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ravenSo I work in a bookshop, right? It's a small bookshop. No, it is really small. The kitchen I'm sitting in writing this has about the same amount of floor space. In a space that is about five by ten metres, there are four walls of shelves and two freestanding "aisles", and altogether, about a thousand books. It's one of two shops, and the other one, in Crosby, is being demolished in about four weeks. The owner of said shop, due to a monumental lack of forward planning, has just found out that he cannot hang shelves off the walls in his new premises because they will fall down. The walls, that is, not the shelves.
Consequently, at nine o'clock this morning, Sunny Steve and Mark-The-Handyman descended armed with drills, hammers, large painful screwdrivers and the will to use them all. You cannot just carry shelves out of a bookshop. They need to be dismantled. They need to be unloaded. The only way for this to be achieved is for three people to actually unload them. So, in temperatures of above thirty-five degrees Celsius, and I should mention that dense paper and plate glass, such as you find in bookshops, do in fact hold and radiate heat, in the absence of air conditioning, ceiling fans, windows to open or indeed any sort of cooling device whatsoever in a small space with four other people and whatever customers we were managing, I spent seven and a half hours lifting stacks of heavy books, stacks of heavy wooden shelves, and, periodically, a stepladder, out of the baking hot shop into the baking hot sunshine and back into the shop as the books were re-loaded onto the new shelves. And don't forget the sound of drills. A very small space and some very loud drills. It just gets better.
In other words, me = very cranky indeed. I mean, we would choose the hottest day of the year for this purpose. And a day on which we have no customers and so no distractions from our own pain, and also no kitchen roll omg, and a singular lack of coffee and Nancy Next Door trying to feed us all prawn mayo and Tony miserable because he's turning forty tomorrow, and did I mention thirty-five degrees (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amchau observed yesterday that the sheer fact of external temperature almost equalling internal temperature renders the wearing of clothes a social but not really biological necessity) and really, the smell of petroleum prevailed throughout.
Anyway, I am £37.50 richer and if adversity is good for the soul, I am somewhat closer to redemption. And to be honest, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. At least it was joint suffering, and at least four fifths of the thrice-damned job is done. Tomorrow, I think will feature reshelving a lot of poetry amid slightly less heat, which will be okay-ish.
Enough of my work-related babble. I actually wanted to talk about something completely different in this post, but got sidetracked by thoughts of, err, kitchen roll and prawn mayo. I wanted to talk about something I haven't talked about for a while, which is writing. Which is important, and particularly important to me at the moment because I am actually doing some of it right now.
Um, before I launch into it, there is the caveat that I'm not sure how qualified I am to speak about the subject. Unlike a lot of my flist, I have never studied language or literature at degree level. I'm more and more aware of this lately, because previously I was an English A-level student just like everyone else. But now I dread to think how much more skilled others are than me, because basically, my only leg to stand on in debates about writing is the fact that I do it. Write, I mean; and I have written fiction pretty much incessantly for about ten years now. All I know about writing, I know from that experience. And it's painfully limited and unsystematic, but what can do you do, etc. I'm always wishing that I could have done English for my degree, because a) I'd be better at it than I am at PPE and b) I might enjoy it more, too. But PPE, sadly, opens more doors, and I am weak but I do want a key to those doors. So English was never for me, and English at Oxford paricularly so.
But again, I digress. I want to talk about writing because just recently, in the comments to "Come Morning, Come Night", I happened to voice a few moans totau_sigma about how dissatisfied I was with the process of writing that story, and then somehow got into a very interesting discussion with hmpf about writing and how different people do it. And the discussion visited ground I always find fascinating, so here I am talking about it.
The basic gist of it goes as follows. I don't like "Come Morning, Come Night" because I don't like the way I wrote it. As I said in the comments, I wrote it by numbers - "prompt here, angst there, now a bit of imagery, then some more metaphor, now a specific unusual image, then a mention of the theme", etc.
hmpf asked, reasonably, isn't that what you do when you write? And I answered no, not quite; in my case it's not what I do, but what I end up doing. I always start a story with a kernel of an idea. It's usually a scene, or a particular theme I want to explore, and it's sometimes a single line of dialogue. And all I do with is think about it. And think about it. And once I've thought about it for long enough, I sit down to write it down. And the things mentioned above - themes, imagery, interesting use of language, even plot - just... happen. Which is a terrible thing to admit to, because it implies I have no control over the process, but unfortunately that is a given degree of true. I can probably write dialogue on demand. If I've got a given plot to write, I could probably do that too. (Which is why I enjoy ficathons and prompts so much.) But then, we have something like this:
(From a Firefly fic, Another Horsedreamer's Blues.)
This, I didn't write with conscious intent. This just happened. I have a very clear memory of writing that first sentence all in one go and liking it enough not to edit it at all. Because of course I do edit with conscious intent, I refine and get rid of the stupid bits and sometimes make things explicit which were only being hinted at, but the main thrust of it comes out in one rush of writing. It's like a painting - you can tell what it is, and the editing is just the fine detail.
But It occasionally worries me that I can't do it on demand. I'm thinking about this now because I am, as already mentioned, currently writing a fic which is proving quite difficult. For one thing, it features a sex scene, which I don't generally write because I can't do it. And so waiting for the sex scene to just "happen" is difficult, but not fruitless, because it is happening. A few words at a time, but it is happening.
But that is, to me, quite silly; I mean, I don't believe in "muses" or whatever. Surely nothing and no one is responsible for my writing except me. But the fact I write better with music on, and much better when I am myself ill or overtired, suggests a peculiar mental process going on. I'm not entirely sure what this is.hmpf went on to explain that she - err, I'm assuming you're female; please correct me if I'm wrong! - writes in very different fashion, almost as a craftsperson or artisan. She uses words and devices as tools to painstakingly create a desired effect. I was impressed by this, as it suggests that she could write anything well regardless of circumstances, because she has the talent but also the tools. If I try and write like this, the result is like "Come Morning, Come Night", which is a story that is perhaps superficially indistinguishable from my others but feels forced and contrived to me. Now, I have no idea if this is evident to anyone else, but it definitely is for me.
It's come up before, as well.likethesun2 and I were once discussing the subject, a few years ago now, when she told me she didn't know what to think when a line of a story wrote itself, because that hadn't happened to her before. I was at once intrigued and impressed, because whilst her style of writing is not aeons distant from mine, she crafts it meticulously. I envy her that, and I think I'll have improved as a writer if I can at least say why such and such a trick works, and be able to deploy a tool deliberately that I can use unconsciously. But I'm not sure if that approach would, for me - always for me, here; I wouldn't dream of presuming about others' ways of writing - destroy something valuable, if indefinable.
Of course, the one thing the whole discussion highlighted was that everyone's ways of writing are different and valid. I guess I'd appreciate some thoughts on the subject.
(And now I go to wait on the next bit of the sex scene. Ah, the tragic life of me.)
Consequently, at nine o'clock this morning, Sunny Steve and Mark-The-Handyman descended armed with drills, hammers, large painful screwdrivers and the will to use them all. You cannot just carry shelves out of a bookshop. They need to be dismantled. They need to be unloaded. The only way for this to be achieved is for three people to actually unload them. So, in temperatures of above thirty-five degrees Celsius, and I should mention that dense paper and plate glass, such as you find in bookshops, do in fact hold and radiate heat, in the absence of air conditioning, ceiling fans, windows to open or indeed any sort of cooling device whatsoever in a small space with four other people and whatever customers we were managing, I spent seven and a half hours lifting stacks of heavy books, stacks of heavy wooden shelves, and, periodically, a stepladder, out of the baking hot shop into the baking hot sunshine and back into the shop as the books were re-loaded onto the new shelves. And don't forget the sound of drills. A very small space and some very loud drills. It just gets better.
In other words, me = very cranky indeed. I mean, we would choose the hottest day of the year for this purpose. And a day on which we have no customers and so no distractions from our own pain, and also no kitchen roll omg, and a singular lack of coffee and Nancy Next Door trying to feed us all prawn mayo and Tony miserable because he's turning forty tomorrow, and did I mention thirty-five degrees (
amchau observed yesterday that the sheer fact of external temperature almost equalling internal temperature renders the wearing of clothes a social but not really biological necessity) and really, the smell of petroleum prevailed throughout. Anyway, I am £37.50 richer and if adversity is good for the soul, I am somewhat closer to redemption. And to be honest, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. At least it was joint suffering, and at least four fifths of the thrice-damned job is done. Tomorrow, I think will feature reshelving a lot of poetry amid slightly less heat, which will be okay-ish.
Enough of my work-related babble. I actually wanted to talk about something completely different in this post, but got sidetracked by thoughts of, err, kitchen roll and prawn mayo. I wanted to talk about something I haven't talked about for a while, which is writing. Which is important, and particularly important to me at the moment because I am actually doing some of it right now.
Um, before I launch into it, there is the caveat that I'm not sure how qualified I am to speak about the subject. Unlike a lot of my flist, I have never studied language or literature at degree level. I'm more and more aware of this lately, because previously I was an English A-level student just like everyone else. But now I dread to think how much more skilled others are than me, because basically, my only leg to stand on in debates about writing is the fact that I do it. Write, I mean; and I have written fiction pretty much incessantly for about ten years now. All I know about writing, I know from that experience. And it's painfully limited and unsystematic, but what can do you do, etc. I'm always wishing that I could have done English for my degree, because a) I'd be better at it than I am at PPE and b) I might enjoy it more, too. But PPE, sadly, opens more doors, and I am weak but I do want a key to those doors. So English was never for me, and English at Oxford paricularly so.
But again, I digress. I want to talk about writing because just recently, in the comments to "Come Morning, Come Night", I happened to voice a few moans to
tau_sigma about how dissatisfied I was with the process of writing that story, and then somehow got into a very interesting discussion with hmpf about writing and how different people do it. And the discussion visited ground I always find fascinating, so here I am talking about it.The basic gist of it goes as follows. I don't like "Come Morning, Come Night" because I don't like the way I wrote it. As I said in the comments, I wrote it by numbers - "prompt here, angst there, now a bit of imagery, then some more metaphor, now a specific unusual image, then a mention of the theme", etc.
hmpf asked, reasonably, isn't that what you do when you write? And I answered no, not quite; in my case it's not what I do, but what I end up doing. I always start a story with a kernel of an idea. It's usually a scene, or a particular theme I want to explore, and it's sometimes a single line of dialogue. And all I do with is think about it. And think about it. And once I've thought about it for long enough, I sit down to write it down. And the things mentioned above - themes, imagery, interesting use of language, even plot - just... happen. Which is a terrible thing to admit to, because it implies I have no control over the process, but unfortunately that is a given degree of true. I can probably write dialogue on demand. If I've got a given plot to write, I could probably do that too. (Which is why I enjoy ficathons and prompts so much.) But then, we have something like this:The world has stopped. Malcolm Reynolds is at the heart of it; the rock around which the rest of the ‘verse revolves, quiet and still in the hand of God like a wave or rider caught in mid-rise.
He is, of course, drunk. But the alcohol is his warmth, his comfort, the one thing that is left for him in this world that revolves round its centre. It’s a damn sight more agreeable on the Rim, he thinks, blearily; he can ride, was broken in with the colts his momma always said, and he could ride out from the core, rocking back and forth to the edge of the black. He’s heard tell men have gone and went crazy from the sight of it, and it’s been a long time now and he’d welcome the change.
“Mal,” says Zoë, gently; and she don’t ever use his name, not like that, “Mal, you’ve got to wake up now. Mal, bâobèi.”
Mal wakes up. The world shakes and starts to spin again, smooth and languorous beneath the sun. His fingers grip at wood on the way down.
(From a Firefly fic, Another Horsedreamer's Blues.)
This, I didn't write with conscious intent. This just happened. I have a very clear memory of writing that first sentence all in one go and liking it enough not to edit it at all. Because of course I do edit with conscious intent, I refine and get rid of the stupid bits and sometimes make things explicit which were only being hinted at, but the main thrust of it comes out in one rush of writing. It's like a painting - you can tell what it is, and the editing is just the fine detail.
But It occasionally worries me that I can't do it on demand. I'm thinking about this now because I am, as already mentioned, currently writing a fic which is proving quite difficult. For one thing, it features a sex scene, which I don't generally write because I can't do it. And so waiting for the sex scene to just "happen" is difficult, but not fruitless, because it is happening. A few words at a time, but it is happening.
But that is, to me, quite silly; I mean, I don't believe in "muses" or whatever. Surely nothing and no one is responsible for my writing except me. But the fact I write better with music on, and much better when I am myself ill or overtired, suggests a peculiar mental process going on. I'm not entirely sure what this is.
hmpf went on to explain that she - err, I'm assuming you're female; please correct me if I'm wrong! - writes in very different fashion, almost as a craftsperson or artisan. She uses words and devices as tools to painstakingly create a desired effect. I was impressed by this, as it suggests that she could write anything well regardless of circumstances, because she has the talent but also the tools. If I try and write like this, the result is like "Come Morning, Come Night", which is a story that is perhaps superficially indistinguishable from my others but feels forced and contrived to me. Now, I have no idea if this is evident to anyone else, but it definitely is for me.It's come up before, as well.
likethesun2 and I were once discussing the subject, a few years ago now, when she told me she didn't know what to think when a line of a story wrote itself, because that hadn't happened to her before. I was at once intrigued and impressed, because whilst her style of writing is not aeons distant from mine, she crafts it meticulously. I envy her that, and I think I'll have improved as a writer if I can at least say why such and such a trick works, and be able to deploy a tool deliberately that I can use unconsciously. But I'm not sure if that approach would, for me - always for me, here; I wouldn't dream of presuming about others' ways of writing - destroy something valuable, if indefinable.Of course, the one thing the whole discussion highlighted was that everyone's ways of writing are different and valid. I guess I'd appreciate some thoughts on the subject.
(And now I go to wait on the next bit of the sex scene. Ah, the tragic life of me.)
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no subject
on 2006-07-20 12:19 am (UTC)I'm rather similar in my approach to writing--and here, I wonder, honestly, if it could even be called an approach because often it is something that spreads out from a single sentence or an image that comes into my head. I don't sit down and outline plots and then give the story a go, which is bad and I realize it, but I've never been able to do that and each time I attempt it the story ends up feeling stiff, formulaic, and contrived. Sometimes spur-of-the-moment writing produces work that I'm not ashamed of, and others not--but I'm definitely not constant with what I do. I can't create on demand either, and deadlines practically ensure a complete halt to anything I'm attempting.
I can see so-called "tools" I've used in my writing; however, this isn't something that I'm conscious of before or during the writing process--it's always after, when I look back at what I've done (similar, actually, to your statement, in my case it's not what I do, but what I end up doing.)
When I write, my head has total reign--an odd statement, yes, but there's a different sort of mentality going on there. I'm not in control, it just comes out. I don't sit there thinking, "Oh, how would she say this?" or "What's the right word choice in this sentence?" I usually go at madcap pace until I hit a spot in the story that doesn't feel right and I'm thrown out of it until the urge comes to sit down and pour out some more. Sometimes that urge doesn't come again for a week (or a month), and sometimes it shows up the next day. If I had to sit down right now and write something it would be utter shit, except perhaps, if it were dialogue, like you've said.
For me, writing is like driver's trance. You end up at wherever the hell you were going without really knowing how you got there, scatching your head and saying "what now?"
And with that statement, I destroy "the craft." Sigh.
no subject
on 2006-07-21 10:39 pm (UTC)And with that statement, I destroy "the craft." Sigh.
Heh. Together we burn the myth.
no subject
on 2006-07-20 01:32 am (UTC)When I attempt to do that from teh start, to go, "this is my theme, this is the metaphor I want to use, here is my point," - that's when it reads as forced to me, as false, and if I've just constructed a thing out of nonorganic parts instead of letting it grown and then pruning it, or discovering its outlines in the sand and digging it out to see what it is. Those feel more like writing to me, or how I feel my writing works best. I can always see where I struggled, where I needed the characters to do A or B for plot purposes, and how that feels forced.
As for writing better when overtired or ill, yes, I do the same - I'm much less self-conscious, more willing to take chances with odd combinations of words, more likely to make intuitive leaps that work but which I might otherwise consider too risky if I were thinking.
I thinking overthinking, overediting, over-talking about how we write - these things make us self-conscious, and that's just bad for prose.
That's my eleven cents anyway.
Misunderstandings etc.
on 2006-07-20 05:47 pm (UTC)2.) I don't think you need to study literature to write, or to write well, or to understand writing. Studying literature is far more about reading than it is about writing.
3.) Reading, on the other hand - and reading very consciously, i.e. becoming aware why a certain part of a text affects you in a certain way - is immensely helpful for writing, in my experience. This is where I get my knowledge of the 'tools of the trade' from, I think.
4.) I think you misunderstood my 'method' a bit:
>She uses words and devices as tools to painstakingly create a desired effect.
Yes, I do. However:
>I was impressed by this, as it suggests that she could write anything well regardless of circumstances, because she has the talent but also the tools.
No. Or rather, maybe - I don't know. It's true that I've often thought that I might flourish in a writing partnership, with someone providing me with a detailed 'script' or plot, and me filling in the details - descriptions, atmosphere, turns of phrase... Yes, I could probably do that. And if it's a 'script' I like, I would probably *love* to do it, because I'd *love* to write something with a real plot for once, and I'm not sure I'll ever manage that on my own. Also, for me the joy in writing really is mostly in using language to... paint, I suppose, or something like it, and I would still be doing that even if the 'idea' behind a story wasn't mine.
I am, unfortunately, abominable at plotting things out. On the one hand, that's not so bad, as I don't write plotty fic, anyway. On the other hand, I'm even worse at determining the direction of non-plotty fic. Typically, a part of such a fic - and that's the majority of my fic, really - comes to me unexpectedly, and then I'm left puzzling as to how to continue it, or how to fit it into an already existing work in progress. That my writing process is sometimes extremely non-linear doesn't help, either. I often end up with dozens of bits and pieces with no cohesion whatsoever, trying to find out how they might fit together. In the case of my - probably - most popular fic, Normal (http://www.allabouthmpf.com/normal.htm, in case you're curious about the result of the process described here) the bulk of it had been written about a year before I published it, and that year between the end of the writing and the publication was spent pushing pieces around and blu-tacking them to pieces of cardboard in different orders to try and see how the various possible sequences 'felt'.
I usually have a vague idea of what a story is about, and I may have a plan - not written out, but in my head - for the story that looks something like this:
1.) Subtly introduce theme (via landscape description etc.)
2.) Give an example of theme 'in action' (conversation between characters A and B)
3.) Glimpse of character A's activities during the day, underlining theme
4.) Character C arrives, character A and C have conversation that makes theme explicit
5.) Coda/epilogue (another conversation between A and B?)
Something like that. It's not enough for a paint-by-numbers job, really. ;-) It's usually not enough to help me get past any of the 'brick walls' I hit during the writing. I may know where I want the story to end up, but that doesn't mean I know what the next sentence from a character's mouth will be, or what kind of environmental detail will enhance a conversation at a certain point, etc. It's the next sentence, or the next paragraph, or the next thought that stalls me so badly. I know where I want to go, I just don't know how to get there - on the 'next step' level, not on the 'I don't have a road map' level. I do have a road map, but what good is a road map if you can't see the terrain in the fog, and thus don't know if the next bit of ground will be solid, or will suck you down into the depths?
So, that's how I write.
Does that make any sense to anyone who isn't me? ;-)
Re: Misunderstandings etc.
on 2006-07-21 10:51 pm (UTC)4. Re: the script, I totally agree with you. I have a co-writer,
And yes, it makes a lot of sense to me, and thanks for telling me about it. I guess I'd say that you have more of a roadmap than me, and that I have less of a roadmap than most people do. Still, getting lost is half the fun. *g*
no subject
on 2006-07-21 10:46 pm (UTC)And thank you for them! I entirely agree with you about the negative effects of overthinking things. I just occasionally can't stop myself. *g* I also think it's very interesting how altered mental states can affect writing, and the process of it. I think it's partly the loss of self-consciousness, and partly, in my case, because my mind really is working differently, offering up ways of saying things that perhaps a more sober version of my mind wouldn't.
no subject
on 2006-07-20 06:58 am (UTC)And I made a post a couple of weekends ago about how I really don't feel my writing is anywhere near good enough. I'm not sure if that reletes to the fact that I do beleive in muses, and I too write better to certain types of music. But there again, I do have a very funny thing going on brain-wise as regards muses.
I'm sorry, I've totally lost my point O_o;;At least it's a little cooler today, though the heat doesn't seem to be penetrating the indoors at the mo...
xx
no subject
on 2006-07-21 10:53 pm (UTC)When I say I don't believe in muses, I mean I don't believe that you can blame your writing on anyone other than yourself. But I do believe in inspiration, and that's what's lacking in the story I dicuss above; I mean, it has its constiuent elements, but no life, no spark.
no subject
on 2006-07-22 07:22 am (UTC)Mmph, I probably missed the whole point of the post, I was getting ready for work at the time...
Not that muses always help, I've a Jack Harkness whos sole purpose in my head is to shag the other muses and deliver innuendo! O_o;; I get very little help from him with anything.
xx
no subject
on 2006-07-20 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-21 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-22 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-20 07:31 am (UTC)But everyone crafts their work. You can't be a writer and not craft your work. Going back over your work, changing a word here, a sentence there- that's all 'crafting', as it were. You may not use a set formula or anything, but I think that's because you do it subconsciously. When something writes itself or feels right, surely you're just writing the story according to your formula? I don't know, I don't make sense, even to myself; probably because I've never thought about it.
no subject
on 2006-07-21 10:58 pm (UTC)(Also: I never knew you wrote! What do you write, if not fic?)
no subject
on 2006-07-20 09:12 am (UTC)I could never write a story where I consciously think "oh, better add a metaphor here, next comes a line of dialogue, then this other literary effect". It just wouldn't work for me in the slightest. Not that I don't use the effects - just not consciously. I think I'm probably quite a bit like you - I prefer to write when I'm inspired, think on the idea for a bit, and then just let the words flow. Afterwards I'll go through and edit, make sure I've got the right words, the right images etc. But in essence, the fic is there, and as you say, it's just fine editing really.
But I think you're probably wrong when you say that you can't write on demand. I reckon that writing is - certainly a lot of it, anyhow - a lot of hard slog. Sometimes if I'm really reluctant to write (maybe something a bit like your sex scene!) or if I'm blocked, I'll just force myself to write. I'll think it sounds stilted and crap. I'll hate it and think I'm useless as a writer. But nearly always, when I go back to it later, I find that I actually quite like what I wrote, and it'll inspire me to write more. And that rocks!
Anyway, admidst all this waffle I think I'm trying to say that you're right, everyone has their own different way of writing - and we all have our own ways of "excusing" why we don't write regularly/enough!
no subject
on 2006-07-21 11:02 pm (UTC)I find that I actually quite like what I wrote, and it'll inspire me to write more. And that rocks!
Heh! Now there, I'm jealous. Usually after I've forced myself to write for a ficathon, I spend days wishing I could just remove the story from existence. It's nice when other people tell me they like it, though!
no subject
on 2006-07-20 04:22 pm (UTC)I guess for me, writing is like feeling your way through a dark tunnel. All you've got is textures and sounds and you don't know where you are going except that you are going "forward", so you keep going until you reach the end, and then you finally see the whole of what you've got. I usually end up looking at it and thinking "How did that happen, then?" Then I leave it for a few days and polish it like crazy, because it may be whole, but that doesn't mean it is any good.
I know I could never write on demand because I honestly don't know how to find the zone where words happen and something whole comes out of an idea. All the times I've had to write without being in that place, I'm either faking it (works fairly well but it isn't really something you can be proud of) or I just lose control of the English language and the result is truly appalling.
[P.S. - This is
no subject
on 2006-07-21 11:05 pm (UTC)But I would argue that something whole, something that comes to you complete like that, has value even before the editing. It's got the spark I was lamenting the lack of above.
[I guessed! Good to see you again.]
no subject
on 2006-07-20 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-21 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-20 06:45 pm (UTC)I've been thinking about this for days, and your painting, artisan, craftsperson metaphor made me want to share it. :)
I know people who have English degrees who don't write half as well as you do.
no subject
on 2006-07-21 11:03 pm (UTC)I'm flattered, in other words. :D I think your metaphor's a perceptive one, too, especially right now; lately I've been trying to pare down my writing, make it cleaner and more streamlined. I'm not always sure how well it's working, if I've lost something in steering away from my old style, so it's so nice that you like it. Although I have to admit to being a bigger fan of your kind of writing--that almost pointillist style, that riot of images--and also of Raven's--which is harder to classify, because her style seems very adaptable to me, with only a certain knack for language constant from story to story.
no subject
on 2006-07-21 11:34 pm (UTC)I seem to remember commenting about that change in your writing style, although I can't remember the context. In any case, I remember saying that it's working; you're not losing something, but saying as much with less, if that makes sense. Which isn't to say I don't like your "classic" style, because I do, very much; reading it, I always feel like I'm skimming the surface of something very deep, something that doesn't reveal itself without a good few re-readings and some deep thought. Reading you is not easy, but definitely good for the soul. :)
no subject
on 2006-07-21 11:26 pm (UTC)And I am always, always amazed to belong to a community of writers. I love Leigh's writing for its depth and intensity, I love your writing for the way it creates a landscape in one easy sweep, making a whole world in a few words, and most of all, I love that we can have this discussion. It's just such a wonderful thing, to know other writers and their writing as well as we can here; I never got to talk about any of these issues through years and years of doing English at school.
Longest comment EVER
on 2006-07-21 09:17 pm (UTC)I agree with what several people have said above: I doubt that the study of literature, as an academic discipline, is inherently helpful in the practice of writing. The study of literature is good for, well, the study of literature-- you learn the tools of the trade of criticism, you learn vocabulary for speaking about and analyzing writing. So it's helpful in making you sound what you know what you're doing, because you can talk more fluently about your own writing as well as that of others, but I'm not sure it really does much more than that. Not to knock it, because I love critical theory so much sometimes it pains me, but lest I kid myself: I am not doing anything here of much practical use. *grins*
Reading literature, yes--all I know about writing, I learned from (a)doing it and (b)observing how the most talented people do it. I mean, even leaving aside the intangibles you pick up, the vocabulary alone that you build from frequent reading is invaluable. I find that the more I read--and the more recently I've read something good--the better I am at knowing what words I need and how to reach them. The way I think about is that the more I read, the closer to hand is my mental dictionary.
Uh, that was a tangent. My point was that analytical writing and creative writing often derive from totally different kinds of thought (although the best of both draw on overlapping skill sets), and I wouldn't worry that you're not qualified to speak on the latter because you don't feel qualified in the former. You're a very, very good writer; as Meredith says, better than plenty of skilled English majors. You don't need to know all the abstruse terms to make use of the concepts, the way most people don't need to know specialized grammatical terms to properly construct a sentence. (Well, okay, some days it seems like most people can't properly construct a sentence, full stop, but my friends page renews my faith. :D)
But PPE, sadly, opens more doors, and I am weak but I do want a key to those doors.
Heh. Not weak: pragmatic. I could take some lessons.
Although I might tend to be a more structured writer, I hear what you're saying here:
As I said in the comments, I wrote it by numbers - "prompt here, angst there, now a bit of imagery, then some more metaphor, now a specific unusual image, then a mention of the theme", etc.
Because I've done that on occasion (I'm thinking especially of the Oz story I wrote for a ficathon, no surprise), and it's very unsatisfying. Not so much because it feels too calculated--as we've discussed, I get worried when it's not calculated enough!--but because I think there's a difference between forcing a story into a given mold because you feel you have to (for a prompt or whatever) and figuring out the point you're making and then calculating how to make it the best way you can. You know? I usually start out knowing something substantive about my stories, but I also know that they might change a little midstream and I'll still be able to adjust my techniques. It's like physics: I have a potential story that has to be converted into something dynamic and kinetic. That was a really weird metaphor.
continued...
Longest comment(s) EVER
on 2006-07-21 09:17 pm (UTC)So I get what you're saying about waiting for a scene to "happen" in your head. I mean, it's not quite so much like being struck by lightning for me--I just don't have that kind of a creative brain--but it is partly a waiting game, waiting for the right convergence of ideas with inspiration.
It interests me, too, that unlike you I don't write better with music, or when I'm sick or otherwise out of my own head. Only in the last year or so have I been able to turn on background music at all without getting horribly frustrated and distracted. And, argh, I read an essay a few years back about music as a writing aid, as a tool to lay bare the spontaneous creative impulses beneath your conscious inhibitions. It suggested, as an exercise, putting on headphones and listening to music so loud that it drowns out your interior monologue, the part of you that says, "No, that's stupid, that doesn't make sense, that's not safe enough." Which I thought was a really interesting idea, although I was never able to make it work for me because my interior monologue is--you know, constant as my pulse, all-encompassing, it is LARGE, IT CONTAINS MULTITUDES. Anyway, I always think of that when the topic of conscious writing vs. "inspired" writing comes up, but I cannot for the life of me remember the title or the author any more. For some reason I keep thinking it's Mark Strand, but a couple of key terms entered into Google have yielded nothing. I wish I could find it again.
Anyway, that difference between you and me lends credence to the theory that we're writing from slightly different places; me kind of from a surface level, you from a deeper one. And frankly I envy you for that, because there is very little wonder or surprise left in my writing for me. As you say, maybe other people don't notice the difference, but I sure do.
Re: Longest comment(s) EVER
on 2006-07-21 10:47 pm (UTC)Re: Longest comment(s) EVER
on 2006-07-22 12:10 am (UTC)Oh, I know, I know! I like ficathons when the prompts are sufficiently loose to make me think about writing something I wouldn't have written otherwise, without actually forcing me into it. (She says, with two deadlines next week ohgod.) It can be great, and it can be awful. And when it's awful, the situation is as I was talking about above. It's uninspired and it's rubbish.
You don't need to know all the abstruse terms to make use of the concepts, the way most people don't need to know specialized grammatical terms to properly construct a sentence
This really makes me feel better about it, you know? When the pros get to talking about literature, I always do feel a bit twitchy, because, y'know, fanfic-writing PPEist hack here. But I do still write. I was afraid PPE might take that from me, but so far that tiny bit of my immortal soul remains unsold. *g*
So I get what you're saying about waiting for a scene to "happen" in your head. I mean, it's not quite so much like being struck by lightning for me--I just don't have that kind of a creative brain--but it is partly a waiting game, waiting for the right convergence of ideas with inspiration.
From what you've said, I think I was right in guessing that your method of writing is a damn sight more structured than mine. I wonder, though, if the process of waiting for a catalyst is similar for all writers. For example, at the moment I'm writing a fic (the XF quasi-five-things) in which there is a specific theme I want to examine. But all that stayed an abstract notion for a good long while; I didn't sit down to write until the inspiration strolled (literally, and wearing high-heeled boots!) into my head. And yet, the themes explored pre-dated that inspiration, and that's what makes me wonder.
because my interior monologue is--you know, constant as my pulse, all-encompassing, it is LARGE, IT CONTAINS MULTITUDES.
Heee! I hear you, I so hear you. You've heard me get very upset in the past over my own interior monologue - it's so clear and objective and all-encompassing that it hurts my head at times - but strangely enough, writing is the one thing that makes it SHUT UP. Time and the world disappear entirely when I'm in the groove, and I look up and hours have gone by and my head's empty, entirely blank, without the voice. Which is good. And then I generally fall asleep without further ado.
I suppose that makes me sound rather loopy. *g* But as for what the music actually achieves, I don't know. It's a mood-setter, I guess, and I stop needing it once I've got into it.
As you say, maybe other people don't notice the difference, but I sure do.
That's it, ain't it? It's where you start from, even if the finished product looks okay. But I still envy you your careful structure, because it smacks of care and attention to detail that my headlong rush misses, sometimes.
(Also longest comment ever, but I've really been enjoying this discussion!)
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on 2006-07-21 10:04 pm (UTC)I have only seen writing from the other side (much better), but I think formulas and the structuralist approach to literature is exactly the reason I detested Literary Theory. For example, Propp's 41 functions of a Fairy Tale, in which he lists the 41 things that usually/must happen in any Fairy Tale. (E.g. Hero leaves home, hero is presented with a magical object by tutor-figure, etc.) Ergo? Harry Potter, Star Wars, and any fantasy-type film you'd care to mention - pretty much ruined and reduced to the sum of its parts. I hate people ripping apart literature like that! Grrrr. I hate it so much, I even wrote one of my essays on the topic, and I got a 64, so I must be right in some way. (Or can argue a bad point effectively; I'm not sure which.)
Damn train of thought! What was I talking about? Oh yes. I hate Literary Theory. You want to write? Write. Some people will glean things from it. They will take your words and find new themes and ideas that you didn't put there. The words will create new things for every single person who reads them; they will spawn new stories and ideas. Just don't stress. Perhaps the structuralists were right, and when people create stories they are tapping into some huge truth of human existence. Or maybe it's just words that grab us emotionally. Either way - people read. I just accept that I read, and don't worry too much about the rest of it.
I'm doing the Language side of English next year, thank god! I don't think I'm really cut out for analysing texts. I don't care enough what other people thought about a certain text, or what Marxist theory would make of it. Blargh.
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on 2006-07-21 11:12 pm (UTC)Perhaps the structuralists were right, and when people create stories they are tapping into some huge truth of human existence.
I feel this every so often, sometimes reading, sometimes writing; when something is not only beautiful and affecting, but just right, so note-perfect that it couldn't have been any other way without losing some element of its perfection. Maybe it's just me being fanciful. *g*
It's the PPEist in me, but I rather like ideology as read in a text. This has been somewhat comically manifested recently because I've been mainlining X-Files DVDs and feminist literature at the same time. Analysing the relationship between Mulder and Scully from the feminist perspective has proved unexpectedly fruitful. *g*
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on 2011-12-30 11:10 am (UTC)"Please excuse me butting in on a five-years-old conversation!! (I'm on a read-through of the Ficathon back catalogue) I felt I just had to say something because I think you and I write in much the same way! I consider myself to be quite an undisciplined writer (Got a 'B' O'level in English Language many years ago but never studied English Literature - wish now that I had) because I often start with only a vague idea of plot or theme, often I will start with just a scene or a line of dialogue or a vague idea of what I want the story to be about...maybe it shows in my work, I don't know. Key to me is the enjoyment of forming something which often feels almost as if it writes itself... and then, like you, I go back and edit and tweak the hell out of it until I feel it's presentable! And looking at hmpf's reply below, I sometimes work like that too.. . I agree completely with her, there is no 'right way' to write! I did once try one of those courses, 'How to Write' and it just killed any creativity I felt stone dead. I wonder if the number of WiP's on my hard drive (and portable hard drive, just in case, LOL) matches the number of hmpf's?! XD My bucket list is simple - finish them all!
And now I'm going to go, sorry again to butt in, just had to - and BTW I LOVE the story. It's the kind of introspective stuff I love to write and read, and is really thought-provoking. Its the kind of fic that sets my plot bunnies hopping (and I don't need any more of those, LOL). Great stuff."
I hope it won't matter that I'm five years late to the discussion... and if everyone has moved on, not to worry. I'll carry on anyway...lol.
I studied GCSE (Or was it GCE?!? So long ago now - I left school in 1975!), read the books, did the coursework... and decided to leave school before the exams, because I could. You have no idea how much I regret that now... I did go on some years later to get a 'B' in English Language at 'O' Level, but have never done any other studying other than a hell of a lot of reading (I can remember being at my own damn birthday party and wishing it would finish so that I could read the new book I'd been given - how book-wormy is that?!) and, over the last five years, enough fan-fic writing to sink a small rowing boat... My son is now at sixth form college studying (amongst other subjects) English Literature and I am so envious... interesting that some who have studied at that level don't seem to feel that it necessarily helps with the writing, though.
I never used to join in on prompt fics; but lately I've been finding them great fun. Because really, if I think about it, most of what I write is prompted anyway - by a show, or a scene in a show, a concept... Over the last year or so I've taken to writing commissions, I suppose you'd call them - someone on a forum expressed a desire to see a particular pairing, and so even though I wasn't that keen on the pairing I wrote the fic as much as a challenge to myself to see if I could do it... and it went to 13 chapters and I really enjoyed it and I suppose as a story it was OK...
Do you find that you have to have a title before you can start to write? I do - and it has to be completely relative to the story I'm trying to tell because it will also act as a prompt to me to stay 'on topic' (because I can get distracted!)... a couple of times I've had to change a title when the story has morphed into something other than what I'd originally intended, which is okay; but it's why I'm still reluctant to start posting a fic before it's complete... the compulsion to keep tweaking as I go is very strong with me! I do do it, but it worries me...
And I should stop here I think, because I may just be talking to myself now, LOL!
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on 2011-12-30 11:20 am (UTC)( http://edzel2.livejournal.com/?skip=80&tag=simm%21master ) and for the first time I felt I understood what people who talk about 'being a channel' meant... it was weird and wonderful at the same time.