The Week in Words - 11/11/24 - 11/17/24
“Like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth”
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Story to Read: Adrift, Adream, Aweigh
Output
Fits and starts that left me feeling disconnected from the story and my inspiration
Data
4,717 words (8 pages [1,632] + 3,085 typed)
5/7 days (.714 WrPCT)
Average Words Per Day: 943/day
Words Added to “Movement and Repose”: 86
Longest Day: 11/11/24 - 1,483 words (2 pages [408] + 1,075 typed)
Shortest Day: 11/15/24 - 612 words (3 pages)
Synthesis
I’ve got a fairly slow process yet find myself more and more pressed for time—or, more to the point, time when I actually have the energy to write. There’s no greater external factor beyond that. I’ve just been straight up pooped and busy in equal measure.
In spite of that, we figured out one of the four character sheets I need to do for this hiking story, “Movement and Repose,” and we got the introductory bit of the story written out. This allowed us to create the file in Scrivener so, it’s official, this story exists.
It’s less than 100 words because I skipped over the character work to try’n start the story but stalled out nigh immediately because I had no idea who the characters were beyond their names: Jake and Joanie and Eric and Oliver. So with the time I had, I figured out Jake’s character sheet. Even though Eric goes through the biggest change, Jake’s perspective as the one between the fulcrum of Joanie and Eric draws the conflict to the surface in a more interesting fashion.
As I work through these sheets, new pieces of the story are elucidated. Right now, “Movement and Repose” doesn’t have much in the way of a third act beyond a general sense of the conflict. By exploring the characters and their voices, we’ll find the actions they would take organically rather than creating an action and then tweaking the character to justify it. This is how we allow Toonses to drive. Which is basically the opposite of the Transformers 2 writing process.
But so, that was really about it. I’m doing my best to find the connection again, and I know that it will come so long as I continue to put one word in front of the other until syntax and structure, sentence and story, are formed.
Input
All the Fun’s in How You Lay Dying
Data
Book: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Starting Page: 44
Ending Page: 75
Days Read: 2
Pages Read: 31
Hearing Faulkner read it with such quickness really speaks to the underlying freneticism of his writing—as if all that molasses is in an oak barrel in back of a wagon going far too quickly.
⥁⥀⥁
Book: All the Fun’s in How you Say a Thing by Timothy Steele
Starting Page: 0
Ending Page: 45
Days Read: 3
Pages Read: 45
3/7 days (.428 rPCT)
Combined Pages Read: 76
Pages Read Per Day: 25.3
Synthesis
This week I dove into All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing by Timothy Steele, which was added to the library’s collection on July 8th, 1999. It’s a book that touts itself as “An explanation of meter and versification.”
Having a technical understanding of rhythm and meter will help me become a better writer. I’m kinda like Prince right now (though far less virtuosic, talented, or sultry): I can play the instrument, and come up with catchy hooks, but I’ve never delved into the sheet music. Learning about iambs and trochees and the things behind things will help me understand why of certain rhythms sound pleasant to my ear. Prince, on the other hand, didn’t need sheet music because he was already perfect. I mean, look:
Having this technical knowledge swimming around with the idea fish will help me fix any clunkers: sentences that come out all jagged and half-formed, that get the point across but don’t quite flow with the rest of everything around it. The more I read of All the Fun…, the more I understand my voice and can enhance it from there.
The goal is to always improve, and gaining this knowledge is a clear avenue for research at the very least. So let’s Learn the Rules to Break the Rules to Transcend the Rules, eh?
Beyond that, I read less of As I Lay Dying than I’d like, but at least I made progress nonetheless. I’m still really enjoying the swirl of it all but I don’t have much to mention about it this week.
-30-
Keep plugging away.