{"id":8005,"date":"2011-01-22T12:24:30","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T17:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8005"},"modified":"2011-01-22T12:24:30","modified_gmt":"2011-01-22T17:24:30","slug":"paying-attention-to-well-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/paying-attention-to-well-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying Attention to, Well, Everything<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: photograph, <\/em>Rock of Ages #15, by Edward Burtynsky<\/a>: “Active Section, E.L. Smith Quarry, Barre, Vermont, 1991.” Click image for larger view.]<\/em><\/p>\n

T<\/span>his Paying Attention<\/em> series<\/a> of posts has recorded, intermittently, one or another aspect of writing (mostly) the novel which I’m now calling Seems to Fit<\/em>. Every now and then I remember something important which I’ve forgotten, in the flush of creation (or re-creation); and I want to “bookmark” it, so to speak, lest I forget it again. (By “it,” I don’t mean a fact or a plot point. I mean something about the writing or the writing process itself.)<\/p>\n

I’d laugh to think of these as “writing tips,” because I have no idea if they’re important to anyone else — or (if so) just how<\/em> important. (And yes, I know — I often use the second person in them: You need to do this and that<\/em>, and so on. Just talking to myself, see?)<\/p>\n

But it’s been a while since the previous Paying Attention<\/em> post, and I’ve almost completely shut off the tap of posts about Seems to Fit<\/em> in general. In part, this stems from what’s going on in the book at the moment: each main character gets his or her own “final” chapter in preparation for the book’s gigantic next-to-last one; so in these chapters — which I’ve been working on for two-three months — I’m sort of saying good-bye to these people, in a book that I’ve lived with, one way or another, for twenty years. (Do not assume from that sentence, btw, that I’m bumping them off.) So to me\u00a0it feels like an extended private moment, between them and me.<\/p>\n

In a larger sense, though, my silence about Seems to Fit<\/em> flows from something which I think has distinguished my blogging from my writing of fiction: carefulness.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A<\/span>s an example of the carefulness I’m speaking of, I’ll look at the most recent post (because it’s freshest in mind): yesterday’s whiskey river Fridays<\/em> post.<\/p>\n

I subscribe to whiskey river<\/em>‘s RSS feed, so have read each recent post there by the time I get to work on my upcoming Friday post here. This week, I had a stray hour (+) at the end of the day on Wednesday, so started yesterday’s post then — zeroing in (by whatever mysterious process my subconscious uses) on Stephen Dunn’s poem, “Welcome,” and the quotation from Henry Miller. I added those to a new post — leaving the post title blank — then inserted the links back to whiskey river<\/em>, and started researching the original sources so I could verify things like line breaks, spelling and punctuation, italicization, and so on.<\/p>\n

On Thursday I started riffing on key words and phrases which suggested themselves to me. There were, let’s see… elements of surprise<\/em> in the two samples, which suggested overturned expectation<\/em>, or things overlooked<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Soon (well, all things are relative!) I had a handful of other passages, from sources other than whiskey river<\/em>. I had a post title (which I kept tinkering with; originally, it looked nothing at all like “Seen Everything? Look Again”). whiskey river<\/em> itself had posted the second Stephen Dunn quotation, which I loved.\u00a0And I’d found an image to cap the post, that great Penrose-triangle sculpture.<\/p>\n

So far, I myself hadn’t written squat. And the post was already way too long, even by my (haha) relaxed standard.<\/p>\n

So I cut off a paragraph from one quotation. I tossed an entire poem. And I finally got the length down to about a thousand words. And then<\/em> I set to writing my lone contribution: the note at the end, about Penrose triangles. I finished that on Thursday.<\/p>\n

As it appears now, the note’s length (counting the last line, below the images) stands at around 150 words. But in its first form, when I opened the post yesterday morning, the note was about three times that length — between 400 and 500 words. It was full of gas, especially: “There is a [noun]<\/em> which [verb]<\/em>s” constructions, for example, instead of the more direct “A [noun]<\/em> [verb]<\/em>s.” And the words kept falling over themselves as I tried explaining how these illusions work.<\/p>\n

(I should mention, too, that at some point on Thursday I’d found several YouTube videos of Penrose triangles in motion. These would have “explained” the phenomenon with no help (however clumsy) from me. But no, damn it: I wanted to <\/em>write this<\/em>. Furthermore, I wanted to… to… well, I guess you could say I wanted to at least try<\/em> to live up to the written standards set by the quotations from “real” writers.)<\/p>\n

Tinker, tinker, tinker… switch this phrase to the start of the sentence… transform passive to active… almost there, getting there, almost… The last thing I did was add the “Two’s company; three’s a crowd” line. (I liked how well it, yes, seemed to fit<\/em>.) Re-read the whole thing one more time, corrected a typo or two. And hit the Publish button, at around 6:3o yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

I<\/span> don’t know: looking back over the above, it seems awfully involved. But when I’m working on a “real” blog post (not just a lagniappe, as a\/b calls them), something like the above is pretty much the norm. I pay a lot of attention to word count. And I cannot stand learning that something’s fallen through the cracks, even a typo. I’m careful<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But non-bloggish writing?<\/p>\n

Embarrassing admission: I’d been coasting. I have pretty much always known about my writing\u00a0that I can “write good enough.” (Not that I’m one of the best<\/em> writers, not by a long shot.) So my habit had been, you know: slap the words onto the screen, print it out, do a revision, boom<\/em>, next chapter! I don’t know why I wasn’t doing my story — so important to me, if to no one else — the same intense favor I was doing my blog posts. When I realized (sometime in October) what was up, I was… well, ashamed<\/em>, if that makes sense. Only after a couple days could I again look at my book without averting my eyes.<\/p>\n

A<\/span>nd that’s why I’ve almost completely shut up about Seems to Fit<\/em>. It’s time, it has actually been time for years: time to really take the writing and storytelling seriously, to give it everything I can give it, and not just slap it together and pronounce it done because it’s “good enough.”<\/p>\n

So yes, the brakes have been applied. Yes, I’m thinking about it more and writing it down less. And no, I’m not blocked.<\/p>\n

I simply need to take it — everything<\/em> about it —\u00a0seriously. Because those people I’m saying good-bye to? If I don’t do right by\u00a0them, nobody else will.<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

P.S. This has nothing to do, btw, with the advice (variously phrased) to shut off your internal editor while creating. My fast “version 1.0” drafts, I concede, are not bad. But I do myself no favors by stringing together a bunch of version 1.1s through 1.5s and calling the result “final.”<\/p>\n

P.P.S. I realize that this post will expose me as completely, ridiculously self-absorbed should Seems to Fit<\/em> turn out to be a disaster, despite all this newfound alleged “carefulness.” Maybe that’s why I’m posting it — raising the stakes, see?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,12,1028,1393,5,372,515],"tags":[229,2181,2182],"class_list":{"0":"post-8005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-03_runningaftermyhat","8":"category-paying-attention","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-style-and-craft","12":"category-grail","13":"tag-blogging","14":"tag-writing-fiction","15":"tag-doing-the-right-thing","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-257","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8006,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8005\/revisions\/8006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}