A writing observation
One thing that is extremely important to me in my writing is... I don't even know if there's an 'official' term for this... 'rhythm'? 'Sound'? 'Flow'? I spend a lot of time listening to what I write - rereading sentences and paragraphs and just listening to them, not for aspects of meaning but for things like... I dunno... sound, or sequencing, maybe? The sequence of long and short sentences and phrases; the pauses caused by commas, semicolons, full stops. I can spend months deliberating on the placing of a comma. I've just removed an 'and' from a sentence, purely for 'rhythm' reasons, for what feels like the hundredth time. I'll probably add it back in tomorrow, or even later today. And then maybe remove it again. And add it back in. Until I've finally figured out whether it should be there or not.
I never really *decided* that this was the way I wanted to go about writing. I just can't seem to do it any other way. I read a paragraph I've written and I just *know*, sometimes, often, that it doesn't 'flow' as it should. And that's when the endless editing and rewriting begins; that, perhaps more than coming up with the actual 'meat' of a story, is what's taking me so frelling long. A lot of the last year out of the three years I spent working on the barely eight pages of Normal was spent on problems like that.
Likewise, when writing something new, I often know the 'rhythmic structure' of a sentence long before I know what that sentence will say. That is to say, I know "the next sentence needs to be long, and read fast and a little breathless", for example. It can be very, very difficult to find the appropriate 'content' for the predetermined 'shape' of a sentence. A lot of my difficulty with Möglichkeitssinn right now is of that sort. Most of it just doesn't read right yet - purely in terms of sound/rhythm/whatever you want to call it.
My problem with the first sentence of 68 Wives is related to this. I often get fixated on certain rhythmic structures for certain parts of my writing, and once I've got the idea of what a sentence should sound like lodged firmly in my head, it's hard to dislodge it again. This is what's happened to me with the first sentence of 68 Wives. The sentence doesn't make sense in its current form, but I can't imagine it *sounding* any different; and that, of course, makes it very difficult to change the content of the sentence, because any new version will also *sound* different. This whole complex of issues is also one of the things that made it impossible for me to rewrite Epilogue. Epilogue has a voice problem, and voice is created by variations in rhythm etc., among other things. (I've recently put that story back online in its old form, because I'm thoroughly stumped as to how to improve it, although it really is a shame to leave it in its present state. It could be really good; currently, though, it's just a good idea that's been very badly executed.)
I never really *decided* that this was the way I wanted to go about writing. I just can't seem to do it any other way. I read a paragraph I've written and I just *know*, sometimes, often, that it doesn't 'flow' as it should. And that's when the endless editing and rewriting begins; that, perhaps more than coming up with the actual 'meat' of a story, is what's taking me so frelling long. A lot of the last year out of the three years I spent working on the barely eight pages of Normal was spent on problems like that.
Likewise, when writing something new, I often know the 'rhythmic structure' of a sentence long before I know what that sentence will say. That is to say, I know "the next sentence needs to be long, and read fast and a little breathless", for example. It can be very, very difficult to find the appropriate 'content' for the predetermined 'shape' of a sentence. A lot of my difficulty with Möglichkeitssinn right now is of that sort. Most of it just doesn't read right yet - purely in terms of sound/rhythm/whatever you want to call it.
My problem with the first sentence of 68 Wives is related to this. I often get fixated on certain rhythmic structures for certain parts of my writing, and once I've got the idea of what a sentence should sound like lodged firmly in my head, it's hard to dislodge it again. This is what's happened to me with the first sentence of 68 Wives. The sentence doesn't make sense in its current form, but I can't imagine it *sounding* any different; and that, of course, makes it very difficult to change the content of the sentence, because any new version will also *sound* different. This whole complex of issues is also one of the things that made it impossible for me to rewrite Epilogue. Epilogue has a voice problem, and voice is created by variations in rhythm etc., among other things. (I've recently put that story back online in its old form, because I'm thoroughly stumped as to how to improve it, although it really is a shame to leave it in its present state. It could be really good; currently, though, it's just a good idea that's been very badly executed.)