Book Reviews

The Granny Diaries by Adair Lara

The Granny Diaries by Adair Lara is an entertaining and light-hearted look at being a grandmother interspersed with smart messages to mothers and grandmothers. Readers are drawn into Adair’s world with her quick wit and keen sense of observation. Advice for the mother: “Remember, that grandmother is your mother, and she’s just trying to help. Talk to her about what you expect, and what she expects, and try to notice the good stuff. A grandmother who bought your child noisy green and pink clogs that the day-care teacher had to write a note about is a grandmother who went into a store, pondered choices (those boring white tennies, formal black Mary Janes, or those cool clogs?), bought the crazy clogs, and looked forward to presenting them. ” This is an easy book to read, especially if you appreciate Adair’s wicked sense of humor. I enjoyed slogging through my day, knowing…

Places to submit

You’re doing what? Magazine submissions.

Adair Lara talked about publishing in magazines during her Summer 2009 Writing Class, giving me the idea for this blog post. 1. Research . . . really research. . . where you could send your writing. Make sure the publication you have in mind publishes the type of writing you want to submit. Read the magazine you hope to be published in cover-to-cover, including the ads. Notice the tone of the articles/essays. Research the demographics . . . make a list of who the ads are geared towards (age, gender, lifestyle, socioeconomic). Make sure your article/essay fits those demographics. You can research magazines at libraries and ask for magazines from: hairdressers, medical offices, etc. Of course, buying magazines is good. We want to support our local vendors, but sometimes we need to use free resources. 2. Look at the magazine’s masthead. . . this is in the first few pages…

Guest Bloggers

Guest Blogger Adair Lara talks about her latest obsession.

Guest Blogger Adair Lara writes: Voice in writing is my new obsession. I’ve been talking nonstop to my memoir students about it until they all look at me cross-eyed. “You must think of your experiences as material! And of yourself as a character!” Many of them have been taking the workshop with me for years, climbing the three flights of steps every Saturday to the redwood attic of the Victorian house I live in. I was all about identifying the emotional beats of the arc when some of them started. They must have been sick of hearing me say, “What’s the beat?” (The wine Lee Anna brings helps). And they must have been surprised –why had I not mentioned this new approach before, if it was so important? Well, I didn’t because even though voice is the most obvious thing in the world, we don’t see it. It’s also all…

Quotes

I read it on Facebook.

Thursday is Quote Day on The Write Spot Blog. I like to post something interesting someone has said, or pithy or memorable. Adair Lara’s writing matches all three. Adair Lara comments, lifted from Facebook: “Facebook is destroying small talk. You open your mouth, and they say, ‘I know, I read it on Facebook.’” — January 24, 2014 Adair on Passwords: “I recall, children, a time when you didn’t have to spend part of each day trying to remember passwords, looking them up in your password file cleverly called something else, like sammy’s dog, putting them in wrong, having to get the password from the site which entails remembering whether you said the name of your maternal grandfather was Tom or Thom, and then having your new password being called weak or strong, and capitalizing the “H” to please them (you’ve employed a variation of the same password since you were…

Prompts

Details prove it happened. Prompt #71

In her book, Naked, Drunk and Writing, subtitle: Writing Essays and Memoirs For Love and for Money, Adair Lara talks about details. “The terms ‘image’ and ‘detail’ are often used interchangeably. A concrete detail, for example, is said to be one that appeals to one of the five senses.” “Details prove it happened. If you say you are late because you hit traffic, the boss may squint at you, but if you say some bozo in a Mini-Cooper tried to drive along the margin of the road on the Waldo Grade and hit a gravel truck, spilling rocks across the road and blocking all the lanes in both directions, you have a shot at being believed.” Today’s prompt, from Naked, Drunk and Writing: “Write a list of details from your childhood.” Being about the same age as Adair, my list contains items on her list: milk delivered in glass bottles,…

Just Write

Want to be a writer? Just write!

In Naked, Drunk, and Writing, Adair Lara writes “I grew up in the San Geronimo Valley . . . a bookstruck little kid sitting on a stump writing stories.” She continues with “Writing was easy then. I used my dad’s square carpenter pencil to cover sheet after sheet with stories of dogs that rescued families from a flood or a fire.” Note the details: Can you see the carpenter pencil? I see a yellow pencil and I can see that little girl hunched over, earnestly scribbling. Adair began her writing career as copyeditor at San Francisco Focus magazine. Her friend Cynthia, the production editor, also wanted to be a writer. They started partner writing, swapping freewrites and returning them with the good stuff highlighted in yellow. “That first writing club, as we called it, changed my life. It made me a writer by giving me the confidence to be one.”…

Prompts

Find the right pace. Prompt #70

In Adair Lara‘s book, Naked, Drunk, and Writing, she talks about pace. “Add more images where you want to slow us [the reader] down, fewer when you want to speed up. This is called pace.” In a writing workshop, Adair said, “To slow down, give more detail, give unexpected detail, detail that moves story forward.” Today’s writing prompt is either, or, or both. Either take one of the story starts below (these are from Adair’s writing class) and keep writing, using detail to slow the story down or minimize detail to speed the story up. As Adair writes in her book, “The more important a scene or character, the more image and detail it gets.” OR: Have fun writing a scene with too much detail. Tell us way more than we need to know. Write a spoof on how to write too much detail. Use any of these lines to…

Book Reviews

Adair Lara Week . . . . And A Day

May 17, 2002 was declared Adair Lara Day in San Francisco by proclamation of Mayor Willie Brown. Today, Mother’s Day 2014, I’m declaring May 11 through May 18 Adair Lara Week And A Day on The Write Spot Blog by proclamation of it’s my blog and I can do it if I want to! Cheshire Cat grin. We’re starting off Adair Lara Week And A Day with a review of her book Hold Me Close, Let Me Go, about “A mother, a daughter, and an adolescence survived.” Hold Me Close, Let Me Go spoke to me on a deep emotional level. I was so moved by Adair’s story of a mother’s and daughter’s struggles that after reading the last page, I sat at my kitchen table, sobbing. Adair’s writing is honest, poignant, brilliant. Hold Me Close, Let Me Go grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. Thank you, Adair, for your…

Prompts

In this photo . . . Prompt #55

This is a two-part prompt. Part 1:  Get a photo of yourself.  We’ll wait. Toe tapping . . . humming.  Photo in hand?  If not . . . close your eyes for a moment and picture a photo of yourself. Write,  starting with:  “In this photo . . . ” Go! Now! Write before reading Part II. Wait. . . did you write on the prompt? If yes . . . proceed to the next part.  If not, take 10 or 15 minutes to write, “In this photo . . . ” We’ll wait for you to catch up.  Maybe we’ll hum a little tune. . . la. . . de. . . dum. . . Ready? Part II: Add three sentences after every sentence you have just written.  Start first additional sentence with “I felt” and then add two sentences after that. Example of adding three sentences to what…