The Glasnosticator (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} wahcrysob) wrote,@ 2009-01-07 21:39:00 |
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in which I talk about writing and resist the urge to compare history and science (too much)
I just finished The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie, which was pretty awesome and makes me want to write mystery novels. I realize that I do have a soft spot for mysteries, and especially film noir, but I think we all knew that. It's one of those novels that makes you want to write (as all good novels do), and of late I have felt a desire to write, but no clue what to write.
The Afterlife and Times of Mr. Mitch Flattery has hit something of a wall again, but I think that's to be expected with such a story. It doesn't really posses a purpose yet, I have a concept but no idea what direction I want to take that concept. I just finished An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke, which has a very bumbling mystery quality to it, and is generally good. At one time you feel pity for the protagonist and want to slap the ever loving shit out of him, and it kept you reading. Also made me want to write.
I got a book called Russka for Christmas, by Edward Rutherford, that is long and very interesting sounding, and I would very much like to read. However, I feel that I should be getting down to brass tacks and reading stuff by the professors I've applied to work with because I need to concern myself more with that than reading or writing for my own enjoyment.
Looking back though, I've realized that I didn't really write fiction between the fall of 2006 and the end of 2007, possibly because I read so very, very little of it during that time. I did a lot of reading for class and a lot of writing, but it was all historical. I'm going to be swinging back into academic mode, vis a vis reading and writing again very soon, but I don't want to completely bail on fiction this time around. Without papers to write, I can really read works by these professors without the stress associated with classes, which I think will leave time for me to read some fiction and maybe even write.
The point of all this is that I want to write, but I'm not sure what. Of recent (as in the last few days) the idea of combining two characters into one and writing something two-fisted and pulpy has had my attention. I have an amazing title in mind, and a good idea for the protagonist, even a general idea for the theme of the story (dealing with and overcoming the past that has plagued him in recent years), but I don't know what the overall plot of the story would be yet.
The other issue is that it feels to me like this story (like many of my other ideas) has to be told visually, which means on screen or as a comic. I'm prone to lean towards the latter, simply because the former is so fucking hard to pull off. Erik has long admitted a willingness to draw anything I wrote (with the unspoken clause that he won't if it totally sucks), so there's that. I guess some good old fashioned head yelling is in order, something we haven't done in, dare I say, years, and which would probably help me a great deal.
While I'm confident in my skills (if not my ability to finish things like this), Erik is probably the better storyteller. Greg once asked us, while were were talking about Pixie after watching a disc of Buffy, why we were going to work together on Pixie. His logic was that Erik can draw and write, and that while I was a decent writer too, Erik frankly didn't need me. By all accounts this is true, but Erik admitted that he's the story guy, where I'm the idea man. He told Greg about how he showed me this sketch of a girl with some kind off fairy wings that would evolve into Pixie, even gave her the name, and that was it. Within a few days I had already come up with a shit ton of ideas for the story. I can pitch and pitch till I'm blue in the face, and when I sit down to do it I can write pretty well, but it's putting ideas together into a cohesive story where I usually stall out. Likely that's my problem with running D&D, but that's not the point here.
My ideas, plus Erik's artistic and storytelling abilities, are considered to be quite a combination, provided we ever get anything off the ground. The problem though, is that I usually want to write my ideas, and when I do try to put them to paper, I rarely finish the task. This is why I've still never done Kingfish (which is probably good, because looking back there was no point to that story and I really need to work that out) or finished a story longer than about 3,000 words or so.
Term papers are so much easier to write. They have a nice form that's easy to put into practice. You come up with a thesis, you do research, you modify your thesis to reflect that research (because to modify your evidence to say something it doesn't is, frankly, the highest intellectual sin, this is like murder in the academic world), and then you present your evidence. All nice and neat.
Maybe I just need to think of a way to modify that process, which is essentially the scientific method (especially when you go beyond presenting your evidence to defending it) and use it to write stories. Pick a thesis and then find characters and events to back it up (or create characters and events, as it were)
I just finished The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie, which was pretty awesome and makes me want to write mystery novels. I realize that I do have a soft spot for mysteries, and especially film noir, but I think we all knew that. It's one of those novels that makes you want to write (as all good novels do), and of late I have felt a desire to write, but no clue what to write.
The Afterlife and Times of Mr. Mitch Flattery has hit something of a wall again, but I think that's to be expected with such a story. It doesn't really posses a purpose yet, I have a concept but no idea what direction I want to take that concept. I just finished An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke, which has a very bumbling mystery quality to it, and is generally good. At one time you feel pity for the protagonist and want to slap the ever loving shit out of him, and it kept you reading. Also made me want to write.
I got a book called Russka for Christmas, by Edward Rutherford, that is long and very interesting sounding, and I would very much like to read. However, I feel that I should be getting down to brass tacks and reading stuff by the professors I've applied to work with because I need to concern myself more with that than reading or writing for my own enjoyment.
Looking back though, I've realized that I didn't really write fiction between the fall of 2006 and the end of 2007, possibly because I read so very, very little of it during that time. I did a lot of reading for class and a lot of writing, but it was all historical. I'm going to be swinging back into academic mode, vis a vis reading and writing again very soon, but I don't want to completely bail on fiction this time around. Without papers to write, I can really read works by these professors without the stress associated with classes, which I think will leave time for me to read some fiction and maybe even write.
The point of all this is that I want to write, but I'm not sure what. Of recent (as in the last few days) the idea of combining two characters into one and writing something two-fisted and pulpy has had my attention. I have an amazing title in mind, and a good idea for the protagonist, even a general idea for the theme of the story (dealing with and overcoming the past that has plagued him in recent years), but I don't know what the overall plot of the story would be yet.
The other issue is that it feels to me like this story (like many of my other ideas) has to be told visually, which means on screen or as a comic. I'm prone to lean towards the latter, simply because the former is so fucking hard to pull off. Erik has long admitted a willingness to draw anything I wrote (with the unspoken clause that he won't if it totally sucks), so there's that. I guess some good old fashioned head yelling is in order, something we haven't done in, dare I say, years, and which would probably help me a great deal.
While I'm confident in my skills (if not my ability to finish things like this), Erik is probably the better storyteller. Greg once asked us, while were were talking about Pixie after watching a disc of Buffy, why we were going to work together on Pixie. His logic was that Erik can draw and write, and that while I was a decent writer too, Erik frankly didn't need me. By all accounts this is true, but Erik admitted that he's the story guy, where I'm the idea man. He told Greg about how he showed me this sketch of a girl with some kind off fairy wings that would evolve into Pixie, even gave her the name, and that was it. Within a few days I had already come up with a shit ton of ideas for the story. I can pitch and pitch till I'm blue in the face, and when I sit down to do it I can write pretty well, but it's putting ideas together into a cohesive story where I usually stall out. Likely that's my problem with running D&D, but that's not the point here.
My ideas, plus Erik's artistic and storytelling abilities, are considered to be quite a combination, provided we ever get anything off the ground. The problem though, is that I usually want to write my ideas, and when I do try to put them to paper, I rarely finish the task. This is why I've still never done Kingfish (which is probably good, because looking back there was no point to that story and I really need to work that out) or finished a story longer than about 3,000 words or so.
Term papers are so much easier to write. They have a nice form that's easy to put into practice. You come up with a thesis, you do research, you modify your thesis to reflect that research (because to modify your evidence to say something it doesn't is, frankly, the highest intellectual sin, this is like murder in the academic world), and then you present your evidence. All nice and neat.
Maybe I just need to think of a way to modify that process, which is essentially the scientific method (especially when you go beyond presenting your evidence to defending it) and use it to write stories. Pick a thesis and then find characters and events to back it up (or create characters and events, as it were)
