Year: 2020

“If a writer isn’t considering point of view they have locked themselves inside one room and are refusing to explore the rest of the house.”

Tina Higgins Wussow is well-known throughout the Twin Ports as a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and host of monthly spoken word events at Wussow’s Concert Cafe as well as the annual Homegrown Poetry Showcase. This month she’ll lead a two-part workshop on The Art of Point of View at the Carriage House at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (1710 East Superior Street) on Wednesday, February 19 and 26 at 6:30 p.m. 

Workshop participants will review and discuss all of the point of view options available for a fiction writer, including more nuanced considerations such as psychological and temporal distance. Each student will bring a short piece of completed writing and rework that piece from a new point of view. Participants will then discuss what was lost and/or gained by choosing one particular POV over another. By the end of this workshop, participants will have a deeper understanding of how POV works and why choosing carefully is crucial to a strong piece of writing.

The fee for the workshop is $50 for LSW members, $75 for non-members (fee for non-members includes a membership through June 30, 2020, including a free entry to the annual contest, and an invitation to the annual spring event). Space is limited! To register, email jennamkowaleski@gmail.com.

Tina was kind enough to answer some questions about herself, her writing, and the upcoming workshop, and this week we’re sharing her answers on the blog.

Tell us all about your upcoming point-of-view workshop! What is “point of view,” anyway? Why is it important for writers to think about it?

The Point of View workshop I am leading will take place on the last two Wednesdays of February at the Carriage House at 1710 East Superior Street at 6:30. I have a moderate obsession with point of view. There are so many interesting possibilities for writers to consider it’s like a “choose your own adventure” story. And every option comes with gains and losses. An example would be: a story that is told in the moment of action (a dramatic event) from the point of view of the aggressor versus a story that is told from a distance of 20 years from the point of view of the victim. This is a broad example, but there are countless more nuanced adjustments to point of view that live somewhere in between. If a writer isn’t considering point of view they have locked themselves inside one room and are refusing to explore the rest of the house.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I was writing stories when I was very young, but thought I wanted to be a vet or a dancer or the person who paints the lines down the center of the road. I didn’t fully consider the option of being a “writer” until I read The House on Mango Street when I was in junior high. I remember thinking, “I want to do that. I want to make people feel how I am feeling right now.” That feeling was connected, alive, open-hearted, curious. And then I read The Bluest Eye and Sula and that was it. Maybe I’d be a vet or a dancer or a line painter, but I would also be a writer. It seemed like the best job in the world. Still does.

What is your work schedule like when you’re writing? 

When I was a younger writer I refused to work on a story (poetry was different) until I had a big chunk of time to devote to it, many hours to dive deep into the work. Then real life happened and now I work in small bursts, scene by scene. Once a first draft is accomplished I usually rewrite it at least three times, often from different points of view. When I have a draft I am proud of, one that feels “true” to me, I share it with a few close friends. I try to never share a draft that I can’t fully endorse as the best I can do at the time. With their feedback in mind I make some final adjustments. Then I read it a few more times, make a lot more adjustments and send it out to the world. If it doesn’t get picked up after many, many rejections I bring it back home and think about it some more. Some stories are easier to develop than others. I just let it come to me at its own pace. I have a deep belief in the magic of sitting quietly. 

Do you have any interesting writing quirks or habits?

I write in a notebook first and then transfer it to the screen later. The only reason I do this is because the screen is attached to the computer which is attached to the internet. There is no email, newsfeed, or entertaining youtube videos in my notebook. I know myself pretty well at this point and so I adjust my surroundings to keep myself out of trouble. 

What is your proudest writing achievement?

My most proud writing achievement is that I still do it. Painting lines would have been way easier. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Someone said, “The only difference between a successful writer and a failed writer is the successful writer didn’t give up.” And “Do your work and shut up” – I tell myself that all the time, it seems like sound advice.  

What are your hobbies/pursuits when you’re not writing?

I like to hike relatively long distances for relatively long periods of time. Being alone in the woods heals me. I also like baking and have worked quite hard at making sourdough. My husband and I run Wussow’s Concert Café and keeping that pastry case filled is how I spend a lot of my time.

The desk is six-feet long, cluttered with a printer and the various office supplies you’d normally find on a desk: pencils, pens, paperclips, a stapler, a three-hole punch, journals, and of course that well-loved coffee cup complete with the coffee-ring stains on the wooden top of the desk. My seven-year-old son sits on the chair at the desk, his legs dangling, too short yet to hit the floor. He is doing his “paperwork.” He has computer papers spread over any spare surface he can find, grabs pens and pencils from the little cup on top of the desk, and opens up my laptop. He makes his outlines on his computer paper, sticks his notes in what he deems appropriate spots, and colors with his orange and pink highlighters. Soon papers are straggling all over my desk.

My son and I often vie for the attention of my desk; who will get the privilege of working here? Is my computer safe in my hands today? Will I have the space to open up my journal and make an entry, or will I have to fight a pile of papers and highlighters before I can even think about sitting down to write? Luckily for me, most of my writing is done in a paper journal, so my desk is not the be-all/end-all of writing. I can take my journal with me and write anywhere.

It is this little boy who keeps me on task. When I finally do get my desk back, when I finally get the chance to write, and when his papers are contained in one spot, I feel energized. I look at my son’s outlines and paperwork. He has such a passion for writing. I know where he gets this from. I, too, had this passion from the young age that he is at now. At his age, I wrote stories about riding Christmas trains with my best friend up to the North Pole to see Santa. He writes stories about playing Minecraft with his friends. They may be different subjects, but our minds are in the same imaginative place.

When my son is at my desk, I often take my journal and sit in my recliner. I write about him; he has autism and life can be hard. Then he looks over his shoulder at me and smiles, and he says, “I love you, Mom.” My heart melts. I keep writing because it’s moments like this that I can write about, and it’s this little boy that gives me these moments.

 

 

Amanda is a proud mom to three children:  Bryan, 21; Dortea, 17; and Matthew, 7. Amanda will forever be apologizing to Dortea for giving her brothers normal names. Amanda can be found writing in the wee hours of the morning, which is the only time she has to herself.

Thanks to writing, my worries have shifted. (So has my ability to make sure I put the milk in the refrigerator instead of the cupboard, but that’s another post.)

I take a break from writing to get some water. In the kitchen I discover dishes are piling up and all the cereal bowls are dirty. But I worry about a story I want to submit to a contest, so I go back to my desk. I reread the story and forget to start the dishwasher. In the morning I’m handwashing cereal bowls.

“The truck needs an oil change,” my husband says.

“I’ll call,” I say, as I worry if a clause at the end of a sentence is nonessential or essential—to comma or not to comma. I don’t seem to have an ear for distinguishing between nonessential and essential clauses at the end of sentences.

After work my husband asks, “Did you call the mechanic?”

“I forgot,” I say.

But I did rewrite the sentence I was fretting about. It lost its rhythm, so I changed it back. I played with the comma again. I put the comma in and read; I took the comma out and read. I raised my hands to the ceiling, threw back my head, and yelled. I thought about meditation, but I’d only think about commas. And comma meditation is an oxymoron. So, when he asks about the mechanic, I’m still worrying: nonessential or essential?

The real fear? I’ll make the wrong choice. An editor will read my story and notice a missing comma, in what she obviously knows is a nonessential clause. She’ll ask everyone in earshot, “How can this person call herself a writer?” It’s of no comfort that Oscar Wilde spent a whole day wrestling with one comma.

I give the comma a break and call the mechanic. If I wait until tomorrow, I might be prewriting a story in my head, and unless the story is about a mechanic . . .

After supper I go outside to pick up dog poop. I hardly notice the robust weeds in my gardens. Before I started writing, they’d registered in my brain like a 6-point earthquake. Embarrassment would lead me to pull the largest ones. But I’m looking for dog poop and trying to decide between two different endings for a story I’ve been working on for months. I don’t have any leftover brain capacity to feel shame about rogue weeds. Maybe I should abandon the story. But it taunts me when I ignore it, so I keep rekindling our relationship. I cut the story more slack than I’d give a person who gave me that much grief.

Before I started writing, I worried about what to cook for supper. These days supper is a fleeting thought and easily evicted from my mind while I hunt for publications to submit a story. I play matchmaker. Is my story like their stories? Might it be considered even if it’s a little different? Or will some editor ask everyone in earshot, “Did she even read our journal?” My story doesn’t seem to fit. I read it again and wonder, Will I ever find it a date?

When my husband gets home, I’m reminded about supper. But it’s another five minutes before he comes up from the basement. I keep looking at publications. When he gets upstairs, supper becomes a multiple-choice question: A) heat up leftovers, B) cook a frozen pizza, or C) go out for dinner.

Maybe it would be easier to quit writing, but then I’d have to go back to my old worries.

 

Vickie Youngquist-Smith writes short stories, essays, and articles. She is working on a collection of short stories. Her short-short story “Tossed” won first place in the Lake Superior Writers 2019 Contest in the short-short fiction category. She has a B.A. in English and history from the University of Superior-Wisconsin.

Her essay, “Writing’s Daily Worries,” was first published on the Brevity Nonfiction Blog on December 18, 2019.