Author Shares His Love for Words
By Melinda Palacio
-- December 6, 2001
Are you a secret writer? One way to multiply your creation of words, sentences, and paragraphs into a finished book or short story is to join a writing group.
UCSB lecturer and author, Leonard Tourney, co-directs, along with Shelly Lowenkopf, a writing group at the Montecito Library.
Tourney firmly believes that there's an advantage to writing groups--he wouldn't teach them if he didn't think they were beneficial. But, he encourages beginning writers to use judgement when accepting advise from more experienced writers.
"I think other readers can give you insights and reactions that help you to understand if you're being clear or whether something is coming across as you intend. But one thing that bothers me, sometimes, is the readiness that people in workshops have to accept all the criticism that they receive. Some people might change their book at every suggestion as though anybody else was source of wisdom greater than their own; that is not true."
Regardless
of where the criticism comes from, ultimately, the fun part of
writing comes from the changes writers make to their work, the
tweaking and the reshaping of a scene or chapter or the manipulation
of words to evoke the right mood. Tourney expresses a greater love
for words than the telling of stories.
"I became a writer because I was interested in working with words and I am more fascinated with them now, more in love with language, than I have ever been. One of the reasons why I started to write novels set in Shakespeare's day was because I was intrigued by the challenge of producing a narrative language and a dialogue that simulated Elizabethan speech, but was not exactly Elizabethan speech. And, to create that was a great challenge to me. And, it's basically what's kept me writing in this era for twenty-five years. I'm trying to get it right."
Tourney has learned enough from his own practice of producing Elizabethan murder mysteries to write a memoir in Shakespeare's voice. Although he has a completed manuscript of over 400 pages in Shakespeare's voice, the writing and revisions are never completed for Tourney, at least, not until the book is manufactured. He says you know a book is finished when it's printed. Until then, the revisions press on. In fact, the 59 year-old Goleta resident says he would have happily spent his life revising his first book, The Players' Boy is Dead .
"If I took that first novel of mine which I published in 1980, now, I could rewrite it. And, the scary thing is I could enjoy it, the rewriting of it. Because within the circumference of that novel there's everything I need to satisfy my creative instincts. I would go back and examine the dialogue, I would rewrite the dialogue, I'd add scenes, I'd take things out, I would fiddle with it for the rest of my life."
But, his best advice to beginning writers is to move on to the next sentence, chapter, novel or creative arena instead of dwelling on stylistic details.
"Beginning writers need to learn when to move on to the next thing. Of course, it's not quite there [at first]. But, the skills, that you need to bring the first chapter to the place that you want to bring it, you may not know until you've written the last chapter of the first draft. And, then you return to that first chapter with what you have learned. Because the writing teaches you how to do it."
After 8 published Elizabethan murder mysteries, Tourney has learned to move on to new creative arenas with his forthcoming Shakespearean memoir. But, one place he won't be moving on from is the Goleta home he shares with his wife, Judith Olauson, an actress, director, and lecturer at UCSB's Dramatic Arts Department.
UCSB is where Tourney received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in English. And, after fifteen years as an Associate Professor in the English Department at Tulsa University, Tourney returned to UCSB and the Good Land. "I enjoy living in Goleta. I like the clean, rural, uncluttered feel of the town, the proximity of fields and orchards, mountains, the expansive sky to the north. I like the idea that after Goleta, it's an hour's drive to another town of any size and that that drive is one of the most scenic in the world."