In the wake of New Matilda folding, a righteous post by Mel Campbell on the value of writing.
Fri 28 May 2010 | Posted by rocketpilot
In the wake of New Matilda folding, a righteous post by Mel Campbell on the value of writing.
Thu 25 Mar 2010 37 notes | Posted by rocketpilot
Via the eminently rebloggable bobulate:
David Byrne on avoiding writer’s block: After the initial transcription of verbal sounds into nonsense sentences made of real words, a long, tedious process begins. I then begin to write out every phrase I can think of that matches that sonic/syllabic flow — no phrase is too mundane or stupid. I try not to pre-judge anything that occurs to me at this point — one never knows if something that sounded stupid at first will, in a new context, make the whole thing shine. …. My conscious mind might be thinking too much — and at this point, one wants surprises and weirdness from the depths. …. The idea is to allow the chthonic material freedom to gurgle up.
Sun 22 Nov 2009 | Posted by rocketpilot
The great fantasist Michael Moorcock talks more about agreeing to write a Doctor Who novel. Truly, we live in such strange and wonderful times, that a) one of the great authors of the genre is writing Doctor Who, and b) that it becomes front page (well, of the books section) news in The Guardian.
mrgan’s magisterial dissection of “cleversimon“‘s unearned snark about this month’s “NaNoWriMo” event:
It’s not that cleversimon is the biggest NaNoWriMo hater, it’s that he’s the first I have an easy way to reply to:
The first fifty thousand words to fall out of your head do not constitute a novel any more than dumping the contents of every jar in your cupboard onto the kitchen floor would constitute a meal.…but a challenge where you cook at home every day for a whole month would be a very valuable learning experience!
But if “the ONLY thing that matters… is output,” when the focus is “quantity, not quality,” you’re not writing a novel. You’re masturbating. It’s fun, it doesn’t hurt anyone, and a lot of people could stand to do more of it—but it’s not exactly something to brag about, and in the end the only thing you’ve made is a mess.…but I don’t see any NaNoWriMo participants bragging about it. Sure, you can google around and find some, but there are blowhards and poseurs everywhere, and lumping my NaNoWriting-friends in with them bugs me.
And beware that word “only” in “only thing you’ve made is a mess.” Great things come out of creative messes.
“Write 50,000 words this month, and it’s okay if they suck” is a great idea. Calling the result a novel is asinine.…but “novel” is a handy, catchy, comprehensible term to slap onto this. Look, no one in their right mind will print out what they have on November 30 and sell it in bookstores. It’s just that working on a “novel” focuses you on generating a lot of output which is still bounded; this aims to prevent nonsense which arises from other quantity-centric exercises, such as stream-of-consciousness writing. Those may produce interesting insights and connections, but they also result in a lot of filler garbage: “Here I am writing again blah blah this is so silly.” Aiming for a novel is something most people will never do otherwise. Let them fight this ridiculous overreach! Where’s the adventure in taking on the feasible? Where the challenge in drawing only when you feel like it? (i.e. very infrequently, if you’re a busy adult.)
There’s no need to get negative about the efforts of many smart, nice people on the very first day they roll up their sleeves. They’re taking on something demanding, new, fun, and entirely victimless. They’re the 9-year-old with a skateboard and visions of Tony Hawk, the high-school sophomore with a programming book and a sketching app all worked out in his head, the girl with a guitar from Target and tabs to ‘Sweet Jane’ she downloaded online. There’s neither victory nor samaritanism in telling them they’ll fail.
struck a raw nerve with the target:
Do the words you spend attacking me for things I never said and refuting points I never made count towards the 50,000? Or are they more of a side-project deal?
Anyway. Watching you project your own insecurities on the blank canvas of my little semantic quibble has been illuminating. Keep it up.
You keep being classy, cleversimon.
So, I think “curation” is in danger of becoming very stale: once an insightfully applied description to the best habits of good link-bloggers such as Cory Doctorow, now a catch-all word labelling everything that we do on social networks. You can now even curate your friends and acquaintances, or at least you’ll be able to as soon as Twitter pulls its collective finger out and actives its new Lists feature for everyone.
Via Kottke, a couple of choice excerpts from a blog called How to Write Badly Well.
Being tense:
I sit at my desk with my head in my hands and sighed. It is only three days until the deadline, I think, and I’m going to have had to finished everything before then. If only I have finish this now, I thought and lean back on my chair. Just then, the phone has rung. I am answering it.
Way too much detail:
Terrence Handley shifted his weight, the weight that had been steadily increasing for the last ten years and showed no sign of diminishing, at least while his wife Marie continued to excel as she did at the design and production of delectable gourmet meat pies, and shuffled his feet restively as he waited.
Every one a gem.
Thu 22 Oct 2009 4 notes | Posted by rocketpilot
Writing tip: write as though you’re being paid by the word; revise as though you’re being charged by the word.
Mon 21 Sep 2009 | Posted by rocketpilot
But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes. Lunsford’s team found that the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos—assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50 years ago.
Nick Caldwell is a professional web designer and unprofessional writer who thinks far too much about aesthetics, the contemporary sociopolitical condition, video games, Doctor Who, and spaceships. This is his Tumblelog.
