What do these things have in common? They're all topics on which editor Patti Lee Gauch waxes poetic. Patti's an outstanding teacher who will join award-winning author Linda Urban as faculty for our
Weekend on the Water retreat in November (applications accepted only until Sept. 12 - don't delay!) She's also generous, with
some excellent information for writers on her
website, including the full texts of several craft talks she's done. Check out this preview below, go download her talks for a mini-virtual-workshop of your own, and apply now to hear her wisdom applied specifically to
your work this fall!
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| Patti in a workshop setting |
The Narrative Power in Objects: It has always
intrigued me that simple objects should have so much narrative power in
good fiction. Almost a transcendent power. T. S. Eliot called an object that
conveys, better than description, the emotional content of a
character or situation in story an “objective correlative.” But,
personally, that term is not down-to-earth enough for me. I prefer
Tolkien’s “Tree and Leaf.” In his essay of the same name, he says to
the writer, ”understand the (ultimate) power of basic earth objects or
elements – and use them.” Fire, a piece of wood, a stream, a stone, a
tree, a leaf, the elemental stuff of our world. When I think of Grace
Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, I think of a ripe peach, an
orange, a goldfish man, a moon. Poets know the power in the concrete
object, but I say the prose writer, knowing these elements and using
them, brings a resonant power and authenticity to narratives of all
kinds. When I read Kate Di Camillo’s The Tale of Despereaux, a
fantasy, and see how she dances around “soup,” for goodness sakes, I am
amazed. The Queen died for loving it. The kingdom was governed by the
rules for it! The tiny mouse Despereaux, whose story this is, was
brought to his knightship by events caused by it. Soup. And Di Camillo
knows this source of power! In loving this element – soup – she uses
it sufficiently, repeating it, playing with it, elevating it to the
status of character in its own right! She does the same for “the
needle” and “red thread.”
The new writer is tentative in using objects; the experienced writer knows the absolute power of the object: tree and leaf.
