Posted in Writing, tagged caravan, creative writing, immigration, modern poetry, Poetry, short story, vignettes on 13 Aug 2019| 4 Comments »
August, without a doubt, is my least favorite month. It’s when the garden starts to pant and parch, spiders build massive obstacle courses in the yard, fruit goes from unripe green to fuzzy grey within minutes, and wildfire smoke descends to choke our skies, our lungs, our eyes.
And this August, it’s also when a “great” idea for a bit of topical poetry falls totally flat. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, editing, short story, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 10 Sep 2013| Leave a Comment »
As I’ve been working on this story, re-creating it from an older model, I’ve been watching over my work. Supervising, if you will.
Overall, the new version is half-again as long–originally around 8,000 words, it now clocks in at about 12,000–and I wondered if that was just because I added a scene here and there.
So I took the opening section. The action is the same. The first and last lines of the section are the same, like fenceposts. But the rest of it has been entirely rebuilt, rewritten, similar only in structure and in what happens. So, what’s the word-count for each version? (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged blogging, creative writing, editing, fiction, short story, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 26 Feb 2013| 4 Comments »
Drum roll, please….
This is the final version, rewritten top to bottom. As I was typing it all in from my handwritten rewrite (which you can win, by commenting on the “Contest” post before Friday), I found it interesting to have the original version open in a side-by-side window. When you look at them both, everything from the original version is here in this final, but it all (at least to my mind) has more depth, and the characters’ actions seem more thought out. Getting inside a character’s head is something I did not know how to do, twenty years ago (among other things!)
This has been a very educational trip, for me. Back when I started this series, I was writing down things that I’ve learned but never put into words. And, coming face-to-face with my former self, I could see all the things that editors were saying to me over and over. I never had a “light bulb” moment regarding these errors. Learning how to write, becoming a better writer, is an accretive process, not a sprint from one epiphany to another. You might “get” the concept in a flash, but learning how to do it takes time and practice.
Anyway, I hope you’ve found it as enlightening as I have, and now, the big reveal…
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 