A Demolition of Square Brackets
I'm not a sequential, chronological type of writer. By which I mean, starting at the beginning of a story and writing through until I get to the end is as alien to me as sun-bathing. (Though I am not suggesting that writing in a beginning-to-end fashion is carcinogenic or gives you leather for skin.) I am not alone in having a writing style that can be (and has been) described as "water-boatman-like". A scene here - a scene there - concentrated whirling on one spot before ricocheting off to another to whirl again. Eventually I have enough scenes to start to sew them together. As I do that, if I can't think how to make something work, or a seam seem seamless, I put square brackets around it and go play somewhere else. Eventually the holes begin to be closed - a point comes where I must hunt down what cowers between the brackets - and, one by one, I pummel them into prose. Have at thee, square brackets! Are metaphors being mixed? Who cares!
It's a heady feeling, finishing a book!
Time has passed and in those years, the writing process I fell into at the beginning of my career hasn't changed. Right now I'm at that intoxicating first stage of a novel, whirling and ricocheting. I know this means I'll have a hard time ahead, pulling it all together and demolishing the square brackets. But right now, I don't care.
It's a heady feeling, starting a book!
Tell us about your favourite stage - when do you get your heady feeling?
It's a heady feeling, starting a book!
Tell us about your favourite stage - when do you get your heady feeling?
Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
3 comments:
I'm a 'start at the beginning and go on to the end' plodder and don't think I could work any other way. I'd feel lost if I let go off that plot-line -- but if the whirligig water-boatman style can produce Silverskin and Walking Mountain, maybe I should try it!
What, in writing, gives me a heady feeling? Not starting a book -- that's trepidation and an impending sense of failure until I've got at least half of it done.
I'd say, finishing a key scene, when it's gone well, the characters have all cooperated, the punch-lines have worked -- or will do, when they've been polished a bit -- that brings on one of those euphoric highs that I've never got from exercise.
I think it is when the story reveals more about a character than you knew when you started writing it - I have a character in my present story who has a fault, but I have only just discovered what it is - and now I know, it is such a relief, and makes sense of the plot.
Thank you for a very interesting post!
Thanks, Sue and Anne, and yes! I love those times too!
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