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Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Traditions

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We are entering the season of traditions in a time when nothing is traditional.

It feels especially strange when the rest of creation appears to be operating routinely. The sun and moon continue to orbit like clockwork: the days growing shorter, the nights longer. The trees are all turning shades of amber and scarlet. The woodland critters collect their winter provisions as temperatures dip, dip, dip on the same scientific bell curve followed since the dawn of time.

The natural world is paying no mind to the fact that kids aren’t back in their conventional school desks, families aren’t sitting round their tables, football stadiums aren’t roaring with fanfare, and the traditional social calendar has been completely thrown out.

A devotee of musicals, I can’t help but hear Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof raising fists to the sky, “Tradition, tradition!”

But, really, what are traditions? The dictionary says that they are customs or beliefs passed on from one person to the next, from one time to the next. A tradition can last for a season: We get Big Dipper cones from the ice cream truck in the summers. Or for generations: My family goes to church every Christmas Eve. But the fuzzy edges of traditions remind us that they had a starting point, which means they will, eventually, have an ending. Maybe not permanently—that’s another nebulous area. A tradition can stop and then pick up again at another juncture in history. Breaks don’t mean termination. They simply illustrate that we are human and so, nothing about us is certain. Everything living— from our bodies to our communities— is in a constant state of reinvention. It’s what defines us from the rest of the universe. It’s what makes us unique.

So then, why are we surprised when our self-imposed conventional algorithms disappoint?

It’s made me 1) think about how I define a tradition, and 2) evaluate if the traditions I maintain are helping or hindering my access to peace, joy, and love.

Because sometimes a tradition becomes a burden. It mutates from being a thing we long to do to a thing we feel we must do out of obligation. Cherished tradition and ritualistic superstition can mesh so that we can’t tell one from the other. Recognizing the difference is the linchpin. [Read more…]

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Using Memory vs Backstory

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A few years ago, I became obsessed with the way storytellers play with memory. I started noticing it with The Affair, which is only very good the first season or two, and then more urgently with This is Us, the story of a family in Pennsylvania, from the meeting of the parents through the current day (and sometimes jutting forward into the future). Both shows explore memory and how we see things differently according to who we are and what kind of emotional impact the moment has on us. You’ve … [Read more...]

Readings for Writers: It Could Happen Here

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These past few years Sinclair Lewis’s novel, It Can’t Happen Here, has attracted interest as an eerily prescient story about an authoritarian US president, more con artist than ideologue. Writers at Salon, Slate, and The Washington Post have certainly drawn parallels between Donald Trump and Lewis’s Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a character based on the demagogue Huey Long. Windrip wins the 1936 presidential election, defeating Franklin Delano Roosevelt by promising the common man that he … [Read more...]

Do Writers Need A Room of Their Own?

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A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction--Virginia Woolf As an only child, I always had my own room. There were many, many rooms during the years when my father was a golf course construction supervisor. Some were cramped and generic, others included an adjoining bathroom or even a private balcony. One, at a ski resort, was technically its own rental unit with a separate address from my parents. At nine I had the entire second floor of our condo, which included … [Read more...]

I Didn’t Know Dick

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This summer, I decided I needed some new audio books to help occupy my brain during the long daily walks my cardiologist ordered me to take. I’d been rotating between a couple of good recordings of the Tao Te Ching and Chuck Palahniuk’s excellent Consider This (about which I raved in my previous WU post), but it was time for something new. While I find significant value in repeatedly listening to particularly good nonfiction audio books, I was hungry for some actual storytelling. More … [Read more...]

7 Ways to Make Early Morning Writing a Reality

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I'm so pleased to introduce you to first-time guest, Keivon Liburd! Keivon is an author, children’s pastor, and educator in Austin, Texas. Married with two boys, Keivon writes so that underrepresented kids, especially young Black boys and girls, can see themselves in every type of story imaginable. He is also the co-founder of HitPitch, a up and coming tool that matches writers to beta-readers, agents, and more! This is a post Therese asked Keivon to write for WU after he tweeted about steps … [Read more...]

Can We Be a Pod? Writing an Ensemble

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This past weekend, I had a pandemic-proper dinner on my screened-in porch with four good friends. It was kind of like camping—we all wore sweaters and jackets and warmed ourselves with whiskey and steaming bowls of chicken and dumplings and laughed a lot. At the end of the evening my friend Connie said, “We just have to be a pod for the winter so we can get through this together.” Connie is on to something, and not just our most basic human need for friendship and companionship. While some … [Read more...]

Don’t Mess with Mama Nature

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Unless your writing is completely grounded in urban grit, sooner or later you’ll find yourself relying on nature.  You may have a character who gardens or simply likes staring out the window at a garden – or a forest, hills, parks, sea, or desert.  Your plot may need a tornado, flood, forest fire, hurricane, blizzard, or ice storm.  You may want nature to reinforce the mood of your story or characters.  Or maybe a character just needs to take a walk. The key to any good description is to … [Read more...]

“You can’t just threaten us with some singsongy thing”

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If you’re someone who enjoys reading or watching fiction around the artistic life, allow me to recommend the quirky Canadian movie, Songs She Wrote About People She Knows. I came across it by accident and when not laughing, spent the rest of the movie watching it with my mouth open. Since then, my affection for it has only deepened. Apparently I’m not alone as in some circles the movie has gained cult status. SSWAPSK is the story of the corporate lackey, Carol, who attends a music class at the … [Read more...]

The Hack’s Guide to Chairs for Writers

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Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody. You can’t help but underestimate chairs, as they are literally under you. Since you’ll be doing almost all of your writing while sitting down, though, a chair is perhaps the most important component to your writing routine next to pens. A bad chair can cause you give up after an hour due to butt or back aches, … [Read more...]

How to Communicate Without Words

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A while back, I texted my daughter. Dinner is ready. Her: Are you mad at me? What? Why? I'm just saying that dinner is ready. Her: Your period is really angry. Perhaps you've encountered this yourself. These days, if your text message doesn't end in an exclamation point, you come off as terse, and even (apparently) supremely pissed off. So, I guess dinner is ready! Hooray! Who knew we'd ever eat again?! *confetti emoji* But there is something interesting about this phenomenon that applies … [Read more...]

Flog a Pro: Would You Pay to Turn the First Page of this Bestseller?

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Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page. Here’s the question: Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents. So, before you read … [Read more...]

What Is Your Story About, Anyway? Word, Phrase, Sentence, Equation

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I recently volunteered to mentor an aspiring writer—part of my effort to pay back for all the help I’ve received—and began our conversation by asking what her novel was about. Her answer went something like this: “Well, there’s this man who’s always … and then he immigrates to … and then later his wife dies … and so he decides to enlist in the Army … and then he finally realizes that … “ It reminded me oh-so-painfully of the first time I pitched to an agent at one of those “get published” … [Read more...]

Ground Your Characters with All Five Senses

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When I’m writing—these articles, for example—I often compose a kind of first draft in my head, and I usually do it when I’m out on a long walk with the dog. For this article, I knew I wanted to get across the idea that writers can introduce elements from one or all of the five senses to make settings and characters more realistic. So, on my walk, I thought about how I could approach this. Then I noticed my dog, Dexter, was nowhere to be seen. This is very usual. We both get caught up in our … [Read more...]