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Paying Attention to Continuity Traps
[Found at Basic Instructions] [Warning to those of you who haven't already read chapter 4 ("The Room") in the Propagational Library series: this post contains a spoiler or two.] As you may know, I’m sort of creating my Propagational Library series on the fly. Which means, among other things: failures – things overlooked in the rush of creation and [...]
Paying Attention to What You Want
From Seems to Fit: “For this one time,” [Bonnie] said aloud, “I want us each to think about the same question, one question, while we do this. We don’t have to say anything out loud, and we don’t have to spend more than ten minutes doing it, I don’t think—” George: “Wait! Brandy first, question [...]
Paying Attention to the Click
Nearly every writer, I imagine — maybe we can even dispense with the nearly? — has favorite words. It’s certainly true of me. Some of them are words I just like the sound of. Some of them have meanings just too right: I can’t help reaching for those words whenever I set to writing or [...]
Paying Attention to, Well, Everything
[Image: photograph, Rock of Ages #15, by Edward Burtynsky: "Active Section, E.L. Smith Quarry, Barre, Vermont, 1991." Click image for larger view.] This Paying Attention series of posts has recorded, intermittently, one or another aspect of writing (mostly) the novel which I’m now calling Seems to Fit. Every now and then I remember something important [...]
Paying Attention to the Momentous
With apologies to Mr. Thoreau, I don’t honestly believe that the great mass of humanity lead lives of quiet desperation. Most people, I have come to think, live lives of simple routine, blended with dollops of making-it-up-as-you-go-along. They come to crossroads in their lives and turn one way or the other not because they’re desperate [...]
Paying Attention to the Silence
This Paying Attention to… series on writing fiction concentrates, for the most part, on what to do when writing. More exactly, it covers things I need to remind myself to pay attention to — particularly as I’ve been working on Seems to Fit. In this post, I want to look at what to when not [...]
Paying Attention (or Not) to Word Count
So, bottom line: yes, at around 12:30 this afternoon I bounded across the 3,000-word mark in the 2010 Write Your A** Off Write-a-Thon. I’d gotten up around 6:30am, heated water in the teakettle, sat down at my desk and by 7:30 — after incidental stuff like selecting the day’s background music — begun to write. [...]
Paying Attention to Voice
I may never have to master anything more difficult than thinking, and thinking convincingly, like multiple characters. It’s not just a matter of the word choices and rhythms of their dialogue (although it includes that). And it’s not just a matter of the outward manifestations of their natures — gender, style of dress, and so [...]
Paying Attention to the Magical
“Ambivalence” doesn’t even come close to capturing my schizoid views about magic (or magical) realism. The term has been around since the early part of the twentieth century, and for most of its life has been associated especially with the work of certain Latin American authors. Here’s part of the definition from A Glossary of [...]
Paying Attention to Unpleasantness
[Image: "Marshmallow Gun" (excerpt) -- click for full original at xkcd.] I realized a couple days ago — during this criminally busy week — that I hadn’t posted any writing samples in a long time. Many of the (non-blogging) pieces I’ve posted on RAMH are grouped together under the category called “Paying Attention.” But I [...]
