msagara | (no subject)

Something

sartorias is discussing made me think of something vis a vis writing and process. I started to post this in response to her comment about narrator and voice, and then realized that it was a digression, and off topic. So I'm posting it here.

I find process discussions fascinating precisely because no two writers I've ever met have the same process, although there's overlap.

Susan Musgrave once came to one of my University classes as a guest lecturer. She spoke, of course, about her own writing processes, and her own approach to poetry, and (this is paraphrased, because I don't have eidetic memory) she said if the -initial- attempt to write something didn't work with a minimal amount of editing, she threw it away. All of the power, in her opinion and at that time was in the initial rush to paper, and losing that in heavy revision killed the poem, for her.

I often find that that's how I approach novels/novel chapters or sections. I've thrown away as much as 600 pages before, to start over, rather than revise heavily, once I've realized what the issues are. It's not that I think all 600 pages are -- or were -- garbage; it's just that the revisions would have been so surgical it would have been more an act of vivisection than an act of organic creation.

Okay, that sounded pretentious. I'll stop now.

Well, almost. I started to wonder, in the discussion about voice, whether or not dissection & understanding of a particular style can be subsumed into one's own process and made part of it -- especially for people who tend to write with a more heavy reliance on the sub-conscious than is probably wise (I include myself in that number).

I know it helps when I review; I know it helps when I critique. I know that I can do this with my work much after the fact, when I've forgotten the initial, blind impulse and emotionality that drove the writing in the first place. But I also know that I live in a jungle, and writing is like hacking a path through dense growth with a machete (I borrowed this analogy from

aireon, who used it to describe the writing of one of my favourite of her books <wry g>.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

If I think too much about process I can't do it. Can only really do that when I'm teaching--when I've switched sides of the brain and am approaching it analytically. I'm writing intuitively and if I pull back and get analytical, it kills the book.

And yet I outline especially with historicals, because events have to happen in a set order. However an intuitive thing often happens--something I'll add because it works turns out to have happened that way in reality, or else a character appears just when I need her and turns out to be just what she needs to be. (Happened in the mip in fact--thank goodness, too, because I needed to shift to female POV and, well, there she was, right in that abbey seven miles from Stonehenge.)

I tend to write tight--sometimes overly so--and have never had to cut. Always have to add. Scenes come through sharp and clear for the most part, and develop through dialogue, with bits of description--then the rest fits itself in. I have an awful time with exposition and time-setting and such--I mean who cares how many days went by between the last scene and this one? (My editor, of course. Aargh.) In a way it's odd I never got into play- or screenwriting.

aireon's first novel was a revelation to me--a completely different way of approaching the process. I well remember all that undergrowth, and the experience of hacking through it. 8)

>I well remember all that undergrowth

And, God help me, I -still- take too long on my effing transitions, despite all these years of trying to leap instead of walk to the next scene.

Which I guess lends credence to Michelle's original point.

Say - how does one get the little name-figure-thingie to show up in posts to identify another person? So I could have said, forex, "'s original point".

Hmm. don't know why that didn't come through.

So I could reference

msagara

or

dancing horse

or

janni

or whatever

signed, slow to learn

It's a coding thing: type <lj user="aireon"> and what displays is

aireon.

---L.

Thank you,

lnhammer

Oh, the excitement! It worked!

I figure as long as we know our bad habits, we can always fix them in the second draft. I try to make sure I fill out the text a bit. And yes, Larry, I do try to get the chronology sorted out.

The name thing is done like so: [lj user=username] only you use pointy html brackets <> instead.

I mean who cares how many days went by between the last scene and this one?

Um — me? It makes a difference in how I expect characters to react if they've had two weeks to come to terms with what just happened, or it's later that day.

---L.

I mean who cares how many days went by between the last scene and this one?

Um — me? It makes a difference in how I expect characters to react if they've had two weeks to come to terms with what just happened, or it's later that day.

Ayup. I actually had one person email me with a request for my calendar, which hasn't ever made it into the front matter because, um, there's never been enough room for it. I tend to map out days, and geography is a part of that -- but I hate maps, and mine all look like big blobs with things jutting out of them that are just as blobby.

Otoh, as a reader I don't care. And was told by many editors that that was my perogative as a reader -- but that as a writer, I had to do the work for those readers who did care.

Not, of course, that I hold this against you. Much <g>.

If I think too much about process I can't do it. Can only really do that when I'm teaching--when I've switched sides of the brain and am approaching it analytically. I'm writing intuitively and if I pull back and get analytical, it kills the book.

This happens for me, as well. But I'm not sure that I write tight in the same way you do -- yours is a more elegant, compact prose. I've never been asked to -cut-, though.

Sometimes I think it's too compact and needs to be opened up so it's more accessible. Bearing in mind that really great-selling fiction tends to be considerably more floppy--you can skim large chunks and still get the story.

Or, to put it another way, when it comes to the large majority of readers, do the words get in the way? Is a writer better off with less craft, more story, and more transparency in the style?

Or, to put it another way, when it comes to the large majority of readers, do the words get in the way? Is a writer better off with less craft, more story, and more transparency in the style?

If we define better off as selling, then for the most part -- at least from observations in genre, and recently -- one is better off. Writers, and people who would be writers, are the readers who most often care.

I have mixed feelings about this, because I have a bit of the word fetishist in me. Also, as a reader, I seldom find -anyone's- prose to be so difficult that I have trouble parsing story. I can point to a piece of writing and say "you will lose people with this", but it doesn't lose me, and from a purely selfish standpoint, I don't necessarily encourage people to change their style.

What I'm trying to figure out is a sort of unified field theory of writing well but still selling well. There has to be a way. Transparency is an art in itself, and clarity can be extremely highly crafted.