she wanted to feel good about it
Jun. 28th, 2010 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraThis post is large. It contains multitudes.
Fourth Street was, as always, delightful. I'm always pleased to find groups of people who prioritize chatting about fantasy novels (Et Cetera) and writing process (similarly), playing/singing music (even though I rarely know any of the songs, sometimes I can pick up on the chorus eventually), making tea very precisely and then drinking it...
...and, you know, everything else that a convention is made up of. This year we didn't have quite so many in-jokes at the end of the weekend as we did last year, but there was still the sense of community, so it was all okay.
---
While at the last panel at Fourth Street, I had an idea for a slightly related question.
How is your revision process (for novels, particularly, but short stories as well) reflected in the material things and/or software structures that you use?
(For example, if a writer restructures their novel in one stage and then goes through to polish, do they use notecards for restructuring, Scrivener, just work it out in a notebook? Do they print it out and go through to polish it, scroll through, check scenes individually?)
...however, it was not really relevant, so I am posing it here instead, or possibly will suggest it as a panel topic for next Fourth Street (if they let us submit panel topics) or WisCon or something. It seems interesting to me, at least. Some writing software is designed for certain things, and some for others, and since writers All Do It Differently, a certain amount of mishmash cobbling together of things is necessary, I should think.
---
...I try not to be a pedant, really I do. Mostly my quibbles with grammar arise when it's more amusing to misinterpret a sentence by taking the 'rules' literally--or, on a more serious hand, when something doesn't make sense.
However, once in a while there is just something so egregious that I cannot in good conscience ignore it.
One of these is the trend, possibly current, of "____-making". Happy-making. Sick-making. In a back-cover blurb of a book I took care of at the bindery today, sane-making.
I don't like it. One, because it's unattractive (and breaks me out of wherever I read it to go "aaaugh"), and two, because it's lazy.
happy-making: you mean 'pleasing', I think.
sick-making: you mean 'nauseous'. Or, if you're worried about your readers' brains, nauseating.
sane-making: you mean, possibly, 'sanity-inducing'?
...alternatively, if 'happy', 'sick', and 'sane' are really the specific words you want to use, I promise it is possible to rewrite your sentence so that you do not have to stick '-making' on the end of it.
(Okay, all right, if you're stuck in the compromising position of writing fiction and really that sentence structure is the only one that will work, and that word is the only one that will work... ...no, on second thought, I dislike this construction enough to not care. And I promise that the thematic implications of your blurb are really not all that important.)
In speech, I will accept these. Sometimes it's hard to think of words on the fly, and you can't rewrite sentences. But in writing? I do not like it, and it annoys me.
---
I have a few more thoughts about Fourth Street (and conventions in general), Et Cetera, but right now I need to do my Ideomancer slush and work some more on my novel.
Fourth Street was, as always, delightful. I'm always pleased to find groups of people who prioritize chatting about fantasy novels (Et Cetera) and writing process (similarly), playing/singing music (even though I rarely know any of the songs, sometimes I can pick up on the chorus eventually), making tea very precisely and then drinking it...
...and, you know, everything else that a convention is made up of. This year we didn't have quite so many in-jokes at the end of the weekend as we did last year, but there was still the sense of community, so it was all okay.
---
While at the last panel at Fourth Street, I had an idea for a slightly related question.
How is your revision process (for novels, particularly, but short stories as well) reflected in the material things and/or software structures that you use?
(For example, if a writer restructures their novel in one stage and then goes through to polish, do they use notecards for restructuring, Scrivener, just work it out in a notebook? Do they print it out and go through to polish it, scroll through, check scenes individually?)
...however, it was not really relevant, so I am posing it here instead, or possibly will suggest it as a panel topic for next Fourth Street (if they let us submit panel topics) or WisCon or something. It seems interesting to me, at least. Some writing software is designed for certain things, and some for others, and since writers All Do It Differently, a certain amount of mishmash cobbling together of things is necessary, I should think.
---
...I try not to be a pedant, really I do. Mostly my quibbles with grammar arise when it's more amusing to misinterpret a sentence by taking the 'rules' literally--or, on a more serious hand, when something doesn't make sense.
However, once in a while there is just something so egregious that I cannot in good conscience ignore it.
One of these is the trend, possibly current, of "____-making". Happy-making. Sick-making. In a back-cover blurb of a book I took care of at the bindery today, sane-making.
I don't like it. One, because it's unattractive (and breaks me out of wherever I read it to go "aaaugh"), and two, because it's lazy.
happy-making: you mean 'pleasing', I think.
sick-making: you mean 'nauseous'. Or, if you're worried about your readers' brains, nauseating.
sane-making: you mean, possibly, 'sanity-inducing'?
...alternatively, if 'happy', 'sick', and 'sane' are really the specific words you want to use, I promise it is possible to rewrite your sentence so that you do not have to stick '-making' on the end of it.
(Okay, all right, if you're stuck in the compromising position of writing fiction and really that sentence structure is the only one that will work, and that word is the only one that will work... ...no, on second thought, I dislike this construction enough to not care. And I promise that the thematic implications of your blurb are really not all that important.)
In speech, I will accept these. Sometimes it's hard to think of words on the fly, and you can't rewrite sentences. But in writing? I do not like it, and it annoys me.
---
I have a few more thoughts about Fourth Street (and conventions in general), Et Cetera, but right now I need to do my Ideomancer slush and work some more on my novel.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-01 02:19 am (UTC)(Ah yes! I have heard of this before, though not quite in those terms. I'm not certain where I fall in that spectrum--quite possibly I put in the skeleton and the kitchen sink and then stop. Or maybe I just find that appealing as a turn of phrase, it's sometimes hard to tell.)