I’ve been waiting to find another short story in the New Yorker that generated interest in doing some more writing analysis. After going back to some older issues as well as keeping up on the semi-regular delivery of new issues in the mail I finally found an interesting story to look at. Unfortunately, it’s a story by Alice Munro. I say “unfortunately” because it’s intimidating to select the master of the genre to be studying.
Author: Glenn
bookmark_borderReview: “Zoe Busiek: Wild Card”, the Ceiling of Mediocrity
I watch very little television these days. I do have a television in the bedroom though, and today I woke up an hour early and turned on the TV to see what was on. Between morning newscasts I found something intriguing on W Network. Googling it helped me to discover that the program is called “Zoe Busiek: Wild Card” and that it ran from 2003 to 2005 on Lifetime.
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bookmark_borderReview: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Finally managed to watch this movie. Very nice. Does not fall into all the standard expected story tracks as it progresses.
bookmark_borderWriting analysis: Blue Roses, by Francis Hwang
Review of “Blue Roses” by Francis Hwang
Published in “The New Yorker” November 1, 2010.
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bookmark_borderAnalyzing writing
I was a music composition major in university and one of the things that my composition teacher required was score reading. Score reading means to take a bit of a string quartet or orchestral work and be able to play a reduction of it at the piano regardless whether you are a pianist or not. And in theory classes we analyzed music looking at the formal structure, root elements such as motives and their later development, harmonic structures, contrapuntal elements, and as many different ways as there were to analyze pieces of music.
bookmark_borderNaNoWriMo reflections
I want to take a few moments to reflect on this year’s NaNoWriMo event before I put it to bed for a while. I plan to come back and revise and edit, but I want some distance before I try.
bookmark_borderNaNoWriMo novel, done
Well, it’s done. I only hit just over 45,000 words, but it’s done. I’ve hit the story targets; the characters had their representative scenes, the plot had its required scenes, the story is told.
bookmark_borderEnd of writing class
As of last night I finished the beginner writing night course that I had been taking, and I feel a sense of relief.
bookmark_borderNaNoWriMo at the half way point
This year has been tough. For my first NaNoWriMo I came up with a characteristic that I wanted to investigate (creativity), applied different versions to have three different characters (recombining, unorthodox, people skills) and then figured out a way that the three would have some connection to each other (famous artist returning to birth city, daughter of gallery owner, son of gallery owner) and then let my protagonist work her way through developing relationships with each of these three in turn. Just let my characters interact.
bookmark_borderNaNoWriMo
As of late my writing has been shaped by 1) the basic writing class that I’m taking, and 2) now the start of NaNoWriMo.