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

[kyellgold]

As I commented on Yiffstar, it's always a pleasure to read your character voice. This piece is no exception: the narrator's personality comes through very clearly, as does his emotional attachment to his lover. I like the twining of the relationship and the lovemaking, and of course the distinction between lovemaking and fucking is nicely elaborated without being overtly described.

Very enjoyable piece!

[kmhirosaki]

You know, I was actually kind of worried about what you might think of this. Part of me wondered if it wasn't kind of "cheap" to just rattle off a piece without ever intending to go back to it and make it anything more than what it came out as.

I'm really glad that you like the voice here, too. To think that there was once a time where I tried to avoid first-person like the plague. :)

...the distinction between lovemaking and fucking is nicely elaborated without being overtly described.

I figured it was something that anyone who's had sex would be able to understand without having to put too many words into it. As for folks who haven't, well, I'll just choose to believe that there aren't that many of those among my readership. :)

[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

[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.

[kmhirosaki]

Oh, no, I definitely know what you mean. I've certainly had very long stories spring out of a single idea or a single mental image or even a single sentence. I think that's one of the core seeds that a writer hopes to have at his disposal.

What I more meant by 'sketch,' in this case, is the equivalent of what artists do when they draw out a quick piece just to sort of do it. Maybe it'll just be a quick little doodle done in pencil, which they're never going to ink or color or anything, but it still gets the point across of, "This is what the image looks like." I think that that concept is a lot harder to do with the written form, and that's kiiind of what I tried to do, here.

[confusedoo]

I don't think that it's inherently that much harder to do a sketch in written form, I just think there is a much greater reluctance of writers to share those doodles. You said above that you do it all the time at the writing workshop, but I've never seen you post one.