Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Favorite TV Episode Blogathon: The Waltons, “The Book”

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After watching several seasons of a TV show and seeing your favorite episodes several times, you begin to pinpoint certain episodes that stand out because of the quality of the writing. While some are just adequate, there are some episodes where everything “clicks”—every line of dialogue counts, all the elements of the story fit smoothly together. The Waltons Season 3 episode “The Book” is one of those. It neatly balances the show’s ongoing theme of John-Boy Walton’s literary ambitions and his recurring adventures at college with his family relationships and the background of everyday occurrences at the Walton home.

It’s probably the best episode built around John-Boy’s college experiences. Much could be written about the theme of John-Boy and college, an aspect of the show I’ve always found mildly irritating. John-Boy goes about devouring and quoting from and enthusing about books and poetry by great authors from all walks of life and varying degrees of formal education, yet he still clings religiously to the belief that if he doesn’t make it through college, he can never be a writer himself. Though this is stated explicitly often enough, the show itself ironically and perhaps unintentionally tells another story. John-Boy clearly draws his creative life from Walton’s Mountain, from his home and family, from the beauty of nature, and from his observance of human nature in neighbors and friends and interesting strangers he meets. He’s happiest when up in his room or wandering the woods scribbling away with pencil and pad. College, on the other hand, is mainly a place for him to struggle with chemistry and geometry, feel inferior beside more well-off classmates, and get into difficulties over lecture tickets, codes of etiquette and dance dates. “The Book” is really one of the only times we see him engaged in any meaningful literary activity at college. [Read more…]

Who’s Afraid of Editing?

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Pretty much the only thing happening on the writing front right now is revisions to The Mountain of the Wolf—and there’s only so much you can say about your progress on one particular project. But as I was thinking yesterday, I think you learn a little something from the process of writing each new story, no matter how long or short. For instance…

not so scary any more

After five years as a published author, I’m beginning to entertain the hope that I may be growing out of my fear of feedback. Oh, sure, I still get nervous when I know someone is reading a new story; but it’s no longer the abject, craven terror that it used to be. I guess I’ve been fortunate: I’ve had several good experiences with really good, helpful feedback that helped me improve a story. And I’ve discovered that with some projects, you really do come to a point where you just can’t decide objectively for yourself whether it’s good, bad or in-between, and need someone else’s perspective to help you move forward. End result: last month I was astounded to find myself actually looking forward to my beta-readers’ comments on The Mountain of the Wolf. That’s progress.

take a deep breath

There is always a moment (okay, it’s more like a few hours, or a few days) after you first read through your feedback when you feel totally overwhelmed by just how much work the story needs. Even if you know exactly what edits you want to make, it looks like a massive job. I think the thing to do is just breathe for a while, before you even think of touching a red pen. I got most of my feedback for The Mountain of the Wolf just before heading out on a camping trip, and initially I thought the hours on the road and by the lake would be a good time to think it over and try to rework my outline. So I brought my notebooks along. But once there, I didn’t want to touch them. I realized what I needed to do was just put the whole thing out of my head for a couple of days, relax and enjoy the peace and quiet, and come back to the edits later with a calmer perspective. And you know what? On the second night, some of the ideas that I needed simply popped into my head, and I pulled out my notebook and sat by the campfire and scribbled them down. After that, nothing seemed as overwhelming anymore.

a little goes a long way

Somewhat along the same lines, it’s amazing how much you can change the purport of a scene or even a whole story by just altering a few lines—or even a word. Changes that I initially thought would require whole paragraphs of new text have ended up being much easier than I expected. Overall, this editing process has ended up being encouraging to me in a variety of ways, and I’m actually glad it was necessary.

The Nonfiction Shelf

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I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.
~ Louis L’Amour

I think I learned how to write largely by L’Amour’s method—reading good books and absorbing their style. I suppose I must have had some writing textbooks back in the early days of my schooling, before we switched to a more literature-based approach, but considering that I’ve utterly forgotten them, their influence can’t have been great.

In the present day, I’m not a huge fan of how-to books on writing. When I first began writing seriously several years ago, I did read a ton of how-to blogs and articles and gleaned a lot of solid practical advice from them: things like how to handle point of view, avoid too much passivity, et cetera. After a while, though, I found you can reach a saturation point with this—you begin to feel like you’re reading the same advice over and over again, and even that it’s making you second-guess your own work too much. So eventually I moved away from how-to topics as a steady diet, referring back to them only when looking for help with a specific problem or feeling the need to brush up on a certain technique.

The kind of writing nonfiction I find I like most now is memoir-type writing by authors, who share some of their own techniques, opinions, and experiences with the joys and headaches of writing—less of a “how-to” than a “how-I-do.” Sometimes you agree wholeheartedly with their conclusions, sometimes you differ, sometimes you find a thought or a tip which never occurred to you before that ends up being a tremendous help. It’s a less formal and less pressuring way of exploring the subject of writing than strict lists of dos and don’ts.

All that being said, here’s the small collection of nonfiction writing books I’ve accumulated over the years—books that have provided inspiration, or served as a trusty reference. They kind of fall into two categories:

nuts and bolts

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. Truth: when I was young I thought the title of this book was “Strunk and White”—it was one of those copies where the authors’ names on the cover are bigger than the title, and everyone in the house just casually referred to it as “Strunk and White.” Anyway, this is a primer I don’t think you can go wrong with, no matter how experienced you are. It’s always useful to come back to when you want to clarify certain basic guidelines, or just need a breath of fresh air to clear your head after reading too much bad English. And it takes up next to no space on a bookshelf.

Simple and Direct by Jacques Barzun. The funny thing is, I’m not certain if I ever read this one straight from cover to cover, but I am sure I’ve absorbed all of its contents at some time or another, and benefited from them. Much like “Strunk and White,” it aims at creating a common-sense, understandable style, and goes into a bit further practical detail.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. After reading this blunt, irreverent, no-nonsense guide to punctuation, I don’t think there was ever any danger of my forgetting what the different punctuation marks were invented for or how not to use them. Punctuation somehow receded to the least of my worries, and erudite specks such as the ellipsis and semicolon became warm and fast friends.

Chambers’ Synonyms and Antonyms. The only criticism I have of Chambers is that they should have better bindings, because this is my second copy, and I’m fairly certain I’ll eventually end up splitting this one’s binding too. I pull this one off the shelf in both moments of inarticulate despair and moments of being certain there’s a better word to express the idea knocking at the inside of my head.

those lovely intangibles

Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster. This is a really nice, intelligent and relaxed look at the basic elements that go into making an enjoyable novel, illustrated with examples from classic literature. I did a lot of pencil-underlining once I got my own copy (also wrote a short review which you can find here), and pick it up every once in a while when I feel like I need a big-picture restoration of perspective.

The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers. I’d been curious about this one ever since Abigail Hartman recommended it so enthusiastically, and I wasn’t disappointed. Sayers makes the case that man, being created in the image of God, shares the characteristics of God as Creator, and has a natural instinct to create and craft works of his own. Being a writer herself, Sayers uses examples from the writer’s life and experiences to illustrate her ideas about the creative mind, which is what makes this book particularly interesting for writers. It’s definitely the deepest and most scholarly book on this list, and I’m looking forward to another slow and careful reading to mull over its ideas further.

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. You’ve probably heard me mention this one before. It’s got such a nice refreshing, emboldening perspective on creativity—not just for writers but definitely applicable to writing—that flipping back through my favorite parts is always somewhat of a pick-me-up when I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew or gotten lost in the minutiae of things going wrong with a project.

Writers: what’s your opinion of how-to nonfiction? Love it or hate it? Favorite nonfiction books on writing?