Threshold of Passion

[kmhirosaki]

Last week, I had two conversations within a day of each other about how, with visual art, you can create sketches that, even unpolished, nevertheless create an image of what the whole and complete piece would look like, and how, when it comes to writing, you don't really have that option--there's no writing equivalent of a "sketch" that most people

Comments

[confusedoo]

That short creative burst has been exactly what I've been practicing lately, even going as far as using a timer to specifically limit myself to 30 minutes. While I've been using pencil, there's definitely a way for writers to achieve the same sort of thing. It's not as glorified as novel-ing, but in it's own way it can be special. I think O. Henry was the master of this. He could pack a lot of meaning into a short space.

As far as literary shorthand, there's several different variations. Things like boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. There could be a whole story in a single sentence like 'For Sale: One pair of baby shoes, never worn.' And there's also the classic outline. I think the difference between the visual and written is in the exposure. Every writer I know has a file folder on there computer or notebook or something full of half formed ideas, plot concepts, abandoned stories and whatnot. They aren't shared though. It's not like the visual artists who make a habit of posting their doodles on FA.

While I would agree that most people probably wouldn't 'recognize' these as "sketches", I do believe that the option certainly exists. I'm sure it's also much more a product of how visual versus text is consumed. People are much more accustomed to looking at sketches than reading them. Still, I do think that's slowly (maybe rapidly) changing with online consumption of content, from things like Yiffstar to blogs, even twitter. I'm sure there's got to be some twitter poets out there.

I do like what you've done in the short space, it's really involved and textured for the short time spent on it. It'd be nice to see more of these, and they serve as good breaks from big massive projects that you can't seem to see the end of, and also for things like writer's block.

[kmhirosaki]

I take part in a biweekly writing workshop where, very frequently, we do little writing exercises based on little prompts or games that we come up with. Usually we take about twenty minutes or so, and just write what we can.

For these exercises, I write things out by hand, and almost invariably, I'm actually never happy with what I come up with. Part of it is probably because my brain is used to writing at the speed of Typing, not the speed of Pencil, and in those twenty minutes I can barely get one side of a sheet of notebook paper filled with words that make sense.

By comparison, in the hour it took me to write this story here, I felt like I really just hit the groove I needed to and I got the story out, and I'm happy that I at least finished it in the time I allowed myself.