Bob Gillen

Healing through story

Month: February 2021

Mannequin Monday – Filling the Void

February 22, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Mannequin Monday – Filling the Void

What do I give myself to when faced with a wide open day? How do I fill the void? A life shift offers opportunity, unexplored space. What will my story be?

Storytelling makes the world go round. I’m reading News of the World.

And again, I offer you another story bite of my own for this week. “The Playlist.”

What I’m Reading/Working On

A friend, a writing coach, asked this week in a social media post: what is your writing goal for this year? I replied by saying, fill the void. A bit humorous, maybe. A touch enigmatic. I’ll explain. My life circumstances have changed dramatically in the last several months. There is now literally a void, a large open space, in my life. How to fill it? So easy to say, I have tons of time to write. Not so easy to actually write.

I need structure to write. I’m not referring exactly to a writing outline, a book plan. There is a blank page, an empty screen, waiting for my words. I re-energized my weekly blog about a year ago with the Mannequin Monday concept. Drape the blank form with thoughts and ideas. The structure I began with was one I borrowed from several online courses I had taken with the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Listen to or read a transcript of an author talking about their approach to creative writing. Reply to a few discussion questions, and offer comments on the work of other participants. Read a writing lesson. Write an exercise inspired by the lesson.

The structure worked for me. I had a pattern. I was not creating entirely from scratch every week. And so Mannequin Monday came to be. I am now 50 weeks in. The structure has evolved somewhat. Simplified to What I Am Reading and What I Am Writing. But the focus remains the same. Fiction. Storytelling.

A brief mention of what I’m reading this week. Paulette Jiles’s book News of the World, on which is based the new Tom Hanks film. I like the main character’s occupation: a printer who also travels the country with current newspapers, charging a dime a head to read the news of the world to his audience. The story is set in the years following the Civil War.

I am five chapters in. Perhaps a bit too much backstory for a short book, but a great read so far. More comments next week.

What I’m Writing

Once again, I used Ray Bradbury’s writing guideline: nouns and titles. Make a list of words, titles, phrases. Let a story emerge from the words. Here’s my latest effort.

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Mannequin Monday – No Car Chase Without a Driver

February 16, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Mannequin Monday – No Car Chase Without a Driver

No story without a character. This week I talk about the people who inhabit a story. The mannequin itself, before it’s dressed. So many memorable characters in fiction.

And I offer you a short piece inspired by a Rodin sculpture.

Enjoy!

What I’m Reading

I remember the driver, not the car chase. No story comes to life without good characters. Their efforts to survive, to conquer, to love, to find a place in the world. 

I remember the detective, not the crime. Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch lives, grows, through dozens of crime novels. Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache commands our attention through all of her crime novels.

I remember Hemingway’s Santiago, the fisherman, not the great marlin he caught in The Old Man and the Sea.

While I never finished re-reading Moby-Dick, I do remember Ishmael and Ahab, not so much the white whale.

his fierce determination to survive

I remember Gary Paulsen’s Brian Robeson, the thirteen-year old boy in Hatchet. I recall his fierce determination to survive. Memories of the environment he found himself in are secondary.

I remember this week’s read: Elizabeth in Raymond Fleischmann’s How Quickly She Disappears. Her engrossing adventure, much of it emotionally wrenching, dealing with a psychotic man who claims to know where her missing sister is. I won’t recall the details of her search. I will remember her. Her strength, her resolve. 

I remember Kieran Elliott in Jane Harper’s The Survivors. Kieran heads an ensemble cast of characters, carrying guilt over the deaths of two men in his small town, now dealing with a missing girl and a murdered woman.

I remember U. S. Marshall John Whicher in John Stonehouse’s Whicher series. Breathless adventures, thrillers. True page-turners. Yet nothing without the MC, the main character.

Needless to say, story and plot, setting, are important. Those are the world the characters live in. But it will always be the characters who live on in my mind.

What I’m Writing

This week I used one of Rodin’s sculptures for inspiration in a writing exercise. Here’s the photo. I focused on the hand on the left.

The Hand

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Mannequin Monday – Easy for Some

February 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Mannequin Monday – Easy for Some

What’s the street credibility of writers who offer advice on the craft of writing? This week published authors guide us in finding the words to drape our bare mannequin. Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Elizabeth George, Natalie Goldberg.

And I offer a chapter, a character study, from a novel I’m working on.

What I’m Reading

As I bounce between a couple of books this week, I can’t stop thinking about how fiction authors extend a hand to inspire other writers.

I’m thinking in particular about the street cred of fiction authors who write about the craft of writing.

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