Post #64 – Memoir and Fiction, Writing Alchemy – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
“I bought Writing Alchemy months ago and love it. So I am buying this copy for a friend.” – Barbara P.
Ever since we announced our Pre-Cyber Monday Sale Week (November 19th to November 26th) we’ve been hearing from you. Your words have been encouraging and gratifying. And some of you are buying for friends so you can share the writing lessons and the free gift we’re offering this season. But there’s only a few days left.
When you buy a copy of Writing Alchemy: How to Write Fast and Deep, we’re giving you FREE, unlimited, online video access to ALL 21 lessons in The [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop. Video access regularly sells for $109, but you get everything for the price of a paperback.
If you already have either Writing Alchemy or The [Essential] videos…we have gifts and options for you. Buy Writing Alchemy for yourself and get the videos as your gift. Buy a second copy for a friend, and you both get the videos. If you already have video access, we’ll give you one of our coaching classes…free. We explain everything about Writing Alchemy and The [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop videos here…just click. You still have SIX days to get your free gift.
And thanks for your support and encouragement.
Putting Writing Alchemy to the Test
As we’ve explained, one of the benefits of working with Writing Alchemy is how it helps you get into your story and find the best way to tell it. For fun, I took the scene at the end of Monday’s story about Niki’s “emergency” and the cuckoo clock and applied the lesson on dialogue. Here’s that scene after I Deconstructed for dialogue.
“Is it here?”
“Well hi to you, too.”
“Sorry, Moo, I’m excited. My cuckoo clock is actually here.” Niki crossed the kitchen and gave Mommy a hug and kiss. “How are you?
“Good. Did you drive or take the train down from Boston?”
“Drove…so I can take my clock back. It’ll look great in my apartment. Where–”
“In your room.”
“Did you open it?”
“No, it’s yours. But I think you’d better go find Daddy before you open it. After all, he paid for it…for your European emergency. I think he’s in the workshop.”
“Okay, okay. Is this going to be a joke at my expense for the next 20 years?”
“Well, I sort of think the expense was your father’s. Just be glad that we’re all laughing about it now…and that Daddy didn’t make you pay him back.”
“All right. I’ll go get him.”
“And find your brother, too. We’re all anxious to see your clock.”
Niki shot out the back door. She was down the steps and across the lawn to the little workshop in no time, rounding up family and herding them into her bedroom as quickly and proficiently as an Australian Sheep Dog.
“Wow,” Niki caught her breath. “It’s huge.” In fact, the box wasn’t a cardboard box at all. It was a wooden shipping crate.
As she stood gawking, Daddy handed her a crowbar he’d grabbed from the workshop. “You’ll need this.” Seeing the confusion in his daughter’s eyes, he pointed to a small gap between the lid and the base of the crate. “Try right here. Slip the crowbar in as far as it will go. Then push down with all your weight.”
The lid creaked. The nails screeched and slowly, grudgingly began to give way. But the top didn’t pop off. “Now what?” she asked.
“Move the bar over here, and do it again.” The lid moved a little more.
“Now here?” Niki was more confident now and grunted as she pushed down hard. This time the lid separated from the box.
“I think you’ve got it,” Daddy said. “You can do the rest with your hands. Just pull.”
As the lid came away, everyone crowded close to get a first look at the magnificent clock that had been Niki’s idea of an emergency. After six months, the shock of what she’d done—using the American Express card Daddy had given her in case of emergency to buy a $500 cuckoo clock in Bavaria—had given way to concerns that the clock would never arrive and that the shopkeeper had taken advantage of her. As the lid came away, everyone leaned over Niki’s shoulder. All they saw was excelsior. Piles of excelsior.
“Wow, Niki, you didn’t get a clock at all,” my brother said. “All you got were the wood shavings from the clockmaker’s floor.”
“Very funny.” Niki reached in to the box with both hands grabbed the excelsior and gently pulled it back. There it was. It was big, more than two feet tall, just as Niki had said, and it had a stag on top and rabbits and birds on the sides. But the rest was mostly a leaf design. The carving was good but not intricate. Daddy looked over at Moo and shrugged. Dovell said nothing.
“It’s very nice,” Moo said, breaking the silence and signaling to everyone else that they should say something.
“I like the stag on top. And it’s huge,” added Dovell.
“Here, let me help you pick it up. We’ll put it on the wall here temporarily so we can try it out and hear the cuckoo.”
“I don’t understand.” Niki looked into the crate then stood up and backed away without even touching the clock. “It’s nice, but it’s not anything like the one I saw in the shop. This is not the one I bought.”
No one said a word. Moo patted her shoulder.
Daddy moved in closer. He lifted the clock out of the crate and set it on the bed. “I’ll go get some tools. I’ll be right back.”
For the next hour, Daddy helped Niki fasten the clock securely to the wall above the foot of her bed. They attached the weights, pulled the chains to start the internal mechanism. With Daddy’s instruction, Niki began the process of moving the minute hand around and around to set the time.
Moo and Dovell, in the kitchen by then, could hear the little cuckoo as Niki moved the minute hand past the hour and half hour marks. “Every time she hears that cuckoo, she’s going to be reminded.”
“Of what?” my brother asked.
“That you can’t be too careful. And that what you may think is an emergency may just be a whim…a passing desire. Niki’s learned a valuable lesson today; it will do her well in life. She’ll be a lot more cautious.”
Moo was right. The lesson did serve her well although it was months before she moved the clock to her apartment in Boston. While disappointed that it was not the clock she’d seen in the shop, it was a nice clock. And Niki grew to love it. She still does.
Dialogue and Writing Alchemy
Want to know more about effective use of dialogue to move your story forward? Then Click Here. Dialogue is one of the five essential elements of writing, and our new book, Writing Alchemy: How to Write Fast and Deep, delves into the secrets of crafting it.
Remember, our Pre-Cyber-Monday sale is in-progress right now. Until Monday, you get our free gift of The [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop (unlimited access to all 21 video lessons plus the valuable workbook, regularly priced at $109) for the price of our new book, Writing Alchemy.
Be sure to pass this on to your writing friends. The offer ends soon.
