Late night rambles
Just spent 2 days reading drabbles. What a wonderful time it is to be done classes. There are still loose ends to tie up administrative-wise and my proposal is never-ending, but hey, that's 80% of my workload gone. And seriously?
I fucking love drabbles. 100 words to paint a scene, build a world, break your heart. Like a 100-word tip of a novel iceberg. 100 words of craftsmanship.
If done right anyway.
I think restrictions allow for the best and most creative works because it provides the frame around which you have to work. How can you cheat the rules? How can you make this little space flourish as vibrantly as any other? This is probably why I suck at academic writing. Everything has to be laid out just so explicitly. Everyone needs to be led by the hand to every point you want to make. Sentences don't need to be efficient because the length restrictions are usually comfortably lax. How can anyone care about writing quality in this environment?
Though to be fair, assessment reports are like drabbles. I only had an 8-page (double-spaced) limit and about 20 pages of information I wanted to pack into it. That was the best piece of academic I had written so far.
Restrictions and creativity. I wonder why they work. Maybe restrictions provide ground to stand on while we try to shape things with words? Or maybe it just removes a lot of the variables? Or maybe it is the challenge of it? I'm sure someone else somewhere has deeper thoughts on this than I do. It's 1am here after all.
Maybe I'll do a drabble every day for the month of May, now that I'm more free.
I fucking love drabbles. 100 words to paint a scene, build a world, break your heart. Like a 100-word tip of a novel iceberg. 100 words of craftsmanship.
If done right anyway.
I think restrictions allow for the best and most creative works because it provides the frame around which you have to work. How can you cheat the rules? How can you make this little space flourish as vibrantly as any other? This is probably why I suck at academic writing. Everything has to be laid out just so explicitly. Everyone needs to be led by the hand to every point you want to make. Sentences don't need to be efficient because the length restrictions are usually comfortably lax. How can anyone care about writing quality in this environment?
Though to be fair, assessment reports are like drabbles. I only had an 8-page (double-spaced) limit and about 20 pages of information I wanted to pack into it. That was the best piece of academic I had written so far.
Restrictions and creativity. I wonder why they work. Maybe restrictions provide ground to stand on while we try to shape things with words? Or maybe it just removes a lot of the variables? Or maybe it is the challenge of it? I'm sure someone else somewhere has deeper thoughts on this than I do. It's 1am here after all.
Maybe I'll do a drabble every day for the month of May, now that I'm more free.