July 4, 1932 – October 22, 2020
One of my mentors, Yvonne Nelson Perry, finessed her craft of short stories the way a wine master blends a prized Malbec. Her work is evidence. She was an artist who valued the integrity of the written word and did her damnedest to teach her students to do the same.
She was a tenacious and charismatic force. I first met her as a newbie at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 1997. When I relocated to San Diego, I was lucky to live close enough to attend writing workshops at her home.
Much like the coach of a winning team, she had little tolerance for using gimmicks or shortcuts to get to the finish line, and she called us out if we tried them. “Crutches,” she would say. “Cast them off and build stronger sentences.” She asked the participants in her workshops to bring an open-mindedness to her critiques. I did, and her strict standards have served me well.
Exclamation Points!
The first time I heard her say, “You are allowed one exclamation point in your writing career,” I chalked it up to hyperbole. Turns out she was as serious as the presiding judge on Writers Court. She sat straight backed and spoke clear throated, continuing her line of reasoning. “If you need a ‘shout mark’ to highlight your meaning, you’ve written a weak sentence.”
She softened her voice and said, “When you come upon the time and place to insert your one allotted interjection, think of it as a placeholder. With the grace of good sense, you’ll edit it out on a later draft.”
(Parentheses)
She didn’t like them. When someone inserted a set of parentheses in their manuscript, she would laugh and say, (I’m paraphrasing here!) “When my eyes come to a set of parentheses, what happens? My brain pauses, hops over the little half-moon put there to add less than necessary information, hops over a second half-moon, and then gets back to the damn story. They are as annoying as someone constantly saying, ‘You know what I mean?’ Trust your writing. Take the time and be direct.”
As you can imagine, her advice on avoiding ALL CAPS and semicolons was similar. Less is more.
Thank you, Yvonne Nelson Perry, the author of “The Other Side of the Island,” as well as over fifty published short stories
