Scott Lax

 

The Sun News, for which I've written a column called "Everyday People" for a year and seven months, has restructured. My new editor wrote and said they were going to run my column every other month.

However, after some soul searching, and thinking about the state of freelance journalism in general, and Northeast Ohio in particular, I respectfully resigned the column instead of continuing to write it every other week. (It had run on the front page every week.)

I'm concentrating on fiction, teaching, and other things close to my heart and writer's soul. For all of you who read my column -- and your letters and comments tell me there were a few of you -- thank you very much for your support, and your good will. To the subjects I profiled, thank you for sharing your stories.

I've posted my last column for The Sun News on the Writing & Film link. (Click above.)  Read More 

I think that good and great writing must have two components. The first is reasonable skill, which is to say, decent grammar and correct spelling. (I usually use spell-check; I'm barely a fair speller, so a dictionary or spell-check is necessary for writers like me.) The second is writing from the heart. Even satire; even journalism; even everything. Otherwise, it's false. And if it's false, it's not good writing.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: learn the basics. If you break the rules, at least know what rules you're breaking. And write cleanly and from the heart.  Read More 

As you likely know, author Frank McCourt died yesterday. The "New York Times" wrote, "His students learned from him that literature was nothing more — and nothing less — than the telling of stories."

That says it all, and it's why my introductory class coming up is called "How to Tell a Story."

It's not about sounding important, or smart, or clever. Writing literature is telling stories. Truman Capote said, "What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter's evening."  Read More 

Last night Lydia and I went for burgers and to listen to The Backup Band, a blues band comprised of some old friends of mine. I sat in on drums, and my cousin Mike sat in on guitar, and all that was fun, but what happened between sets blew me away.

My old pal Craig, the base player, came up to me and said, seemingly out of nowhere, “Have you ever read BIG BAD LOVE by Larry Brown?” I asked him if he had been reading my blog. He said no, and he didn’t know I had a Web site. I asked him if he knew I had been a friends with Larry at Bread Loaf. He said no, he just thought I’d like his work, particularly this book.

The coincidence was pretty astounding. Why is Larry Brown’s BIG BAD LOVE in the air, at least in my life?

Maybe because as writers, we delve deeper into our stories and narratives when we’re ready. I feel ready to go deeper, and confident that the book I’ve just finished accomplished that. At least, I hope so. I’ve had tragedy in my life this year; Larry’s stories are often about those who continue writing through adversity. Larry was never afraid to face the darkness in life, as well as the tenderness. And, too, it’s said that the teacher will arrive when the student is ready. So I ask myself, are Larry’s stories teaching me something?

The answer, I think, is yes. I’ll be writing about what that in days to come.  Read More 

Having finished and submitted the second draft of my novel last week, I again understand Hemingways' quote: "They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him."

Speaking of fiction, and of how hard it is to finish a novel, I'm reading BIG BAD LOVE (re-reading, mostly, as it's a book of short stories) by my late and lamented friend, Larry Brown. Larry was one of the great fiction writers of our time, I think - and a guy who worked very hard to be a writer, and to finish his novels, after being in the marines, then a fireman. His voice was so pure and honest -- not to mention gnarly and shocking, coarse and tender -- that we'll never see or read his like again. There will be other honest voices, of course, but Larry's was something special.

Sometimes I think I learned more from Larry sitting in rocking chairs up at Bread Loaf, sipping Larry's whisky and listening to Johnny Cash, and Larry's hard-won writing wisdom, than I did in any classroom. If you have a chance, pick up some of Larry's work. He was a master, and a real person.

I do have one chapter in my novel, THE YEAR THAT TREMBLED, that's a sort of tribute to Larry and his characters. It's in the voice of a Vietnam veteran who is wheelchair-bound. I thought of Larry when I wrote it. I'm not sure why. He just kind of had that effect on you.  Read More 

I finished the second draft of my new novel today. Tomorrow I send it off to my agent. Within a few days I'll post information about two new classes I'll be teaching.

One of the things that many students learn in the MFA factories and writing workshops around the country is never use adverbs. Like the dreaded exclamation point, banishing adverbs to the hinterlands of middle-school essays has become de rigueur for anyone wanting to write serious fiction.

Instead of telling you the problem with those hard-and-fast rules of unpublished professors, let me give you an excerpt from a novel. The game is “spot the adverb and name the author”:

“There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll do a thing like that,” said the other girl eagerly. “He doesn’t want any trouble with anybody.”

“Who doesn’t,” I inquired.

“Gatsby. Somebody told me –”

The two girls and Jordan leaned together confidently.

“Somebody told me he killed a man.”

A thrill passed over all of us. The three Mr. Mumbles bent forward and listened eagerly.

“I don’t think it’s so much that,” argued Lucille skeptically; “it’s more than that he was a German spy during the war.”

One of the men nodded in confirmation.

“I heard that from a man who knew all about him, grew up with him in Germany, he assured us positively.”

Wow!, if you’ll excuse the exclamation point. In that small excerpt from “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, we find a “confidentially,” a “skeptically,” two instances of “eagerly,” and a “positively.” That’s five adverbs – which is five more than many creative writing students are allowed by their profs in total.

What are we to make of that? First, I think that fashions have changed, and maybe one of the greatest novels in American literature could have used a bit more editing. On the other hand, Fitzgerald wasn’t an MFA product – he used the best words he could think of to suit the purpose of the sentence, which in turn suits the purpose of the story. He didn’t worry that someone in a writers’ workshop was going to admonish him because of some adverbs.

My advice to fiction writers is this: if adverbs suit you and your style, use them with care. Don’t toss them out the window just because they’re out of fashion. Words – lots and lots of words – are there for you to use.

If you can show the action instead of using an adverb, that’s usually a good idea.
For F. Scott Fitzgerald, though, he apparently needed to keep the story moving, and he wanted the reader to know – yes, by telling a bit, not simply showing (breaking yet another "rule") - that a character’s actions were confident, or skeptical, or eager, or positive.

The moral of this story? Be yourself, and write as well as you can. But if you try to please workshop participants, or a teacher or professor who has lots of rules about what you should and shouldn’t write, you’ll drive yourself nuts. Or put another way: Adverbs don’t kill stories, bad writing does.

I don’t use many adverbs. But on the rare instances when I do, I use them...happily.
 Read More 

It's common for me to move between writing nonfiction and fiction during the day (or night). What the two forms have in common is that I try to craft sentences lyrically, to make them sound pleasing to the ear, or mind. What's different is that with nonfiction, I make every effort to write the truth to the best of my knowledge.
This necessarily limits nonfiction, because if the author speculates, he or she must make clear that it is opinion, not fact.

With fiction, I believe in what Ernest Hemingway wrote: "All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened."

What that means for me is that in my fiction I try to write not just about human beings, but about human nature. While I may not tell the reader why a character says something, I know why he or she says it. I know the character's history, her background, and her mood when she utters the dialogue.

When Hemingway says, "[novels are] truer than if they had really happened," I think he means that the action of a novel speaks to a deeper truth about life - it's truer because it isn't random, but illuminating. Who turns on the light to illuminate the page? We do - the writers. That's what we strive to do; that’s what we live for. We can’t be afraid to shine a light, even into dark corners. Read More 

I just wrote and filed a newspaper essay about walking in nature - specifically through a meadowland and woodland near where I live. I'll post it soon under the "Nonfiction" area of the "Writing and Film" link.

If you're a writer, or aspiring writer, I hope you find the time to connect to nature; to be in nature. Much of what is being written today is disconnected from the sky, the meadows, the woodlands, the animals and birds that inhabit the world. You simply can't find nature in a computer, or television. It's not in there. It's out there. Find it, and it will help you find your writerly self.

To quote the ancient African saying, as a parent holds a newborn to the starry skies, and which was depicted in Alex Haley's "Roots": "Behold, the only thing greater than yourself."

If you're writing is blocked, take a walk. Look around you and past your mind. Breathe. Behold. Read More 

I've posted my tribute to my sister Pat that ran today in the Sun News on the Events & Announcements page, which you may find by clicking the link above.