and the love that is right in front of her because she still chooses to live with a narrative that makes her feel unlovable. It is only when she decides to see what is front of her first and narrate the situation later, that she can finally allow Florin’s earnest sweetness to be part of her story. Her new story.

Miss Mardle is creating fiction within Mr. Selfridge’s fiction. Yet somehow, in this creating of fiction there is a cementing of a deep human truth:  Stories are powerful. We tell them to remember, to solidify, and to redefine. Every morning, when we emerge from sleep, the experiences of our past and the fantasies of our future weave together, creating our stories of the present. These are the narratives that will either close us off to the goodness, honesty, and love around us—or, open us up to it.

 

 

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