A few years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing memoirist and novelist Pam Houston. At the time of the interview, her book, Contents May Have Shifted, was Port Townsend?s Community Read. I did the taping on behalf of our local library. In this podcast, Pam talks about her writing and, in particular, the writing of Contents May Have Shifted. She explains that the book is a collection of passages, each of which begins as a ?glimmer,? a fragment of observation that led to a passage. With editing and rearranging, 144 of these glimmers from real-life moments and travels created the novelistic narrative arc of her protagonist?s self-growth.

Pam describes how she finds them and what glimmers are in this interview with The Haberdasher:

By going out in the physical world (often the natural world) and really paying attention. All of my work comes from my experience in the physical world?. The real world, you might say, though I intentionally don?t. I move through the world and I wait until something ?glimmers? at me, until something says, ?Hey writer, over here, pay attention.? It can be a seal?s head popping up in an ocean wave, or the color the bark of the Aspens turn just before they leaf out, or a snippet of conversation overheard at a coffee shop, or a piece of graffiti on an underpass?. Just about anything, but some of those glimmers feel like they have resonance. It feels as though this thing in the outside world is somehow going to help me unlock some story I have to tell. I don?t think too much about the how of that. I just trust that it will happen, and often, when I actually sit down to write and gather all the recent glimmers around me, a story does in fact emerge.

While our taped conversation covers a lot of ground concerning topics that readers and writers find of interest, one of the most important parts of the conversation for me is when Pam addresses editing down her words like a poet might and reducing her manuscript by 17 pages by finding a few unnecessary words at a time.

Poets always move toward compression, she?d learned from admired poet teachers in graduate school. Deeming herself a prose writer and not a poet but one who loved poetry, she wanted to see how she might approximate a poetic structure in her prose.

If you don?t own the book, you can get a feel for what Pam means by glimmer moments, by using the Look Inside feature on Amazon. As she says in the podcast, these moments that inspire her to write are a mixture of simple observations that involve the senses and observations of complicated life-changing moments.

It might be useful for you to look into some of your freewrites, journal entries or first drafts and find what was glimmering that inspired you to write and what seems to be glimmering now. Poetic prose and good poems occur at the conjunction of glimmers and compression.

In the writing you have decided to look at, circle the images that seem to ?glimmer? for you now. Take away words you see that unnecessarily surround what glimmers. Does the compressed writing work as poetic prose or poetry? Or does it need something more for the reader? Show the tightened version to trusted readers. What are their responses? If they say they need more to understand what you have written, show them the longer version. Ask what in that version they would want in the shorter version. Do a rewrite. See if it pleases you.

Here is a sample of how I edit from prose to get to the heart of what glimmers for me, how I try my best to trust that the images, if left as undisturbed as possible by exposition, invite deeper perception on my part and invite readers to find resonances they can absorb through their senses rather than my ?telling.? That is really the most important trick to good writing?remove the hand of the writer from the experience being gifted to the reader.

My Freewrite from a Writing Moment That Glimmered

Now the paper I write on at Agate Pass is soggy from the drizzle or the humidity and it feels like filo dough. I can taste the baklava I ate in Greece. I can hear the sound of my pencil when I wrote under the olive trees, the slight rustle of a breeze through the leaves. I see the wind ruffle the pages of my notebook. I remember the word Athena and I smell the cheeses they wrapped in white paper at markets. My skin was liquid and warm then in the Mediterranean sunshine, not goose bumpy as it is now in the cool Agate Pass weather. So much has happened since then. (112 words)

Could I reduce the words to help the glimmer brighten, deepen into a story?

Sheila?s Revised Writing

The paper I write on at Agate Pass is clammy like filo dough. I remember baklava, the days I wrote in pencil under olive trees outside of a temple, the rustle of my notebook?s pages, the breeze I heard in Athena?s name, and how in the Greek markets, there were two kinds of cheese, white or yellow. In the damp weather where my skin is goose bumpy, I long for the smooth silk of the Mediterranean sun. (77 words)

[I see this as a beginning to bringing up difficulties in what had been an easy and sunny personal relationship.]

A Second Freewrite on Another Day About What Glimmered Outside My Window

Outside my window, the sun has set and the horizon is orange now, the cedar and fir trees at the edge of the bay give witness from front row seats. They seem to wear shawls, to have colicky hair. Still, I can see between them, the orange slice of sky above the grey-blue water of the bay. Between my back row seat and theirs, I see salal. I see Nootka roses. I see elderberry and Oregon grape. What do I hear? Wait let me open my door to whatever is out there beyond the tinnitus in my ears, the evening song of the birds, the evening croak song of frogs. What do I smell?the odor of bananas not yet ripe left in my nostrils from today?s marketing. What do I taste?the sweetness of the blueberries I?ve just eaten. (141 words)

What words might I not need? What phrasing might tighten the words I did need?

Sheila?s Rewrite

At Sunset, June Horizon

Cedar and fir trees at the edge of the bay
are an audience in front row seats. They wear
shawls, have colicky hair. But I can see
between them to the orange band in the sky,
bright against the grey blue bay and a coming
cloud cover. From my cheap seat in the back,
I gaze over the heads of salal bushes, of Oregon
Grape. Evening arrives to the songs of birds,
the soft croaks of the frogs. Here is an orchestra
for the sky?s choreography. I watch. I eat a late
dinner. I savor the sweetness of blueberries
still warm from a day?s bright sun. (106 words)

[Here the conjunction of recording what glimmered and applying compression led me to a poem.]

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Your Turn

Write a paragraph with five sentences about what your senses pick up from where you sit. Compose at least one sentence for each of the five senses. What you see, smell, hear, touch and taste in this moment. When you have written the sentences, try to locate the feeling your words induced. What might the images you took in or remembered through your senses be glimmering about?

Read through again. Circle words you have repeated; circle words that are abstract or editorializing, words that are not tangible but summarizing. Amazing, stupid, beautiful, and awful are all words that tell how the writer or character felt but don?t give the experience of that feeling to the reader.

Think about the tone and landscape of the glimmer words. Do they fit well with what you are feeling your words saying? Do they accomplish more with less? Don?t settle for more words than you need and choose the right ones?usually the words that appeal to one of the five senses.

Keep at it and you will find that the images and events you choose to write about will offer immediate experience both to you as the writer and to your readers.