« Fear Breeds Repression | Main | Every Word is A good word »
Week Two Woopty Doo
Working on the novel, slowly inching my way, 100, 900, 2000 words a day. I sit down to write .... What the heck should I say? But you know the saying, about no work and all play. These comments at Stay of Execution (from commenter “Matt” of Second Person Singular) perfectly capture one of the best things about creative writing:It's true. I'm sure if I ever sat down to edit and rewrite these drafts I've tapped out in the course of past NaNoWriMos I would find that the only parts worth saving are the parts I had never even thought about until they appeared on the page. The serendipity of the unexpected is not always welcome, though. I often have this problem where I'm writing along and a character develops some habit or tic or does something that requires explanation, and that sends me on some tangent, and that often creates new scenes and characters that I don't know what to do with. And I think this is where some theories of writing say you should just go with it, follow your characters where they lead you. And that's fine, but I don't see how I'll ever get a story out of it. At some point you have to impose some discipline on that rampant serendipity, give it some shape, put up some fences and force it to roam around in a more limited area. If you don't, you'll end up writing endlessly and creating creating creating something that no one, including yourself, will ever be able to read. The great thing about NaNoWriMo, though, is that you don't have to worry too much about those fences, that discipline. Not this month. I mean, you can if you want, but there's no pressure to do so. It's all about quantity, not quality. Unlike the phenomenal Sui Generis who already has nearly 40k words, I'm falling way behind in quantity, so, um . . . bye....i've never written a page on which something unexpected didn't happen, i've never had any creative work merely assume the form i expected before beginning, there is always serendipity, the unexpected, something ....more than i was aware of when i set out...be it painting, or cartooning, or designing buildings, or writing... and those moments, come to think of it, are usually the most wonderful occasions in the piece, they are the strong points.
Posted November 11, 2004 07:05 AM | NaNoWriMo
Hey! Maybe you should check out Kerouac's Essentials of Spontaneous Prose, which you can find here http://www.purpleglitter.com/poesy/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=27
This website seems like it has a lot that might be helpful in yer creative efforts, he said enviously whilst elbow deep in the guts of some tortured academic prose.
Posted by: Famous P. at November 11, 2004 11:39 AM
nice compliment, thank you!
...regarding serendipity and letting the characters lead the story as they interact "independant" of the authors control, i think the technique can be used without sacrificing coherence, without giving up pacing, without surrendering theme or thesis... i'm trying that as an experiment in the Zeppelins in Action! story that i have linked from my site... it's a situation where the only preconception i have is the afterglow that the book leaves inside the readers mind when they close the book after reading it through. yeah, i have a vague sense of the skeleton of the story, but as the scenes occur, the skeleton changes in response... it develops.
of course this approach couldn't work for every kind of story; a detective story written this way would probably not pass muster for example.
the characters in Zeppelins have minds of their own and don't readily submit to the direction that i expected to push them... but they go to a more ...fruitful place, a more interesting place.
and seriously, it isn't a mind-trick, it isn't a way of pretending not to write the story... it's more like writing from a deeper place, a place within you that doesn't usually have access to language. something inside becomes the character, acts and speaks as the character would. at least that's what i strive for.
the story so far is available at http://homepage.mac.com/digilithos/00_toc.html
Posted by: matt at November 15, 2004 06:50 PM
