Which I can't say in sparkly shortbread, alas.
One of my Christmas presents from Mark was a membership in LibraryThing, which I fear will not enhance my writing productivity. Already I have discovered the joy of adding a book that no one else has, alternating with the joy of seeing who else has the same books. This with only 50 or 6o of my books added, and no adult fiction yet.
A shared Christmas present was a 2d-hand rowing machine, plonked now in front of the television. Mark is up to 40 minutes at a time, I'm at 20, and using it to catch up with the videos and dvds that I've bought over the last few years and haven't gotten around to watching. I'm favouring HK movies with subtitles, so I don't have to bump the volume up to hear them over the machine.
Much happy Christmas baking still remains, including rolled shortbread, pressed shortbread, iced cut-out cookies, chocolate shortbread, cheese shortbread, spicy cheese cookies, honey cookies, oatmeal shortbread, butter tarts, candied grapefruit peel, sugared walnuts, melting moments, bar shortbread, domino cookies, toffee candy (it was meant to be fudge), gingerbread snowflake cookies, one piece of birthday cake, gingerbread cake, butter pecan cookies and coconut macaroons. So if it were to snow for real and we were to be trapped at home, we wouldn't starve.
But now it is the New Year, and time to get seriously serious about finishing the revisions on Cost of Silver. This means writing more scenes relating to the draining of the fens, the English Civil War, and the witch hunts. There may have been cheerful things happening in the latter 1600s, but I'm not sure any of them will appear in the book. Angsty angstiness is the tone of the era, with occasional gallows humour.
Also: writing down actual comments for Anne's excellent slice-of-lowlife novel The Sleepy Teepee. And thoughts on possible markets.
Showing posts with label critiquing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label critiquing. Show all posts
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Critiquing - fireweed blossoms on the burnt-over patch
I've been going through a dry spell of critiquing. Or had reached a plateau. A flat, dry plateau. Not a slough of despond, fortunately, but not exactly inspiring, either.
I like critiquing. My strength is probably line-critting rather than big-picture issues. I'm good at spotting continuity breaks, and inconsistencies, and keeping track of where the characters are in a scene. That's 'good' in the sense of amateur reviewer, not in the sense of 'people who get paid to do that'.
It was fun, because I could see where small changes could make a real difference, even something as minor as reversing the order of clauses in a sentence. Where someone could cut a couple of words and make a sentence stronger. Easy things to do, for the most part. Sometimes the other writer would immediately pick up on those tricks, and we'd have a back-and-forth where he'd apply the points that made sense to him (not all--this wasn't slavish). His next subs would be stronger and tighter, and more his own voice. It's very cool when that happens. Like showing someone the little painting tricks for trompe l'oeil, and watching them run with it.
I tried to google a citation for the line about editing and the irresistible urge to meddle with someone else's writing, but couldn't--probably because I'm not sure of the exact wording. I did find this:
"We live in a world where the three great motivators of humanity are 1) Food, 2) Sex, and 3), the need to change someone else's writing."
from Joe Clifford Faust's blog. It may be the primary source, but I expect the sentiment has been expressed before the advent of the internet, or even of wordprocessors.
In the interests of honesty, I'll admit that two people told me to never review their work again. In the interests of snarkiness, one of them had an MC who was an escaped slavegirl with natural healing powers and a mind-bonded unicorn, who was taught swordsmanship by an enchanted wolf, and whose hair changed colour when she worked important magic. I said as gently as I could that her heroine was verging on Mary-Sue territory. I guess I wasn't gentle enough.
Then, in the fall of last year, critting became a chore. I'd skim through submissions on Absolute Write's Share Your Work forum, and through the under-reviewed subs on the Online Writing Workshop, and I wouldn't be able to think of anything to say. Or I'd think, well, I could suggest that the writer do this or that, but would it really make a difference? Would they listen, would it matter if they did? Rather like depression, but specific to critiquing. The rest of my life was good--in fact I was excited about attending Viable Paradise.
The irony of this did not escape me. I was going to spend a week critiquing other people's work, in person, and I couldn't stir my stumps to critique online?
I pushed myself. I reminded myself that once I got started, I'd find things to say, and that, reading my crits afterwards, I'd find them more coherent than they felt while I was writing them. But while I did write a few, I fell with a flump off the Top Reviewers List on OWW and disappeared.
Well, after VP I'd be reinvigorated, right?
Yes, for my own writing. That zoomed (at least by my slow-and-steady standards). No for crits. I whined about it on AW, and got a few head-pats, a suggestion that maybe I needed to examine my motivations, and one very thoughtful post from Linda Adams: that since one learns by giving critiques as much as by receiving them, "you may not be doing critiques because you've learned what you need at this point."
I took comfort in that, and tried to think of it as plateau rather than burnout. I did crits here and there, usually of under-reviewed pieces, so I wasn't just repeating what other reviewers had said. (That's my usual practice. If someone's received more than two or three reviews, I figure the useful points have already been made.)
Gradually through March, the base urge to mess with other's prose has slowly, tentatively returned, like a crocus pushing through the soil, or some other trite simile. Whether it's really back, or about to be smushed into black slime by a late frost, I don't know. But I've posted three crits on OWW, and four brief crits and one multi-part line-crit on AW, which is more than I've achieved since, oh, November.
Writing, the stuff I'm really supposed to be doing...
The Willow Knot hit 71k this month. I'm slowing down, because I've reached the point where I need to figure out which scenes still need to be written, and write those, not just bumble around in the world and see what I trip over.
I also need to work out the details of the plot against Alard, and what makes it necessary to move at that point. Who gains what?
On the happy side, there's a fever-dream that I'd sketched in after Myl's encounter with the bear, where she's taken underground (foreshadow willow-root rescue later) and sees the root-forest as the reverse of the branch-forest, as lively and as beautiful, for all that it's worms and bugs instead of birds and squirrels. Originally it was just an idea that I thought was cool. Now I'm thinking it may tie in thematically with the latter part of the story, Myl at court. She's been humbled, now she's raised as high as she can go, but she'll need all the skills she learnt at the bottom to keep herself safe at the top. And she can see how necessary the roots of the tree are to the crown (pun, sorry) which may not be as clear to those who've never looked down.
Something for me to think about, if I can avoid being heavy-handed and preachy!
Just finished reading The Thread That Binds the Bones, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Very nicely written--she's a stylist. The premise is pretty much ZennaHenderson's The People gone bad, which is intriguing. Very readable, but I felt it skimpy in parts. Not that I wanted an explanation or backstory for the Family, or why they have Clearly Symbolic Surnames, but that the baddy was such a shadowy figure until the end, and it seemed the other characters were overlooking the source of the problem (which was perhaps established too early, or I'm too quick at guessing). Also I didn't really feel afraid for the hero; his powers were so mutable and adaptable I felt sure they'd rise to the occasion.
I enjoyed it, and I'd read other books by her, but it did make me wonder if she was held back by wordcount limits or other considerations.
I like critiquing. My strength is probably line-critting rather than big-picture issues. I'm good at spotting continuity breaks, and inconsistencies, and keeping track of where the characters are in a scene. That's 'good' in the sense of amateur reviewer, not in the sense of 'people who get paid to do that'.
It was fun, because I could see where small changes could make a real difference, even something as minor as reversing the order of clauses in a sentence. Where someone could cut a couple of words and make a sentence stronger. Easy things to do, for the most part. Sometimes the other writer would immediately pick up on those tricks, and we'd have a back-and-forth where he'd apply the points that made sense to him (not all--this wasn't slavish). His next subs would be stronger and tighter, and more his own voice. It's very cool when that happens. Like showing someone the little painting tricks for trompe l'oeil, and watching them run with it.
I tried to google a citation for the line about editing and the irresistible urge to meddle with someone else's writing, but couldn't--probably because I'm not sure of the exact wording. I did find this:
"We live in a world where the three great motivators of humanity are 1) Food, 2) Sex, and 3), the need to change someone else's writing."
from Joe Clifford Faust's blog. It may be the primary source, but I expect the sentiment has been expressed before the advent of the internet, or even of wordprocessors.
In the interests of honesty, I'll admit that two people told me to never review their work again. In the interests of snarkiness, one of them had an MC who was an escaped slavegirl with natural healing powers and a mind-bonded unicorn, who was taught swordsmanship by an enchanted wolf, and whose hair changed colour when she worked important magic. I said as gently as I could that her heroine was verging on Mary-Sue territory. I guess I wasn't gentle enough.
Then, in the fall of last year, critting became a chore. I'd skim through submissions on Absolute Write's Share Your Work forum, and through the under-reviewed subs on the Online Writing Workshop, and I wouldn't be able to think of anything to say. Or I'd think, well, I could suggest that the writer do this or that, but would it really make a difference? Would they listen, would it matter if they did? Rather like depression, but specific to critiquing. The rest of my life was good--in fact I was excited about attending Viable Paradise.
The irony of this did not escape me. I was going to spend a week critiquing other people's work, in person, and I couldn't stir my stumps to critique online?
I pushed myself. I reminded myself that once I got started, I'd find things to say, and that, reading my crits afterwards, I'd find them more coherent than they felt while I was writing them. But while I did write a few, I fell with a flump off the Top Reviewers List on OWW and disappeared.
Well, after VP I'd be reinvigorated, right?
Yes, for my own writing. That zoomed (at least by my slow-and-steady standards). No for crits. I whined about it on AW, and got a few head-pats, a suggestion that maybe I needed to examine my motivations, and one very thoughtful post from Linda Adams: that since one learns by giving critiques as much as by receiving them, "you may not be doing critiques because you've learned what you need at this point."
I took comfort in that, and tried to think of it as plateau rather than burnout. I did crits here and there, usually of under-reviewed pieces, so I wasn't just repeating what other reviewers had said. (That's my usual practice. If someone's received more than two or three reviews, I figure the useful points have already been made.)
Gradually through March, the base urge to mess with other's prose has slowly, tentatively returned, like a crocus pushing through the soil, or some other trite simile. Whether it's really back, or about to be smushed into black slime by a late frost, I don't know. But I've posted three crits on OWW, and four brief crits and one multi-part line-crit on AW, which is more than I've achieved since, oh, November.
Writing, the stuff I'm really supposed to be doing...
The Willow Knot hit 71k this month. I'm slowing down, because I've reached the point where I need to figure out which scenes still need to be written, and write those, not just bumble around in the world and see what I trip over.
I also need to work out the details of the plot against Alard, and what makes it necessary to move at that point. Who gains what?
On the happy side, there's a fever-dream that I'd sketched in after Myl's encounter with the bear, where she's taken underground (foreshadow willow-root rescue later) and sees the root-forest as the reverse of the branch-forest, as lively and as beautiful, for all that it's worms and bugs instead of birds and squirrels. Originally it was just an idea that I thought was cool. Now I'm thinking it may tie in thematically with the latter part of the story, Myl at court. She's been humbled, now she's raised as high as she can go, but she'll need all the skills she learnt at the bottom to keep herself safe at the top. And she can see how necessary the roots of the tree are to the crown (pun, sorry) which may not be as clear to those who've never looked down.
Something for me to think about, if I can avoid being heavy-handed and preachy!
Just finished reading The Thread That Binds the Bones, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Very nicely written--she's a stylist. The premise is pretty much ZennaHenderson's The People gone bad, which is intriguing. Very readable, but I felt it skimpy in parts. Not that I wanted an explanation or backstory for the Family, or why they have Clearly Symbolic Surnames, but that the baddy was such a shadowy figure until the end, and it seemed the other characters were overlooking the source of the problem (which was perhaps established too early, or I'm too quick at guessing). Also I didn't really feel afraid for the hero; his powers were so mutable and adaptable I felt sure they'd rise to the occasion.
I enjoyed it, and I'd read other books by her, but it did make me wonder if she was held back by wordcount limits or other considerations.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Things that are not writing
Blogging is a kind of writing, but I can't really consider it a productive kind of writing. Perhaps a way to work out questions and issues before they go into the narrative. In which case I beg your pardon, Gentle and Hypothetical Reader, for talking to myself in front of you.
Research is not writing, but for me it's a necessary, even vital, prelude to writing. I can't make something up out of whole cloth. I have to have a strong idea what is possible within a particular setting, and I can't know that without research.
Critiquing is not writing, but it may improve one's writing skills, simply because it's much easier to see an error in someone else's work. Then one asks 'Am I doing that too?' The struggle to express an opinion or make a suggestion in a manner both clear and kind is a useful exercise in itself.
The risk with any of these is that they become valuable in themselves, and eat time. Writing time must already be squeezed in here and there between paid work, travelling to and fro, housework, time with family and friends. Every activity that chips away at writing time is a risk.
So it's the old weighing of risks and benefits thing. Keeping up with my online friends, particularly those who are also writers, is important to me and helps me keep my perspective.
Reading Fandom_Wank, on the other hand, is hard to justify on any basis other than snarky entertainment. For a while I read FW after every phone conversation I had with a particular friend, just to cleanse the choked-up snarkiness from my system.
I'm weighing the risks-and-benefits of having a website while being unpublished, you see, and this is me dancing around the question. It would make for something a Hypothetical Agent could look at, which is both a risk and a benefit, ratio depending on the lameness level of the website. Maintaining a website (and they're no more useful unmaintained than they are 'under construction') is another thing that chips away at writing time: a definite risk.
Partly I feel that my setting up a website, as if I were some sort of real writer, is the sort of hubris that merits lightning bolts or divine humiliation in short order.
Then there's registering a domain name. Common wisdom is to register one's own name or writing name. Common wisdom is not named after a popular comic-book heroine, though. I'm sufficiently fussed about that aspect that I've considered choosing a pen-name, even though I quite like my real name and it's at a convenient part of the alphabet, not likely to be shelved close to the floor and inaccessible save to the young and limber. Part of the fear may be due to the trauma of grade 7, when I was greeted regularly by my classmates with a chorus of daduh-daduh-daduh-daduh-BATGIRL!
Research is not writing, but for me it's a necessary, even vital, prelude to writing. I can't make something up out of whole cloth. I have to have a strong idea what is possible within a particular setting, and I can't know that without research.
Critiquing is not writing, but it may improve one's writing skills, simply because it's much easier to see an error in someone else's work. Then one asks 'Am I doing that too?' The struggle to express an opinion or make a suggestion in a manner both clear and kind is a useful exercise in itself.
The risk with any of these is that they become valuable in themselves, and eat time. Writing time must already be squeezed in here and there between paid work, travelling to and fro, housework, time with family and friends. Every activity that chips away at writing time is a risk.
So it's the old weighing of risks and benefits thing. Keeping up with my online friends, particularly those who are also writers, is important to me and helps me keep my perspective.
Reading Fandom_Wank, on the other hand, is hard to justify on any basis other than snarky entertainment. For a while I read FW after every phone conversation I had with a particular friend, just to cleanse the choked-up snarkiness from my system.
I'm weighing the risks-and-benefits of having a website while being unpublished, you see, and this is me dancing around the question. It would make for something a Hypothetical Agent could look at, which is both a risk and a benefit, ratio depending on the lameness level of the website. Maintaining a website (and they're no more useful unmaintained than they are 'under construction') is another thing that chips away at writing time: a definite risk.
Partly I feel that my setting up a website, as if I were some sort of real writer, is the sort of hubris that merits lightning bolts or divine humiliation in short order.
Then there's registering a domain name. Common wisdom is to register one's own name or writing name. Common wisdom is not named after a popular comic-book heroine, though. I'm sufficiently fussed about that aspect that I've considered choosing a pen-name, even though I quite like my real name and it's at a convenient part of the alphabet, not likely to be shelved close to the floor and inaccessible save to the young and limber. Part of the fear may be due to the trauma of grade 7, when I was greeted regularly by my classmates with a chorus of daduh-daduh-daduh-daduh-BATGIRL!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)