Maybe that is exactly what we are being; turning out page after page of what we hope an unknown judge will not deem drivel. Preface: I read post after post about how this should be that and that should be this according to some unseen Oz we nominate as sellable or the regurgitations of the daily lessons of the high school teacher who is but a stone skipping across the fathoms of literature. We use words like craft and craftsmen, art and artisan. We play the same plays that made the ones before us good. We place our favorites on high pedestals and marvel at their skill and uniqueness, but daren't tread upon their majesty. No, that hallowed ground was for them and them alone. Yet, even today, an author will cast down the bulky confines that limit his craft (again, sorry ginger and maia for using masculine) and present to us another bestseller or question maker. Meat of the Matter: Are those new, groundbreaking authors telling the readers to go fuck themselves? No! They are showing, not telling. They are telling a compelling story that stands out from the rest of the confined, homogenous blob of what writing should be. Spoiler alert: I hate to break it to you, but living amongst the poor and downtrodden citizens of Lafayette and Yocona (pronounced Yok-nee) counties in Mississippi; Faulkner's stories could have passed for newspaper articles. His dialogue is not unique; it is real. One of my favorite shows to watch as I fall asleep over my half full cocktail, of which I wish I had the alcohol to use the following night, is The New Yankee Workshop. I could learn to emulate everything Norm Abram has to teach me if I had roughly $37,532.57 to spend in equipment, right?. Probably not. The real question, though, is would I want to. If all I do is copy Norm, does that make me a master? If all I do is write like Keats, does that make me a master? Plato did not reason like his teacher, and his student did not reason like him. Who do you know best out of the three? Conclusion: Of course there are certain rules you have to abide by as an author: syntax, tense, POV, etc. It is your unique ability to apply those rules (not all are always applicable) and create your own story. Don't copy. Don't replicate. If all writers on this site are craftsmen, then the person replicating table after table at the Wal-Mart woodshop are craftsmen as well. Take your teachers' lessons with a grain of salt and apply; never copy.
writing is certainly considered an art form by most, along with painting, sculpture, photography, music composition, etc. but i consider myself merely a writer, not a craftswoman, not an artist... just a writer...
Very compelling, Garball. To me it is about developing some reliable equilibrium as a writer and endlessly striving toward it. Yes, I must remain true to the forebears of this art form (I do believe it is a deeply profound art form, writing), even paying homage to some of the authors that influence my own development; yet I must also remain committed to pushing boundaries and putting my own signature on my writing in the face of that "unseen Oz", that omnipresent hand that seems to push us with or without our consent. It is remaining true without always imitating, pushing the boundaries while still respecting the tenets of writing, that makes this equilibrium so difficult (impossible?) to achieve. Phew. Chalk that long-winded response up to your thought-inspiring post.
Nice vent. I should only like to point out that I take issue with a couple assumptions. Why do you grant such powers to the unknown "judge"? And why grant them also to people writing post after post here? I hope you're being more selective than that and only soaking up the advice or feedback that makes sense to you. I don't know your experience with formal teachers but mine has been mixed on that front as well. If this post is the result of that "first rejection letter" I'm wondering if that couple of cocktails and a half have loosened your thoughts on the letter's words? If it was a more than a form rejection, it's my understanding that's a positive sign. If it was a form letter, then from whence does all this particular venting come? How does "copying" come to play such a center role? I think Walmart tables are made by machines. [sidetrack] I'm pleased I made enough of an impression on gender neutral language to be cited, but find it interesting it was forgotten that I also said it was my choice but I had no reason to insist anyone else make the same choice. In this case, it's my philosophy that my personal effort to use gender neutral language adds to the collective change. I'm not disappointed that such changes take time to become the norm. Since you were aware that you referred to 'we' and 'all writers' as 'men', it's only one more step (solely up to you) to replace craftsmen with 'writers', 'artisans', 'masters of the craft'; or, if you prefer, just drop the "we". [/sidetrack]
I wanted to share with you a link to a blog I recently started on the craft of writing. I'm not selling any books on writing, nor do I think they help. I just spent three years writing and editing two novels (250,000 words worth of work) and learning. So, now that I'm taking a break, I wanted to share my massive OneNote file full of all my self-teachings and thoughts. I will be focusing entirely on craft; so, there will be no information on getting you motivated to write; there are tons of those blogs out there with lots of shiny kindle books for you to buy. I simply wanted to share my thoughts on technique, and not ones I ingeniously discovered, but ones I found inside the works of all the writers I, along with millions, have admired. So, if you like lots of examples and the thinking process of a writer as he goes about writing, then you will have a good time. And just to be clear, this is not out of the goodness of my heart, I too hope to learn as I go along, both on my own, and from you. The blog is new, but I've already begun posting several lessons/ruminations, and will continue until I exhaust my stack of digital notes. Writer In Perpetual Training: http://writerinprepetualtraining.wordpress.com/
an odd way to endear yourself to the members! in any case, before touting your website, you might want to check out the rules 'n regs governing this site... and perhaps introduce yourself in the introductions section first, then establish yourself as a helpful member, before expecting those who've been here a while to go off-site to see your 'massive' file... that said, welcome to the forums! love and hugs, maia
Just so I understand, books on writing don't help, but your accumulated "self-teachings and thoughts" do?
Yep. No book on writing out there breaks down sentences or describes to you every different method of description, narration, exposition, or projection of consciousness. They are either grammatical (Quirk), linguistic (Chomsky), stylistic (Tufte: Artful Syntax), or philosophical (exe: David Lodge or Booth or Stephen King or books like On Writing Well). I've yet to come across any book that breaks down the work. After reading all the different offerings, it became clear that the only way to actually grasp command of the craft is to sit down, read, find patterns, compare, and come up with our own opinions of what were the underlying reasoning behind the choices the authors made. If it sounded like I was making my blog some sort of higher authority on writing, I apologize. It isn't. It's my work that I've done, hours and hours, and instead of hitting the delete button, I decided to share it. Not everyone can live on a university campus with a hundred thousand book library at their disposal, nor the time to do the hours of active reading. I don't have the benefits of having many writer friends in my social group (i'm a computer engineering student and the sort of writing we do is rather bleak), so it would be helpful to me to get people to bounce ideas off of.
I would agree with this, except for your claim that it is the "only way". My own opinion is that each writer has individual learning styles as well as individual writing styles, and that both impact the process of learning writing. There have been some extensive discussions on these forums about what methods work best, and after participating in them I came to the conclusion that what works for one writer will not necessarily work for another because of the differences I mentioned. What's more, even if I follow your method, I may come to different conclusions, because my goals in writing may well differ from yours, the works I've studied may differ from the ones you studied, and a particular technique with which you are comfortable may just not work for me. I appreciate you sharing the fruits of your labors.
And none ever will, so let's declare that straw man dead. Or structural -- where any writer, fiction or nonfiction, had better know what he is about.
That is where I disagree. I'm not exploring how to write a certain style of genre. If you looked at my blog so far, you'd see that I've covered topics like Clusters and Phrases and the structural methods of description writing. All of which is independent of what you want to write. It is simply the tools of the English language. The Absolute construction is the same in erotica as it is in magical realism, the same holds true for description by attribute or detail or comparison. As I said, it isn't about philosophy of how to write, simply the deconstruction of the work put forth by great writers (great as in having a long career and extensive and consistent body of work). Willa Cather uses the same sentence style that Don Delillo uses, but one dwells into the metaphysical world by employing lots of successive noun clusters and backtracking absolutes, while Cather writes raw Frontier fiction with heavy verb clusters and verbals. The tools are the same, the frequency in use is what sets them apart. As for the poster bringing up structural, well, after you read enough body of fiction, you realize how utterly pointless structure is; as Neil Gaiman once said, he'd rather not know the Hero's journey or act structure or any other. I tend to agree. Structure goes out the window the moment you discover a writer whose work resonates with you.
Actually, I do. I just didn't click that link and assumed you meant structure as in you know, Russian formalist and all the other connotations with that word. I've read Gopen, and I've gone beyond and read pretty extensively on affective lexicon and mimesis and emotional arousal. It just isn't all that important. It is only important if you are writing Genre, because in there, the readers have a premeditated quota of expected emotional arousal. They buy a book already being prepared for the emotions they will feel, and any deviation is met with severe condemnation. But all of that is irrelevant to learning the craft of writing. You need to learn how to swim before you dive after the sunken treasure.
Lol. What exactly do I have to gain from bullshiting? Good God. I am simply letting people on this board know that there is relevant information available to them. So, why don't you read my blog, come back, and then tell me if you found me to be a charlatan.
I looked over the articles. My personal opinion is that you're focused on words and description and ignoring the actual craft of writing for the printed word. And, you've not presented any of your own writing to show what such advice looks like in practice. So...you've yet to convince an editor to offer a contract, yet you presume to tell people how to write based on your own personal analysis? You offer your opinions as being worthwhile, while at the same time being unable to demonstrate that your advice yields prose a reader will seek out? I'll admit to being confused as to why you feel someone working to improve their work would benefit from what you say. After all, the measure of any advice lies in how well it works for the one giving it.
Sorry, but I have a sock drawer that needs rearranging. Your blog is way down my priority list from there.
Again, the blog has been up for two days! Lol. I'm building one post at a time, incrementally. And I'm not posting my own work because I'm showing the techniques used by proven writers, so, why would I not use them myself. If you notice, in the two days, I've built up the 8 different constructions in the english language, and now I'm applying each of them to description. I will do the same to for narration and the other rhetorical modes of fiction. I'm not presuming anything. I'm showing people how the language functions and how the different constructions are used. As for my lack of a contract, I don't think writing has anything to do with the market. Would you as a publisher buy a 150,000 word manuscript about a contemporary urban fantasy with a nihilist main character who shits on Gods, country, and everything else know to man as he eats chocolate and contemplates how utterly useless it all is? Nope. You know why I wrote it? Because I liked his cadence. He spoke and I wrote, and it was a blast. I'd give anything to write like that again, and I am going to write like that again. Lol. Please, don't come at me with lack of sales. Joyce wandered for a decade peddling his manuscript. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Oh, and I'll just go on and show you why I'm not just making shit up as you claimed. Here is a bit of the reserach I've done on affective lexicon and reader-expecations: AFFECTIVE LEXICON: When is a feeling an emotion? Some criteria must be established for separating emotional from non-emotional feelings. For example: it does not seem unreasonable to question the status of the following terms: sleepy, tired, and relaxed puzzled, curious, and receptive boredom, impatience, and inspiration luckiness, conflict, and rectitude Do these words refer to emotions? The term affective to refer to the positive or negative evaluation, or valence, inherent in the meaning of a term. The phrase affective lexicon to refer to that subset of words in a language that are about affect or affective conditions. Many of the words in the affective lexicon refer to emotions. Affect is being treated as a more general concept than is emotion: All emotions are affective, but not all affective conditions are emotions. The first main distinction is between words that refer to External Conditions. Words that do not refer directly to experiences of the person of whom they are predicated. Two kinds of External Conditions can be distinguished Subjective Evaluations such as sexy, peculiar, and weird Objective Descriptions such as alone, abandoned, and welcome. The reason called External Conditions is that when one describes a person as sexy, or as abandoned one is not referring directly to any particular experience of that person. and those that refer to Internal Conditions Words that refer to conditions of the person of whom the term is predicated. These are typically, but not exclusively, experienced states. Nonmental Conditions include only Physical and Bodily States, referred to by terms such as aroused, sleepy, and well. Mental Conditions give rise to five categories, depending on which of three major meaning components, affect behaviour and cognition are referentially focal. a referentially focal meaning, component is one that constitutes a predominant part of the reference of a term rather than something that is merely implicated in its meaning Of the categories for which affect is focal Affective Statesin which only affect is focal. Such terms as happy, on-edge, dejected, and learning Of the category for which both affect and behaviour are focal. Affective-Behavioural Conditions to accommodate terms such as cheerful, grouchy, and mournful Of the category for which both affect and cognition are focal Affective-Cognitive Conditions. Such terms as encouraged, malice, despair, and worried. The two remaining are those for which affect is not focal Cognitive Conditions category. Such terms as certain, prejudiced, bewildered, and surprised Cognitive-Behavioural Conditions for which both cognition and behaviour are focal careful, greedy, and virtuous. We hypothesized that the best examples of emotion words : ones that refer to internal (as opposed to external)conditions, those that refer to mental (as opposed to physical)conditions, and those that have a significant focus on affect in the sense just described Of the 22 verbs with the highest rating in the present participle form 18 were non-causatives. Of these 18 17 appeared originally in one of the affect-focal groups in the taxonomy the affect-focal groups are perceived to contain the best examples of emotions These 17 verbs are admire appreciate desire enjoy grieve hate love resent adore despise detest disapprove-of dislike forgive like Loathe want Only 4 (of the first 22) were causative cheer inspire terrify Excite
@M.J.Rahman, I read through some of the entries, and I appreciate what you're trying to go for. But you need to go more in depth. Right now you're just listing out various methods. You need to talk about why using such-and-such a method is effective.
