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mallorys_cameraThere are two kinds of writing. The first is Spontaneous Brain Dump, that eye in the neural hurricane where big ticket vocabulary words blow effortlessly through clear lucid prose, and showy metaphors are backlit like palm trees in a Florida sunset. This kind of writing is fun, kind of like being on amphetamines. Attention Deficit Disorder is your own best friend since it allows you to glide from idea to idea.
The second kind of writing is torture. Every word feels wrong. Every idea that pops into your head is mired in glue. This is the kind of writing where you'll spend five hours obsessing over a simple transition like "And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go." Maybe the lamb shouldn't go. Maybe the lamb should amble because after all, verbs are the heavy lifters in the alphabet kingdom, and we've already established that its fleece is white as snow (symbolic subtext = carefree innocence) and clearly we need a word that reinforces this naiveté, which possibly we could plagiarize if we ran a Google on William Blake for the lamb's backstory… Etc etc.
I swing back and forth between these two modalities.
Ben and I hashed out more plot points in the seemingly endless ride to the San Francisco airport to pick up Robin. Lots of loose ends in the first three chapters and of course since I wrote them a year and a half ago and seem to have lost all my notes, I cannot remember where the hell I was going with them. Most glaring is Johnny Blessing (snacky Russian boy detective's) perception that the Dalai Lama shooter next aims at Iris.
Have I mentioned that plotting is not my strong point?
Give me the talking points and I will write you up a storm. But I have the hardest fucking time coming up with an actual story.
Presently, Iris has just come out of a four-day interrogation session with shady Secret Service agents and is standing on the cement landing overlooking the parking alley. She's marooned there unless I can come up with a serviceable, throwaway description of the day (sunny, cold) and her state of mind (reminiscent of revisiting the scene of an accident.) And though I've been playing with various word combinations for the past couple of hours, so far I can't.
"It's like solving an algorithm," I tell Max who's having his own adventures with writer's block. "You're feeding information to your reader that will enable him to come to the same conclusion that you have about the problem you've posed. But you have to do it in degrees so your reader's eyes don't glaze over. It's like the linguistic equivalent of a time-release capsule."
His second round of essays for Deep Springs is due in just one week. Four compositions: solve a social problem; explain why anybody should care about college at all; expound upon a commonly misunderstood virtue, and the kicker – and judging from its archaic tone, the legacy question – a 1924 excerpt from the collected writings of LL Nunn which is supposed to help young acolytes solve the riddles: "What does it mean to be employed in the service of your fellow men? How can a blacksmith be so employed?"
The blacksmith composition is particularly daunting. So far we've had a ten-page thesis on how come the world isn't a better place when so many contestants at beauty pageants want to help humanity, and a kind of Disneyland ride through pastoral kitsch ("Blacksmithing was not a wealthy profession, but it was respected as noble and honest.") Nyet, nyet, nyet said I in my role as managing editor.
I can't put words in his mouth. Even if it was ethical, I wouldn't know what words to put. LL Nunn was kind of a madman; the excerpt that accompanies the questions tilts dangerously into T.E. Lawrence territory, the quasi-biblical megalomania of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The problem, I think, is that while Max reads a lot, he reads for content not style. Also – and in this he's like most adolescents, I suppose – he doesn't quite grasp that writing is primarily a form of communication and only secondarily about self-expression.
The second kind of writing is torture. Every word feels wrong. Every idea that pops into your head is mired in glue. This is the kind of writing where you'll spend five hours obsessing over a simple transition like "And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go." Maybe the lamb shouldn't go. Maybe the lamb should amble because after all, verbs are the heavy lifters in the alphabet kingdom, and we've already established that its fleece is white as snow (symbolic subtext = carefree innocence) and clearly we need a word that reinforces this naiveté, which possibly we could plagiarize if we ran a Google on William Blake for the lamb's backstory… Etc etc.
I swing back and forth between these two modalities.
Ben and I hashed out more plot points in the seemingly endless ride to the San Francisco airport to pick up Robin. Lots of loose ends in the first three chapters and of course since I wrote them a year and a half ago and seem to have lost all my notes, I cannot remember where the hell I was going with them. Most glaring is Johnny Blessing (snacky Russian boy detective's) perception that the Dalai Lama shooter next aims at Iris.
Have I mentioned that plotting is not my strong point?
Give me the talking points and I will write you up a storm. But I have the hardest fucking time coming up with an actual story.
Presently, Iris has just come out of a four-day interrogation session with shady Secret Service agents and is standing on the cement landing overlooking the parking alley. She's marooned there unless I can come up with a serviceable, throwaway description of the day (sunny, cold) and her state of mind (reminiscent of revisiting the scene of an accident.) And though I've been playing with various word combinations for the past couple of hours, so far I can't.
"It's like solving an algorithm," I tell Max who's having his own adventures with writer's block. "You're feeding information to your reader that will enable him to come to the same conclusion that you have about the problem you've posed. But you have to do it in degrees so your reader's eyes don't glaze over. It's like the linguistic equivalent of a time-release capsule."
His second round of essays for Deep Springs is due in just one week. Four compositions: solve a social problem; explain why anybody should care about college at all; expound upon a commonly misunderstood virtue, and the kicker – and judging from its archaic tone, the legacy question – a 1924 excerpt from the collected writings of LL Nunn which is supposed to help young acolytes solve the riddles: "What does it mean to be employed in the service of your fellow men? How can a blacksmith be so employed?"
The blacksmith composition is particularly daunting. So far we've had a ten-page thesis on how come the world isn't a better place when so many contestants at beauty pageants want to help humanity, and a kind of Disneyland ride through pastoral kitsch ("Blacksmithing was not a wealthy profession, but it was respected as noble and honest.") Nyet, nyet, nyet said I in my role as managing editor.
I can't put words in his mouth. Even if it was ethical, I wouldn't know what words to put. LL Nunn was kind of a madman; the excerpt that accompanies the questions tilts dangerously into T.E. Lawrence territory, the quasi-biblical megalomania of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The problem, I think, is that while Max reads a lot, he reads for content not style. Also – and in this he's like most adolescents, I suppose – he doesn't quite grasp that writing is primarily a form of communication and only secondarily about self-expression.
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Date: 2005-01-07 05:14 pm (UTC)I would say basically that everyone makes a contribution to society. all jobs in society exist for a reason, and someone has to fill even the most undesireable job (like milking the cows at 4 am) or else problems within society will arise (no milk for breakfast). What can I say, I read their website.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-07 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-07 05:53 pm (UTC)what do you expect.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-08 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-07 10:07 pm (UTC)Ken L.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-08 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-07 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-08 03:46 pm (UTC)