The November meeting was done by 6:30 and Hugo is on the last leg of the bus trip home. It’s already dark and he is watching the wipers on the front window. Bus wipers must operate by separate motors because they never stay in synch. Bomp, be-domp. Bomp, bomp-de, bomp, b-domp. Each one has its own tempo and sometimes they hit together and then drift apart, further and further, then closer, and closer, until they meet again. It’s an result of his musical background that these asymmetrical patterns draw him like moths to a light, rather than any disorder. Or at least, so he hopes.
bookmark_borderEgo bruising
I attended a writing workshop this weekend. Standard structure; moderator asked panel of published writers some questions about how they write, what advice they have, why they chose their genres. This was followed by a session where preregistered participants met for fast reviews by experienced writers or editors.
bookmark_borderWrite about what you know
“Write about what you know”
You hear this all the time. The theory is that if you pull stories from your own life and use settings, occupations, and situations that you are familiar with, then your writing will ring true. Writing about what you know will also help to avoid errors like using words that Brits don’t use when a character is supposed to be British, or calling a street “Maple Street” when it should be “Maple Avenue” for a city that you visited once. But writing about what I know is something that I rarely do except in an indirect manner. I rarely use things that actually happened to me or to someone close to me. At most I draw on fragments. I do it this way because of my reasons for writing.
bookmark_borderWriting analysis: “Axis”, by Alice Munro
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.
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.