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a journal |
 This book is intended as a place to blog about my life and things I'm interested in and answers to prompts from various blog prompt sites here on WDC, including "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  and "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" I'm not sure yet what it'll turn into, but I'm going to have fun figuring it out. |
| What do you make of the advice for fiction that says, “Revise, revise, revise”? Could too much revision kill the original spark, and what is your advice concerning revision? I believe in revision. But only after a solid first draft is on the table. That first draft is what contains the spark, and it could be that what I end up with veers away. That’s all right. The spark that made me interested in how the story would end isn’t the story itself. I’ve had months and years of frustration with a story, trying to make that first line or that last line still fit because it was so cool and I wanted it. I’ve usually found that getting rid of it in service to the story that came out of it makes the whole thing better. I revise in several ways. When I’m doing a substantial revision, adding scenes and subtracting them, changing dialogue, adding setting details, changing tense or point of view—I actually will bring up a new document and rewrite the story. I have more freedom to move things around then when I’m not working with the original typed document that keeps me more attached to the structure that might need reshaping. When I was writing my thesis, I rewrote every story in it from scratch. Each time, it felt more right. I also revise by editing. Here is where I go through and line edit, adding grammatical things I might have missed, changing a sentence here or there. This is also important but it comes later in my process. It’s more like polishing. Sometimes, after I’ve polished, I look at the story (or get someone I trust to look at the story) and end up doing a major rewrite because it’s not working. Breaking something apart sometimes is the best way for it to heal. I mean, it doesn’t matter how often you polish a gem stone if the stone itself has a flaw. Cutting it away will make it brighter in the long run. So, my advice is to not be afraid of revision. Revise until the story is ready to stand on its own. And then send it out into the world. If it comes back, maybe revise again. |
| Jeff Vandermeer, in his Wonderbook, talks about a “scar” or a “ghost of a scar” or a “splinter”, which exists in a writer’s background that inspires or causes him to begin to write. In his case, it was his parents’ divorce when he was a child. What other kinds of “ghosts of scars” can inspire the urge to write? Do you know of any real-life examples of it? There’s some truth to this particular myth. We often try to come up with reasons why we are the way we are. And as writers, we are a varied lot. Older, younger, male, female, abused, neglected, harmed, protected, loved—there are highs and lows in any life, and it’s at that edge that most stories happen. I personally know that two major components of my writing are my type 1 diabetes, and the fact that we moved a lot. This house that we live in now is the longest that I’ve lived anywhere. Ever. Attendant with moving a lot are losing friends, moving schools, changing curriculums, changing weather patterns, changing accents. While I didn’t lose a language (we lived in the US for all my life except for a year and a half that I spent in England) there is enough linguistic variation between New York and Maryland (and then Tennessee) that there were points when I felt I was learning a new language. The point is, moving is something that shapes my writing. Living with chronic illness shapes my writing. My family shapes my writing. The fact that my nephew died at five days shapes my writing. The fact that I worked at a toy store, the fact that I have taught, the fact that I have a big family, the fact that I’ve lived away from my family, the fact that I have engineers in my family tree . . . everything that I am, all my background causes me to write, not one single, simple scar. There doesn’t have to be something specific that shapes a life to make it a writing life. I write because I’m me, with all the scars and splinters and aches on my mind that I’ve grown because I live. And they’re unique to me, those scars. That doesn’t make me a better writer (or a worse one) it just makes me. |
| Well, it’s been a while since I’ve played blog. There’s a reasonable reason for that. I’ve been out of town since the third. A lovely vacation involving my sister and her family, and sleeping on the floor of my nephews’ room and having no real time or space to read or write or anything like that. But I enjoyed myself. We watched fireworks the way nature intended. On the television. We had a small birthday celebration for one of my nephews (who just turned five) and watched him get overexcited over his new kickball which (as he told us after some careful coaching) is an outdoor toy. We watched movies (and when I say movies, I mean, things that appeal to the children who ranged from eleven (Minecraft) to almost two (Potty Power)). At this point, I’m tired and I’m sore and I’ve spent way too long on an air mattress and way too little time on my computer or reading the book that I started last Tuesday, and I’m ready to be home. But too tired to come up with an answer to a prompt. |
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