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Posts Tagged ‘creative writing’

I’ve Got Style

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 05 Dec 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been reading about Gustave Flaubert and his writing method.  “What a bitch of a thing prose is!” he wrote to his friend and lover, Louise Colet. “It’s never finished; there’s always something to redo.” And redo he did.

Flaubert was a definite “basher,” taking up to a week to produce a single page. He once remarked that for the first 125 pages of Madame Bovary, he actually wrote 500 pages. But this constant revision was required to achieve the style for which he aimed.

“A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.”

In reading an analysis of the style he adopted for Madame Bovary, I realized that I, too, have a style. (more…)

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Relativity

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 04 Dec 2012| 6 Comments »

Stack of BooksBy the time he was my age, Gustave Flaubert was decades past his peak with Madame Bovary. By the time Hemingway was 54, he was pretty much done. And by the time Shakespeare was as old as I am, he’d been dead a couple of years.

It’s hard to look at facts like these and not get a little depressed. I mean, sure, I didn’t even start writing until I was in my thirties, and didn’t really get into novels until my forties, but…damn! Adding fuel to the fire, a quick search for “writers who started late in life” does not generate a list of  late-blooming literary giants.

My mind quickly comes up with all sorts of justifications and explanations as to why so-and-so succeeded early in life and I have not—financial support from others, an early start in the craft, etc., etc.—but it’s all nonsense. As my father once wisely told me, there’s always going to be someone richer, smarter, or more talented than I am. Getting down on myself for not being a genius, for not getting that Nobel Prize for Literature, is silly. More than that, it’s counter-productive.

I don’t write to be famous. I don’t write for immortality. Crap, I don’t even write to make it into the “Who’s Who in American Literature.”

I write because I like it. Because I love it. And that’ll do.

k

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October 19, 1964

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , on 03 Dec 2012| 4 Comments »

Kurt R.A. GiambastianiIn the years to come, much will be lost to him. Many details will simply not make it past the blinkers of his mind’s eye, and many more will be lost to the unraveling threads of time, but even at five years old, much will survive for him to carry forward.

He comes home from school, running up the hill, shoes scuffing the rough surface of the concrete sidewalk. The sun is bright despite the thin clouds. Past the last corner, he smacks the juniper in his neighbor’s yard, feels the sting of its prickly fronds and smells its sharp scent. He passes under the fading leaves of the Fillingame’s plane tree, kicking a path through the fallen litter. He looks up. His father’s car is in the drive. Dad is home? Already?

Dark, green ivy climbs the yellow stucco of the bungalow’s wall near the front door. He reaches up to turn the knob and enters. It is dark within. Shrouded. Silent. Immediately he knows. Something is wrong. (more…)

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Hum Me a Few Bars

Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on 27 Nov 2012| 4 Comments »

As a music major, I never really listened to music for the lyrics; I could rarely understand the singers anyway. (That’s why, during the final seasons of BSG, I missed the fun when they started quoting “All Along the Watchtower,” but that’s beside the point, really.)

Naturally, therefore, music has been incredibly important to my mind. It’s always been there, providing a soundtrack to my life, driving me onward or soothing my savage breast, lifting my spirits or challenging my assumptions with new and unusual combinations of sounds and tonalities.

When I switched from being a working musician to a struggling writer, music continued to play a big part. A very important part, as it turns out.

(more…)

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Who Ya Gonna Call?

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 21 Nov 2012| 6 Comments »

Yesterday’s post engendered some questions about getting feedback on our writing; specifically, How? More specifically, in the absence of an editor or agent, “…where does the average person seeking to improve their writing find honest and unrestrained critical feedback for their writing?”

First, let’s dispel a myth. Editors and agents don’t give you advice on how to improve as a writer. Sorry. They don’t.

Some agents (like the one I had) don’t give any constructive advice at all, but merely give you their impression of the marketability of an already completed work. Some agents are savvy enough to help a writer polish a work-in-progress, but from all the anecdotal evidence I’ve heard, they’re rare. They’re marketers, not editors.

And editors are generally only going to provide feedback on a particular work, the one they have contracted to bring to market. An editor will help you make a book you’ve written better, which may help you become a better writer, but the goal is to make the book better, not to make you a better writer. It may sound like a subtle distinction, but it isn’t.

In short, both agents and editors are focused on a single, finished work, only appear in a writer’s life after s/he has achieved a certain level of competence, and are not in the business of bringing a writer’s chops up to professional levels. After Book One, they may provide input or advice on Book Two, but they still aren’t going to tell you how to write, much less how to write well.

So, where does that leave a budding writer? (more…)

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Walking the Edge

Posted in Fallen Cloud Saga, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on 20 Nov 2012| 8 Comments »

Kurt R.A. GiambastianiBack when I had a writing career, I was given some advice. I was having lunch with my agent and the editor of the Science Fiction Book Club. (My first novel, The Year the Cloud Fell, had been a featured alternate at SFBC.) When the conversation swung around to my work, the editor said, “your books have too much history.” My agent nodded, sagely, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.

I’m very good at not reacting immediately to bad news. It’s a defense mechanism, really. Treat me with rudeness or disrespect, tell me my dog died, or drop a pithy little bomb like “your books have too much history,” and I shut down. The smile stays up. The amenities and little etiquettes are still observed. Platitudes and small talk continue to be exchanged. “How nice.” “It was a pleasure meeting you.” “Until next time.”

Meanwhile, my inner child is weeping, my reptilian brain has fled for a safe, dark corner, and my intellect has gone all blue-screen on me.

“Too much history”? That’s like telling Mozart his music has “too many notes.”

(more…)

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Poetry as a Tool

Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged , , , , , on 17 Nov 2012| Leave a Comment »

Kurt R.A. GiambastianiI am not a poet. Well, no more than the next person, I’d say. But as a writer, I think poetry is a useful tool. I learn from writing poetry, whether it’s free verse or a more formal structure. Like etudes to the pianist, I learn technique through poetry. I learn how to be spare.

I put some of my poetry online here, today, a new annex off the Writing page. Some of them still make me smile. Many are bittersweet, as that’s the mood that most resonates with my Inner Poet. Rueful, I guess.

In my opinion, poetry should not read like prose, as so often happens these days. Like a lot of modern art, I think a lot of modern poetry is a sham. But I’m an old, crusty curmudgeon, so what do I know, eh?

k

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