Literary Banking: Investing In Your Imagination

Oxford Creative Writing Master Class
with author Douglas Bond

How is a literary tour of middle England like making deposits in the bank of your imagination? Let me show you by giving you a window into the most recent Oxford Creative Writing Master Class.

I wrote the first draft of this post while unwinding with Stilton, Hojiblanca olives, and Languedoc, in drenching London after an invigorating week of guiding seven aspiring writers on a literary tour of middle England (or is it middle earth?).

Let me nudge the door ajar and give you a peek at one brief episode of that inspiring week just concluded. Join me as I rehearse our opening day's literary adventure together:

• First stop, Martyrs' Monument, rooting our literary tour in history, in this case, the tragic history of the Bishop martyrs of 1555-56.
• Then off to climb Anglo-Saxon St Michael's Tower (c. 1054) and view Oxford from above, get the lay of things.
• In the 13th c nave of the City Church, we discussed liturgy, the Reformation, transubstantiation, the rediscovery of biblical truth, Lewis's first communion December 4, 1914, where he "ate and drank condemnation to myself," as an atheist coerced by his father to be confirmed in the Church of England.
• Then strolled past Christopher Wren's 17th c Sheldonian Theatre where Lewis, still raw from the trenches of WW I, read his winning essay May 24, 1921, placing him squarely on the rising academic radar of Oxford.
• Dinner at The King's Arms, the eatery with the highest IQ per square inch of anywhere in Oxford.
• Stop over at the doorway of one of JRR Tolkien's houses, and onward to Merton College Chapel for Holy Week evensong, sung by magnificent college choir (ranks with King's College Chapel Choir, Cambridge, in my opinion), music by William Byrd, with texts by Martin Luther, and concluding with our joining the choir singing Isaac Watts, When I Survey (to Edward Miller's Rockingham Old, the proper tune, not the Lowell Mason ditty we Americans sing it to).
• Then country drive (on the wrong side of the road) to Banbury Hill Farm, near Blenheim Palace in the nearby Cotswolds, and cheese and chocolate as we launch into our first of many tutorial times together. 

Each day was filled with wonderful and memorable literary experiences that are designed to give expansive breadth and substantive depth to the writer's mind and imagination. We cannot write well if we do not have a well-nurtured mind, heart, and imagination. I sometimes refer to what we are doing as making deposits in the bank of our mind, imagination, and heart, there to be drawn out as we mature, develop our writing skills, and are presented with opportunities orchestrated by the kind providence of our good God. Think of it as literary banking, and now is the gathering, saving, storing up season of life. What a week of literary banking lay ahead!

After experiencing that first evensong at Merton College Chapel (think Anglo-Saxon scholar JRR Tolkien) with my Oxford Creative Writing Master Class writers (think unforgettable intensive writing experience on location amidst the vaulted splendors where so many greats honed their writing craft), on our second day, I had my scholars settle into the hushed majesty of an Oxford college chapel, rain pattering against the stained glass, and write to a prompt.

Decades of teaching have taught me to require nothing of my students that I don't equally require of myself. Hence, I wrote a sonnet for them to parse and scan, and to use as a working illustration of just what iambic pentameter is and why it is so valuable for a writer to submit to the conventional forms of poetry:

I sensed that there were angels here, 

With awe-filled bowing, wing beats drawing near--

Or is it Merton's chorister that I hear, 

Medieval tiles endure their fickle feet?

Amidst the splendors grand, I take my seat, 

Agape at Gothic grandeur, soaring high; 

My mind awhirl with wonderment, I sigh

As choral songs arise and ancient stones reply.

The tapers bow as lyric praise redounds, 

Mute hearts, yet feeling voices, heavenly sounds 

Of Anglo-Saxon accents, blithe and strong, 

Lift glory, laud the Father, with their song. 

Ennobled for the moment, I belong, 

But it's for endless anthems that I long.

(Oxford, March 24, 2018, after evensong at Merton College Chapel).

I am podcasting more details from the recent OCWMC at The Scriptorium. Browse the archive of The Scriptorium for writing tutorial, vignettes of Church history, interviews with other authors, and more, then follow and share.

Join me on the next Oxford Creative Writing Master Class. There are two OCWMCs in 2019 but they will fill fast:

Spring: April 2-9, 2019

Summer: June 15-22, 2019

Space is limited so visit  bondbooks.net and contact me today to reserve your place. #oxfordcreativewritingmasterclass

WRITING As God Sees Fit--INKBLOTS

Join me in Oxford April 1-8, 2017

"You do not write the best you can for the sake of art, but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as He sees fit." Flannery O'Connor

Inkblots talked about the O'Conner perspective on our purpose for writing, why we do it. If it was simply for our own gratification (good writing, making progress, overcoming glitches and literary ticks, ought to gives us a measure of satisfaction), but finally and ultimately for our usefulness to the King, for him to use or not use (it may seem to us) as he sees fit. May it be so. 

Eight writers out this chilly, half-moon autumn evening. Patrick leads off, reminding himself and his fellow 'Blots of the importance of writing not only to tear down (far easier to lob ordnance at your enemies) but to adorn truth and a redemptive understanding of the world. New Shiloh, accused of being radical preppers, purchased a Cold War missile sites--the setting for his latest work. Patrick has an imagination that goes where no man dared go before, at least in contrast to mine, so I feel when I hear him read. There seems to be quite a stretch of beginning exposition, maybe too much. I would suggest starting medias res where the conversation begins with Lenny about Billy, then fill in the back story. This will have the advantage of hooking the reader at the gate, then when their interest is piqued, the who, what, when , where, etc, is filled in a in pieces as the story unfolds. Soft green grass, works, but could you awaken my imagination to see, smell, compare it with something more tangible in the reader's mind. When they hear the outsiders, give us a snippet of their way of talking, instead of just telling us they hear it and it doesn't sound right. Let us hear what it sounds like. Reminded Sofia of The Village film, and others agreed. Alisa gave a vote that she liked it as it is, maybe consider tightening.

We discussed point of view and why shifting is so dangerous for a writer to do to a reader. The conventional wisdom, rule if you will,  is to stick with one dominant  perspective. Cliff hanger chapter endings are conventional (I like to think of it as a relay race and there needs to be a clean clear passing of the baton--or else it gets dropped, and so does the book). Patrick gave a really helpful rationale for breaking conventions, making sure that doing so also fits the movement of the story. Good stuff, Patrick.

Alisa reads from her second character, written in third person. This is an early draft (sounds pretty good to me for a first draft. Mine rarely feel this good in early draft). You narrate some of their words, what she hears from her abductors. I would suggest let the reader hear what she hears, and ramp up her terror, the pain in her wrists, where. Would she beg them not to hurt her? Would she try to threaten them with reprisal from her dad or the law? John agreed that there needs to be more dialogue. Bob does not think she would be rationale enough to threaten and bluff it out. A woman's perspective is needed, and Alisa has that in ways we do not. Patrick thinks there needs to be a moment when she realizes this is real, not just a joke. And wouldn't she pray in such dire straights, even as unbeliever. It won't sound like conventional praying, but how does an unbeliever pray when they are intensely frightened? John thinks it would help if the boys are trying to hide who they are, but she gradually begins to realize who they are, and her reaction, augmented fear. 

John invited us to pause and pray for our country, a thing we were eager to do.  John reads from Saving Grace where she announces to her parents. So he has been working on rewriting, this episode the next day after they have had a chance to sleep on it. Try, "Shifting forward on the edge of the couch, Nora..." instead of two simple sentences. You will get more cohesion by doing this. I think you might be over writing, please listen and hear us out and don't judge us until you have heard what we are about to say. Have Grace interpret her mother's imploring expression and deduce these things, but having her mom say it feels over written. You do more with what you don't write than with what you write. He could tell she was really upset... How could he tell this? Show the body language, the mannerism that conveys really upset to the reader. Good having the glass fall and break. What are they actually saying as they try to comfort her? Let us hear some of that. So why did they adopt? Did the mother get pregnant out of wedlock and have an abortion that made her unable to bear children. This would be a super helpful angle, in my opinion. The women in the room asked if John needs to have this in the story, the adoption makes it too complicated. Rachel points out that the tentacles of adoption and family photos and all the rest complicates this. Patrick weighed in that the emotional impulse to tell their daughter that she was adopted her, but her angst at them not telling her, is dispelled by telling her that she was hiding pretty important familial information (she was pregnant) from them, her parents. Lots of input in this story. Sofia wants to see another layer of connection, as in Grace nearly being aborted by her mom. Is this story too complicated, trying to cover all the angles abortion. What is essential to make the emotional impact on the reader. Doug Mac, father of four daughters, points out that a strong father taking charge of the situation is the way to bring order. But this is not a particularly good father. The author wants to create an emotional scenario whereby the reader longs for a good father, and sees the problem more clearly, and wants a solution. 

Rachel reads further from her Wall Street yarn. Morning after, wherein she implies that she and her ex husband slept together. Nicole or her husband's perspective. At first I thought it was his pov, but now I see, it is from Nicole's. Looked all about her as if to inventory the evidence... This is good writing. I missed something when the other woman came to the door, or what happened there? Maybe I was too busy blogging. .Martin takes her into the immaculate room. Who is this? Olivia's makeup, Walter's fiance. Good use of precise details like the tissue with the make up on it. Realizing that he didn't want her to be seen. She could think, Good call, for an idiot. What an idiot I am, or infer that it could have been him she was thinking of as an idiot. This is the journalist yarn. So Olivia is his current fiance. Patrick thinks that Rachel is writing in the antiquarian Mid-Atlantic stage dialect of in the hay day of old black and white movies. Cary Grant film an Affair to Remember, Rachel knows this stuff.

A congenial time, honest, constructive, encouraging. "You do not write the best you can for the sake of art, but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as He sees fit." Flannery O'Connor May we return our writing gift--however grand or modest--to the invisible God, increased by our rigorous interchange this evening. 

October 25 is our next INKBLOTS meeting  (and my patient wife's birthday)

Summer free time--How to make the most of it

OXFORD CREATIVE WRITING MASTER CLASS

A summer intensive writing tutorial for the serious aspiring writer in Oxford, England July 12-19, 2016

"Everything was so beyond my highest expectations!"

Do you have a serious writer in your family? Are you not sure how to help them take the next critical steps in their writing? Then the OXFORD CREATIVE WRITING MASTER CLASS with author Douglas Bond may be for your son or daughter. 

Unlike so many writing courses, OCWMC is actually led by a successfully published author, with more than twenty-five books of historical fiction and biography in print (www.bondbooks.net).

"I am so excited! I feel like I've been given a key or a treasure map, and I can't wait to get home and put it to use." Rachel (April, 2016)

OCWMC is more affordable than you might think; what participants gain from the tutorial is invaluable. Ask about enrolling in the OCWMC for college credit through New College Franklin. 

Space is very limited for the July 12-19 tutorial and registration will be closing soon. 

Register today by emailing bondbooks.net@gmail.com or calling 253-381-1961 or at www.bondvoyage.webs.com

INKBLOTS--Writing with the most prolific author of the 19th century

Seven ‘Blots tonight (Justin arriving after work, so eight), seated around my scriptorium. I began by sharing CH Spurgeon’s seven pieces of writing advice (one of the most prolific writers of the 19^th century, if not all time). Much to consider here: 

1. Write to Help others
“We are very mistaken, if our work does not prove to be of the utmost value to purchasers of books…no object in view but the benefit of our brethren…it will be remuneration enough to have aided the ministers of God in the study of his word” (Sword & Trowel, March 1876).
2. Write Short
“Long visits, long stories, long essays, long exhortations, and long prayers, seldom profit those who have to do with them. Life is short. Time is short.…Moments are precious. Learn to condense, abridge, and intensify…In making a statement, lop off branches; stick to the main facts in your case. If you pray, ask for what you believe you will receive, and get through; if you speak, tell your message and hold your peace; if you write, boil down two sentences into one, and three words into two. Always when practicable avoid lengthiness — learn to be short” (Sword & Trowel, September 1871).
3. Write for God
“Courteous reader, throughout another year we have endeavored, month by month, to provide for your entertainment and edification. For both, because the first is to the most of men needful to produce the second, and also because God hath joined them together, and no man should put them asunder” (Sword & Trowel, Preface, 1875).

4. Write Clearly
“So I gathered that my sermons were clear enough to be understood by anybody who was not so conceited as to darken his own mind with pride. Now, if boys read The Sword and the Trowel it cannot be said to shoot over people’s heads, nor can it be said to be very dull and dreary” (Sword & Trowell, November 1874).
5. Write to Compel
“It was an ill day when religion became so decorous as to call dullness her companion, and mirth became so frivolous as to demand the divorce of instruction from amusement. It is not needful that magazines for Christian reading should be made up of pious platitudes, heavy discourses, and dreary biographies of nobodies: the Sabbath literature of our families might be as vivacious and attractive as the best of amusing serials, and yet as deeply earnest and profitable as the soundest of divines would desire” (Sword & Trowel, Preface, 1875). “If the writer had possessed genius and literary ability, this might have been a highly interesting work; but as the writers’ sole qualification is his honesty of purpose, the work is most reliable and dull” (Sword & Trowel, November 1882).
6. Write, Write, & Write
“Many of our hours of pain and weakness have been lightened by preparing the first volume of our book on the Psalms for the press. If we could not preach we could write, and we pray that this form of service may be accepted of the Lord” (Sword & Trowel, January 1870).
7. Read to Write
“Read good authors, that you may know what English is, you will find it to be a language very rarely written nowadays, and yet the grandest of all human tongues” (Sword & Trowel, August 1871).

Only 3 places available on the July Oxford master class--Register today!

Doug Mac led off our Inkblot's time this evening, reading from Return to Tarawa, his intriguing WW II Pacific Theater yarn. Cosmic epic scale, world war is big, but seen through the eyes of ordinary young men trying to figure it all out and survive. We discussed the challenges of the vague attribution, we, us, they, etc, and the importance of sticking with a dominant perspective (which Doug Mac largely does throughout), and what to do with the other men without names from the squad, platoon, etc. There is reality at work here, because we don’t know the names of lots of the people we rub shoulders with on a given day, but how to make the contrivance in fiction come off as genuine. Great progress on this manuscript, given the highest rank that Writers Edge reading service gives a manuscript, and soon to be another Inkblots Press release.

Rachel Y read, with some urging, from her cheese yarn, a fascinating, detailed, mouth-slavering story about smuggling cheese from Italy to Russia. We are all hungry, salivating, craving cheese. And thinking about how devastating government regulation of the economy is (especially when it comes to good food). We discussed the use of the almost, nearly qualifiers. John brought up how we deal with criticism. Take what is being offered, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the critic is right, but they have helped the writer by pointing out an area that needs attention. Embrace the criticism, keeping in mind that the person who just heard you read doesn’t know the larger context, what you wrote in the last chapter, where you’re going after what you just read.  But swallow pride, and welcome criticism (or hang up your pen and take up underwater basket weaving).

Josh Y puts us in context in his post-apocalyptic drama. Lodges and outside of town. It seemed like an odd mixture of the primitive and the civilized. Sort of shirt, is it sort of or the real deal? Blouse or tunic might be better. Mouth sweetly shaped, could this be a more specific comparison? Sweetly is a vague descriptor for a physical feature, rather than a character quality or a taste. Where are you going with this story? Is it part of a larger yarn. Josh explained that it is a series of books. The female interest in the yarn loses her toenail. John thought that sounded odd. Josh explained that it would come into the story later. Rachel PH and the other women present offered valuable perspective to a young male writer who would rather be writing a fight scene than a tender romantic moment in the yarn. Thanks, ladies.

INKBLOTS PRESS New Release! WW I yarn

John S reads from Saving Grace, his contemporary fiction work, a novel that exposes the evil of abortion. This is a moment where the protagonist is pondering a moral dilemma. If she doesn’t have an abortion she will lose her job, scholarship to college, pressures exerted by a manipulative parent. Someone had to be thrown under the bus. What about clichés in contemporary fiction? If a character is using it in dialogue then it makes sense to use it, but in narrative, the use of clichés is off limits. Are there other mannerisms that Grace would have when she is talking with the counselor? Does she cross her legs and bob her leg up and down, or ring her hands, or tuck hair behind her ear? The interaction between the counselor and the counselee seems kind of wooden, and the prayer is good, but I think it works better to give us only part of the prayer and then summarize the rest in narrative, how it was heard by Grace. I think there’s some overwriting here. I promise to be quiet, thank you Sarah. It seems to pat. Things worked out for her. Maybe there’s hope for me. Seems too pat. Sarah’s story is profound, but seems too much. For now. Justin commented that it seemed too fast forward, too much happening to fast. 

I finished off (no time to read from my Drama of the Reformation, audio theater project) by sharing about the final process to finished book with WAR IN THE WASTELAND, now available in print and ebook. Order a signed copy here and get free domestic shipping and a free download of the comprehensive study guide.