idiosyncreant (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
idiosyncreant) wrote2007-10-08 08:38 am
idiosyncreant) wrote2007-10-08 08:38 am
Entry tags:
Mandatory Viable Paradise Blogging
Actually, I just want to have the term "Viable Paradise" here for any Googlers who, like me, came up with a dearth of information outside the site. Which is sad. Because it's street cred should be puffed up on the Intrawebs, not otherwise.
Hello, I'm Bethany Powell and I'm a writer. I've come to VP to get a hold on what I'm doing wrong.
It was definitely worth all the months I spent earning airfare/hotel rates/tuition. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, if that wasn't blatantly the wrong thing for me to do. I have about ten years of work ahead of me!
Why?
It's not that I'm going to sit home and write short stories that ache for meaning until I'm 27, like Jean (roommate) maybe worried about. I agreed totally with the idea that I need five more years (which will make me 26 1/2, actually) (parentheses! mwahahaha, Ben Biggs, I R IN MY BLOG IGNRING UR STILE CRITS) to grow up and have enough life experience to write seriously from. Doctorow's observation that I was overreaching myself was spot on.
But. Though I at least interpreted his comments to mean I have a lot of juvenility going on in my writing, I am pretty sure what I submitted typifies my bad writing, not my good. Lack of control is what typified World Domination 101.
It wouldn't exist, and it certainly would be no good, if I hadn't lost control somewhat. The over-the-top humor came straight from my giggling into the keyboard. When I write by pen I am controlled, I contemplate, and even my humorous pieces come with a certain pacing enforced by my sense of timing.
And there is a grace in it because I've been doing this for almost 10 years, I am a very lingual person, and control of your craft is good.
But what was broken up by typing things as they came for my superkids with mediocre powers (! hook phrasing !) was that it's a blatant oil-spill of my native humor as I speak, as my Boston Irish side of the family talks with each other, as I've grown up bantering with other home schooled/cross-cultural/book geek kids with large vocabulary, advanced critical skills, and a precocious perspective on the world. So I need to clean it up. I need to rework it so the huge possibilities for solved=new problem are exploited, instead of incidental.
Maybe tomorrow I'll go anecdotal, but yesterday I spent telling my family all that and it's not so interesting right now. Freeskate on what I'm thinking about what I learned is much more interesting to me.
Now it's time to go write for once. I did get two pages in on my first flight. Aolon suffers from the same plotting problems, but at least it's syntax is fairly clean, now I've gotten past the bits were I'm trying to be archaic and failing to make archaism sound fluent and fresh.
At least I know the problem, right?
That is--Bethany thinks she's far cleverer than she is, and writes accordingly...
Hello, I'm Bethany Powell and I'm a writer. I've come to VP to get a hold on what I'm doing wrong.
It was definitely worth all the months I spent earning airfare/hotel rates/tuition. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, if that wasn't blatantly the wrong thing for me to do. I have about ten years of work ahead of me!
Why?
It's not that I'm going to sit home and write short stories that ache for meaning until I'm 27, like Jean (roommate) maybe worried about. I agreed totally with the idea that I need five more years (which will make me 26 1/2, actually) (parentheses! mwahahaha, Ben Biggs, I R IN MY BLOG IGNRING UR STILE CRITS) to grow up and have enough life experience to write seriously from. Doctorow's observation that I was overreaching myself was spot on.
But. Though I at least interpreted his comments to mean I have a lot of juvenility going on in my writing, I am pretty sure what I submitted typifies my bad writing, not my good. Lack of control is what typified World Domination 101.
It wouldn't exist, and it certainly would be no good, if I hadn't lost control somewhat. The over-the-top humor came straight from my giggling into the keyboard. When I write by pen I am controlled, I contemplate, and even my humorous pieces come with a certain pacing enforced by my sense of timing.
And there is a grace in it because I've been doing this for almost 10 years, I am a very lingual person, and control of your craft is good.
But what was broken up by typing things as they came for my superkids with mediocre powers (! hook phrasing !) was that it's a blatant oil-spill of my native humor as I speak, as my Boston Irish side of the family talks with each other, as I've grown up bantering with other home schooled/cross-cultural/book geek kids with large vocabulary, advanced critical skills, and a precocious perspective on the world. So I need to clean it up. I need to rework it so the huge possibilities for solved=new problem are exploited, instead of incidental.
Maybe tomorrow I'll go anecdotal, but yesterday I spent telling my family all that and it's not so interesting right now. Freeskate on what I'm thinking about what I learned is much more interesting to me.
Now it's time to go write for once. I did get two pages in on my first flight. Aolon suffers from the same plotting problems, but at least it's syntax is fairly clean, now I've gotten past the bits were I'm trying to be archaic and failing to make archaism sound fluent and fresh.
At least I know the problem, right?
That is--Bethany thinks she's far cleverer than she is, and writes accordingly...