"the process has become a case of "how many bowling pins CAN I throw?" The pins were always there. They were just at my feet, waiting for me to toss them." Yes !! Great advice S. Going to pay close attention to this and toss my pins higher. I tend to lob things up gently, and as you'd expect, they don't do much but flop back to my feet w…
"the process has become a case of "how many bowling pins CAN I throw?" The pins were always there. They were just at my feet, waiting for me to toss them." Yes !! Great advice S. Going to pay close attention to this and toss my pins higher. I tend to lob things up gently, and as you'd expect, they don't do much but flop back to my feet with little consequence.
My inner editor tends to hold me back, sort of like a Hollywood Producer telling a script-writer, "Listen, your gonna have to cut something, you can't have a global pandemic, an attempted insurrection, world-wide protests against racial injustice, wild fires, floods, and crippling "heat domes" all in one script. No one's gonna buy it as realistic." If anything, these last few years have shown that, really, you can have a lot of serious pins up there. Def increases the tension. < sigh>
In the introduction to Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (Barnes & Noble Classics Edition), Sharon Carson notes, "In August of [1918] Scribner's rejected The Romantic Egotist [the original title for TSoP] claiming, 'The story does not seem to us to work up to a conclusion' and 'Neither the hero's career nor his character are shown to be brought to any stage which justifies an ending.'" So what did Fitzgerald do at the tender age of 22? He tossed the bowling pins again. And he was rejected again. So he tossed the bowling pins once more and, at 23 (the old coot!), finally published his first of many marvelous novels. Fitzgerald's exposition is exquisite and his ear for language among the best. What he learned in the process of writing TSoP was that something had to happen to his characters or, moreover, that they had to do something. That something can be as simple as incremental choices scaffolded like a quiet game of Jenga. Joyce is sometimes accused of having written about nothing at all in Ulysses (or, more recently, I've read this about Mary Gaitskill), but the pins are all there and the elevation quite satisfying. Keep writing, Dorothy, and keep on juggling!
"the process has become a case of "how many bowling pins CAN I throw?" The pins were always there. They were just at my feet, waiting for me to toss them." Yes !! Great advice S. Going to pay close attention to this and toss my pins higher. I tend to lob things up gently, and as you'd expect, they don't do much but flop back to my feet with little consequence.
My inner editor tends to hold me back, sort of like a Hollywood Producer telling a script-writer, "Listen, your gonna have to cut something, you can't have a global pandemic, an attempted insurrection, world-wide protests against racial injustice, wild fires, floods, and crippling "heat domes" all in one script. No one's gonna buy it as realistic." If anything, these last few years have shown that, really, you can have a lot of serious pins up there. Def increases the tension. < sigh>
In the introduction to Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (Barnes & Noble Classics Edition), Sharon Carson notes, "In August of [1918] Scribner's rejected The Romantic Egotist [the original title for TSoP] claiming, 'The story does not seem to us to work up to a conclusion' and 'Neither the hero's career nor his character are shown to be brought to any stage which justifies an ending.'" So what did Fitzgerald do at the tender age of 22? He tossed the bowling pins again. And he was rejected again. So he tossed the bowling pins once more and, at 23 (the old coot!), finally published his first of many marvelous novels. Fitzgerald's exposition is exquisite and his ear for language among the best. What he learned in the process of writing TSoP was that something had to happen to his characters or, moreover, that they had to do something. That something can be as simple as incremental choices scaffolded like a quiet game of Jenga. Joyce is sometimes accused of having written about nothing at all in Ulysses (or, more recently, I've read this about Mary Gaitskill), but the pins are all there and the elevation quite satisfying. Keep writing, Dorothy, and keep on juggling!
This reminds me of reading that Ann Patchett said she learned about plot and pacing from reading Raymond Chandler...