Anne Lamott—You Make Me Laugh!

Recently, feeling overwhelmed by all I have to do and underwhelmed by my meager writing talents, I was rereading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life for inspiration to keep going. But what I got instead was a ton of much-needed laughs and some insight into how Anne Lamott does it—make readers laugh that is. Here’s just one example that caused me to herald Ted from his office to “come hear what Anne wrote.” (I always like him to come to me, rather than me going to him. He-he.)

“I [Anne Lamott] started writing when I was seven or eight. I was very shy and strange-looking, loved reading above everything else, weighed about forty pounds at the time, and was so tense that I walked around with my shoulders up to my ears, like Richard Nixon. I saw a home movie once of a birthday party I went to in the first grade, with all these cute little boys and girls playing like puppies, and all of a sudden I scuttled across the screen like Prufrock’s crab. I was very clearly the one who was going to grow up to be a serial killer, or keep dozens and dozens of cats. Instead I got funny.”

I started thinking about why this passage is so funny. Why it left me practically falling off my chair and screaming frantically for Ted to come. It’s largely because I could SEE what she was describing through her often surprising comparisons.

I can picture Anne walking with her shoulders up to her ears like Nixon, can’t you?

I can see the boys and girls playing like puppies, can’t you?

I can envision her scuttling across the room (don’t you just love how active that verb is?) like Profrock’s crab.

So Anne, I’m glad you didn’t cross over to the dark side and become a serial killer or a hoarder of cats. I’m glad you got funny instead. Thank you for making me laugh…and teaching me about good writing. Now if you could just sit beside me and whisper in my ear when I write!

Still Thinking About Visualization

Monday’s post got me thinking about visualization and exactly what it is that writers do to breathe life into their text. We talk about visualizing all the time but what does it really mean? Clarifying this for myself will help me identify additional titles I can use to demonstrate visualization and explain to children what to look for as they read and to try out when they write.

Authors help readers to visualize when they:

Write with specificity—For example, writing “Peter ate a heaping bowl of Captain Crunch” is more evocative than saying he ate some cereal. In Lester Laminack’s Saturdays and Teacakes, his Mammaw opened the Frigidaire (later described as a refrigerator) and put two sticks of Blue Bonnet into the teacakes (later described as margarine). Better to sell 128 boxes of girl scout cookies than to sell “a lot” of them.

Use strong nouns and active verbs—This makes the writing so much more concrete. “The toddler tip-toed” across the room enlists more of the senses than to say “the young child walked...”

Compare one thing to another, often something unfamiliar to something I know—Both fiction and nonfiction writers do this through similes and metaphors. In the Big Blue Whale, Nicola Davies writes that the blue whale’s skin is as slippery as soap and as springy as a hard-boiled egg.

Write dialogue in keeping with every day language of the character—Lester Laminack’s Mammaw said, “My goodness, buddy, we didn’t put no vanilla in here. Reach up in that cabinet and get me down the bottle of vanilla flavor.” Hearing her say this—in this way—makes her more real to me.

Use onomatopoeia (sound words)—In Down the Road by Alice Schertle, the screen door goes “Squeak-bang,” and Hetty listens to her shoes go “thup, thup, thup, thup” as she walks down the road.

When you read to your kids this week, look and listen for how the author evokes the senses and then share it with the children. Maybe even make a list like I just did.