Wednesday, November 7, 2007

really 3:40 PM, having lots of trouble with time in the story, how to handle it. The passing of a day, a week, a month. How to weave in and out of time in a way that is meaningful, that isn't boring, yet feels true. Don't tedioulsy going through minute by minute but not just skipping around to the more interesting parts. Some sort of balance. And how does one describe this or do that? I have a pile of books next to me, I am thinking of opening them and seeing if they can show me, but I am also reluctant to because I don't wish to be reading more than I am writing.

I am also thinking that I should have done third person, rather than I as narrator, some of my troubles I am attributing to this decision. I don't know if I should start over and give it a try the other way and see if it is better, or if I should just press on and fully do it this way first. (if I open these books surely I will be taking a look at how they handle the narration.)

4,782 equals chapter 1, plus a para. That said I am very aware that 4 of my paragraphs need to be distilled down to one.

I am trying to be upbeat about the bad writing. Saying to myself that it is good that I can see what doesn't work, can recognize what is bad (even if I am not sure as of yet, how to fix it), because what if I didn't even know that it was awful, that would be a real problem. Take my singing for example, my voice sounds perfectly pleasant to me, but as others have freely told me, sounds very bad to them. I feel there is no hope for the singing, tone deaf probably, but I think with writing I will get better at hearing pitch and eventually....

oops must get back to work

2 comments:

Matthew said...

As much as is possible virtually, I feel your writerly pain. I have to advance the screen to the top of the page just so that I will not be tempted to go back and re-read the bad word choices or sloppy grammar. Sometimes it is just plain ugly.

I think that you are right about hearing the pitch of your writing (at least I hope so). Carrying that metaphor along I wonder if it is possible to cure tone deafness. Maybe I shouldn't look to deeply into this. Almost five thousand words though (great), at my rate I will catch you in one week. Only if you don't write another word in that timeframe.

Here's to nimble fingers and shushed inner critics!

Taffiny said...

Matthew,

Well, I didn't write more tonight. I hope we both do burst forward. I have a smashing headache at moment, so will respond more tomorrow.