Tuesday's Inspiration - A Bit More From Pearl S. Buck #MFRWauthor #BooksWeLove

Chuckled when I read this bit in an old essay by Pearl S. Buck. "An extrovert finds himself boring and turns to anybody else he can find." She goes on to say "The novelist, therefroe, who is an extrovert by nature or cultivation, stands a fair chance."

I never thought of myself as an extrovert in the way she describes but I do find my life is boring. The life of the characters I invent is more interesting than anything that occurs in my life. What about you? Do you find your fictional characters more interesting than yourself?

I've thought about this for a time. I also find when I'm investing in a character I'm curious about what's happening in his or her life. One I'm finished writing about their story, I'm ready to move on to new characters. Does this mean the writer is also fickle? I'm afraid so.

I've been asked many times which is my favorite of the characters in my stories. My response is I really can't choose but the one I'm working with now is my favorite for the moment.

I remember my father once telling me and I'll try to get it right. This was a long time ago. "Men are like streetcars. There's another one along every minute." Well that's the way this writer feels about her characters. There's another one along, maybe not every minute, but every time I start to write a new book.

Tuesday's Inspiration - Quote from Pearl S. Buck #BooksWeLove #MFRWauthor

Pearl S. Buck wrote With simplicity and yet there is much to learn from her writing. This quote I found to inspire me. "Communication is quite as important, no, more important than self-expression." Thought about this for a long time and decided what she meant was for the writer to step outside of their own importance and write simply and with passion.

Sitting with a Thesaurus and finding new words or the dictionary takes the writer out of the work. Suddenly what they're writing self-conscious. How can I make this sound fancier. What new metaphor can I add to the strings of metaphores that abound in my work. One stops looking at the story and becomes the one who wants to show just how erudite they are.

We've probably all done this. I remember having a dictionary and a thesaurus at my side as I began writing. Looking frantically to find another word to add to my list of words. One day I became bored with this and put those books aside. Oh, I still use them when I want to know how to spell a word or when a word I've chosen isn't just right. But mostly I write with the words I use most of the time. Trying to make my communication simple enough for others to understand. Doesn't always happen but one must try.

What about you? Are you working with the words you know and adding to them slowly but not to use them to impress people? Have you learned to communicate you must write whatothers can understand and not drown them in words.

Tuesday's Inspiration - A Quote from Pearl S. Buck

Many years ago when I moved from short stories to novels, I began by reading all kind of novels. Pearl S. Buck's were some of the ones I read. I also picked up a book of essays by authors I'd heard of and many I hadn't. In this book of essays I found this quote by Pearl S. Buck.

"Communication important--no, more important than self-expression."

I pondered this for a long time and decided what this meant to me was that when I entered a story I put myself aside. Not that little bits of me didn't end up in the characters I was developing. Many of the major emotions my characters were experiencing belonged to me but they had to be threaded through the character's experiences, not mine. I needed to communicatese to whoever would read the story as intregal parts of the characters' natures.

Easiest done for the hero and heroine but for the villain. This meant having the reader believe the bad guy or gal were people with the same traits as the hero and the heroine. Do I always succeed. Maybe and maybe not. I can only hope to communicate with those reading my stories that the people in my stories have come to live no matter what part they play. That is communicating.

How about you? Are you so hung up on showing you've mastered and excell in all the tricks of the trade that you forget about the real essence of telling a story? Letting the reader into the characters' lives by communicating who and what they are. Using those bits of yourself create ideas that the reader understands without the "It's so because I am the writer and I said so."