The Fine Art of Writing by Carrie Stuart Parks

Carrie Stuart Parks

From what I’ve seen, similar lessons and challenges are experienced in most artistic endeavors. My daughter (singer and actress) and I can relate to a number of things involved with pursuing our chosen fields. I think it’s also common for writers to have more than one gift in the arts. Take for example, our own Seriously Write team members. Check out Angela Arndt’s amazing pen and ink drawings.  Annette Irby has musical gifts—she plays instruments, writes, and sings. Today, author Carrie Stuart Parks shares how she used what she learned as an artist to become a better writer.   

~ Dawn

The Fine Art of Writing

I’ve been a watercolor artist for the past forty-six years, which is astonishing considering I just turned twenty-nine.  Ah, hum, yes, well . . . As a watercolorist, I did very well, garnered awards, sold a ton of art, was in a number of galleries, and my work was purchased by major corporations. I illustrated magazines articles, painted CD covers, worked on books, and even wrote a how-to paint portraits in watercolor for North Light Books-one of five books I wrote and illustrated for them. I’ve taught watercolors at every level of learning. I’m sharing this because when I started writing fiction, a mere 11 years ago, I found a lot of parallels between writing and art. And I found an astonishing difference. 

Let’s start with the difference. If you were in my class, drawing a portrait for example, I’d insist you be looking at a photo of that person you wanted to illustrate.  If I came by to help you, I could point to the photo, then the same area of your art, and talk about why your image was off. The nose was too long, the lips too small, or the hair looked like brown dying worms. You’d be able to easily see why your sketch needed correction. Both drawing and photo are visible to you and me. Drawing is all about learning to see, not what you think is there, but what is really there.

When I started writing, everything was in my head: the rich setting, snappy dialog, thrilling action, memorable characters. I felt my first writing efforts were astoundingly brilliant. I blissfully sent my early work off, expecting a phone call begging to represent, or publish my work. I was crushed when the call not only didn’t come, but my work was ignored, rejected, and/or refused.

What’s the matter with these people? Couldn’t they see my profound writing there on the page? No, they couldn’t, because it wasn’t on the page. Nor could they see into my mind to clearly show me why there was a vast gulf between what I believed I communicated and what I actually wrote.

So began my odyssey of learning to write. And here’s where the parallels occurred between art and writing. When I painted, I used Arches 140 weight, cold pressed paper, Daniel Smith watercolors, two primary brushes: a #8 round and a Winsor and Newton series 995 1” flat, and painted the same subject five, ten, twenty, fifty times. I wanted to commit to memory just exactly what the paint, paper, water, lighting, subject, brush, and technique would do so I wouldn’t have to THINK about it. I knew automatically that my brush had too much water in it by the feel, the paper was too wet or two dry to get the effect I wanted by the appearance, exactly what Quinacridone gold would look like if I mixed it with Anthraquinone blue. Pretty obsessive? Maybe, but I wanted to learn my craft. Once each part of painting was second nature, I could focus on creating that work of art.

Learning to write, I would take apart the writing process and study each component: ending a chapter on a hook, tension on every page, dialog, setting, and so forth. I would attend writer’s conferences, buy and consume writing books, take on-line classes, participate in critique groups, and worked exhaustively with my mentor, Frank Peretti. Each part of writing, like each part of painting, needed to become second nature so the story would shine.

May God Bless you on your writing journey.

The Bones Will Speak

The Bones Will Speak

A killer with a penchant for torture has taken notice of forensic expert Gwen Marcey . . . and her daughter.

When Gwen Marcey’s dog comes home with a human skull and then leads her to a cabin in the woods near her Montana home, she realizes there’s a serial killer in her community. And when she finds a tortured young girl clinging to life on the cabin floor, she knows this killer is a lunatic.

Yet what unsettles Gwen most is that the victim looks uncannily like her daughter.

The search for the torturer leads back in time to a neo-Nazi bombing in Washington state—a bombing with only one connection to Montana: Gwen. The group has a race-not-grace model of salvation . . . and they’ve marked Gwen as a race traitor.

When it becomes clear that the killer has a score to settle, Gwen finds herself in a battle against time. She will have to use all of her forensic skills to find the killer before he can carry out his threat to destroy her—and the only family she has left.

Carrie Stuart Parks is an internationally known forensic art instructor as well as FBI trained, Certified Forensic Artist. She worked for the North Idaho Regional Crime Lab for years before going freelance. A winner of numerous awards for her innovative teaching methods and general career excellence, she is also a signature member of the Idaho Watercolor Society. Carrie’s debut novel, A Cry from the Dust, was sold at auction in a three book deal to Thomas Nelson. She was mentored in her writing by NYT best-selling author Frank Peretti.

To learn more, please visit www.carriestuartparks.com

 

Meeting Frank Peretti by Carrie Stuart Parks

Carrie Stuart Parks

Do you have any mentors? Those who are generous with their time and expertise? Carrie Stuart Parks shares how famous author Frank Peretti became an important mentor in her journey to publication. Frank’s novels have impacted my life, so it was really cool for me to read about Carrie’s experience. Enjoy! 

~ Dawn

Meeting Frank Peretti

by Carrie Stuart Parks

My husband, Rick, went on a crusade to have me meet a wonderful couple that he’d become friendly with over bluegrass music. “Did you know,” he asked me one day, “that my banjo-playing friend is an author?”

Okay, he had me. I love books. “What has he written?”

“I think it’s called ‘A Clear and Present Darkness.’”

Great. A Clancy wannabe. Rick persisted, however. In desperation, he told me they owned a Great Pyrenees. That was the deciding factor. I’d owned Pyrenees since just after Noah’s flood. We invited them to dinner. Frank and Barb Peretti.

I had no idea who Frank was. I’d never read his books. When they returned the favor and invited us to dinner, I got some inkling of Frank’s reputation and success. Their home was gorgeous, sprawling on emerald green lawns and overlooking the river. Discreetly tucked on the walls leading to the basement were a variety magazine covers and awards for selling a bajillion books.

Clever person that I was, I put it together that Frank wasn’t just an author, he was an Author. Big time. Important. A list. I could have been intimidated, but Frank and Barb were such lovely, down-to-earth folks that we became friends.

I’ll skip over all the great times we had, because I’m sure you’re now chomping at the bit to find out how Frank came to mentor me in my writing. Fast forward a number of years. It was Christmas and I’d not found a single thing for Barb. So I wrote a story. An adventure about two women on a quest: one fat and jolly, the other movie-star beautiful.

I know. I know. I’m so original…. I wrapped it up and gave it to Barb. She read it to Frank. He said I had writing talent and that he would “teach me to fish.”

I was stunned and thrilled. I decided to not enter any art shows that year and devote myself to learning the writing trade from the master. That was January of 2004. Two months later I was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer.

Funny thing about God. He sure knows how to time things. Throughout that awful/wonderful year, through surgeries, chemo, baldness, sickness, everything-hurt-times, Frank would sit across his kitchen table from me and listen to what I’d cranked out on my computer. Barb would listen and ply us with lattes.

It was a time of refining fire. I posted on my refrigerator Hebrews 12:1 and took courage from the last line that said, “let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Not only was I battling cancer, my mom was slowly dying of emphysema and I was caring for her. She died a year later, never knowing about my disease.

I finished my first manuscript that summer of 2004, but my writing, like my life, needed that refining fire. I had much, much more to learn. Rejections, rewrites, more rejections, writer’s conferences, classes, critique groups, still more rejections, classes again, and finally, finally success. Through all of this, Frank patiently, skillfully, taught me to fish.

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Funny thing about God. He sure knows how to time things. Click to tweet.

Author Carrie Stuart Parks shares how Frank Peretti became her writing mentor. Click to tweet.

Frank Peretti said Carrie Stuart Parks had writing talent, and then he taught her to “fish.” Click  to tweet.

A Cry from the Dust

A Cry from the Dust

Gwen Marcey was tops in her forensic art field. Then cancer struck, her husband left, and her teenage daughter engaged in active rebellion. Gwen’s best chance to start her new life was a temporary job reconstructing faces from an 1857 massacre site. Instead, the images from the grave trigger a domino effect of ritualized murder, kidnapping, and fear. Gwen must weave through a labyrinth of Mormon history, discovering secret societies and festering grudges in a race against time. Will she be able to stop another massacre?

Carrie Stuart Parks is an award-winning fine artist and internationally known forensic artist. Along with her husband, Rick, she travels across the US and Canada teaching courses in forensic art to law enforcement professionals. The author/illustrator of numerous books on drawing and painting, Carrie continues to create dramatic watercolors from her studio in the mountains of Idaho. Mentored by New York Times best-selling author, Frank Peretti, Carrie began writing fiction while battling stage II breast cancer. Now in remission, she continues to encourage other women struggling through the effects of cancer.

To learn more and connect with Carrie, please visit:

Web: CarrieStuartParks.com

Facebook: Carrie Stuart Parks, Author