Category Archives: writing techniques

ADAPTED FORTUNE COOKIE WISDOM

Today, I broke open a fortune cookie to find this fortune: “The really great man is the man who makes everyone feel great.” Since I’m a woman, I immediately changed “man” to “woman” so that I could apply it to myself. Then, the more I thought about it, the more I liked my “adapted” quote better.

When people think about the great characteristics of men, they often include “leadership” as one of those traits. Not so for women. Good traits for great women often include self-effacement, submissiveness, sweetness, and obedience.

I inserted “woman” in this fortune to point out that women don’t have to be doormats or voiceless handmaidens to bring greatness into the world. In contrast, women who act as spineless or voiceless females hurt and limit the potential of both themselves and men. I know women who are their family’s breadwinners, but who still allow their husbands to act as the “head of the family.” I also know women who are treated so badly in their relationships that they have no power whatsoever—no equal voice in their marriage, no personal confidence, and no respect from their children. These situations occur when men act as insensitive partners and women allow men to control and diminish their lives.

Women can be transformative leaders, but it’s going to take a global village to make that become a natural expectation.

 I’ve spent the last five years writing my first novel, Learning to Whistle, about a woman finding her personal power, something that all women struggle to do. My novel is coming out on April 7, 2026 by She Writes Press, a publisher that has been a true blessing in my life.

Through the community of She Writes Press, I’ve learned about the countless ways that women and men can boost the success of women. First of all, I’ve learned that publishing is a process. Experiencing the progressions of editing, rewriting, re-examining, publicizing, and sharing success has given my writing life a bigger vision to follow. With my new perspective, I will forever learn better ways to express myself and to make a difference. My writing career isn’t dependent upon how much I publish, but, instead, about how I nurture my own heart and how many other souls I raise up.

I’ve learned about the power of community and that people who promote the success of others experience their own greater rewards. I’ve cheered for my fellow She Writes Press authors when they win awards and followed their social media pages. I’ve purchased their books, read them, and written reviews.

But, in return, I’ve received immeasurable benefits. Through my fellow She Writes Press authors, I’ve found a reputable company to publish the audio book of my novel. Through Brooke Warner’s Substack posts, I’ve discovered great memoirs, such as Joyride by Susan Orlean and All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, & Liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert, which have exposed me to examples of the grit it takes to be a successful author. Warner also connected me to Jane Friedman, who publishes her own writing blog and offers numerous writing classes. My publicist, Caitlin Hamilton Summie, introduced me to podcasts and blogs that promote writers such as Compulsive Reader that, on December 28, 2025, published an interview of me by my daughter, Rachael Brandt at https://compulsivereader.com/2025/12/28/an-interview-with-tess-perko/ on December 28, 2025. Hamilton-Summie also connected me to the author Suzanne Simonetti, who writes alluringly realistic tales about women and their struggles—good writing I can emulate.

I don’t suppose anyone will ever label me as a “great” woman, but, then again, I don’t seek fame. I seek to be—not a doormat, not a handmaid, not only a mother, not merely a wife, not solely a friend—but a full participant in the human race who happens to have the valuable perspective of being a woman.

What am I going to focus on in 2026—polishing my leadership skills until I lead with grace and ease.

Building a Sentence, Step by Step

Photo by Dmitry Shamis on Unsplash

You know what excites me? Crafting sentences that overflow with content and brim with alluring vocabulary. When I read Stanley Fish’s book, How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, I became giddy with pleasure, thinking about all the future memorable sentences I could write. In one chapter, Fish demonstrates how to expand a four-word basic sentence into one that reveals character, moves the plot, and illustrates how the setting affects a story. Let me show you what he suggests with my own example.

My basic four-word sentence is: her brother went to the meeting.

Now, if I want to build the character of the brother, I must say something about him. Here’s my first addition: her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor. But I could say even more. Here goes: her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor who always arrived twenty minutes late to every appointment and made excuses for his tardiness. Now, the reader knows that this guy is unpleasant and too arrogant to take responsibility for his short-comings.

Next, let me tackle how he went to the meeting. I replace the verb “went” with a more exact one and add some related information: her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor, who always arrived twenty minutes late to every appointment and made excuses for his tardiness, rolled his wheelchair across the snow-packed sidewalk in thirty-degree weather, wearing a down jacket, gloves, wool hat, and earmuffs. Not only does this addition explain how he got to the meeting, but under what conditions. It also infers that he was determined to go since driving a wheelchair over the snow in freezing weather is tough.

Ok, home stretch here. Let’s finish by adding something about the meeting: her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor, who always arrived twenty minutes late to every appointment and made excuses for his tardiness, rolled his wheelchair across the snow-packed sidewalk in thirty-degree weather, wearing a down jacket, gloves, wool hat, and earmuffs, to get to his AA meeting. Whoa, I only added one more word, here, but a term full of meaning and content. Now, the reader might associate the brother’s tetchy deportment with his alcohol problem that he is struggling to overcome.

I like this sentence so much I’m going to paste it on the bottom of this post, so I can admire it. Happy sentence-crafting to you, too.

Her brother, a tall and lanky 56-year-old with a cantankerous and rude demeanor, who always arrived twenty minutes late to every appointment and made excuses for his tardiness, rolled his wheelchair across the snow-packed sidewalk in thirty-degree weather-wearing a down jacket, gloves, wool hat, and earmuffs-to get to his
AA meeting.

by Tess Perko

Reference: Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. Harper. 2005.

Five Ways to Read Like a Writer

Photo by Michael Satterfield on Unsplash

When I was a child, I sat in a corner on the floor, reading fairy tales and getting lost in the dreamy and, sometimes, cruel, plots. I wasn’t yet a writer.

Now that I AM a writer, I read differently. I give myself permission to stop anywhere to observe the author’s craft. Here are five things I do.

Make Notes in the Book

I read books on my Kindle and via paper. The reason I use a Kindle is that it’s easy to hold while reading in bed. But, if I find an author whose writing I want to analyze, such as Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, I buy the paper version, and I write notes in it. Notes are better than highlighting since they help me remember why I marked a particular sentence. I’m not going to give the book away since I know I’ll come back to it over and over again to think about Kingsolver’s wording, sentence placement, or plot twists.

Look Up Words

Building vocabulary is a lifetime endeavor. I’m always finding new words while I read, especially when I read authors from other countries such as England and Australia. Different cultures seem to emphasize different vocabulary. For example, the other day, I came across the word “palaver” which means a prolonged and idle discussion. I look these words up, but I don’t take the paper dictionary off the bookshelf to do this. I’ll either use the dictionary feature on my Kindle or a dictionary app on my phone to make the task more efficient. Then, I’ll think about how the word fits into the author’s sentence and also how I might use it in my own writing.

Think about Word Choice

In Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver begins Chapter 40 with this sentence: “One look at her and I was gone” (319). The word that caught in my throat was “gone.” When I read it, I couldn’t wait to read the rest of the chapter. I had to find out what she meant by it.

That’s how powerful one word can be. I want to be the kind of writer that can use words to grip a reader, make her heart pump, send pulses through her body, and keep her reading. The only way for me to become better at this is to read how other writer’s do it. Which word does she choose? Where does she put it?

Evaluate How a Sentence is Structured

Believe it or not, sentence structure can make an action more compelling. Short sentences or phrases create tension or drama. Long sentences can paint a picture. Here’s a sentence from Demon Copperhead: “In my high-water jeans and the old-man shoes Mr. Peg had loaned me at Christmas, I joined the tribe of way-back country kids with no indoor plumbing and the Pentecostals that think any style clothes invented since Bible times is a sin.” This sentence not only describes what Demon was wearing, but it also says something about the two types of kids that he hung out with. In other words, it packs a punch.

Think about How an Author Uses Dialogue to Create Character

People don’t use the same words, have similar accents, or form identical sentences. Writers can say a lot about a character by creating dialogue that is unique to him or her. For example, in The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, Large Marge says, “’Sit down or I’ll knock you down” (162). Large Marge is a big woman who is not afraid to threaten a man and her words illustrate this. If she was small or complacent, she would’ve said something completely different.

The Close

I can’t think of any better way to become a mature writer than to read voraciously. The true writer that gets excited about great prose.

A Writing Exercise for Immediate Satisfaction

I love writing, but sometimes, I tire of working on a huge project, such as a novel. I want to write something that rewards me with instant pleasure.

Last week, I read Stanley Fish’s How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. In this captivating book-length essay, he includes some exercises to help people write “finely crafted sentences.”

In Chapter 2, he asserts that “a sentence is a structure of logical relationships,” and excellent writers build sentences with a variety of logical relationships.  

To practice, he proposes that a writer begin with a short sentence of three or four words such as my example of “Toby cooked the chicken.” Then, the writer adds a series of logical relationships to this short sentence to make it interesting. Here’s my attempt:

  • Toby, who had arrived at the restaurant at 10:06 a.m. instead of his expected time of 9:00 a.m., cooked, or rather deep-fried the chicken, which the owner purchased at the local butchery that morning before he arrived at 9:00 a.m. on time.

I realize that this isn’t the most incredible sentence of all time, but it says much more than its original version. First, we know that Toby was extremely late to work. We also know that he cooked the chicken with grease since he deep-fried it. He works with his boss, who does the purchasing for the business, and his boss knows he was late since he arrived before Toby. As soon as I wrote it, I felt elated at my new-found skill.

Here are a few more examples of my sentence-relationship-building exercises.

Short sentence: The dog scratched his ear.

Adding logical relationships:

  • The dog, a runt mixture of auburn English Setter and black Poodle, scratched his ear, which was covered with a bandage due to an infection.

Short sentence: Joan called her father.

Adding logical relationships:

  • Joan, who was suffering from the flu and lying in bed with a box of Kleenex, called her father to whom she hadn’t spoken since before she bought her new car.

Short sentence: Dan drove his car.

Adding logical relationships:

  • Dan, a medium-sized guy with a mop of brown hair and a sliver of a mustache, drove his car, a bright red Subaru Outback that he had bought five years ago in Bozeman, Montana.

This exercise is so easy that I plan to do it every day. Why shouldn’t life be fun all the time? Thank you, Stanley Fish.

Source: Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. Harper. 2005.

The Purpose of My Blog

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I recently took a free class about blogs from Reedsy, a website that offers professional help to writers.

One of the topics discussed in the online class was the purpose of a blog. While I was reading about this, I realized that I had begun my blog for the purpose of improving my teaching skills; however, now that I’m retired, my focus is on my own writing and my other retirement activities.

The purpose of this post is to explore the current focus of my blog.

Practicing Writing Skills

The biggest focus of my current blog posts is to practice various writing skills.

I am currently exploring the ideas for my second novel so I decided to writing a series of character studies. In each post, a new character finds herself in a different situation. I use distinct character traits to identify her. I choose a unique name and reveal whether she is a child, youth, young adult, or older. I sometimes describe her physical characteristics, especially if they are important to the story.  For example, if she is riding a bicycle, I may describe the strength of her legs.

Since each story is unique, I use specific description to illustration the setting. She may be in a bedroom, on a trail in the country or behind the bar in a night club. In addition to using visual description, I try to add smells and noises to make the setting as vivid as possible. Perhaps, someone has spilled whiskey on the bar or the juke box is blasting out Beatles’ music.

Sharing My Writing Experiences

Since I retired almost three years ago, I have written one novel and over one-hundred blog posts. I also have petitioned several publishers about the publication of my first novel.

Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot in the past three years about my current writing activities. I like to share my experiences so that other writers can benefit from my practice, and so that I can interact with other people who love to write. Writers have so much passion about their work, and that excites me.

When I was writing my first novel, I wrote a post about my experience. You see, I didn’t have much of a clue how this project would go. Maybe I’d write it and find out it was awful. Maybe I’d have to completely rewrite it.

I wrote about telling people about my novel writing. They asked detailed questions. I made no promises. I protected my heart from criticism, but I listened to it as well.

What happened? I actually wrote a novel that is now being considered by a few publishers.

In another post, I wrote about how I evaluated publishers for my first novel. I thought this was important to share with other writers since publishers all have their own missions. Writers waste time if they don’t evaluate which publisher is appropriate for their book.

Sharing My Retirement Experiences

Retirement has turned out well for me because, during the first month, I made a three-part plan of what I wanted to do. The first goal was to write a novel. Second, I wanted to become fluent in a second language, and, third, I wanted to raise money for scholarships for community college and vocational students.

I’ve met so many people in the last three years and I’ve learned that some retired people are happily retired and others are bored. I write blog posts about my retirement experiences to demonstrate how retirement can be a vivacious time of life.

I’ve traveled several times since my retirement, and I’ve written about these trips. Two summers ago, I visited my cousin’s dairy farm in Minnesota. I wrote a blog post about being a “town girl on a dairy farm.” From that same trip, I wrote about how my ancestors came from Kashubia, currently a northern part of Poland. I also wrote about a hike on my great-grandfather’s property, which is now a Minnesota State Park. And I pleased my dozens of cousins when I wrote about how diverse they were.

I joined a philanthropy group named The Alamo Women’s Club since they raise money for college and vocational scholarships. Now, I’m the chair of the AWC Scholarship Committee. I’ve written a blog post about how we awarded eleven scholarships to financially-disadvantaged students in April, 2023. But that’s not all the organization does. We collect coats in the winter for people who need clothing. We assemble food packets for Ukraine refugees in Poland. We sponsor jewelry sales for scholarships. Our activities have provided a host of ideas for my writing blog posts.

Now that I’ve written this post, I’m going to revise my front page to update the purpose of my blog. It’s nice to gain clarity.