guest blogger: my sheepdog

Brian, the writer, is at it again. Sitting there. Looking at the computer. Staring out the window. Looking at the computer. He doesn’t even see anything when he looks out the window. There are some perfectly good birds out there that certainly need chasing. Not to mention one of those mangy little squirrels hopping around the yard with impudence. He doesn’t even notice them. He doesn’t hear anything either. There’s a German Shepard barking from up the road, a woman yelling at her daughter, a motorcycle backfiring. I would love to bark at these sounds, let them and the world know I’m alive, but he’d get all upset because he’s BUSY. Right, BUSY. A dog must have more control than a human. They can make all kinds of noise and no one complains.

Nevertheless, I understand dreams. I have them myself. I dream of the old days. Once my ancestors took care of the sheep and fought the sharp teeth and claws of hungry wolves. There weren’t many sheep lost when a sheepdog was around. We were made for it.

I can see that Brian is made for what he does. In the end, doing what you’re made for makes you happy. Not every day. Not every moment. But, yes, happy. Certainly this was once true of my ancestors. We gathered the sheep together and watched over even the weakest and in the end doing what we were made to do made us happy. If I could write, that’s what I would write about, the loss of this noble profession. And perhaps the taste of fried chicken and the fat from steak and, naturally, Alpo Choice Cuts from a can.

Still, sometimes I dream of sheep though I’ve never actually seen one in real life. I dream I’m in a grassy meadow, a full moon above me and bright twinkling stars in a black sky, and somewhere far off a wolf howls. My sheep begin to shiver and make frightened sounds and I rise from where I lay and walk among them and I say, “That wolf will not get you. Not that wolf. Not that one.” And I feel them calm, feel the calm spread just as the fear was spreading a second before. Is this what it’s like I wonder? Is this why he sits at his desk all those hours?

revision

The Sheepdog is at it again. More non-verbal communication. He put his gigantic head on my lap while I was writing the other day. You, of course, do not know my sheepdog so let me just say he’s got a cartoon head, one much too large for his quite adequately sized body. He’s about ninety-five pounds, but that head definitely provides disproportionate poundage to the whole. Anyway, he also has round cartoonish eyes. He may, in fact, have escaped from a cartoon, but that’s another post. He stared up at me, his big head heavy on my lap, his big eyes focused.

Such a look signals, usually, a basic need. He needs out, needs food, needs a walk, needs attention. But this time I sensed something else. Naturally I looked to the manuscript on the computer screen before me because sheepdogs, at least my sheepdog, is forever being cryptic about his writing advice.

What was wrong? Of course-- not enough detail. The sheepdog had somehow, with the keen insight of sheepdogs, seen the thinness of description and physical detail in the scene I was writing. Sheepdogs are naturally gregarious and, in my opinion, a bit over the top in their moment-to-moment living. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I tend toward the other end of the spectrum. A little too understated. Perhaps in life. Definitely in fiction. So, though he exists in perpetual overstatement, his criticism in this case was right on.

Since I know I have this weakness(among others), it’s one of the things I look for when I revise. One of the ways I try to work on my weakness with physical detail is to look for places in the manuscript that seem thin. I think of these as doors I can enter and add specific detail. When I go through the manuscript I look for as many doors as I can.

But what I’m really getting at here is every writer has strengths and weaknesses and if you can discover some of your weaknesses and isolate them, then it can be helpful in revision. Sometimes I will go through a manuscript just looking for one thing.

sheepdog and writing

My sheepdog reminded me of something the other day. His comments are subtle in the way of a Tibetan monk, one grown wise with meditation. He doesn’t actually talk to me, of course, because that would mean I was, well, insane. No. But he does communicate.

I was reading my manuscript out loud and he, his name is Merlin, fell asleep. Merlin is not a quiet sleeper. He snores like a chainsaw. He made it hard to read.

I stroked my chin and contemplated the meaning of those booming breaths, his closed eyes, his outstretched paws. It was revealed to me. I saw. Yes, he was reminding me of one of the cardinal rules about writing. Do not be boring. When you’re revising, remember that there is a reader (most likely not a wise sheepdog or a Tibetan monk, but still) and that you want, no you need, that reader to keep turning the page. It might seem obvious but it’s easy to forget that one aspect of writing is to entertain. Whatever other literary heights you hope to scale, you’d better make sure your work has the virtue of being interesting or all will be for naught.

Great writers can get away with anything, but the rest of us have to be careful about self-indulgent rambles. Long asides or lengthy internal monologues can often be boring, too. What you really have to watch out for is weak selectivity. Don’t throw everything you’ve got into the story. You will be like someone at a party who tells you a long, long story about their summer vacation, unselectively giving useless detail after useless detail. They will have you yawning before they’ve hit the midway point.