CoalFungi of Sleet
Feb. 20th, 2018 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoStill tired. Still coughing. I didn't go for a walk today, because of the rain, which has been falling incessantly since yesterday afternoon. Even with that much rain, it has taken this long for the snow cover to wash away. At the corners of yards and driveways, where it was piled high, remnants still survive. Tomorrow it will dip below freezing again, so whatever is left will be frozen again and will last until the next thaw. Still, it was strange and refreshing to see the earth emerging from under the frozen wastes!
I carried on with my chapterizing of the WIP. It's not easy to create chapters in something that's already been written without them. It doesn't feel organic. But it's an experiment that I hope will help me learn to write better synopses. I've never written chapter by chapter. When I was young, I had trouble mastering the art of the paragraph, too. When I set out to tell a story, I would just write it down, from one edge of the page to the other, until I was finished. I didn't believe in margins, either. Why waste perfectly good paper?? I did not see the point of paragraphs. I still don't, really, but I've come to accept them as something we do for the convenience of the reader. Chapters are the same--they are something that can be crafted with artifice, but they break up my thought in a way that doesn't feel natural to me.
I've read that Mozart didn't write his music section by section. He conceived the whole thing as a unity, with all the parts, and wrote it down as a completed whole. I wouldn't want to compare myself to Mozart, but I envision a book in a similar way, on a much more humble scale. I don't think of it as a grid, an outline, or a series of chunks. I feel it in my mind as a sculptural shape, a landscape, a musical form. It's all one big pattern. I have to keep going till the whole thing is out there--all in one breath, as it were. Writing from edge to edge of the paper with no margins! Two of my books, Sky Road and Steel Helix, were written in three sections, but that felt more like movements in a concerto. Each section had its own shape within the big arc.
I have friends who are very deft at writing chapters and naming them, making each one a separate treat within the whole. It's a skill I'm trying to learn. I may not be able to, but I think I should try.
I carried on with my chapterizing of the WIP. It's not easy to create chapters in something that's already been written without them. It doesn't feel organic. But it's an experiment that I hope will help me learn to write better synopses. I've never written chapter by chapter. When I was young, I had trouble mastering the art of the paragraph, too. When I set out to tell a story, I would just write it down, from one edge of the page to the other, until I was finished. I didn't believe in margins, either. Why waste perfectly good paper?? I did not see the point of paragraphs. I still don't, really, but I've come to accept them as something we do for the convenience of the reader. Chapters are the same--they are something that can be crafted with artifice, but they break up my thought in a way that doesn't feel natural to me.
I've read that Mozart didn't write his music section by section. He conceived the whole thing as a unity, with all the parts, and wrote it down as a completed whole. I wouldn't want to compare myself to Mozart, but I envision a book in a similar way, on a much more humble scale. I don't think of it as a grid, an outline, or a series of chunks. I feel it in my mind as a sculptural shape, a landscape, a musical form. It's all one big pattern. I have to keep going till the whole thing is out there--all in one breath, as it were. Writing from edge to edge of the paper with no margins! Two of my books, Sky Road and Steel Helix, were written in three sections, but that felt more like movements in a concerto. Each section had its own shape within the big arc.
I have friends who are very deft at writing chapters and naming them, making each one a separate treat within the whole. It's a skill I'm trying to learn. I may not be able to, but I think I should try.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-21 01:42 pm (UTC)