Front Row Lit offers professional insight on writing tips and tricks to make your next project better.

By Ralph Fletcher

I’m not a big believer in “story starters”. I believe that the best ideas are living inside you. Your challenge is to dig them out. Do the writing only you can do. But every writer gets stuck from time to time so I’ve included a few ideas to jump-start your imagination.

You might try to write about:
* Family story
* A particular tradition in your family.
* An artifact (arrowhead, ring, antique, etc.). Important objects in our lives often provide excellent material to write about.
* Special place: special room, attic nook, inside of a tree, scary closet. You might start by quickly sketching a map of a house full of memories. Mark those rooms where something important happened to you.
* Brother, sister, or special relative. Remember: think small. Focus on one aspect of that person, or one experience you had with him or her.
* Your place in the family. Are the oldest kid in your family? The youngest? Are you a middle child? An only child? Were you adopted?
* Best friend. (Did you ever get in trouble?)
* Moving. Did you leave behind a best friend when you moved from your old house?
* A disastrous time you had at camp or on a family vacation.
* Horrible haircut (or other mortifying experience)
* An injury. Did you ever have to go to the hospital?
* Important first: your first day in school, the first time you rode a two-wheeler, etc.
* Favorite pet, or a pet you once had.
* When your family changed: your brother went off to college, grandma came to live with you, etc.
* What you are (or used to be) afraid of.
* One thing you never want to do again!

Tips courtesy of http://www.ralphfletcher.com/tips.html

The year was 2004. During the spring and summer the Iraqi nation was overwhelmed with violence. The nation’s Shiites and Sunnis headlined the sectarian fighting. The Army of Iraq had been disbanded by the United States Proconsul. The results of his actions were infusing a large number of angry young men into the streets of the population centers in Iraq. These men had no jobs skills, no jobs, and no prospects for employment. These men were literally angry in the streets. The clergy fueled their anger which developed into a rage and campaign for jihad against the United States and all “occupation forces”.

By August 2004, Muqtada Al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric, called upon thousands of Mahdi Militia, his armed followers and de facto private army, to resist the occupation. Fighting would break out in several locations. The holy city of Najaf, the site of the largest Moslem cemetery in the world, and the Imam Ali Mosque were major sites of fighting. U.S. forces found themselves fighting in 120-degree heat. The battleground was through a tangle of crypts, mausoleums, and crumbling graves. The fight was rough. It had the religious zealots against the motivated and disciplined United States Army and Marine Corps troopers. It makes for a spellbinding account of Americans in battle.

The book itself is excellent. Dick Camp tells an excellent story. The quality of the book is remarkable. I am referring to everything from the writing, the large amount of high quality color pictures, and even quality of the paper the book on which the book is printed.

Review courtesy of www.keplersmilitaryhistorybookreviews.com

By Jen Schiffer

He tapped his yellowed fingernails on the table by his bed

And he looked stronger and more purposeful with every word he said.

He told me age crept up on him, and how it caught him by surprise

And I took his warning straight to heart as he stared into my eyes.

He said “I know you’re having fun right now, with adulthood on the brink

But I hope you understand me, dear, it’s later than you think.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that my hair was black and thick

And the only illness I could claim was when vodka made me sick.

I had all my life before me, with no dependent kids or wife

I was ready to take on the world, to take on this splendid life.

It seemed I hadn’t blinked my eyes before my job consumed my time

I was serving out my sentence before I had done the crime.

My twenties had betrayed me; my thirties were a blur

My middle ages were upon me, and that was all I could endure.

Before I even had a clue, I was captive to a chair

My body had grown old too fast, but my mind was all still there.

\I tell you this as warning; take my words for what they’re worth

Make sure you know life’s precious, your time limited on Earth.”

I focused on his frail old frame as he leaned to take a drink

His words have echoed since that day, “It’s later than you think.”

By Allison O’Connor

The youngest of four daughters in an old, celebrated St. Louis family of prominent journalists and politicians on one side, debutante balls and equestrian trophies on the other, Jeanne Darst grew up hearing stories of past grandeur. And as a young girl, the message she internalized was clear: while things might be a bit tight for us right now, it’s only temporary. Soon her father would sell the Great American Novel and reclaim the family’s former glory.

Fiction Ruined My Family is more than a memoir, to me. It’s more than comedy or tragedy. I’m going to go so far as to say that Jeanne Darst is the female David Sedaris. Her story-telling is a bit different, true, but her voice is much the same. She’s charming and likeable, yet blunt and vulgar at times. Which meant, of course, that I loved this book!

As a writer who never seems to write, I could really appreciate Jeanne’s loving, yet frusrated, description of her writer father. His love of good books and ‘the story’ behind everything is something I could relate to. In fact, his willingness to work for his dream, regardless of cost, was something I admired. Yet, nothing more than a few articles ever really materialized for the man. 

Then Darst shows the true story of how the starving artist lifestyle affects a family. The romance of a creative existence dwindles with each painful retelling of poverty and, at times, despair.

Jeanne Darst’s parents both grew up comfortably. Her mother grew up well-off, and expected a similar lifestyle as an adult. The fact that her father’s writing career never flourished could not put a damper on her mother’s desire to live the lavish lifestyle, to which she seemed entitled.  When Darst’s father decided it was time to uproot the family from St. Louis and move them to a ‘farm’ that in reality ended up being more like a commune where artists went to languish.  Her father’s intention was to write his big break-out novel. Then the family would move back to St. Louis and go back to the life they’d always known.

Not only did they never return to St. Louis, but the lifestyle they once knew was never to return. When grandmother (Nonnie) died, Jeanne’s mother inherited some money to keep hersel and the girls afloat, but also seemed to inherit a new personality. One that apparently drank more, cried more, and smiled less. Broke and unsuccessful at his attemp to write a novel, Jeanne’s father took a job at CBS, but never really got his act together enough to write more.

As Jeanne Darst takes us on her life’s journey, she unabashedly shares her stories of partying, careless attempts at jobs, and increasingly, drinking like her mother.

As Jeanne herself wrote, “For a long time I was worried about becoming my father. Then I was worried about becoming my mother. Now I was worried about becoming myself.”

Darst navigates her life, eventually figuring out how to be herself and be successful at the same time. The wild ride to get there is definitely worth a read.

There were a few quirks that I found mildly distracting. Some sentences seemed to fragment in ways that weren’t intuitive to me. In places, the wording seemed either forced or awkward. And sometimes there’s a feel of ‘stream-of-consciousness’ that seems to come out of nowhere. None of those things take away from the overall goodness of the story, however.

I recommend this book. It’s worth a read and is good for a few laughs. Darst is funny and sympathetic and on her way up.

This book gets 4 out of 5 stars.

Allison O’Connor can be reached at aliverseblog@gmail.com

www.aliverse.com