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February 9th, 2007
12:55 am - The groove
I've been writing little stories to put in the Valentine's day cards I'm sending to some of my friends. I've been failing so far in my "write more" campaign--at least till now--so I'm fascinated at how much more quickly I'm able to pick up writing again than after my last hiatus.
The last one, granted, was at least five years long. And I hadn't done much serious fiction writing, even then. But I thought the process would be similar: a lot of starts and stops, waiting for the right words, constantly editing even though I know I shouldn't. But it's completely different.
I feel...like my thought processes, at least the ones not related to physics, are writerly. So even in terms of social thinking, I tend to "practice" conversations, which is an awful lot like writing a story with real people as characters. And the exercise of writing these little stories for my friends is less like laboring to come up with something that works, and more like becoming aware again that I can capture these fleeting bits of fancy my brain creates all the time. I'll be sitting somewhere, think, "Oh, that would make a nice bit of a story," and there's a beat before I remember that--oh yes! I CAN write it down! And because I'm trying to write now, in a way I haven't had time to for a while, that's more...directed than it was before.
It also feels pleasantly like cleaning out cobwebs from my mind.
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November 26th, 2006
10:36 pm - Grad school and such
It's funny--I'm much busier now with grad school than I think I've ever been, but it's much easier than my busy times in undergrad.
For one thing, I don't really have many friends here yet (I've only been here a couple of months, after all) and so I'm not spending a lot of time hanging out with people. That sounds sort of depressing but it's fine--I have some friends, just not a plethora.
Mostly, though, I think it's the lack of busy work. Most semesters I had some kind of class that was way too easy, and it's...draining. I guess it's like pushing the gas pedal on your car when you're in neutral, or something--the engine revs, but you don't really go anywhere, so you get wear & tear for no purpose. But all my stuff is hard now! Wow! But not impossibly so--it's stuff I feel like I can do, just not stuff I know how to do the minute I look at it.
I haven't been writing much so I'm determined to start doing an hour a day (probably after finals--it strikes me as a horrible idea to stick to that kind of plan the week I need to start studying, when I'm still cold). It's been so long since I've really written a lot that the normal banked oven of skill is totally dead and everything on the back burners is gelatinous and kind of disgusting, so I should build up slowly--so I'm counting correspondence and blog posts, for the moment. (I seem to have a thing for inappropriate analogies at the moment.)
In good news, I just got a Levenger lap desk for my birthday (a little early since I was home). Yay for working on soft surfaces!
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December 7th, 2005
02:32 am
Grad school applications have eaten my head. One of these days I'll write another word of fiction...
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October 25th, 2005
06:35 pm - short stories feat. women in the military
Does anyone know any short stories featuring women soldiers? I'm doing a paper looking at characterization of military personnel in a few short stories, and I'd like at least one sample with female characters.
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September 9th, 2005
12:41 am - Short Story Writing
I don't claim to have a lot of experience editing short stories--I'm still new on the workshop, of course, and I've had some but not a lot of experience in class.
One thing I've noticed, possibly because of that inexperience, is a proliferation of stories which read like outlines. Some of them are like this a bit, with spaces of description in between vivid scenes; others are nothing but related action. I suppose I can't really talk, because the short story I just sent off a couple of weeks ago is 3/4 the protag relating how this situation got about and only about 1/4 current action, but I hope the narration was at least engaging.
So, questions:
1. Is this because some writers try to fit novel-sized plots in short stories, rather than taking stories which are more innately suited to the short story form?
2. Is this because it's the mode of most people to start writing as a teller (not the comedian) and only gradually to move into a shower (not the bathroom fixture), and I've just found people who are part of the way there?
3. Is this because I suck as a reader of short stories?
4. How many licks does it take....er, sorry, different area of expertise required.
(I'm crossposting everything from the other blog now, mostly because this increases the chances that someone may stumble upon it accidentally, and I like writing to an audience.)
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August 30th, 2005
05:12 pm - Reading Journal, 08/30/05
So I'm taking this class on short stories. It's really interesting--I haven't ever studied the form as a form, just as part of the Big Class o' Stuff Known As Literature.
The teacher's asked us to keep a reading journal, and I thought I'd do it here, to educate the large number of people who .... are not reading this journal at all, really. But it's handy and I can write in it anywhere with the Net, so.
( Onward and upward! Chekhov, Oates, Cather, Gilchrist. )
(x-posted from Random Notions)
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif) thoughtful
Current Music: library noises
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June 27th, 2005
01:31 am - Yet more updates
I'm sort-of blogging here--latest entry is on quality and enjoyment, and how it varies across genre fictions (and literature, which, really, mostly qualifies as a genre of its own).
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/tired.gif) tired
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June 22nd, 2005
05:12 am - Small update
Changed the way the website looks. Sort of working on more essays through a haze of fatigue. Yes, I know the formatting in the bibliography is screwed up, but I don't know why. :( It's the same code I used on the rest of the site...
Have another sort-of blog. http://random.world-building.net . Not much there either; my apologies.
ETA: Helps to, y'know, delete all the old table cells from your formatting pages before adding the new ones. Or, in other news, the bibliography looks okay now.
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November 6th, 2004
02:27 am - Site Update: Fly Free, Little Website!, or Why I Want to Be Cory Doctorow
Site's been updated--no new essays, I'm afraid, but I cleaned up the language of a lot of things. Also, I finally found that story I'd been looking for (it's "The Road Not Taken," by Harry Turtledove, and one of the best short stories I've ever read).
Changed all the page titles to say "world-building dot net," which is rather more correct than the dot com was. Oooops.
And, likely the biggest news, I released the content under a Creative Commons license: attributed, noncommercial, share alike.
I want some actual content in here, so I think I'll try to keep up a list of what I'm reading. At the moment, that is ( Brothers in Arms, by Lois McMaster Bujold. )
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July 29th, 2004
04:33 am - Website up!
Well, the site's now at least partially functioning, with about 1/4 of the essays up, I think.
...God...this is going to take forever. :)
That's http://www.world-building.net , just in case.
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July 20th, 2004
05:16 pm
Just a placeholder, because my journal looks sad and empty.
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surely_i_jest's journal