Well Versed

I had a young reader contact me a few weeks back for a school assignment interview, and one of the questions she asked is one I never get: What's your favorite Bible verse?

Mine happens to be Deuteronomy 32:2 – “Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.”

One reason I think it's the loveliest verse from the Scriptures because it speaks directly to the writer in me. The other is that it harmonizes perfectly with how I feel about sharing my work (and myself) with the world. There's rain in it, and rain has a particular personal meaning for me and my guy. I like everything about it, and I should probably embroider it on something so I can see it every day, and be reminded of all it's taught me.

You don't have to go Biblical to find verses, quotations, or other phrases that inspire you. Consider what most moves you from what you enjoy reading. If you're a romantic, you can find plenty to inspire you in romances or love poetry. If the wisdom of our forefathers is more your thing, the words of a historical figure might motivate you to make some of your own history. My mother likes to clip comics from the newspaper; my daughter harvests electronic jewels from the Tumblr blogs she follows. All any inspirational words really have to do is move you in a positive direction.

There is so much hate in the world right now that anything that inspires you to go in the opposite direction is a powerful blessing. You can spend your day wallowing in the muck being thrown at us from all directions, or you can remember a favorite verse to help you out of it. Being inspired means you're not adding to the woes of the world; you're fighting them -- and isn't that worth the battle?

What's your favorite inspirational line, phrase or verse? Share them with us in comments.

Epigraph

Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick. -- Hippocrates (466?-377? B.C.)
-- epigraph for StarDoc by S.L. Viehl

Last week in comments I mentioned that Tennessee Williams used the last line of my favorite e.e.cummings poem as an epigraph for The Glass Menagerie, and promptly got three e-mails asking me what epigraphs are and why writers use them.

To put it simply, the epigraph is a very brief preface, usually in the form of a line or two, placed at the front of a book or chapter by an author. Epigraphs are almost always a quotation of someone else's work, and are frequently borrowed from verse or text that has some relation to the story or some personal significance to the author (or both.) Epigraphs became popular back during the early eighteenth century when printing processes had evolved enough to make mass-produced books less expensive and more accessible by the general population. Authors and publishers knew many of these folks didn't have extensive backgrounds in literature so they used the epigraph to give the reader a preemptive shove in the correct thematic direction.

Why do writers use epigraphs? Lots of reasons that have to do with our love of words and wisdom from other writers. Epigraphs could also be interpreted as the copy we would write for our stories (if publishers ever let us.) I can't dismiss how very cool they look at the front of a book, either. Epigraphs quoting Scripture, poetry and classic literature are common, but there are plenty of other forms. I used the definitions of genetic terms as epigraphs for my Kyndred novels. Quotations by Kafka and Nietzsche are particularly, ploddingly popular among the literati, but Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides coolly opted to use lyrics from a Talking Heads song for The Marriage Plot.

Up there you see the very first epigraph I published, which I did not place in the front pages of StarDoc but used to open book's first chapter. This was deliberate; I wanted the statement by Hippocrates to be the very first words of the story that the reader saw. Yes, it was that important. StarDoc's epigraph doesn't simply describe the main character's goals and conflict or what drives the plot for ten novels, or even give a big hint about the series. Those sixteen words are the series.

Other writers with interesting epigraphs:

E.M. Forester was famously, fabulously brief with the two-word epigraph for Howard's End: "Only connect . . ."

Going for the ego gold F. Scott Fitzgerald decided to quote himself as an epigraph for The Great Gatsby: "Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry 'Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!'" (It's a line he wrote for Thomas Parke D’Invilliers in This Side of Paradise.)

Ernest Hemingway made John Donne pull double duty when he used him for the epigraph and the title of For Whom the Bell Tolls: "No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

Mario Puzo was extremely cold and direct with his Balzac quotation epigraph for The Godfather: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

Mark Twain is the author of my all-time favorite epigraph, which you can find (if you dare) in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance."

If you want more examples of book epigraphs, visit Epigraphic, a Tumblr blog devoted to them.

Quote Ten

Just a heads-up: it's deadline week again here at Casa PBW, so for the next seven days my online time will be limited and posting here likely light and/or sporadic. Once I turn in my book I'll get back on schedule, but in the meantime here are:

Ten Things About Writing from Famous Scribes

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. -- Scott Adams

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes. -- Dave Barry

If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape. -- Ray Bradbury

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it -- Octavia Butler

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. -- Lord Byron

I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes... -- Phillip Dusenberry

The desire to write grows with writing. -- Desiderius Erasmus

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. -- Barbara Kingsolver

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators. -- Olin Miller

Well, my book is written--let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library--and a pen warmed up in hell. -- Mark Twain

What's your favorite quotation about writing? Post it in comments.

Poster Me

While image searching for some cover art for a large print edition of one of my novels (the few print copies I have came to me all dinged up) I found something I'd never seen in the results: two quote posters with my byline:



I traced the images back to The Quote Factory, which allows you to download "famous quotations" in low resolution (screen use) for free or higher resolution (for home printing) for a couple bucks. You can also create your own custom quotations, which is how I imagine the quotations from my books got there - I've seen both before on that Goodreads site.

Since I'm already quoted on the site I thought I'd try to create my own poster with something interesting I've said about writing, and with a few clicks produced this on the screen:



I then downloaded the free version of my poster, which comes out like this; pretty nice for a low-rez image. While anyone with a decent photoshop program can produce the same sort of poster themselves, the Quote Factory is a fun generator to play with (there are a few choices as to the type of background, font and layout.) I also like the option to download whatever you create for free -- just remember that whatever you create stays on the site and can be sold to others.

Quote Your Mindset

Today's assignment: in comments, leave a quotation from a famous person, song, poem, story, or any other source. Choose one that best describes your current mindset or, if you're not in any particular mood, a philisophy you embrace.

I'll start with mine:

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. -- Oscar Wilde

Taking a Header

"Never marry for money; ye can borrow it cheaper." -- Liz Carlyle, Three Little Secrets, Chapter Four

"To: Patricia C. Walker {pattycake@ogilvie.edu} From Angeline Mangiamele {apples@tiedtothetracks.com} Re: follow up (2)..." -- Rosina Lippi, Tied to the Tracks, Chapter Fifteen

"The path changes, so too must the traveller. -- Tarek Varena, ClanJoren" -- Yours Truly, Blade Dancer, Chapter One

Writing a chapter header, or beginning a chapter in a novel with a quotation, summary or something other than the text of the chapter itself, is the sort of detailing most novelists skip these days. It's a quaint custom, dating back to the days when every popular novel chapter started with a summary line:

Chapter One
In Which I Introduce Myself

Chapter Seven
A trip to town; Mrs. Fullahotair confides in Prudence

Chapter Fourteen
Jane Receives Her Richly Deserved Come-Uppance in the Form of Boils, Bed Bugs and a Bad Marriage

Sometimes when I find chapter headers in old books, I wonder if the practice started as a pre-emptive reader strike or as shorthand for what the writer needed to accomplish: In this chapter, I must ruin Mr. Rochester's nuptials, kill the mad wife and set fire to the place.

I rarely write chapter headers because they can be tricky. When I was putting together the outline for Blade Dancer, I wanted to work in a little about one of Kol's ancestors, Tarek Varena, whose philosophies changed Joren's ancient war faring culture. At the same time, I didn't want to drop in an infodump about a messianic figure who had been dead for five centuries. Then I wanted to tag the chapters with something other than numbers or titles. Using Tarek's philosophies (the prime influence on modern Jorenian culture from my worldbuilding) as chapter headers solved all of those problems.

Anyone can toss in a real or made-up quotation to create a chapter header; really inventive headers that contribute something solid to the novel are more rare (and that's mainly why I find them so tricky.) Two novels that I think have the most original, effective chapter headers I've found are in Rosina Lippi's Tied to the Tracks and Frank Herbert's Dune.

How do you guys feel about chapter headers? Do they add to the reading experience, or distract you from it? What would be an appropriate header for the chapter you're working on right now?