writing

I think it does yes, I have assignments to write all the time, so I'm not going to come home after writing 3000 words on What Is News and write something for fun. Even if I wanted to I wouldn't be able to.

Still now I have my first 2 weeks off without anything due in months I plan on writing some stuff. be warned.

YEAH RIGHT!

"Disposable income is calculated by adding together the client’s income from benefits (not Housing and Council Tax Benefits or Disability Living Allowance), earnings, maintenance, student grants and loans etc and then deducting allowances for each dependant child. This is £31.45 per week for each child aged 15 and under and £32.25 for each dependant aged 16 or over."

In my last job, I found myself writing things like:

'If modern art aspires to the condition of physics, then Rimbaud's prescient declaration of 1871, "je est un autre", may well be its e=mc2. In which case, Pessoa was the father of literary fission, exploding the coherent lyrical self into boundless possibilities. The authentic "I" is replaced with "a sinister well, full of faint echoes, inhabited by ignoble lives, slimy non-beings, lifeless slugs, the snot of subjectivity". He was to recount his discovery of the heteronyms with all the sobriety of Virginia Woolf remarking on the change in human character "on or around December 1910".'

Neither of these have helped me finish the novel that has been in my drawer since 1992.

Or so you think. Frustrated by your failure to update the Schlegel / Wilcox conundrum in time for the millennium, I actually nicked it in June 2000 and have been steadily adding to the MS since. The action now - surely this will crush you - takes place in Hemel Hempstead. Some of the names have been changed. The epigraph is still taken from 'Passing Through'.

That bulky tome occupying your drawer, through which you've evidently not flicked since, now comprises 9 spare copies of my own classic discussion of Hugh Kenner, hastily bound.

"When the boys were promptly shoehorned into their sleeping bags, most stayed awake for upwards of an hour. While the counselors drank beers around the dying hearth and congratulated one another on their performances, Stephen itched under the standard issue wool blanket. Unlike the rest of his bunkmates, he had neglected to pack a sleeping bag. He had been given a military green cot and a terribly thin wool covering to last him through the night. It would be the first night of an insomnia that would follow him for the rest of his life. Hours later, deep into the night and long after the cruel storytellers had succumbed to the effects of their drinks, a flashlight muted by a small hand sluiced a dim arc through the darkness."

y/n guys

Y

I like it. Though "cruel storytellers" sounds a bit too lyrical compared to the rest of the text.

more pls

Y. Like "sluiced a dim arc" a lot. Might quibble over "promptly".

thanks for the feedback, all.

it's from a story i'm working on about two boys at a summer camp for disabled kids.

'Tis good, though the repetition of 'night' in two of the sentences doesn't sit well with me.

Maybe change one for 'until morning'?

Is "to sluice" a verb? If I was your editor I'd make it this. I'm interested in your story already!

"When After the boys were promptly shoehorned into their sleeping bags, most stayed awake for upwards of an hour. While the counselors drank beers around the dying hearth and congratulated one another on their performances, Stephen itched under the his standard-issue wool blanket. Unlike the rest of his bunkmates, he had neglected to pack a sleeping bag. He had been given a military green cot and a terribly thin wool covering to last him through the night. It would be the first night of an insomnia that would follow him for the rest of his life. Hours later, deep into the night and long after the cruel storytellers had succumbed to the effects of their drinks, a flashlight muted by a small hand sluiced sliced a dim arc through the darkness."

"shoehorned"??????

they had very very small sleeping bags

Apparently "sluice" can be used as a verb. I had to look it up before I let myself use it.

tl;dr

get rid of sluice

he sluiced the reams of subcutaneous lipid from beneath the patient's dermis, occasionally pausing to take a surreptitious, lingering sip

I like it and I like Tracer Hand's changes (I wanted to say something about the two really symmetrical When/Where statements and how I thought they should be de-symmetricizored)

xpost LJ my god

...awesome

everything I write for my fiction-writing class is horrible and I hate myself for it

I feel that it's a little unfair to say he had "neglected" to pack his own. Isn't that his parents' responsibility, even if he weren't developmentally disabled?

I'm serious!!

^ well caught. Thanks. Serious!

Ma'am, we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. My bartender, myself, and my general manager will not tolerate your hate speech on our property. We have not and will not charge you a cent and you're free to take your business elsewhere. I'd rather not call the police, but if you insist on continuing to disturb our guests I will. Please leave.

lazy zing catalog

Can I answer with a limited N? Using high / mid-century diction in stories about kids to kind of camp up and ironize the drama is ... you know, it gets done a lot, and the returns have been pretty diminished. I feel like you'd have to actually either go full-on Nabokovian with the whole thing or give up on pulling the prose that way.

This thread:

It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style.

Tracer's emendations are helpful. Take them to heart. You might also wish to lose the "promptly".

The material has promise. Depending on where it goes, it could make a strong story, since it seems to be either a meaningful personal memory or a well-imagined situation.

Nabisco has a point about the diction, although I would not identify it as a particularly 'high' diction, so much as a bit awkward and overreaching in places (see more under "sluice").

As you develop the story, try a little less to write as you imagine writers are supposed to write (i.e. with fancy scrollwork), and just concentrate on what you want to make clear to the reader. If a detail seems important to understanding the setting or the action, just write it out plainly; don't try to hook it onto a sentence like a sidecar.

Resist adding highly colored words (e.g. "shoehorned"), unless they feel natural for the job you're asking them to do. Otherwise, it seems like you are laboring to bring forth an effect, any effect. It screams that you don't trust the material to hold the reader's interest.

Instead, pretend you're writing a letter to a friend, or dashing something off to post to ILX. Being stylish can wait until you are ready to write your masterpiece, which, of course, is the piece that displays your complete mastery over the language and your chosen form.

Don't stop now. You're just getting warmed up. Good luck.

Here is some writing advice I posted to the Mindless Prattle forum several years ago. It is as true today as it was then:

How To Write A Good Posting

No one likes to be called "uninteresting", whether or not they know what that means. That's why so many people who might post here on Mindless Prattle don't. If you think about how many people there are, and then you think of how many people post here, I think you'll see what I mean. Fear of being "uninteresting" keeps a lot of people from letting their light shine on Mindless Prattle and that's a shame.

That's why I'm going to tell you how to write a good posting. I want to help all of you write things you can be proud of, things you want to show off to the whole wide world wide web. So, let's get started, ok?

First, use small words. No one likes big words, so use lots and lots of small words. Don't use any words that most folks can't figure out right off. With big words they have to read what you wrote more than once to see what you meant. If you put a lot of big words in there, there is a good chance they'll just get all balled up any way, even if they read it over and over. Then they'll just get mad at you or give up. Short words are easy. Every one likes them. They are good friends. Use them.

Make your sentences short, too. Lots of people run out of breath when a sentence is too long. Then they have to stop right in the middle of it for a while, and that's not a good place to stop. They can lose their place or forget what came before. Using lots of short sentences lets their minds rest a tiny bit while they wait in between. This helps. I don't know about you, but my mind gets tired real quick and maybe yours does, too!

Don't be clever. Most folks like new ideas to be simple, the kind they can get a good grip on right off the bat. But what people really like is to read ideas they have already thought before. That makes it super easy to think them again. Thinking a thought for the first time is always the hardest. So keep those new ideas out of your posting if you can help it. This works out great for Reader's Digest and it will work for you, too.

By now you might be thinking, "Hey! This is easy!" And you'd be right! But if you want to write the best you can, keep reading because there's even more to come!

I bet you never stopped to think how much more exciting it is to read a posting where the writer is real excited about what they're writing. But it's true! Excited writers write exciting stuff. And the best way to let the reader know how excited you are is to use lots of exclamation points! They're cheap, so don't worry!

Here's another smart tip from the writing pros. Write about what you know best. That way you don't get all balled up with looking up new facts about things you don't already know all about. That's just hard work and you might even get mixed up and write it all wrong and not even know it! Why should you risk looking stupid, when you can write about something where you know all there is to know about it? That way you don't even have to think twice about what to say. You can just say it, and that's that.

Write like you talk. Good talkers just grab you by the ears and don't let go. The same goes for good writers, except they grab your eyeballs. If you write like you talk, you'll find the words will just come squirting out of you and onto the page. And right up into your reader's eye, too! That's what you want.

Use colorful words. It's hard to say what words are colorful, but I think you'll know them when you see them. They're the words that zap you and make your teeth hurt, that float as pretty as butterflies, that make your mouth water and your gums tingle. Think of as many colorful words as you can and fling and hurl them all over what you write. Your readers will be hypnotized.

The last thing I have to say is - have fun! Writing doesn't have to be so hard it makes you sweat like a pig. It can be a breeze! So, what are you waiting for? Let your juices flow and you'll write the kind of real good postings that won't be pushed off into the Dunce Corner of Mindless Prattle. So, lick that pencil and get started today! I can guarantee, you won't be sorry.**

**The author of this piece does not actually guarantee that you won't be sorry.

I thought 'shoehorned' worked perfectly well (and that's not just because I really like the word) - it evokes that feeling of uncomfortable tightness that you get from sleeping bags, and the way you have to ease yourself in. Keep the shoehorn!

Also, is this the opening passage? If so, I agree with the removal of 'cruel' in relation to the storytellers. If not, then it may work in context.

I would also say that whilst the advice to keep it simple is important, I wouldn't let it take away all of your style. For example, the stuff above about using short words - yeah, nobody wants to be another LJ, but you don't have to stick to this rule if it feels unnatural. Just check and recheck that you're not too heavy-handed and grandiloquent, and keep asking for input like this.

i agree with nabisco, and i think shorehorned is high diction.

'Shorehorned' might be, but why is 'shoehorned'? Is this just a gut feeling you have? I have explained why I think it is a valid use of words, but nobody has explained why it is high diction/colored/pretentious/whatever you want to call it. Would you rather he put 'snuggled'?

consigned
exiled
crammed
shooed
shoveled

whatever

But all of these have different connotations. If they were consigned, this would imply a militaristic, methodological way of putting the kids to bed. Exiled, the loneliness of the individual comes to the fore. Crammed is probably the closest to the way I imagine shoehorned to be, but actually doesn't work for me as a description of entering a sleeping bag. Shooed is a bit more mischievous, as in 'oh, shoo, you scallywag, go to bed', and shovelled again doesn't have a particular ring of truth to me.

My issue with shoehorned is that it suggests being pushed in: cos the kids are 'tards, are you suggesting they were manhandled by the drunks, or just that their itchy sleeping sacs were constrictive?

Well, you see, I think it lightly suggests some physicality to their bed entrance, but it's more ambiguous than crammed or shovelled. It's cold, but not necessarily violent or forceful.

For what it's worth, this is neither the beginning of a story nor the opening to a section. It's sitting in the midst of a couple of other paras. I was just looking for feedback on this in particular.

Previous sentences suggest that the counselors tell the boys an especially scary story, too close to reality for kids their age, complete with falsified frantic calls to "base camp" etc.

This is leading into a scene where Stephen & Daniel, our heroes, find themselves unable to sleep. They share a blanket and talk about their respective disabilities (and the effect they had on childhood etc) until the sun comes up.

Obv very difficult to write without coming off as way sentimentalist and sappy and overwritten, but I'm giving it a shot. Fiction has never been a strong point, branching out and all that.

Can I answer with a limited N? Using high / mid-century diction in stories about kids to kind of camp up and ironize the drama is ... you know, it gets done a lot, and the returns have been pretty diminished. I feel like you'd have to actually either go full-on Nabokovian with the whole thing or give up on pulling the prose that way.

-- nabisco, Wednesday, September 19, 2007 11:23 PM

I can certainly appreciate the point, but I wouldn't say I'm trying to ironize or camp up the drama. I'm going for "serious" Bildungsroman and all that shit. Does it read like I'm overwriting for the sake of irony?

difficult to write without coming off as way sentimentalist and sappy and overwritten

Go for broken ribs honesty, as straight to the heart as you can. If it still comes off as sappy and overwritten, you need to let go of it.

Does it read like I'm overwriting for the sake of irony?

More samples, plz. Not seen enough yet to go on.

Yeah, it's hard to say with this one section, out of context. "Shoehorned" does have more physicality, if you want the sense of helplessness, dread, of childishness, to an extent,which also goes with "neglected to" and "cruel storytellers" (gotta be somebody's *fault* alla time, that's life for this story's kid) Also, the nervousness of the kid relates to the "heightened diction" I associate with ghost stories (Might all tie together better if you heightened the suggestion[which I'm already getting] that this is perhaps a memory, re-cast in third person, maybe with little bits of breathlessness, something about the tempo of certain sentences or phrases--if you left that possibilty in there--without confirming it through any kind of middle-aged Stephen King Stand By Me narrator taking over, looking back etc)(IF that's the direction you mean to go--just try to get a strong idea or vibe you want to convey)

nobody wants to be another LJ

I have become a default strawman. Woe.

When writing in a more serious context (like a story), I tone it right down. Not everything I compose sounds like a remixed thesaurus.

you have become a default strawman. whoa v. stop, halt, discontinue, cease, quit, desist, stfu.

The story sounds like it will be interesting but I have to agree with others on the tone. It sounds as if it's a coming-of-age story written 50 years ago - the style is a little too self-consciously "literary", which distracts from the story. I think you can get away with "shoehorn", but I'd lose some adjectives, simplify some of the sentence structure, wonder whether things "at least an hour" wouldn't be better than "upwards of an hour", wonder if "dying hearth" sounded a bit literary cliché, eliminate repitions of wool, night, hour etc... if I was your editor, these are the suggestions I'd make:

"The boys were shoehorned into their sleeping bags, most staying awake for at least an hour. While the counselors drank beers around the fire and praised each others' performances, Stephen itched under his standard-issue blanket. Unlike his bunkmates, he hadn't packed a sleeping bag; instead, he'd been given a military green cot and a thin wool covering. It would be the first night of an insomnia that would follow him for the rest of his life. Later, deep into the night and long after the storytellers had drunk themselves to sleep, a flashlight muted by a small hand cut an arc through the darkness."

What's a military green cot?

I guess like olive-drab

I presumed it to be one of those camp beds the military use.

http://www.numberninethegallery.com/artists/stormthorgerson_3.jpg

At the risk of being too nit-picky, does insomnia follow you? Or does it plague you?

I think it can metaphorically follow you - like that Travis Bickle line: "loneliness has followed me my whole life"

The story sounds like it will be interesting but I have to agree with others on the tone. It sounds as if it's a coming-of-age story written 50 years ago - the style is a little too self-consciously "literary", which distracts from the story. I think you can get away with "shoehorn", but I'd lose some adjectives, simplify some of the sentence structure, wonder whether things "at least an hour" wouldn't be better than "upwards of an hour", wonder if "dying hearth" sounded a bit literary cliché, eliminate repitions of wool, night, hour etc...

-- Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 20 September 2007 09:49 (Yesterday)

I've been infected by all the Chabon/Lethem/etc I've been reading.

By the way, for the curious or those who're interested in reading more, I'm sorta blogging this as a work in progress here. Disconnected bits and pieces that have yet to coalesce into a coherent whole, but which had better do so by Monday (my deadline).

" Stephen had begged his parents for a bunk bed at home for months before they relented and got him a fire-engine red with Nintendo sheets. After a week of torturous climb, with awful tendon cramps meeting every ascent, he never slept in the top bed again. His parents never forgot the slight, and well into his own middle age his parents would gripe about the bunk bed they'd bought him that he never slept in.
In other words, he had not "won" the top bunk at Lions' Camp. He had been stuck with it. When Stephen sufferred an inconvenient foot cramp on his way up the oak ladder to the mattress above, he thought he could finish the climb and work out the charley horse once he was safely beneath the blanket. Instead, at the last step, his leg spasmed. He felt himself fall backwards, then the sleeping bunkhouse was met with the sound of meat dropping in a bucket.
For an awful moment Stephen couldn't move. Daniel cried. Rusty gathered Stephen into a wheelchair and pushed him to the infirmary. Daniel followed close behind. After the darkness of the bunkhouse, the infirmary was a blizzard of cold and white. The nurse examined his spine."

ew formatting.

sorry.

hoos something has gone wrong there

I wish I could write, but I am sadly extremely crap at it.

Stephen had begged his parents for a bunk bed at home for months. before they relented and They got him a fire-engine red one with Nintendo sheets. After a week of torturous climbing, with awful tendon cramps meeting on every ascent, he never slept in the top bed again. His parents never forgot the slight, and wWell into his own middle age his parents would gripe about the bunk bed they'd bought him that he never slept in. In other words, he had not "won" the top bunk at Lions' Camp. He had been stuck with it.

When Stephen's sufferred an inconvenient foot cramped on his way up the oak ladder to the mattress above,. hHe thought he could finish the climb and work out the charley horse once he was safely beneath the blanket. Instead, at the last step, his leg spasmed. He felt himself fall backwards,. then the sleeping bunkhouse was met with the sound of meat dropping in a bucket.

For an awful moment Stephen couldn't move. Daniel cried. Rusty gathered Stephen into a wheelchair and pushed him to the infirmary., and Daniel followed close behind.

After the darkness of the bunkhouse, the infirmary was a blizzard of cold and white. The nurse examined his spine.

yeah.

Yep, Tracer Hand has edited it in the right direction. I'd be even more ruthless. An 'ascent' of a bunk bed strikes a slightly pompous note. "For one awful moment" sounds clichéd, "a blizzard of cold and white" sounds a bit try-hard... Like the previous passage, there's nothing inherently wrong with your writing but I think the self-conscious literaryness should be toned down a bit...

his parents sound like DICKS

i mean "the slight"?? he's disabled and goes into spasms trying to reach the top bunk, and they think it's a SLIGHT when he decides he'd rather not be in pain? if that's the way they are then fine, but if that's NOT the way they are then you are sending a weird message that needs more explanation

also, why did he want a bunkbed so hard? clearly he'd never really had experience with one or he'd have realised it was not for him. a movie? a story some kid told him once?

mm, I don't know if that's important, I think the gap between him wanting to be able to climb up, and his parents' dissatisfaction in how he stopped 'trying' to climb and how they took it as an insult to them..

etc.

well like i said, they're dicks

Here is a thing I wrote:

Spicy Chicken Sad-wich

This week in famous Russian Child Brides:

WENDY aka THE FAKE PIPPI

Wendy Thomas (nee Wendlychkly Vorimols) was imported by one Dave Thomas in 1958 at the cusp of her fresh pubescence, 14 years after her birth in Stalingrad (nee Volgograd). Her already wan, malnourished skin was powdered with talc, hiding her freckles; her pigtails were plaited at an angle perpendicular to her pouting face. Dave Thomas, her fiance after spending $5,830, selected young Wendlychkly due in part to her fetching photo, but largely due to her autobiographical paragraph:
"I am always making spicy chicken sandwiches, hamburgers, frosties and cheeseburgers for your enjoyment. I like to cook American food. I hate Russian soup that is red like my ridiculous hair. I love American sandwiches and Jerry Lewis!"
After years of sordid exploitation in America's "Tijuana Bible" industry,Wendy was ready for years of sordid exploitation in America's "Fast Food" industry. From 1964-1987, Wendy personally cooked each order at each Wendy's franchise in a miracle comparable to Santa's simultaneous midnight delivery. Hidden from the public eye during the harshest years of the Cold War, Wendy served as a silent ambassador by warming America's heart with square patties. Wendy died in 1987, looking no older than 17. The next 20 years of Dave's life found him dying slowly of heartsickness.

Not "sleeping" bunkhouse, but some reminder that others are present and he's waking them up before get to Daniel and Rusty; not "was met with," but "sound of meat dropping in a bucket" goes with his abjectness etc; not "blizzard" but good to mention contrast between dark and light/cold.

This thread has made me want a bunk bed and some sweet-ass sheets.

"Shoehorned" is fine by me. Anyway, the prose effect I'm talking about isn't a matter of particular words, it's more about the frequency with which you use certain kinds of words, which I will exaggerate thusly:

- dying hearth
- by Jove, a quite terribly thin wool covering!
- an insomnia that would follow him for the rest of his life (DUM-TUM-TUUUUM)
- oh cruel storytellers! hast thou succumbed to the effects of thine drinks?
- etc.

HOOS, it's a really short section, so sorry if I'm off about what you're trying to do with the prose -- it's hard to workshop a paragraph and all! Just saying the diction is a slightly odd fit for a camp story, and I've read so many workshop stories going all grand and high-diction on the ironic-heroic deeds of young boys that I just assumed that's what you were shooting for.

That's shitty commentary, though, because even if that WERE what you were shooting for, you should just go ahead and shoot for it -- trying to CHANGE your stylistic quirks in response to workshopping (as opposed to, like, refining them) is always a losing game.

OTM

nabisco half-right. I don't believe in deliberately trying to stylize one's diction/phrasing/tone a certain way, at least as far as the first draft is concerned. it's an almost-certain recipe for florid overwriting.

style, timbre, word choice, etc... are all in the jurisdiction of the rewriter. if one's too occupied w. them during the first pass, there's a lot of room to get 'stuck' or bogged-down in probably-gonna-be-rewritten-anyway minutiae. a lot of wasted time.

the analogy i've always found helpful in prose-writing is that of a wood-carver. the first draft is nothing more than the chainsaw selection of an adequate tree. second draft is the rough blocking out of the shape, and the third, fourth, fifth ... nth are the refinement of the carving. all but the final drafts have an attritional temperament: paring, scraping, reducing the idea to its essence, removing excess verbiage. only in the final (hell, it's called 'polishing') stage is it occasionally prudent to "add" style, flair, what-have-you, lest you be seen as gilding a lily.

I disagree entirely: prose style is not "gilding," and thinking of it that way is basically anti-literature!

ha ha nabisco otm, remy bean, is the new gwyn barry

ha ha what's up, Gwyn Barry

"style is character," etc. -- but even before this, prose style is SETTING, I think: your prose style isn't just the tone of the world your character are wandering around, it IS the world, mood and backdrop and all, and your prose style has everything to do with the possibilities and limits of what the characters do and what happens to them and how

i don't disagree w. any of that.

i don't know how carefully i expressed myself, or how carefully you read what i wrote.

i'm deriding intentional grasping at 'style' over the expression of an idea through style, among other things

sorry remy, i meant that your wood carving analogy is the very same analogy that the writer Gwyn Barry makes in that Martin Amis novel--which by the way, does exactly what Nabisco says above with regarding to prose and setting

hell, i'll be a mediocre writer in a martin amis novel

Hey so what do y'all think of my piece about Wendy's?

I think the part I was objecting to was this:

the first draft is nothing more than the chainsaw selection of an adequate tree. second draft is the rough blocking out of the shape, and the third, fourth, fifth ... nth are the refinement of the carving.

... which seems to assume that there's some kind of narrative shape that exists independent of style, and even before style. Whereas for me, and I think for a lot of writers (maybe not you, which is totally cool!), the question of "adequate tree ... for what?" is partly answered by style. Sometimes it's finding the tone and prose style that lets you see what the thing you're building actually is -- what the characters are like, what their possibilities are, what this "shape" is that you're carving in the first place.

Wood carving is possibly a bad analogy here, since you can't uncarve wood -- but to continue it, writing can just as well be about repeating the minor strokes of the chisel and you find the texture and detail and style that suggests what everything else needs to be like.

Most of this stuff is academic, though, as I'm increasingly of the opinion that what dictates EVERYTHING is just whether or not it moves along. I have yet to encounter many writers who could just as easily write something like a novel in either of two ways -- you kind of play around with these things until something snaps into place and you have the momentum to get to the end. Probably on your 8th novel or something you're prescribing more of this stuff to yourself, but in the beginning it's just that one thing will get you there and others won't.

Very fair.

Re. your assertion that my 'chainsaw selection' analogy seems to assume that there's some kind of narrative shape that exists independent of style, and even before style, I think we've on an interesting idea about conceptualization.

Most writers I know (in spite of intentions, plans, outlines) really need the 'space' of the initial draft to figure out what they're doing. I don't know anybody who doesn't do the old 'oh, this is where we're going... interesting...' during their first layout of whatever fiction they're creating. While the style they're employing (focus/locus, grammar, vocab, meta, sentence and paragraph structure, length, plausibility, genre, et al.,) may guide them in finishing and defining the piece, I think that direct and immediate attention to these concerns above the over-all construction, and not in its service, is a massive misstep. Hence the chainsaw-selection analogy.

Part of the issue we disagree about (if I presume to parse it toward my own point?) regards the, heh, font of creativity. At the risk of sounding hokey, I'll admit to being persuaded toward a more universal source of inspiration (there's a story that wants to be told: the writer's craft is telling it w/o getting in the way) vs. what I perceive as your view (creation from the stuff of a writer's individual experience, ego, and knowledge). I don't know that these two aren't reconcilable, if only in practice.

For all it's worth, I understand the analogy's a little vapid - which doesn't lend it less utility to me.

ok guys I realize I am opening myself up for complete ILX death and eternal italics quotes here, but I'm running out of time and am getting desperate. Shit is due Monday and I've got four more pages to write. My background in poetry means that all my scenes are super-economized, four paragraphs each instead of four pages. Frustration.

Here's everything I've got so far:

The bus stank. Every breath Stephen took was full of dust, adolescence, and decade-old leather. A bus full of boys is a dangerous thing, but this one was especially dangerous: it was on the way to summer camp. The road to Texas Lions' Camp for Disabled Children was a vast flatland.

Hair the color of dirt slowly rose from the seat in front of him. Auburn eyes looked at him expectantly.

"Do you have any magazines?"

"No," Stephen groused.

"Some of us are trading magazines, if maybe you wanted to look at some of mine and I could look at some of yours."

"I don't have any magazines."

"I'm Daniel."

Stephen ignored him and tried his best to sleep with his head awkwardly pressed to the window, but Daniel continued.

"Do you know which tribe you're with?"

"I think I'm with the Tejas bunkhouse. Can you leave me alone, please? I want to sleep."

"Okay," Daniel said, sinking back into his seat with displeasure. His eyes slid into view once again: "I'm with Tejas too," he said.

A camp sponsor was making his way down the aisle.

"We're stopping for breakfast in a few minutes," the impossibly old man said. "Do you want something?"

"I don't need anything," he mumbled. "I'm fine."

In four more hours they would reach the preserve.

*

The counselors helped the boys unload their bags and sent them to a line of nurses waiting to inspect each one for lice, ticks, and all the other awful-sounding parasites that tended to latch on to dirty boys. It was here, seeing Daniel in full profile for the first time, that Stephen realized the younger boy only had one arm. Though his left arm was properly gangly and awkward for a young man in the midst of a growth spurt, Daniel's right arm quietly terminated at the elbow joint.

In the half second before guilt sank in Stephen stared at the boy's aborted fingers. By an accident of genetics, the fingers found themselves on the end of a gnarled and blunted nub. They stuck out strangely and at odd angles, like mushrooms with the tops cut off. Stephen had never before met anyone that was missing a limb. All at once he was filled with questions, fear, morbid curiosity , and an ache he would not understand for many years.

"What happened to your arm?"

"My Mom says I lost it because God sent me to fight the Devil's lions before I was born."

*

"It feels right," Stephen called from the water. "It's perfect. Learn quick so we can play Marco Polo!"

Daniel sat at the edge of the pool swinging his feet. He waited on Rusty to come over. In the noontime sun the crowded pool glistened like fat sloshing in a pan.

"Ready?" Rusty's hair was a sun-bleached dirty blond. Despite his cultivation of a Southern twang, his apparently irrevocable shirtsleeve tan gave away his youth in the Iowa cornfields. "You're gonna have to take off your glasses," he told Daniel.

The glasses were reluctantly removed and Rusty lowered the boy into the water. Though his strokes were tentative at first, Daniel seemed to learn quickly. He kicked well, and his left arm supplied enough strength to carry his small frame. Stephen pretended not to watch. With an air of self-congratulation, Rusty asked Daniel if he was ready to try swimming on his own. He nodded enthusiastically.

*

Stephen had begged his parents for a bunk bed at home for months before they relented and got him a fire-engine red with Nintendo sheets. After a week of torturous climb, with awful tendon cramps meeting every ascent, he never slept in the top bed again. His parents never forgot the slight, and well into his own middle age his parents would gripe about the bunk bed they'd bought him that he never slept in.

In other words, he had not "won" the top bunk at Lions' Camp. He had been stuck with it. When Stephen suffered an inconvenient foot cramp on his way up the oak ladder to the mattress above, he thought he could finish the climb and work out the charley horse once he was safely beneath the blanket. Instead, at the last step, his leg spasmed. He felt himself fall backwards, then the sleeping bunkhouse was met with the sound of meat dropping in a bucket.

For an awful moment Stephen couldn't move. Daniel cried. Rusty gathered Stephen into a wheelchair and pushed him to the infirmary. Daniel followed close behind. After the darkness of the bunkhouse, the infirmary was a blizzard of cold and white. The nurse examined his spine.

"There's definitely some bruising," she announced, "but nothing that can't be fixed with an ice pack and a popsicle."

*

The tower in the distance flashed every night. It warned passing planes of the Kerrville State Hospital. As was their yearly custom, though, the camp counselors used the light and local lore to construct a campfire story. The fearsomeness always bordered on cruelty when inflicted upon prepubescent boys, but such were the delights of bored young men forced to spend their summers with those half their age.

Every year the story of Joe Pannetto grew in scope, and the counselors increased their acting skills accordingly. Just after dusk, as the tower began scattering diamonds of light through the hill country, Rusty and the others would proceed to panic and talk furitively into their walkie-talkies. They made a show of stealing around corners and mumbling communiques to "base camp," pretending to argue about safety issues, and generally causing a stir among the boys. When their curiousity finally reached a boiling point and, like a tea kettle, the campers would squeal their readiness for the story, Rusty would sit down by the fire.

"See," Rusty began, "Joe Pannetto used to be a camper here. Just like you guys. He got older and eventually turned into a counselor, like me."

This was unsettling.

"After a while," Rusty continued, "Joe got convinced that everybody was trying to kill him. His wife, his kids, everybody in town, even. Kerrville's a small town, you know. Every summer that you campers come in, the town gets bigger. One summer a few years ago, Joe didn't like that idea at all."

The boys coiled tighter around the crackling flames.

"He figured it was time to start cutting down numbers with his hunting knife." The sudden appearance of a hunting habit in Joe's life struck the boys as terrifying rather than incongruous. "He cut up a bunch of campers, and the city locked him away in the State Hospital."

"T-t-that's where they put the crazies," a camper volunteered shakily. In the shadows tossed about by the fire, no no one was sure if the suggestion came from the cabin's resident stutterer or if the speaker was simply terrified.

"That light?" Rusty pointed to the tower. "It means Joe escaped, and he might be coming here."

After the boys were shoehorned into their sleeping bags, most stayed awake for upwards of an hour. While the counselors drank beers around the dying hearth and congratulated one another on their performances, Stephen itched under the standard issue wool blanket. Unlike the rest of his bunkmates, he hadn't packed a sleeping bag. He had been given a military green cot and a terribly thin wool covering to last him through the night. It would be the first night of an insomnia that would follow him for the rest of his life. Hours later, deep into the night and long after the cruel storytellers had succumbed to the effects of their drinks, a flashlight muted by a small hand sluiced a dim arc through the darkness.

"Stephen?"

jesus christ the adverbs.

oh, the adverbs.

Some of the scenes are unfinished, all very first draft yada yada etc

good stuff! i'm not gonna be too intrusive on your vision, but if there's one teeny thing, it's that you shouldn't repeat adjectives. "a bus full of schoolboys is a dangerous thing, this one especially so" is slightly softer on the ears.

'impossibly old' is a bit over the top.

the section where stephen observes daniel's truncated arm is very good.

ooh, yeah, this definitely improves as it goes along. "this was unsettling" = favourite bit, a moment of authorial levity that helps to contextualise the drama.

Shit is due Monday and I've got four more pages to write.

At this point, stop worrying about whether its well-written or not. If you know where you are going, just put one foot in front of the other and you'll get there.

As with walking, writing a first draft can safely be unselfconcious, if you know your destination and you know a way there. It's when you aren't sure of your destination or the way to get there that you hesitate at every crossroad and agonize over every choice.

IMO, you should stop asking for comments here. Comments will be more useful after you've put it all down on paper. You don't start to tweak an engine for performance when half the parts are all over the garage floor. Put it together first. Then you can tweak away.

lose "standard issue"!

"No," Stephen groused.

"no" is not enough to be considered a grouse.

Every breath Stephen took was full of dust, adolescence, and decade-old leather.

not into the way "adolescence" is, uh, shoehorned in there. as the other two items in the list are specific smells i find it jarring. also, maybe reword hte leather bit. "a breath full of leather" is a little awkward.

Stephen realized the younger boy only had one arm. Though his left arm was properly gangly and awkward for a young man in the midst of a growth spurt, Daniel's right arm quietly terminated at the elbow joint.

that's "arm" three times. maybe just "daniel's right"?

He felt himself fall backwards, then the sleeping bunkhouse was met with the sound of meat dropping in a bucket.

i like meat dropping in a bucket but "the bunkhouse was met with" is not the best way to phrase it i think.

Every year the story of Joe Pannetto grew in scope, and the counselors increased their acting skills accordingly.

not the best phrasing. that makes it sound like they're adding status points to their acting skill meter.

Sad byproduct of MFA: I feel like if I actually workshop this I'm going to have to check my tuition bill and apply for more financial aid :(

[02:47] hoos: man i am productive
[02:47] hoos: drink some wine and shit out 200 words a night
[02:47] hoos: i'll have a novel in like 30 years

- oh cruel storytellers! hast thou succumbed to the effects of thine drinks?

this is still funny

for the curious here is the completed version

Can Science Fiction/Fantasy writers PLEASE stop bitching about how 'Li-Fi' really is a genre with its own conventions, and whyyyyyyyy won't Professor Smith let me turn in my space opera?

"Science Fiction/Fantasy writers" = bitter genre writers in my college creative writing program

ok i have a new story and i would like u guys to tear it to shreds if you plz

trooper

hoos i think thats really really bad

im not joking

lol never saw this thx kl0pper u a total bro for bein real about that totally shitty unfinished story that i haven't even gone back to revise/finish

maybe not 'totally' shitty but def unfinished and unpolished

I've read so many workshop stories going all grand and high-diction on the ironic-heroic deeds of young boys that I just assumed that's what you were shooting for.

-- nabisco, Friday, September 21, 2007 7:01 PM

lol i blame lethem/chabon/eggers

btw my "rejection letters" file now has 3 pieces in it. a++

that's roughly 100 less than mine

i'm young! give me some time to catch up.

young in submission time! not sayin yr old!

"Is that such a priority? Is that some sort of measure of a man's worth? To drag what's best in him out into the street so every average slob with some pretense to taste can poke it with a stick?" --Henry Fool (Hal Hartley)

i'm starting my own internet literary journal, The Burt_Stanton Tribune. submti ur stories now pls

can i submit?

nobody can submit. i was born suppliant

BURT_HOOS THE STEN DRIVER, I'll publish your stories.

I figure there's no point doing anything unless you can get as much as you can out of it so I make sure the writing I do for school is interesting to me and helpful and allows me a good reason to read interesting writers etc.

Unfortunately, the climate these days is very much ... non-literate. The best creative minds spend all their time in visual media, and a lot of the people who write get way too caught up into the MFA/workshop cult. The lit. that tends to get a lot of attention is really, really middling... and unfortunately young writers gravitate towards what gets the most exposure, and so imitate drek like Eggers, etc.

So, once being a professional writer myself, after doing my regular work, and you write your personal stuff, it's like ... "where is this going to go?"

I can see how that would happen but if you write for the love of it and you get by....

is it weird that truman capote is the only 'southern' voice i feel a kinship with

the only canonized southern voice, i mean. faulkner gives me a headache and o'connor is wonderfully apocalyptic but so damn po-faced and mccarthy is masterful but pompous

and i know capote isn't even really southern, just tackles the occassional southern subject, but he's got a wit and a sense of irony about the cold world mccarthy et al deal with

In my creative writing class, for our second to last assignment we had an option to write three poems or a play. Hey group members, all of your poems are killing me.

Using "On the Other hand" without writing "On the one hand" before: yes or no?

probably shouldn't use either, really.

do all the time though anyway.

I don't think it's confusing to use 'on the other hand' without 'on one hand'.

I'm very used to doing it, but I'm wondering if there's some sort of Composition and Rhetoric pedantry that promises eternal damnation for doing it.

does anyone on ilx write fiction of any kind? what are your methods for getting work done?

Mostly, that when I do get inspiration, I pursue it with a brief and demonic intensity, before it may lie dormant again. I have also successfully forced myself into starting when not in the mood. Generally I'll tell myself to write at least 3, 4 times a week and constantly play with ideas about it in idle moments. Often an idea left brewing is better served than one immediately attacked. There's definitely a right pace for each work. Also, it's possible to pledge three hours of writing in a day, as I'm doing now. Might not hit 3 but you will probably do something useful.

What sort of thing are you writing?

Don't be afraid of writing shit. Seriously. Editing is much easier than writing, you can go back later and reshape each sentence/make sure your dialogue isn't cringeworthy. Just keep moving forward. It's better to sketch out a scene and rewrite virtually everything than aim for perfection with every sentence first time and find yourself paralysed as a result.

Trust the little voice inside your head when it tells you something's shit, but use that to improve rather than as an excuse to junk everything. Don't expect to write pages and pages every day, or feel you have to set aside hours on end for it - if you can get 500 words down in an evening or in a snatched bit of time then that's fine. It's all about incremental progress.

Critique groups are also really useful provided you've got a balanced one with no nutters and someone good to lead the discussion.

I'm pretty lucky in that I usually have about an hour and a half each evening before my gf gets in that I can use for writing and having a limited window gives a sense of urgency.

huh matt i never thought of you like that

not that it's outside ur capability or anything - far from it - but like you've always tended to resist the giveaway florid gesture (or self-conscious pruning) of the writey writer

You can probably offer slight variations on all the above advice depending on what you're writing. I'm doing a long crawl up the 500-to-1000-page mountain myself, so a massive time-period is to be expected. My best friend has been working on the same 5-scene play for about...two and a half years now? But he wants every single word to be perfect.

Matt's the biggest pruner on ILX! Never have mod powers been so wantonly etc

pruning as in a overtly strict style not wanton abuse of mod edit obv lol xp there u go

christ we even both went for wanton

So what are YOU writing rtc? :D

nothing, ever. i've honestly never had the slightest urge to try my hand at blank-page creative writing, think i have a gland missing or something

i remember once at school for english lit when i was like 14 we had this rotund happy chappy teacher on an american exchange for a while and one of his homeworks was "write a cowboy story", god i was so deeply disgusted with the man

You're a music reviewer though aintcha?

Ah man, disgust followed by gleeful subversion of the 'cowboy story'. (I was, as you can imagine, a complete fucking nightmare at school)

Garda's absence presumably down to him being candlelit at his scriptures rn

There are quite a few technically excellent writers on ILX who I'd imagine could very well create a thorough literary novel with some effort. Shame that a few of these (darragh, nakh) are big ol' lazyboneses. Very keen for Fizzles' debut.

nah the rtc gonchong holds little ambition beyond wasting its long-suffering host's spare time

what is fizzles writing? (or fizzles what are you writing should you read this thread)

I think my writing ambitions are gone fwiw. I've rarely got time to sit down and properly attack something now. Plus I no longer particularly think I've got anything of general worth to say that someone else won't say better; and anything that's specially mine I'd rather keep to myself.

I do a lot of non-creative writing at work and I'm pretty comfortable with banging out a thousand finished words in a day when I need to. Occasionally I'll have a dab at making those a story, but it's largely a technical exercise for me I think - do the set-up like this, pose the questions in this order, drop the punchline just so. The deeper stuff you need like exploring character and so on, I don't have the urge for.

As for method, do it first thing in your day I reckon, before other thoughts get in the way. When you reach quickstand, stop immediately. But it's a personal thing obviously.

I write fiction (just finished a story). When I'm hot I write two pages a day: one in the morning (a few bit sneaked at work), one at night.

there are enough terrible writings in the world for me to add to the ranks, never mind laziness on my part

cosign fizzles and nakh to bother tho

you are published writer deems

Garda's absence presumably down to him being candlelit at his scriptures rn

you joke but this is 100 per cent true, even down to the candle. (my room smelled a bit fusty so I lit a scented candle, sue me, i love them.)

i ask this cos basically i am going through prob the first phase of my life where i'm writing creative stuff every day.

i'm working on a play, having finished a short story (the first thing i've ever finished, ever) which went down quite well with those i sent it to.

i just heard back from a theatre who liked a two-page submission i did and asked for a script so that's really encouraging for my play.

techniques i'm finding useful:

pen and paper all the way until there's a body of a scene to put into a computer (computer distracts me too easily, like now, when i am supposed to be finishing my first draft.)

eliminating all other hobbies/distractions. i basically buy something quick to make for dinner on my work lunchbreak, then aim to be writing asap after getting in. even two hours sat at desk might only yield a short amount of work, but it's working for me.

i agree with your advice too, matt. i find just getting things down in a way where you know what you want to say, is best, you can always make it better later. it is difficult tho when the "this is shit" voice grows louder during an uninspired spell.

i guess overall the biggest thing i'm finding is that finishing something has amazing worth. it doesn't have to be perfect, just getting that "maybe this'll work" idea out of your head lets you learn.

hard to make a complaint to the irish times stretch out over more than a page tbf

xp mozeltoff ronan

so am i, with a 100% acceptance rate for items sent for publication, although the wire probably get fewer emails than the irish times do green ink jeremiads from gaeltacht fire and brimstone types

add u to the list above of ilxors whose work id steal from the internet lg

xp i can't get joptionpane to work i will not derail this thread in pique

haha I wasn't even joking! the very act of bumping this thread probably the spur you needed to get going

I forgot to link this here: Anonymous Writing Group II: submissions thread, deadline 31 October All this talk, let's turn it into some serious wordcount.

So does my character drive the plot or does the plot drive my character? Like, I keep being unsure as to whether I should make things happen to change him in interesting ways or whether I should have a deep idea of him before I make anything happen to him. If that confusion makes sense... I know there are no rules as such, but interested to hear what people think.

My teacher always said they were the same thing. I think he was quoting F Scott Fitzgerald.

Yeah I guess it's all the one process - I find I start with a loose idea of a story and then it changes a bit along the way. I do reach forks in the road where I wonder about what should happen next, and the indecision can be difficult, like... if I press on with an initial idea what if that is not a good idea, then that's kind of my plot, can I delete that and come back to this junction again without it all falling asunder in my mind?

This is prob a confidence problem, really.

this is for a play btw, i think with a story the two are more easily intertwined, with a play events seem more important, things that are dramatically interesting or whatever. but so far not a lot happens in my play, and it's a monologue, so it's more a dude talking about stuff that happened.

there is some good prose on ilx imo

I hope tim at kfc edu contributes to the next anonymous writing thing

xp

As in life, the totality of events in a plot are beyond the control of any one character. Each character controls only himself or herself. But, depending on the story you want to tell, it may easily happen that most or all of the events in your plot consist of actions or words driven by your characters. There may be some impersonal events, like a tornado or a social movement, which help to drive your plot, but where the actual gears of your plot mesh their teeth together will be driven by your characters, whose words and actions emerge from their individual motives and abilities.

For example, you could ask yourself what drives the plot of Robinson Crusoe?

The fated event I guess - what's interesting and difficult is choosing the event, that's a skill I suppose, what event will show my character in an interesting light, what event will change him or get him to where I want him to go. That's the fork in the road that has me posting on ILX instead of continuing.

Demanding character change, introducing problem/resolution as a driver to this, is the kind of formulaic grind that turns me off reading, let alone writing.

Have a character interesting or well written enough and contrived plot is unnecessary, whatever light shines on yr character can pass for plot enough.

tentatively agree

Yeah that's a fair point. I suppose I'd still like to place him in an unfamiliar situation and spin things out a bit before my ending, I have a decent sense of where I want to end things. Sorry, I realise this is of little interest without knowing the thing I'm doing.

xpost

Nah my vehemence isnt for your posting nor questioning its for the visible mechanics (or demand for them as necessity)

Obv a good plot can cover for sketchy characterisation but its a lot more difficult to do imo?

xp
I'd say the character has to have a problem of some sort or he won't be very interesting. He doesn't need to solve it by the end of the piece. He may not even be aware he has a problem, or he may know it but not be able to articulate it. But he has to have a problem.

It's kind of interesting though, the idea of it as trickery or as you say, visible mechanics. Like, is it an organic process or are you really just thinking "what would be most fun"...

xpost he has a problem alright!

I know lots of interesting ppl without a rubik cube irl. If you claim that this cant translate to written or performed creativity then ill stay irl and enjoy that instead. But i disagree.

imagine if people "developed" as much as characters are expected to while going about their business

Itd be cuntish, theyd be cunts, cunts can be good characters but less so if they must develop imo

ime too i think

^undeveloped cunt

(joeks)

Unrepentant cunt, but i reveal a shocking backstory over time that changes the audience perspective tbph

imagine if people "developed" as much as characters are expected to while going about their business

i guess being realistic is not really a necessity for drama though? maybe to be avoided even.

sure, sure. It's the programmatic insistence on one way of doing things I'd object to

like I'm always reluctant to nail my colours to any partic mask in these convos but I find just taking the opposite position feels p comfy

Cunt

mask mast?

no I'm not imo xp

haha why did I write mask

imagine if people "developed" as much as characters are expected to while going about their business

cf http://www.theonion.com/articles/completely-unrealistic-tv-character-has-complex-mu,33855/

my technique for getting writing done is spending all day worrying about not getting writing done then shitting out a couple of hundred words of shite at 3am. i highly recommend it.

shitting out shite.

To avoid my pirate joke xp

do you think it's good to just go with your gut and write every idea as you have it - and then go back and delete stuff later? like it seems weird to me that one might have the plot going one way on a tuesday evening and then chop it back and make it go another way having read over that work on wednesday. so i sort of am trying to be sure before i put things down... and to use lots of pen and paper before adding to my actual draft. again, i know there's no right answer here.

xpost

har de harr d

well for me it's generally not fiction i'm writing so i'm not sure to what extent useful techniques would cross over, but i find having a pretty clearly defined and tiered structure - e.g. within the one big idea there'll be five main smaller ideas, each of which will again break down to a few smaller ideas, etc - is useful, and then i'll choose a section and start filling it with whatever i have and whatever comes to mind. the big structure will almost always mutate and it means things can start to seem wildly fragmented and stuff that seemed good will eventually have to be deleted, but it helps me to be able to pull things together in that bricolage kind of way rather than having that daunting feeling of 30 pages being in your head just waiting to be typed.

do you think it's good to just go with your gut and write every idea as you have it - and then go back and delete stuff later? like it seems weird to me that one might have the plot going one way on a tuesday evening and then chop it back and make it go another way having read over that work on wednesday.

When I write fiction I begin with a scene: an exchange, an observation, or a character in action. I'll usually jot it down beside bits of song titles, observations about relatives or friends, and other bric a brac. I'll write a couple pages. Eventually plot starts to cohere. I can think of only a handful of times when I've thought through the whole plot. Learning in college how Flannery O'Connor and Carver worked this way helped.

I'll usually jot it down beside bits of song titles, observations about relatives or friends, and other bric a brac

do you mean about the character?

Yep. The observations about my own relatives, friends, colleagues often form part of the fabric, even if all it means is a character listens to Van Halen in the car or something.

Interesting.

I kinda come at character from my acting training, thinking about how they move and where they lead with, how they breathe and their physicality, but also lists of traits and characteristics. I find this is good even when not writing drama, but the current thing I'm working on is a monologue I intend to act in myself, so there is that extra tactic of doing little improvs or playing a piece of music and being the guy live (and hoping my flatmates don't hear and think I'm insane.)

I think I finally have something to share. Can someone recommend a workshop in New York?

i think i'd like to start writing because it scratches an itch. it would be cool to write something i thought was really good. i can only write about myself though because i'm too lazy to research what other people are like and i have a poor imagination.

so, it's jumping onto the poetry train for you then

Ha, ha. Poets are so self-absorbed, am I right? Always waxing lyrical about the smell of their own farts. Not like there's a whole strand of poetry that plays upon the impersonal or anything.

epic and narrative poetry are deeply out of style, but lyric poetry can go a lot of directions other than self-absorbed fartistry. in map's case, it also wouldn't require creating characters or plots, or the kind of imagination involved in creating fictional settings and events, so that his professed weaknesses would be far less relevant to his results.

For something I do every day, I don't actually think about writing very much. The actual activity of it, what it takes to do it. I feel like everyone who writes regularly probably has their own patterns and routines and rituals. Just thinking about it now because I realized it's been two hours since I finished the second of three parts of something I'm writing for tomorrow. Each part's about 800 words. And after finishing the second part I took a break, did some other things, got some food, and now I'm circling back to finish the last part. Which makes me think that two hours is about what it takes to recharge from writing 800 words (or at least from writing the second 800 words of the day). Like, my mind needs time to drift and wander and not work so hard for a little while.

Anyway, it's a curious activity.

I work best in the morning, no set pattern though except that I limit myself to a couple pages a day to have reserves left for the next day.

I would like to write more in the morning, a lot of my work ends up requiring later-day writing. Which can exacerbate the fatigue, for sure.

I remember reading about Ian Fleming's schedule, which struck me as ideal. He would get up in his Caribbean manse and have coffee and cigarettes and write for 2-3 hours in the morning, then retire to the pool and spend the rest of the day eating, drinking and socializing.

when i've had a regular practice, i usually choose a time of day AND a writing medium in which i'm working in order to get me into the proper headspace. otherwise i can't write consistently...so for example, i will write from 9-10 or so most nights for a month or two, but only on my phone in bed. or i'll write from 3-5p in blue books i stole from a former employer, etc etc.

right now i am trying to find the best time, and i am afraid it might be the morning, which means i need to wake up earlier and/or give up my morning reading practice.

Nights are best for me lately. When I'm doing something strictly formatted like my Stereogum column (10 album blurbs, 9 of which are 150 words and one of which is 500, plus an intro features of 2000 words or so) I can bang out, say, 2 blurbs in the morning before starting my day job. I do the big feature part the weekend before turning in the column. But when I'm writing a magazine feature, or a book, I like to work on it from 9 to 11 or midnight, bleary-eyed and tired, and then revise the next day. I usually write my Substack newsletter on the weekend before it runs, though I'll toss a couple of sentences in anytime they occur to me during the week.

I wrote a paragraph today! Most in a long time. Not forcing myself to go any further than what comes easily.

two more today