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Five things or so make a post
Aug. 24th, 2010 05:33 pmToday was my last day at the archives, which was kind of awesome, and kind of not. Awesome in that I finished my third box of political cartoons, bringing me up to a sum-total of 7 years and over 1800 unique cartoons; not in that there are still years and years of cartoons left I didn't even touch. Awesome in that my boss-person brought in cupcakes 'cause it was my last day; not in--well, you know the drill. Food allergies, which are irrelevant enough to library work that I hadn't mentioned 'em, but the thought was really nice.
On the writing front, it's possible that reading the last of Delany's About Writing while in novel-withdrawal mode wasn't the greatest plan ever planned. But I read the rest of it! Weirdly, he talked about Alphabetical Africa and then it came up in conversation with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
epicrauko this weekend/last week, and then a copy of it came across my desk at the bindery yesterday... so maybe I'll pick up a copy sometime, who knows.
Anyway, About Writing was good. Delany makes me think about writing in an orthogonal way to the way a lot of writers do. A few key things of his, so I remember them: each word building on an image--add things to the image, don't cut away what you've already caused the reader to picture; structures and patterns create plots; a story about a man going into a store and buying something can sideways-talk about []ism as easily as science fiction can (somehow I hadn't quite gotten that before, and I still don't quite believe that it's as easy, but maybe my brain just works in speculative fiction because I have read so much).
Yesterday--maybe the day before?--I sat down and thought, via a pen and notebook, about where I am in the novel-rewrite process. What's going on, and why, and why it matters to the plot and the themes and all those fun academic writer-y thinky thoughts. I didn't end up actually sitting down and working on it, since I didn't have a ton of free time by a computer that day and I want to at least skim through what I have so far before I go on, but...
...today I sat in the park after the archives, and the rewrite grew a title. So it is officially no longer Mad Library Hermits (which it was until I realized that that was problematic), and it is no longer Badass Library Hermits--both of which were joke-titles off a throw-away one-liner not even in this draft so far. Instead, it is A Returning Power.
Which might be a terrible title anyway, and will likely change, but it's actually about the novel, not my jokes about it. That's a step in the right direction. The fact that I know enough what the novel is about to make it grow titles is proof of a step, too.
Sometimes I feel like one day I will actually be a Real Writer. (The rest of the time is evenly split between "I'm a Real Writer already!" and "I will never be a Real Writer." In case you were wondering.)
On the writing front, it's possible that reading the last of Delany's About Writing while in novel-withdrawal mode wasn't the greatest plan ever planned. But I read the rest of it! Weirdly, he talked about Alphabetical Africa and then it came up in conversation with
epicrauko this weekend/last week, and then a copy of it came across my desk at the bindery yesterday... so maybe I'll pick up a copy sometime, who knows.Anyway, About Writing was good. Delany makes me think about writing in an orthogonal way to the way a lot of writers do. A few key things of his, so I remember them: each word building on an image--add things to the image, don't cut away what you've already caused the reader to picture; structures and patterns create plots; a story about a man going into a store and buying something can sideways-talk about []ism as easily as science fiction can (somehow I hadn't quite gotten that before, and I still don't quite believe that it's as easy, but maybe my brain just works in speculative fiction because I have read so much).
Yesterday--maybe the day before?--I sat down and thought, via a pen and notebook, about where I am in the novel-rewrite process. What's going on, and why, and why it matters to the plot and the themes and all those fun academic writer-y thinky thoughts. I didn't end up actually sitting down and working on it, since I didn't have a ton of free time by a computer that day and I want to at least skim through what I have so far before I go on, but...
...today I sat in the park after the archives, and the rewrite grew a title. So it is officially no longer Mad Library Hermits (which it was until I realized that that was problematic), and it is no longer Badass Library Hermits--both of which were joke-titles off a throw-away one-liner not even in this draft so far. Instead, it is A Returning Power.
Which might be a terrible title anyway, and will likely change, but it's actually about the novel, not my jokes about it. That's a step in the right direction. The fact that I know enough what the novel is about to make it grow titles is proof of a step, too.
Sometimes I feel like one day I will actually be a Real Writer. (The rest of the time is evenly split between "I'm a Real Writer already!" and "I will never be a Real Writer." In case you were wondering.)