Previously published under the pseudonym W. Alexander.
Portfolio: Escape Second Death (Poets Choice), A Nod To Derry’s Son (The Closed Eye Open)
Anyone can write. Few revise well. Revision is essential. It is much more than spell-check and grammar adjustments. Revision is ensuring the story you are telling is clear. Rarely is misinterpretation the mistake of a reader. The job of writers is to ensure readers do not do any heavy lifting. Any skewed reading, comes from bad writing. How does the writer ensure the message they are conveying is interpreted clearly? You guessed it; revision. No one sits down and writes a novel by the seat of their pants in one long first and final draft. If they do, the writing will be garbage, regardless of talent. I would not count on being the exception.
“…I hated him and his kind. I hated his affluence, his expensive clothes, his chiseled looks, and the arrogance he was born too. But most of all, I hated the power he held over me, his assumption of authority, and the truth of his superiority.”
Starting over sucks. I dread it. All who write dread it. My stomach turns at the thought. But understand this, the rewards of revising will outweigh the pains. You will be shocked. Learn to enjoy the process. Here are some questions you can ask about your work:
Why should my reader turn the first page to the second? Does the first sentence, paragraph, page introduce tension? If not, red alarm.
Is there unnecessary summary? Cut. Cut. Cut! I too often have the impulse to cover too much ground. It destroys energy and I find, I tell more than show. This is a bad thing. The whole premise of writing prose, is to show not tell. A concept I will elaborate on with a later post.
Is it original? Stereotypes are lazy. A good writer will extract any cliches and make a point to show the exact and honest.
Is it clear? Ambiguity and mystery are one of the pleasures of literature. But there is a fine line between mystery and sloppiness. I love characters rich with contradictions. That is the human condition. But I often have to start off with a more simple reality. Then I can build out the imaginative. Have your character answer these: Where are we? When are we? Who are they? How do things look? What time of day or night is it? Weather? What is happening? On how to create captivating characters, check out: Create Captivating Characters
Is it self-conscious? Just tell the story. Your style will follow of itself. But you have to just tell the story. If you get carried away dressing your prose with all your wit and insight, there is a good chance you are having more fun writing that the reader will have reading. Good writing is easy reading! Just tell the story.
Where is it too long? In fiction, you want sharpness, economy, and vivid details in telling. With every sentence, say what you mean to say and get out. Hit it and quit it. Use the fewest possible words. What does this look like? My advice, read the poets. Trust me, the poets will teach you everything.
Are there too many scenes? Try and tell your story with the fewest possible scenes. It is tempting to give each turn of plot or change of setting a new scene when fusing several together would proffer better effect.
Where is it too general? Look for general and vague terms. Write instead a particular thing, an exact size and degree. In fact, my short tip, cut the words very and really out of your work entirely. You are welcome!
Revision, revision, revision. Originality, economy, and clarity all come from thorough revision. These questions are just the start and short of taking a creative writing class, they will serve you well.
Remember in fiction, the goal is to show characters doing things. Never tell what you mean. I promise if the prose is clear and concise, the reader will not misinterpret. You write for the reader. If you forget that, you have lost your way.
Several poems left me exposed and shivering, as if I were in front of a mirror which revealed what’s inside the reader. The images I discovered moved me to tears. And, the more I studied, the more I understood myself.
This article is uncomfortable to write, because I’m not pretending artsy-pompous, pennings of self-indulgence, or bleeding on display my deep personal wrestlings. I’m writing you in the nude—naked in spirit. It’s important that you read me. I have to admit something embarrassing.
I confess too many of my posts have been half-assed written. I blame my self-sabotage’s grip on my life, and how it’s crushing my dreams, squeezing the life out of me. My blog is my brand; my train-ticket destined for you to end up reading. Don’t be alarmed. Where you are is where I’m safe. 2022, is my year for both professional and personal growth. I share my strategy for growth. I’m concentrating on quality. I might even end up paying for a web designer. I want a flawless image. I’m twice published now. I got own this accomplishment. I think it’s okay to indulge in a win right? I worry I’m not worthy of accomplishment all the time.
It’s nice to get that off my chest. Thank you. 😊
I sobered to the cold-water-truth: making myself into a successful writer will be hard work. I’ll be thirty-three-years-old this summer. It’s time I win the fight against self-sabotage. So I’m going to do my blog right: each post gets equal attention to what I write in my prose and poetry. I want to be tomorrow’s next class act and sophisticated New England writer. We all have our ambitions, and you now know this one is mine. My dream is to publish a novel. Starting today, I will start performing like the writer I want to be, and I hope to attract more readers like you on my journey. It’s time I step out into the world; the primetime hour of my ambition nears. The time has come to put everything learned to test and work it.
I graduate with my english degree in a few months. I’ve been all in; I’m living everything I’ve learned. I looked into literatures deep waters, and she shared with me how she sailed over the currents flowing times passed, ideas and theory churned and crashed. She often whispers to me, I am your religion.
I try to never forget God is first-and-foremost worshipped as the creator. He’s the artist sculpting the cosmos. So, yes, I guess literature is right whispering she’s my religion. I am convinced it must have been the early artists, those who first looked inside themselves to color-in and seed perspective for the world outside, who first discovered God’s presence.
Creatives like us understand lightning can strike the artist anytime. It’s even more likely when the writer’s pen is spent and hot. My blog’s goal is to steal as much of that fire as I can and give it back to you. I’m starting 2022 intending to grow. Help me grow as an artist and influencer and follow.
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“…I hated him and his kind. I hated his affluence, his expensive clothes, his chiseled looks, and the arrogance he was born too. But most of all, I hated the power he held over me, his assumption of authority, and the truth of his superiority.”
Previously published under the pseudonym W. Alexander.
Portfolio: Escape Second Death (Poets Choice), A Nod To Derry’s Son (The Closed Eye Open)
Chapter I: Necessity Breeds Destiny
We were poor, almost destitute. I remember pretending to sleep through my father’s weeping himself into exhaustion, day after day, from scratching a scanty living gathering and selling fish to our neighbors. The Nile sustained both of us, until, that is, I became a thief. Father was once a holy man, so the first day I stepped through the door with a handful of silver and laid the coins before his feet, he didn’t ask where my bounty came from. Instead, he sighed. Then, he kissed me and hurried out to trade for wheat and barley. Though necessity drove me to steal my daily bread, I soon found, Ra forgive me, that I was good at it. In fact, I loved the thrill of following fat patricians, as they waded through the agora’s crowds. I became their shadows, and when the moment was ripe, I jostled them, pretending accident, before I slipped my knife into their robes and sauntered into the crowd before they knew their purse was gone.
That day, thievery and destiny entangled. Forever after, my previous insignificant life was insnared in a role far larger, and far worser than what fates befall the gods. I had been stupid, even overconfident. It was a ruse I used often: I hid behind some drunkard poking the barrels of beer imported from upper Egypt grumbling about their price. Senselessly, I lobbed a small stone at the next merchant’s stall, if I am remembering right, hitting him full on the chin. At once, the stall holders clamored at each other’s throats allotting their recriminations. In the upheaval, I grabbed a basket, believing it stuffed with bread, from behind the beer seller’s stall.
But a woman caught me in the act. She emerged from the encirclement of barrels stored behind the stall just as I scooped up my prize and shouted: “Thief!” The entire agora turned. A cacophony of voices followed her, “Stop that thief!” and “Somebody, grab that boy!” I squirmed through the crowding press of the rich and poor alike until—crack—a soldier supplied a cudgel to the forehead. When I came ‘round, the soldier had dug his heel into my chest, pinning me to the ground in the center of the jabbering, malicious crowd. I struggled, but he picked me up by the neck and punched me full in the face with his battle-hardened knuckles. My legs went limp.
“That boy is Ishaq,” I heard someone cry. Another yelled, “have pity on him. His father once served Horus.”
The crowd’s expressions whirled and meshed with the blue liveries donning Pharoah’s guard, and I knew I was caught.
I spit out a single tooth, and feared my own blood threatened to drown me. The soldier dropped me, and I sat up dazed and trembling. Onlookers craned forward to see the incriminating evidence the soldier was about to pull out the basket. I’ll never forget his smirk.
“Why lose an ear for papyrus, boy?” he asked.
“It’s not bread?” I replied.
He laughed, “Scribbles make poor excuses for bread.”
Then, a wave of jostling and shouting, and the crowd parted for six seven-foot-tall spearmen. Into the clearing stepped a figure outfitted entirely in scarlet. Though, I had never seen him before, I knew this was Imhotep: the first prince of Egypt, husband to Pharaoh’s daughter, regent of Alexandria, and, as such, held the power of life and death over all peoples for a hundred leagues. The agora fell silent, and I gawped at him, frightened, as his eyes scanned serenely up and down my starved body, taking in my unshaved scalp, bloody face, and tattered clothes. Prince Imhotep was a slight man, not tall like his guards but handsome. He had a body sharpened from heavy use clad in a scarlet kaftan, and a black satchel, fixed with a turquoise clasp at his hip. In his left hand, he fingered a black leather riding whip a yard long. His face was clean-shaven, carved and framed underneath his nemes. His eyes were cold and inhuman, and he pursed his lips while he studied me.
Suddenly, somehow, in that moment my fear retreated. I discovered I hated him and his kind. I hated his affluence, his expensive clothes, his chiseled looks, and the arrogance he was born too. But most of all, I hated the power he held over me, his assumption of authority, and the truth of his superiority. I concentrated my disgust in my stare. He must have recognized my repulsion in the instant our eyes locked, for he simpered.
The soldier bowed and handed over several papyruses, “My Lord, he stole this thinking it bread.”
Prince Imhotep undid the thread tying one of the rolls. I could feel blood running down my chin. I resisted the urge to lick at it. Imhotep signaled he wanted silence. He began to read.
“Can you read this,” Imhotep asked me. Instead, I pressed my lips shut, trembling underneath. “Boy! Answer me.”
I stayed silent.
“You do as your prince commands, or I will—” threatened the soldier who caught me before Imhotep cut him short.
“Silence!” Imhotep thundered.
He stared at me with contempt and then spoke, “You’re brave. I can see that much, but you’re stupid.”
He snapped his fingers, and the soldier grabbed me by the arm, lifted me to my feet and started to drag me away when we all heard a man cry:
“That’s my son. Please, my prince, have pity on him, he’s only a foolish boy.”
Both Prince Imhotep and the soldier turned toward the man’s voice. As he looked, the soldier detained my left arm with only one of his fists. I twisted my body against his grip, ripped free, fell to the ground, and crawled through the prince’s legs and missing, by inches, his fast-closing grip. I took to my heels and dashed through the crowd.
Behind me, hell itself erupted; the soldier shoved and cursed the people impeding his path. A woman threw a pottered vase. I ducked just in time, avoiding my brains becoming entangled with the falling shards which crashed above me. I juked left and right; I slid through the crowd’s legs; I shoved past stout tradesmen and skirted unsuspecting slaves and the livestock they drove. Men and women, slaves and soldiers, sellers and buyers, all rounded quickly, furious at being so roughly shoved. I dared to look behind me. Only the soldier who caught me earlier pursued me. Prince Imhotep and his bodyguards walked, absentmindedly, the opposite direction. I stopped stunned still. That’s when I caught a fist with my left cheek and toppled into the dirt. I pushed my heel into the man’s kneecap. He screamed. Then, I rolled out of the soldier’s path as he dived to tackle me. I got to my feet again and squirmed through another fast-pressing crowd. I sent carts flying. I shoved an elderly man to the ground busy tying his empty cart to his donkey, seizing it, and then, with all my strength, pushing it into the nearby sheep hurdles. The animals let loose, and the ensuing tumult was chaos.
The soldier’s legs were taken out from under him by the stampede of darting sheep. That’s when I raced down a side alley, bursting, to my surprise, through our city’s great library, and into a crowd of philosophers and wealthy patrons. Then, out the other side, up a wide street, passing between noble houses, I ran until the noise behind me subsided. I turned left into another alley.
I stopped in the doorway of a brothel, recovering my breath. No one was behind me. I leaned my back against the door, struggling to calm my hammering heart. The pain emanating from my jaw threatened my ability to stay conscious. In a flash, a hand wearing three gold rings closed around my mouth and dragged me through the door. I landed on my ass, coughing through a pounding head. My stomach churned. I struggled to stand, but a woman’s heel fixed my hand to a dirty clay floor covered in ragged yellow and green carpets.
A voice whispered, “Stop yelling, you fool.”
Outside the door, a troop of footsteps charged down the alley. Their voices commanding bystanders to stop me. The woman let off my hand and held a single finger over her mouth. I crept to the door and peered through one of its cracks. The soldier I ripped myself from in the agora was leading the others.
“Damn, he has help now,” I said.
“Whatever you did, you won’t be escaping today,” she said.
“Who are you?”
She frowned. “I wouldn’t expect you to recognize me as I—,” she hesitated. “As I am now.”
W. Alexander Dunford I will never forget the television’s blue light that night fifteen years ago. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Blood Diamond played. Outside, beneath black skies, rain pelted our windows and the house’s bones braced against high winds. Thunder shook the walls. It was Father’s idea to watch the movie. He loved violence, and I loved…
I’ll be done with my degree in a few months, and that means my workshop classes will be history. This breaks my heart, as I fear without the structure of “deadlines,” I won’t write as much. I have my local writer’s group, and without school’s work load, I will be able to attend far more regularly. Not to mention, I will attend national conferences, and by spring my book will be finished.
Fortunately, also in the spring, our new car will be delivered.
However, I’m still going to miss my professors. This is why, per my last workshop at school, I’m going to use my project to apply for grad-school—An MFA.
Yes, I’m still weighing attending seminary. My stomach turns and flips and twists and yanks itself as I discern the future. Fortunately, the decision does not need to be made today, tomorrow, or even six-months down the line. Pray for me!
The truth is simple: art demands honesty. We can only create what we know, and what we know depends on what we have experienced, witnessed, and researched.
“…in that moment my fear retreated. I discovered I hated him and his kind. I hated his affluence, his expensive clothes, his chiseled looks, and the arrogance he was born to. But most of all, I hated the power he held over me, his assumption of authority, and the truth of his superiority.”
Derry, New Hampshire was the longtime home of Robert Frost. This poem is in dedication to my favorite poetry book: North of Boston, and his poem October.
Aristotle said, “Memories are the scribes of the soul.” Okay, fine, this is my paraphrase of my own transliteration of his Greek, but this fact remains: Aristotle is right. The purpose of life is not to arrive safely into old-age, but to live presently. Each of us measures our lives in profound highlights. Time flies because we forget the spaces we lived between big moments.
Jesus shared this same point-of-view. The Christian Scriptures—New Testament—teaches us not to even worry about the clothes on our backs and not to worry about tomorrow. These aren’t abstract ideas; these are excerpts of wisdom. They are guideposts on how to live one’s life, if they have the privilege, to live fully.
I cannot and will not count all the times I have failed to live in the present. The task alone would send me into an early grave. However, if I cannot count all the times I have failed to live in the present, I can choose to count when I do live in the here and now. Journaling, for me, is the key.
I have, for as long as I can remember, always wrestled, unable to accept easy answers, life’s grand, unanswerable questions. I am an armchair philosopher, and a man obsessed with the same question ten-year-old Alex asked his grandmother twenty-two-years ago: how do people die happy?
She was stunned, and no clear answer came from that conversation. But I can remember, having now grown up and cut my teeth in this chaotic space we call Earth, a few things she did not say.
She never said money would make me happy. Though, the lack of it was guaranteed to make you miserable. She never said, the right spouse would make you die happy, or even kids that grew up to accomplish feats unimaginable. No, she never, that day over peppermints and coffee, said anything regarding the right job or the right influence. But she did do something, she grabbed her Bible and began teaching me the Lord’s Prayer—KJV version. She did not preach. She demonstrated. She never forced religion. She left the invitation open.
If it wasn’t for her, and for her doing this, I would not be counted among the ranks of the faithful today.
For a long time, every time my sister and I would stay the night, she would help us recite this prayer before bed. See, she knew she didn’t have the answers, but she knew who did, and instead of empty phrases and cliche responses, she pointed me and my sister toward the only one who could help a person to one-day die happy.
Faith is the secret to joy. Service is the key which unlocks heaven’s front gate.
Selfishness, greed, gluttony, and the rest of the deadly sins aren’t sins in abstract, but actual soul killers. In other words, joy stealers. If you live only for yourself and yours, regrets stalk you like shadows.
There are many paths to true joy, but none of them can be walked alone. We must live and love our neighbor and not worry over the future. We need to plan, sure. That is wise, but we cannot make decisions on how we treat one-another based on how it affects our wallets and lifestyle.
This is why a religious devotion to capitalism or any man-made philosophy will always lead us to alienating ourselves from our tribes—our neighbors.
So, again, how do we die happy? I don’t know that answer, but I believe in my heart-of-hearts that if one dies with Jesus on their mind, service and love in their hearts, one dies with profound hope, and, therefore, everlasting joy.
—I’m thinking of writing a poem or series of poems off of this idea. What do you think?
