(no subject)

These have been among those days where the thought process goes as follows:

"Even more harrowing than the first chapters of a novel are the last, for Mr. Earbrass anyway. The characters ahve one and all become thoroughly tiresome, as though he had been trapped at the same party with them since the day before; neglected sections of the plot loom on every hand, waiting to be disposed of; his verbs seem to have withered away and his adjectives to be prolifterating past control. Furthermore, at this stage he invariably gets insomnia...."

Yup, Gorey knows his stuff. Damn him anyway.

I should be glad to realise for sure that I'm approaching the endgame (Albeit still a few chapters off). Actually, I think the adjectives aren't doing too badly. But my ability to transition within a scene is lost, as is any capacity to pace scenes so I don't get two back-to-back that both clash horribly and destroy any impression I ever gave that I have a sense of structure.

And besides, I found out that I forgot one detail entirely, which means there's another recent scene in the new stuff that has a big blatant error in it.

Still, writing was done. And if tonight that has more of the ring of "Mistakes were made" than it does of "Look! Accomplishment!" Well --

-- hey! I was doing great at archery today! No, really. No winter shoot, alas, ( Boy have we all been awful at actually counting scores and the like) but, well, I felt like I knew what I was doing again.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I've begun thinking ahead a bit. This story will someday be done. A day not as far as it feels, though almost certainly not before the end of April. So naturally, as spring rolls around, a woman's fancy turns to critiques. Or at least therory there-about.

Fortunately, sartorias said enough on the subject for me right here. My big mistake when giving critiques has always been to give suggestions how to fix the story. So far I have solved this not by scrupulously editing this tendency out, but by writing big caveats explaining that the last thing I expect is for the person to follow these ideas, and by always suggesting as many as five different, preferabnly mutually exclusive, ways to "solve" any one problem. Things that make it clear I'm not trying to rewrite the story to my sole preference, that their solution will be better than any of mine.

It's still a mistake, and all the caveats in the world don't change that. I know it. But I'd like to think I've given useful advice in spite of it.

And this is probably of interest to any writer who still thinks with a bit too much of good&evil. At its root I notice an unspoken assumption that "Conflict=story", an oft cited bit of writing advice, is wrong or at least incomplete. Or maybe it's just too late at night. Besides, she quotes from The Lion in Winter.

(no subject)

These have been among those days where the thought process goes as follows:

"Even more harrowing than the first chapters of a novel are the last, for Mr. Earbrass anyway. The characters ahve one and all become thoroughly tiresome, as though he had been trapped at the same party with them since the day before; neglected sections of the plot loom on every hand, waiting to be disposed of; his verbs seem to have withered away and his adjectives to be prolifterating past control. Furthermore, at this stage he invariably gets insomnia...."

Yup, Gorey knows his stuff. Damn him anyway.

I should be glad to realise for sure that I'm approaching the endgame (Albeit still a few chapters off). Actually, I think the adjectives aren't doing too badly. But my ability to transition within a scene is lost, as is any capacity to pace scenes so I don't get two back-to-back that both clash horribly and destroy any impression I ever gave that I have a sense of structure.

And besides, I found out that I forgot one detail entirely, which means there's another recent scene in the new stuff that has a big blatant error in it.

Still, writing was done. And if tonight that has more of the ring of "Mistakes were made" than it does of "Look! Accomplishment!" Well --

-- hey! I was doing great at archery today! No, really. No winter shoot, alas, ( Boy have we all been awful at actually counting scores and the like) but, well, I felt like I knew what I was doing again.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I've begun thinking ahead a bit. This story will someday be done. A day not as far as it feels, though almost certainly not before the end of April. So naturally, as spring rolls around, a woman's fancy turns to critiques. Or at least therory there-about.

Fortunately, sartorias said enough on the subject for me right here. My big mistake when giving critiques has always been to give suggestions how to fix the story. So far I have solved this not by scrupulously editing this tendency out, but by writing big caveats explaining that the last thing I expect is for the person to follow these ideas, and by always suggesting as many as five different, preferabnly mutually exclusive, ways to "solve" any one problem. Things that make it clear I'm not trying to rewrite the story to my sole preference, that their solution will be better than any of mine.

It's still a mistake, and all the caveats in the world don't change that. I know it. But I'd like to think I've given useful advice in spite of it.

And this is probably of interest to any writer who still thinks with a bit too much of good&evil. At its root I notice an unspoken assumption that "Conflict=story", an oft cited bit of writing advice, is wrong or at least incomplete. Or maybe it's just too late at night. Besides, she quotes from The Lion in Winter.