Can your writing environment be a factor in your writing? The answer’s obvious, if say, you were trying to write romantic sonnets, while two feet from your hair-raised head a teeth-bared pit bull strained against a cracking leash. That’s a bit extreme of course. But might you write halfway better if half of the pit bull’s teeth were removed? How would a purring kitten in the room affect your writing?

I broach the topic because I write in somewhat of an unusual environment: attacked by plaid. That’s the interior of my 1966 Airstream Globetrotter in the photo above. It’s got a good broadband connection (though it’s only sends Internet packets from the 60s, so there’s a lot of The Man from Uncle coming through) and it’s downright cozy. I live in a semi-rural environment, so out of its many windows I see mostly fields, right now filled with high grasses—and the skunk I missed stepping on by two feet the other day.

Since I write pretty regularly for Airstream Life magazine (and for the Airstreamer newsletter) I’ve written a lot about the feeling of being in an old Airstream. So, to quote myself:

The Airstream’s classic silvery-egg shapeliness has been refined, modified and expanded over time, but that bullet-bodied essence has retained its original appeal. There are certain shapes that beguile the eye, winning our affections in a swift, unconscious bond that escapes any internal editor. Perhaps more intimately, there’s something a little womb-like about the trailers; they curl around you when you’re relaxing inside. That singular shape still rewards the eye with a tingle of approval; every glance reinforces the sense of timeless design.

I do feel that congenial coccooning in the old trailer, and I think it’s a fine environment for writing: there’s the sound of the mockingbirds (and sometimes those damn roosters), the wind swaying the shifting grasses, and that settled sense of an old vehicle that’s still solid and sound. I think well in the old Stream, and it feels like an atmosphere conducive to good keyboarding.

But some writers do well with an entirely different ambience. I know writers who love to go to active coffee shops for their scribblings, needing the murmurs of people and the spoosh of the espresso machine to percolate their thoughts. Other people make sure there ARE no windows in their writing room, so distraction can’t seep in. I’m one of those people who never writes with music playing, or at least music with lyrics, because I’m lured by the words, and my writing thought train derails.

I love to write travel pieces, but don’t like to write the actual sentence-by-sentence of an article on the road. So I’ll write notes and a few sentences in the hotel room, but I always wait to get back home to put together the full composition. Of course, I do some of my writing in the house too, because that’s where the bourbon is. I return to my Airstream when I want a room of my own.

Where do you hang your writing hat?

Have you ever noticed that the way certain things are packaged or presented instantly influences your feelings about them? In this age of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink or the myriad of studies about marketing preferences or tastes, savvy shoppers are aware that a rice package that has an artfully designed classic “homey,” or retro or “Miz Maybelle’s Cajun Rice Paddie” look might contain nothing better inside than old-school Rice-a-Roni (which was never really embraced by San Francisco for its alleged treatness to begin with).

Yet, even if we know that the packaging is pointedly positioned to persuade, it’s hard to be objective. The photo above shows the packaging for a pair of bath soaps, sandwiching a box of individually wrapped chocolates. Indeed, the soaps were quite nice, and the chocolates delightful, but their artful and expensive packaging immediately disposed me favorably toward them, psychically relieving me of at least a smidgen of critical objectivity.

Apple does this very well with their packaging, everything done just so, from the typography to the way the electronic components rest snugly in their recessed cubbies. The “Tiles” box above is indicative: these weren’t mere chocolate squares, but “tiles.” This told you they were special little chocolates, with a bit of architectural snootiness. The packaging, of course, tells a story. Here’s an interesting take from Seth Godin on putting a worldview in your packaging.

And WTF Does This Have to Do with Writing?
Glad you asked. One of the chunky nuggets of advice you’ll get about sending a query to a magazine editor is that you lead your query with your article lead. Write the actual first paragraph of the article you intend to write and that’s what your editor-in-waiting looks at when they open your cleverly crafted email. Your product’s packaging is immediately in their face, so that they know your article is “Dreadnought Dave’s Eye-Searing Hot Sauce” or “Winsome Winnie’s Willow Bark Soap.” They can taste your writing immediately, not having to wade through “Dear Editor Toadstool: I’d like to write a piece for Amalgamated Amalgams on surfactants that subside, and rarely surface. I’d cover these fascinating points…”

Here’s a query lead I used about a proposed article on bathtub distilling that did grab an editor and that indeed did begin the published article itself:

Maybe it’s the down economy, maybe it’s a renewal of that do-it-yourself ethic that characterizes this country, or maybe it’s because it’s a closed- door, wink-wink, just-the-other-side-of-legal enterprise, but there’s a resurgence of home and hobby spirits distillers. Your neighbor might not make home-brewed hooch, but there’s a fair chance he knows how to get a hold of a bottle or two.

This “in media res” style of querying has worked for me a number of times. However, I’ve lately been shopping an article on roller derby gals for which the query begins thusly:

What’s got a raucous crowd, a heart-pounding pace requiring strength, stamina and mad skills, an undertone of potential violence, a flash of spandexed sexuality and enough tattoos to open a carney parlor? Why, roller derby, of course—and Santa Cruz, California roller derby in particular. Roller derby has speed-skated its way to tremendous popularity in the US over the past decade, returning from what was represented as a sort of underclass—though popular—theatrical spectacle in the 50s and 60s. There are leagues all over the country, and national organizations such as the Women’s Fast Track Derby Association, which counts nearly 100 leagues under its skates.

Disclaimer: All You Editors Out There About to Receive Queries: I Don’t Mean You
That is how I’d like to start the actual article, because I think it’s vivid, particular and expressive. But, I’ve sent that query out to 12 separate relevant publications, and only received a single reply. (The fact that many magazines or papers often don’t even send out a polite—or even impolite—”no” these days should be the topic of another post.) Though I do like the feeling of the query lead, and think it tells an editor what the article would feel like, perhaps something is lacking. Or perhaps it simply doesn’t fit the editor’s calendar, the magazine’s style, or any of a number of reasons, quality of expression notwithstanding, for which a piece doesn’t flutter the hearts (assuming editors have them) of your magazinish recipients.

I have a small collection of liquor flasks, most of which are very nice pieces of metal tooling. Many of them are quite old, with beautiful engraving or filigree, delightful in their heavy feeling in the hand. But I have a couple that also look quite nice, but there’s something off: the base metal is cheaper and lighter, the metalwork not finished with flair or with that quiet competence that indicates quality. So maybe there’s something cheesy about the roller derby lead I’m not seeing.

Keep sending those queries out and keep tailoring their packaging with your writer’s eye.

Well, I’m not really referring to writers of diminutive stature. I don’t really have an opinion on them (though people with very tiny hands scare me). What I’m talking about is the art of brevity, specifically regarding paring down your work so that the point is not merely sharp, but that the point can be seen beneath the urge to put frilly hats on it. This is a black art for me, since I often take the Dickensian approach to getting to my point, larding my work with parentheticals and asides, long trilling notes and meanderings.

Of course, writing that has flowery little hillocks in it rather than a flat-line speedway can have its charms, but in this matter I’m speaking of taking the cold scalpel to your writing, when leanness offers an advantage. There’s a famous quote by Blaise Pascal that captures the spirit of my slant:

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter.” (This quote is often attributed to Mark Twain; Twain merely penned 19,324 other oft-cited quotes, and was too busy playing with his cats to get to this one.)

What ol’ Blaise was getting at is that it’s often much more difficult to restrain your writing, hitting just the high notes, rather than putting in both the trumpet solo, the tinny triangle and the banging cowbell (with apologies to the “more cowbell” advocates).

Stories Under the Knife
Not long ago, I had to trim almost 500 words from a short story in order to submit it to a contest requesting stories 2,500 words or shorter. I groaned about it, as much because cutting that sharply from something is not only hard work, but because I was convinced that the gouging would gut the story, leaving only its fluttering pulse. Wrong.

Well, right about the hard part: it is work to delete from, shift sentences around in and reshape a written piece, particularly when you are prejudiced regarding its already inviolate integrity. But as for gutting the story, not at all—the work was distinctly improved, the dialogue more snappy, transitions sharper, fewer flat spots. I was surprised.

I didn’t remove the 500 words all at once. I initially looked for bigger chunks for deletion, maybe even an entire paragraph or two, but the editing didn’t turn out that easy. However, I did find full sentences that my editor’s eye winked away, descriptive material that was added (but unnecessary) color. And I moved from there to cutting out phrases, removing things that seemed parenthetical (because parentheticals are often puffery, don’t you agree?) or just word-candy to feed my sweet tooth.

Sifting with a Finer Sieve
It’s when you get to the “I still need 75 words removed” point that it’s sweaty: but that impels you to see that a sentence reading, “At sunset I wept, with feeling, wept with ferocity,” might be better served as “At sunset, I wept.” Not Hemingway, but still better than condensed milk. (Parenthetically—but not pathetically—aside: that isn’t an actual example of an edited story sentence. You’ll have to pay me for those.)

Writing succintly is a fun and focused exercise. Here are some examples of six-word stories I wrote for a Narrative magazine contest:

Finally published. No readers. Quietly perished.


Her crash survivor: James Dean doll.


Balding. No prospects. Wear brighter socks!


Cruise ship canapé: tight tennis whites


That smell. Where? Maddening! Soul rot…

And here’s another attempt at cracking Narrative’s 160-word iStories:

Cold Stone, Warm Tears

He patted the dirt around the stone. The hand-tools were fine, but he liked to touch the earth last—it sealed the deal. He pulled out his notebook and scribbled:

“Precious gift”

OK, he thought. Not as sharp as “We are lost” from the Russian kid’s stone last week. He’d collected the tombstone statements from children’s graves for a while, soon after beginning his gravedigger’s job. The first one—“God’s garden has need of little flowers”—made him laugh, so he wrote it down. He probably had 70 or so now. Maybe he could publish a little book, maybe sell it in the parlor. He could use the cash.

The next day, the call: set the stone for a nine-month-old. “So small, so sweet, so soon.” Good one. He read it twice, a third time.

He buried the notebook under the stone, and patted it in. Little guys need their rest, he thought.

Who cares if Narrative didn’t think that much of them (the pigs). Short-form writing is good practice at focus and intent, nonetheless.

Examples For, Examples Against
I subscribe to Bruce Holland Rogers’s “Three Stories a Month” emailings, and I marvel at how often he can summon up sharp feeling in a short piece, and across so many genres. But sometimes, editing away some of a story’s skin can remove a bit of bone too. I took 400 words off of this story, The Vial, in order to reach the desired flash-fiction 1,000. It did place among the Smashwords contest winners, but it felt like some of its windows had been covered in comparison to the original. (Note: the Smashwords link goes to the free, 40 flash-fiction stories ebook download.)

But editing well, whether fiction or non, can often boost a tale’s flavor. And if you can’t stand to cut your own typewritten toenails, just ask one of your literate friends to do it. They’ll cleave away entire characters and just laugh at your bleatings of pain…

Writers are made, not born. Writers are born, not made. Writers are born without maids. Whichever nature/nurture boxing glove you decide to swing in that battle, I hold that there are some distinct methods to cultivate a writer’s eye, and that those cultivations can result in sweet writerly fruits. (Please excuse that that last sentence mixed its metaphors with a waffle iron rather than a whisk.)

Our lovely kitty image above is figuratively indicative of my intent: as a writer, you must always look at situations with your writer’s eyes. But those eyes must have a different focus, while still giving you a clear picture. Before I get into the wherefores of bicameral write-sight, let’s underscore one fundamental: there are stories EVERYWHERE. No matter if you’re a poet, a journalist, a short-story scribe or a Tweetin’ fool, stories saturate your day—they are in your neighbor’s mail (don’t look without permission), your boss’s impatient gait, how your daughter wrapped your Mother’s Day present, why coins feel cold, a bat’s favorite breakfast, and how endless calls from AT&T about expanding your network offerings make you want to scream.

Stories Are Everywhere
Stories are not the province of the high and mighty movers and shakers; stories rest there too, but they are much the stuff of the commonplace, the cupboard, the errant gesture, the box left on the bus bench. You just need a writer’s eyes to see them.

So back to those bicameral distinctions: You need what I like to call a crazy eye and a calm eye. One eye is your open-to-all experiences self, your id eye, and the other is objective, your superego eye. A small example (and in a larger sense, how a stories lurk in everything): You see see a brightly-colored bird. Your crazy eye opens—is there a story there on how the male birds are most often the ones with the wild plumage? Maybe an article on who the Audubon of today might be, if such a specimen exists. Branch out: think about your first flight on an airplane. Could one of your characters have an overwhelming aversion to flying on airplanes, so that a scene on one in which he breaks down is pivotal to a story? What did Leonardo da Vinci have in mind when he designed that prototype flying machine?

Rely on Your Crazy Eye, Collect from Your Calm Eye
Let your crazy eye go crazy. Your crazy eye is a speculator, a dreamer, the one that swigs the moonshine even when the lip of the bottle is mossy. When your crazy eye whispers (which is quite a feat for an eye), listen.

But you also need your calm eye. That eye questions and discerns—where might there be a market for that story, what’s the natural lead for the story, do I really want to write that story, is there even a story there? Both eyes are your friend, and both are necessary for seeing that there’s a story in everything, but that that story shouldn’t necessarily be written by you. But you never know unless you open your eyes to it. (Personally, I like the crazy eye—it will sometimes make a crumpled bag in the street appear to be a body, before your wise eye tells you no.)

Your third eye, of course, is your calm Buddha nature, the eye on the face you had before you were born. That eye judges not. (Though it likes strong shots of whiskey—oh, wait, that’s somebody else.) Keep all your eyes open, and story ideas will flood your inner screening room. Some of those blended visions will find their merry way to the page.

Tribute to the Old Man
Finally, I must salute Mr. Bob (Sarge) Bentley, who turned 93 today. My dad, a good citizen, a good guy, who has made many people happy over many years. I love him, and I’m honored to be his son.

The image here is a photo of one of my favorite shirts. If it’s not clear to you, it’s Colonel Sanders with a maniacal look, with the unsubtle graphical suggestion that the good Colonel has had a snootful of LSD. That amuses me on several levels, but the one that’s instructive here is based on a two-step of moving from familiar to farcical. You can employ this comedic trip of incongruity in your writing (though never in your cooking).

Of course, the expression and interpretation of humor is as subjective as declaring that the piccolo is king of wind instruments, hands-down. (Never forget the pan pipe!) What some folks think is funny is just whistling wind to others: Some jokes might have your entire Mongol horde spitting out their teeth, while another of the same caliber might only make your cat laugh. For some it’s poop jokes, for some it’s palindromes, and never the twain shall meet. (Except for this instance, since “poop” is a palindrome.)

So, neatly sidestepping the sheer subjectivity (and the poop) of our subject, I’ll concentrate on a single comedic element that works for me as a writer, and as a consumer of comedy: incongruity. It’s as broad as the princess with the corn stuck in her teeth, or as peculiar as a man in a business suit with briefcase, walking a crocodile, or as off-balance as a garden gnome giving a speech on metaphysics to an assemblage of frogs.

The Setup
Dave Barry is a master of the incongruous in his writing, and a lot of the funny in what he does is structured on a one-two-three of situations or circumstances, where the one and the two are prosaic, but the three is preposterous—but the preposterousness only works because the one and the two are banal enough to lull the reader, and the three puts a moustache on the coffee cup. What’s THAT doing there?

Here’s a Barry quote from an interview that asked him what book changed his life. (Note, Barry has said or written much funnier stuff than this, but this is a good example of the structure of what I’m talking about).

Barry’s reply: “The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoevsky. I was supposed to read it my freshman year in college, but it’s 18 million pages long and I could never get past the first 43. Nevertheless I wrote a paper about it, and I got an OK grade, which taught me that I could write convincingly about things I did not remotely understand. This paved the way for my career in journalism.”

Emily Dickinson, Notable Joker
It’s the old ba-da-bing, done twice here by Dave. Straight answer, a bit of elaboration, and then a kicker; rinse and repeat. The incongruity I’m talking about is often a matter of rhythm: you set up the reader by offering some conventional understanding, and then you goose that understanding with a cheeky thrust. Though it’s not always going for the belly laugh; sometimes it’s more a “Huh? Ah, you’re nuts.” But nuts in a winning way. It’s a variant of ol’ Emily Dickinson’s “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

So exactly HOW do you do this? Sheesh, I’m no Svengali; when you try to write funny, it often comes out a miserable hairball-like thing, shaggy and sad. It’s more of an attitude or perspective. Check out this article I wrote on the travails of travel a bit back; it has some of what I mean. Sometimes it’s as “simple” as that Jack Benny stare and shrug that coming from another man would only produce indifference, but from Benny it was hysterical. And sometimes you have to go out on a limb: you have to give an avuncular icon dangerous drugs. It’s the Colonel that gets fried, not that chicken of his.

Bonus Colonel Sanders Sighting!
One reason why I probably find the Colonel reeling on chemicals comic is that when I was 11 or 12, I was selling candy bars outside the local liquor store (it had lots of traffic) in my hometown, fundraising for my Catholic grammar school. I was with my best friend, who can verify: we sold a candy bar to Colonel Sanders. I’m not talking about a guy dressed up like Colonel Sanders: this WAS the Colonel, with the white suit and string tie, the man himself. He was alone, and we gawked at him, and I mumbled my “Wanna buy a school candy bar?” pitch to him as he passed into the store, to no effect.

But when he came out, he stopped and chatted for a moment, and he bought a bar, paying five times as much as it cost (and, like most fundraising candy, it cost five times as much as it should to begin with). The Colonel popped it into his bag (which probably held some of the distilled elements of his secret herbs and spices recipe), and went on his merry way. As a kid, it was a crowning moment for me. I now like to think of the Colonel in chicken heaven, dropping acid every day, and musing over his chance encounters with youths in front of liquor stores. Incongruous, but funny. At least to me.