Sometimes I wish I was clumsier...
Jan. 24th, 2008 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI really do, sometimes I wish I was clumsier. In the literary sense, I mean. In my person I am entirely clumsy enough already, thank you. I dropped the Laptop of Heavenly Perfection this afternoon. Or let it fall, rather. Luckily it was in the backpack and sufficiently swaddled, so no harm has apparently been done, but even so...
Anyway, the gist of this? Why do I want to be a less-good writer than I am (for whatever values that you want to apply to such a massively egotistical statement)?
It goes like this. I have quite an ornamented style, when I choose to use it; like it or loathe it, there's a rhythm to my prose. Phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph and page to page, there's an inherent flow that I work for constantly. It's in the beats and the pulses of the language, and often in the words themselves, wordplays and repetitions that carry you onward in what's meant to be a smooth and seamless fluency.
Which is all well and good, but it really ought to be the last thing I attend to, the final polish. In earlier stages, it just makes things more difficult.
As, for example, this.
I have what I persist in calling a novella, despite all evidence to the contrary (it's already too long for that category, and all my ideas for redrafts involve more material). It's pure SF, set in the same universe as my story Terminal, but that's not relevant here.
Point is, it really needs disassembling and putting back together again, major structural rearrangement. I know more or less what it needs and where it's needed; I can remake it quite convincingly in my head. But as soon as I approach it on the page, I find myself lured hypnotically into that rhythm and flow, paragraph to paragraph and page to page, seduced to the point where all I want to do is fiddle with the punctuation. Major reconstruction will mean hacking into that superficial gloss, where really all I want to do is ride its sweet curves like a wave...
Etc. I think really I'm just feeling sorry for my pretty-but-incomplete boy of a story, that it will have to become a great big hairy man-story with added complications and an adult complexion. [Editorial byway: why do we still write complexion without a second thought, when connexion just looks sooo old-fashioned?] But honestly, it would be so much simpler if my first drafts were just great rude rough chunks of text that were amenable to being hacked about and restacked and thrown away and suchlike. Like an artist's first sketches, a sculptor's first maquettes, and so forth. Comes down to process, I guess. I do think I fuss too much, too soon. But I won't be changing it now. That close attention to the language, to the actual words, that's what gets me through, page to page and day to day. That is the writing, that's the heart of story.
Anyway, the gist of this? Why do I want to be a less-good writer than I am (for whatever values that you want to apply to such a massively egotistical statement)?
It goes like this. I have quite an ornamented style, when I choose to use it; like it or loathe it, there's a rhythm to my prose. Phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph and page to page, there's an inherent flow that I work for constantly. It's in the beats and the pulses of the language, and often in the words themselves, wordplays and repetitions that carry you onward in what's meant to be a smooth and seamless fluency.
Which is all well and good, but it really ought to be the last thing I attend to, the final polish. In earlier stages, it just makes things more difficult.
As, for example, this.
I have what I persist in calling a novella, despite all evidence to the contrary (it's already too long for that category, and all my ideas for redrafts involve more material). It's pure SF, set in the same universe as my story Terminal, but that's not relevant here.
Point is, it really needs disassembling and putting back together again, major structural rearrangement. I know more or less what it needs and where it's needed; I can remake it quite convincingly in my head. But as soon as I approach it on the page, I find myself lured hypnotically into that rhythm and flow, paragraph to paragraph and page to page, seduced to the point where all I want to do is fiddle with the punctuation. Major reconstruction will mean hacking into that superficial gloss, where really all I want to do is ride its sweet curves like a wave...
Etc. I think really I'm just feeling sorry for my pretty-but-incomplete boy of a story, that it will have to become a great big hairy man-story with added complications and an adult complexion. [Editorial byway: why do we still write complexion without a second thought, when connexion just looks sooo old-fashioned?] But honestly, it would be so much simpler if my first drafts were just great rude rough chunks of text that were amenable to being hacked about and restacked and thrown away and suchlike. Like an artist's first sketches, a sculptor's first maquettes, and so forth. Comes down to process, I guess. I do think I fuss too much, too soon. But I won't be changing it now. That close attention to the language, to the actual words, that's what gets me through, page to page and day to day. That is the writing, that's the heart of story.