Writing with more than words

Sitting around a conference table the other day, several of us were talking about the difficulty of communicating with a group of people by way of a conference call. You can’t see their faces, their body language, anything about their reactions to someone else’s words, all those little ways people communicate their meanings “between the lines” of spoken speech. Being certain of everyone’s intentions will take time, a bit of work, back and forth questions and answers. Of course, if several people are on one continent and several others on a different continent, that’s probably the best you can do.

Today as I recalled the discussion we’d had about this, I started thinking about the humorous serial mystery story I’m writing.

You can say “She is pretty,” with a matter-of-fact tone, and the listener interprets your sentence to mean you think that “She,” whoever She is, is pretty. If you say it with your eyes closed and a big smile on your face, the listener knows you think She’s pretty, really more than pretty, beautiful even.

However, if you say it while rolling your eyes, the listener knows you think that She is just the opposite of pretty.

How do you get those body language nuances to communication into written speech? Writing with more than words takes some work, it takes some meditation, planning, editing.

Descriptions help.

“Can I help you?” she said, her brow wrinkled, a pencil clenched between her teeth. Her hands fiddled with a stack of grammar school papers she was grading, trying to keep them from escaping the surface of her desk.

Well, obviously this person doesn’t really want to help you, she wishes you’d go away and leave her alone.

“Can I help you?” she asked, smiling as she put her pencil down and swiveled her desk chair around to face me.

This is a welcoming greeting, an offer to help that seems genuine.

Of course, when you’re writing mysteries, or spy novels, or adventures, descriptive phrases, descriptions, adjectives and adverbs may change the scene altogether.

“Can I help you?” she asked, smiling as she put her pencil down and swiveled her desk chair slightly to face forward. Her left hand beneath the edge of her desk first pressed the hidden button to summon the security guard, then barely moved to grasp the small handgun she kept in an alcove beside the button, just in case.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to be more observant as I go about my daily routines, notice things and file them away in the back of my mind for use in writing. Suggestions of hidden meanings or hidden motives, hidden in a facial expression, the shifting of a gaze or shrug of a shoulder.

All should make for more interesting reading.

Reverse Forward Reverse

My nephew Stephen Motte has 18 of his original artworks on display in a solo show at the Florence Museum from July 2 through August 29, 2007. The piece displayed in this photo is titled “Reverse Forward Reverse,” a work in graphite on paper.

As I looked at it, at first I was puzzled, then a bit intrigued. Pencil marks? Strands of hair, maybe? I examined all the other pieces but I came back to this one, stood and stared, and gave it some thought.

The topmost panel shows flowing movement in two streams, forward and reverse. Double-mindedness… Indecision. The center panel, however, shows strands beginning to turn, flowing together. Going the same direction. Progress.

The lower panel, however, shows no movement. A standstill. If you’re standing still, you’re being carried backwards. Reverse. An apt description of life, I thought.

I invested in this piece and look forward to hanging it in my office after the show. Thank you, Stephen.

So far, so good

Three things have required me to read and learn a lot in the last two months or so. How to research, write, compose, and publish a local newsletter for the OM Ships Partner Ministries office was the first, and the first issue of Carolina Connection was published the middle of June. The second one will go out in another week or so.

The second was to learn how to use the software and add local pages to the worldwide OM Ships website. That took a bit more concentration, but the first pages are up and ready to peruse, with news and prayer items being added weekly. There’s a link on the welcome page to the first newsletter, actually: Carolina Connection pages of OM Ships website.

The third was a different type of program, an e-mail update program that resides on the internet itself. It was much easier to learn how to use, although thinking of news items for weekly updates takes some thought.

The content of all of these, newsletter, web pages and emails, are items of local interest (meaning North and South Carolina, mostly) that have to do with the OM Ships Partner Ministries office. Of course, that certainly includes information about the ships themselves, since so many people hereabouts aren’t familiar with them.

Slowly I’ve been closing out Executive Services, Inc. after twenty-two years.  I still do some medical transcription and probably will for a while, plus a small amount of general typing for customers I’ve known a long time.  No walk-in work, though.  No new clients.

It’s been an odd transition, working as a volunteer in a missions office where our director is not in the country right now. Everyone has a different sphere of work and is pretty much responsible for his or her own assigned tasks.

Over the next few weeks some construction will be going on inside the building as some space is converted into offices — more people will be arriving to work in the Florence office and there is nowhere to put a desk for them yet.  We may all be brandishing paint brushes for a few days, who knows.