Finally focussed
This blog started as a brief and failed attempt to write about anything and everything that popped into my head. Not surprisingly, I've been fairly vacant for the last three months. Make that entirely vacant. So, I've decided to delete the random posts I've already made, and redefine this little page's purpose. I am and shall remain an unpublished author for a substantial period of time. Anyone who's told you writing a book and getting it published is difficult wasn't lying. It is an ASTRONOMICAL amount of work. Sure, the writing might be fun, even interesting, but to make any story good, you need to painstakingly research the topics you're discussing and examine and justify each character's actions and reactions to specific stimuli and plot points. You do this in order to connect with your readers in some basic, gut level way and, naturally, to make your story realistic enough to suspend disbelief.
Now, by no means last or least of the challenges every writer faces, especially the first time around, is the rewrite. I'm talking the months of soul destroying work that goes into taking a draft (which when you first finish it figure it's about 75% done) and turning it into something legible and, hopefully, interesting. The initial estimate of 75% is about 74% too high, because you will find that several things changed over the course the writing. First is style. If it takes you a year or so to pound out 500 manuscript pages, by the time you finish you'll have (hopefully) grown in some meaningful way. That means your perception of what is good writing and what sucks is going to change, and all those really good sentences you thought were in the first draft turn out to read like 3rd rate garbage. Second is the direction of the story, the themes, the embedded message as it were. As you change, so does your perception of the world around you, and that must be reflected in your writing. Whoever said a real artist puts nothing of themselves into their work was an idiot and, obviously, not a very good artist. Art is the exploration of self, the culmination of an individual's emotion as translated into another medium. Whatever medium that turns out to be, be it paint, sound, film, verse, movement, etc., affects how that emotion is protrayed, received and processed. If you want to be a writer, in my limited opinion, you have to consider how your words are going to affect your reader.
That means meter, among other things. Every sentence in English, every word and sound produced, conforms to certain conventions. Instinct tells us how many syllables we should use, which words should go next to one another, and which constructions we should avoid at all times. Like the lyrics of your favourite song, prose has to flow a certain way, otherwise it doesn't read right and it certainly doesn't sound right when you try to vocalize it. In other words, if you can't read one of your sentences out loud without stuttering, struggling or leaving off with the wrong intonation (command v. question, pause v. bridge), you're probably looking at something you should re-write. Less is more when it comes to prose, a rule I seem to have broken here. I could go on, but I think I'll save a more in depth exploration of the above noted problems for another time.
Also, you can look forward to hearing from me about plugging plot holes, because that one's a bitch and a half.
Later.
Now, by no means last or least of the challenges every writer faces, especially the first time around, is the rewrite. I'm talking the months of soul destroying work that goes into taking a draft (which when you first finish it figure it's about 75% done) and turning it into something legible and, hopefully, interesting. The initial estimate of 75% is about 74% too high, because you will find that several things changed over the course the writing. First is style. If it takes you a year or so to pound out 500 manuscript pages, by the time you finish you'll have (hopefully) grown in some meaningful way. That means your perception of what is good writing and what sucks is going to change, and all those really good sentences you thought were in the first draft turn out to read like 3rd rate garbage. Second is the direction of the story, the themes, the embedded message as it were. As you change, so does your perception of the world around you, and that must be reflected in your writing. Whoever said a real artist puts nothing of themselves into their work was an idiot and, obviously, not a very good artist. Art is the exploration of self, the culmination of an individual's emotion as translated into another medium. Whatever medium that turns out to be, be it paint, sound, film, verse, movement, etc., affects how that emotion is protrayed, received and processed. If you want to be a writer, in my limited opinion, you have to consider how your words are going to affect your reader.
That means meter, among other things. Every sentence in English, every word and sound produced, conforms to certain conventions. Instinct tells us how many syllables we should use, which words should go next to one another, and which constructions we should avoid at all times. Like the lyrics of your favourite song, prose has to flow a certain way, otherwise it doesn't read right and it certainly doesn't sound right when you try to vocalize it. In other words, if you can't read one of your sentences out loud without stuttering, struggling or leaving off with the wrong intonation (command v. question, pause v. bridge), you're probably looking at something you should re-write. Less is more when it comes to prose, a rule I seem to have broken here. I could go on, but I think I'll save a more in depth exploration of the above noted problems for another time.
Also, you can look forward to hearing from me about plugging plot holes, because that one's a bitch and a half.
Later.
posted by donmonty at 8:38 PM
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"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence."- Oscar Wilde.
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