Work
Whenever I finish a scene I'm really happy with, I read it over and over again to marvel at my ability to string all those images together. Some passages are like a pop-up book, where everything is amazingly clear. The work that is required for that is intense, though. I spend days on one word, whole sections are tied up with a sentence I can’t turn around properly while my characters lean against the walls, patiently waiting for me to get on with it.
And the work isn't just about the vocabulary, that way writers put precision in their descriptions. It’s also about rhythm. If the rhythm of a sentence is off, then the reader has to put on the mental brakes. The scene has a skip. Experience has been helping me find that rhythm more quickly, of course, but sometimes I feel like no amount of writing will ever make me a sixty-word a minute fiction writer.
Amy
And the work isn't just about the vocabulary, that way writers put precision in their descriptions. It’s also about rhythm. If the rhythm of a sentence is off, then the reader has to put on the mental brakes. The scene has a skip. Experience has been helping me find that rhythm more quickly, of course, but sometimes I feel like no amount of writing will ever make me a sixty-word a minute fiction writer.
Amy
posted by Seven Authors in A Private Conversation at 12:53 PM
2 Comments:
Sixty words a minute! Who is the idiot that came up with that UNATTAINABLE goal? I may as well give up right now.
But I won't give up, by all the small gods. HOWEVER, I still want to have a little talk with that sixty words a minute idi. . .person.
Angela
I love the image of the characters leaning against the wall. And your musical image of the skip. I read it as a skip in a record, something which even a person 10 years younger than we are might not know about. All those little details are so important to me...is it a sign of aging or of just wanting to remember every detail? Victoria
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