Book Lookit

Looking Around:
"Looking around" sounds like being the fly on the wall. For a writer, being the fly on the wall is to not have judgements about others, but to see them as they are (not what you think). You look at what they say, how they behave, etc without assigning right or wrong to it. Lamott describes how to achieve this; "Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others."

Broccoli:
Lamott is using broccoli as a metaphor from a quote she heard. Broccoli represents our intuition or inner voice and if we're stuck in writing out our characters, we need to quiet ourselves and listen to our "broccoli." Lamott writes, "Let's say it's only 9:15; now, if you were to stick it out, the image or situation might come to you that would wedge the door open for a character, after which you would only have to get out of the way. Because then the character could come forward and speak and might say something important it might even be the thing that it most important to him or her, and your plot might suddenly fall into place."

Letter:
"The letter's informality," says Lamott, "just might free you from the tyranny of perfectionism." That is the power of writing out your own or your character's history. It gets you going as you aren't publishing a novel, just writing a letter. "Some of the best pieces to come out of my classes have been written by people who wanted to tell their children about their own childhoods, or about their children's childhoods, what the years were like just before these children were born and then after, in that first house the family lived in, down the hill from the little white church, or about those years in the Peace Corps, in that tiny wild brilliant African village, or what it was like to work on a whaling ship in the forties." This prompt/format for writing can be sloppy, so it makes room for all the sensory detail and situations to arise. Then you can use this to write your story or add to a preexisting one.

Week 14, Discussion 3 - Bird by Bird book lookit

School Lunches:
Why does she have entire chapter about "school lunches?" How could that possibly fit with writing?
"The contents of your lunch said whether or not you and your family were Okay. Some bag lunches were Okay, like some people, were Okay, and some weren't. There was a code, a right and acceptable way.
Something I realized from reading this chapter is that you can use basically anything as a prompt. Lamott likes school lunches, because it's a prompt that mirrors writing in and of itself in the sense that school lunches reflect our lives. In this quote she talks about how the lunches reflected the family. Maybe a piece of fried chicken and muffin were a sign of a good family (good people who cared) and a slice of bread with apricot jam (har, har) was a sign of neglect. This prompt of writing about your school lunches opened up a whole topic to write about that could be shaped to fit whatever.
Dialogue:
Describe some of the advice she gives about dialogue.
"Then when you're out in the world [...] and you hear people talking, you'll find yourself editing their dialogue, playing with it, seeing in your mind's eye what it would look like on the page. You'll listen to how people really talk, and then learn little by little to take someone's five-minute speech and make it one sentence without losing anything. If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off."
I loved this section about dialogue. I've heard this before with other authors and I discovered it's true. You want dialogue to be believable and have every word "spoken" to have significance. It's a lot like professional eves-dropping and a great way to characterize.
Set Design:
Why does she refer to setting as "set design?" What are the crucial elements of "set design?"
"[...] I'm working on a section of my of my book where we first meet a family of great wealth and breeding, and I was wondering if I could pick your brain about what sort of carpets and rugs and lighting and antiques they might have. For instance, let's start with the living room. Can you describe a really lovely living room in as much detail as possible?" And then you can ask what smells your friend remembers, in the living room and kitchen, and what the light was like, and what various rooms sounded like or what their silences felt like."
When she says "set design," she's referring to the type of environment the characters will be in. In terms of "crucial elements," I'm hearing a few things. I'm hearing that sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell are huge to set design. If writing about a chem lab, you want to know what all the five senses are going through. Does it smell like sulfur? Are there students or professionals - or empty? Are there bubbling noises, hissing noises, tapping noises, no noise?
So a "set design" for a zoo-keeper might be the zoo, smelling like manure and that special hot animal smell, sounds of chimpanzees and loud squawks, taste salt water from sweat or bitter from dirt, sticky skin, etc.

Week 14, Discussion 2 - Start with a quote

1. Mr. Vandino glared into the eyes of everyone he met as if he had finally met the person who killed his father.
2. "Get down from there," said Mrs. Bowman.
3. Francine loved Becca, but deeply believed in heartbreak.
4. The sandstorm covered all but the top of the small hut.
5. I had watched him die that day, all day, his tail between his legs.
----
Free-write:
"Get down from there," said Mrs. Bowman. Billy was climbing the oak tree in front of the school, his shoes dangling from the tallest branch.
"Do you hear me, child? I said get down!"
Billy ignored her, he was already halfway up. Climbing trees was easy for him, he had one just like his school's in the woods by his house. When his parents would fight, Billy grabbed the shoes his father bought him and would go down to climb. He wasn't scared of falling. If anything, he thought if he fell his parents would get stop fighting, realizing the error of their ways.
"I'm calling the police!" Mrs. Bowman said as she ran inside. The other kids were chanting his name or throwing rocks at him, one hitting his back rather hard.
At least those kids can't climb.
Billy was now only a few branches away from his shoes, the pair his father gave him. Neither rocks nor bullies were going to stop him from getting them back. Just as he was one branch away, police sirens could be heard getting louder and louder.

101 Word Short Story Excercise

I walked with him, hand in hand. We shared a ripe, red apple we found on a neighbor's tree, each taking a bite after the other. Earl, our street's homophobe, must have snapped when he saw the apple. It was from his yard, though I didn't know it at the time. Mom said the ride to hospital was only five minutes, but I counted days. The doctors removed the splinters of the bat, but he doesn't recognize me anymore. He doesn't recognize anyone. Yet any day of the week, a ripe, red apple sits nearby his hospital bed.