Rambling Through Writerly Things

A Crisis of Faith: Pauls Toutonghi on Finding Purpose in Creativity  

I’d been unable to fully articulate what I’d done, Ted Sod told the class, but that didn’t matter. The work itself would show us! He’d printed out copies of the play, he continued, enough copies for everyone, and—over the rest of the class period—we went through my play and talked about my ideas. I calmed down a bit, and was able to discuss what I’d done. I felt seen and, for a moment, lifted from my despair.

The bell rang. Word spread quickly through my friends about what had happened. I think it was startling to everyone because there was no doubt that I was a troubled kid; acting out, failing classes, headed for some kind of indefinite trouble. But this? This was a reversal. Now I had a different trajectory. I had an identity. A profile.

My PO keeps asking about my mental health, another question which I have begun finding tiresome, without understanding the only time to worry again about my reverting to self-destruction is when both of these two things happen: I stopped writing, and I stop delving into Orthodox Christianity.

 From Richard Hughes Gibson's Why Characters Write: First-person narrators and the stories they tell.. a technical issue:

I bring up Orwell’s essay now, however, to consider another problem of motivation in the house of fiction: why characters write. The problem is more acute in stories narrated in the first person, since, fairly or not, that mode of narration more directly raises the logistical question of how we readers have access to the story. Is someone speaking? Was this story written down at some point? If so, why? And by whom? Some writers get around these issues by signaling that the book belongs to a genre in which first-person reportage is customary or even necessary. For example, once we read the subtitle to Jane Eyre, An Autobiography, all logistical problems dissolve. Of course, an autobiographer is writing about herself! The problem now shifts to whether Jane’s life keeps our attention. Other writers acknowledge logistical impasses without purporting to solve them. Margaret Atwood cleverly does this in The Penelopiad, her Penelope lamenting that words from the Underworld rarely reach the ears of the living: “Those of you who may catch the odd whisper, the odd squeak, so easily mistake my words for breezes rustling the dry reeds, for bats at twilight, for bad dreams.” (Atwood’s Penelope looks to me like some SE expressing itself under the cover of HI, her author, meanwhile, working under the banner of PP.)

From Making the Right Word Choices for Better Writing by Melissa Donovan; three points I have been working on (she lists a few more):

Repetition: When the same words and phrases are repeated in a short space, they act like clichés, becoming tiresome and meaningless. Some words have to be repeated, especially articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. If we’re writing a story set on a submarine, the word submarine (or sub) will get repeated frequently. That’s to be expected. However, repetitive descriptive words get monotonous. Every girl is pretty, every stride is long, everybody taps their keyboards. The fix: look for words that can be replaced with synonyms or alternative wording and avoid using the same descriptive words over and over again.
Connotation: With all the synonyms available, choosing the right word can be a challenge. Each word has a meaning, but most words also have connotations, which skew the meaning in a particular direction. Connotations are implied or emotional undertones that flavor a word’s meaning. If your character is going home, there is a much different implication than if the character is going to her house. The fix: when choosing synonyms, consider the connotation and emotional flavor of each option.
Precision: The best word choices are specific. One word might be vague and nondescript while another is vivid and descriptive.

Pay attention to her fixes.

 From How Does Rejection Influence Your Writing? 

But when you do, you’re no longer writing the story you were originally had in mind—what you wanted to say. Instead you’re now writing what someone else wants to say, and trust me, the difference shows. For example, we sometimes receive submissions of short stories about racial and gender issues that are obviously written by white men from the boomer generation. Those stories are almost always filled with attempts to pander to current social values, and make generalizations that reveal their lack of knowledge about what’s really happening in our culture. In a way, those stories are just as stereotypical as some of the attitudes from decades ago that these writers appear to be trying to renounce.

***

Is it self-confidence to resist giving into market pressure, or is it simply stubbornness?

I sometimes think about writers like William Saroyan, who reportedly received 7,000 rejections before selling his first short story. And William H. Gass, whose short story, “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country” is now an American classic. But, said Gass in an interview, “I was turned down for ten years. I couldn’t get a thing in print. My writing went nowhere. I guess you have to be persistent.”[2] I could go on for hours about great writers who received hundreds or thousands of rejections before becoming established. Just keep in mind that eventually they did make it without giving into market pressures.

I am too old, too far out in the boondocks to have any notion of what is fashionable – I expect to be unfashionable. However, rejections have made re-read stories and think on them harder. Whether that has made them better remains an open question.

 

sch 10/7