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pegkerrWord count: Unknown. I wrote a bit more than usual today, but it was all longhand and I haven't transferred it to the computer yet, so I don't have a word count. I will try to do that tomorrow.
Notes: There are bits of the scene I don't know what happens (yes, the old problem: what is it exactly that the fish have to say?). I am trying to ignore that inconvenient fact for the moment and write all around it. Perhaps it was that fact, that I knew I was writing a scene where I didn't know a crucial bit, that made me try a rather different technique with this writing session: ordinarily, I write sentence by sentence, crafting and recrafting, trying to get each one as close to right as I can get it before going on. Lately, I've had the feeling that none of it is right, on the sentence level, I mean (and I'm talking about just about every single sentence I've written in the book so far). I have this sensation that the language should be more beautiful, flow better, include more sensory detail, and yet at the same time the style should be perfectly transparent, not get in the way. I know, I know, I know, I want the moon. Yet, when I look at what I've actually typed, I feel as though I am describing the characters movements as if they are clumsy wooden puppets, rather than flesh and blood people. And I'm viewing them through a cloudy and scratched lens smeared with Vaseline. It doesn't feel real yet because I'm, ack, I'm a talentless hack who can't get across what I'm trying to say, clearly and beautifully. I feel as though I've taken each sentence up to about 75% of where it should go, but I lack the vision (or the talent or chops or something) to take up all the way to be a beautiful sentence that is exactly right.
Anyway, this time, instead of getting it to the 75% point and getting stuck, feeling I can't possibly get it any better although it needs to be better, I wrote each sentence down and moved on if it was only at about the 40% mark. The near miss method. This-is-sort-of-what-I'll-say-here method. Just laying track, I've heard it called (can't remember which writer I picked that image up from). Another thing I did was to skip over "beats" in the scene where the language wasn't coming right away. I threw in a sentence, sort of taking a stab at the idea I wanted to get across, and then next wrote down something else that wasn't the next thing that happened, but it would happen in the scene somewhere. It was like taking a lot of quick candid photographs; I will try to assemble a collage from them. Many of them were quite out of focus. But as I said, more words today than I've had in a single writing session in a long time.
I will have to make a peculiar experiment this weekend. I must take a marshmallow and find out what happens if you drip a drop of blood on it. I mean, does it soak in, or does it just slither off the surface or what? Yes, these are the weird things that writers need to know.
Mood: cautiously pleased. More words than usual. This is good. We hope the momentum keeps up. Of course, I don't think they're the right words yet, either, but we can work on that, too.
Notes: There are bits of the scene I don't know what happens (yes, the old problem: what is it exactly that the fish have to say?). I am trying to ignore that inconvenient fact for the moment and write all around it. Perhaps it was that fact, that I knew I was writing a scene where I didn't know a crucial bit, that made me try a rather different technique with this writing session: ordinarily, I write sentence by sentence, crafting and recrafting, trying to get each one as close to right as I can get it before going on. Lately, I've had the feeling that none of it is right, on the sentence level, I mean (and I'm talking about just about every single sentence I've written in the book so far). I have this sensation that the language should be more beautiful, flow better, include more sensory detail, and yet at the same time the style should be perfectly transparent, not get in the way. I know, I know, I know, I want the moon. Yet, when I look at what I've actually typed, I feel as though I am describing the characters movements as if they are clumsy wooden puppets, rather than flesh and blood people. And I'm viewing them through a cloudy and scratched lens smeared with Vaseline. It doesn't feel real yet because I'm, ack, I'm a talentless hack who can't get across what I'm trying to say, clearly and beautifully. I feel as though I've taken each sentence up to about 75% of where it should go, but I lack the vision (or the talent or chops or something) to take up all the way to be a beautiful sentence that is exactly right.
Anyway, this time, instead of getting it to the 75% point and getting stuck, feeling I can't possibly get it any better although it needs to be better, I wrote each sentence down and moved on if it was only at about the 40% mark. The near miss method. This-is-sort-of-what-I'll-say-here method. Just laying track, I've heard it called (can't remember which writer I picked that image up from). Another thing I did was to skip over "beats" in the scene where the language wasn't coming right away. I threw in a sentence, sort of taking a stab at the idea I wanted to get across, and then next wrote down something else that wasn't the next thing that happened, but it would happen in the scene somewhere. It was like taking a lot of quick candid photographs; I will try to assemble a collage from them. Many of them were quite out of focus. But as I said, more words today than I've had in a single writing session in a long time.
I will have to make a peculiar experiment this weekend. I must take a marshmallow and find out what happens if you drip a drop of blood on it. I mean, does it soak in, or does it just slither off the surface or what? Yes, these are the weird things that writers need to know.
Mood: cautiously pleased. More words than usual. This is good. We hope the momentum keeps up. Of course, I don't think they're the right words yet, either, but we can work on that, too.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-20 01:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-20 06:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-20 06:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-20 10:40 am (UTC)Hell, I feel this way all the damn time. I've discovered, though, that what feels like maybe 60%, 70% to me, reads like 100% to the rest of the world--in other words, I'm gettting a lot more of it on paper than I think I am. I think it's one of those things that the writer can't see him- or herself, because we're so busy looking at the thing in our head that there aren't any words for.
The other reliable mantra is, I can fix it later.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-22 09:45 am (UTC)I use that one a lot, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-20 01:30 pm (UTC)K.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-22 08:40 am (UTC)That sounds like a wonderful way to go about it! :-) It's really interesting reading about how you're figuring out how to made this work. Thank you for sharing it.
I remember reading something Diana Gabaldon (author of Outlanderand many other books) wrote about her writing process. She said (and I may be remembering this incorrectly but I think it's right) that when she'd get to a part where she didn't know a fact or exactly what she was going to say in that scene or exactly what was going to happen right then, in order to keep her momentum going and not get stuck, she'd put in brackets and keep going, then go back later and fill in the brackets.
Like, "Jaime grabbed his sword [description of sword] and [big battle scene here]. Meanwhile, [what Claire learned in town]."
Really bad example, that, but anyway...maybe this would be useful to you?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-22 08:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-11-22 09:04 am (UTC)p.s. Sorry 'bout the wacky italics. I think I forgot to put in the 'end italics' bit.