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May. 15th, 2002 02:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7heh heh heh, these graphical smilie things are going to get really annoying really fast, the way i'm overusing them. But they amuse me, for now. see what chatboards will teach you?
So.
I keep doing dumb things to my eyes, I don't know how; i was reading a book, which i'll talk about in a bit, and had my glasses off, and now my eyes don't want to focus with my glasses on. it's times like this that i ardently wish my eyes were good enough to read my monitor 2 feet away without glasses. But one cannot comfortably position oneself less than 12 inches (my max focal distance for text sans corrective lenses) from a 19" monitor and not go insane.
i dunno about the fencing photos page i made today; cute, simple, straightforward, and really the only way to organize that many images, but... not very me. still i'll probably leave it as-is...
i will absolutely require server space and an internet connection this coming year; i'd just better get a job and a place!
but i need to be more aggressive in my applications. i've been very slow.
so, liesl sent me her copy of Stephen King's On Writing.
I have never liked Stephen King.
His works seemed to me to be sensationalism, over-long, under-edited, needlessly graphic, antiintellectual, and mostly a waste of space. his movies were simplistic and over-moralizing, his symbolism pointlessly overworked, etc. I just didn't have much time for him.
I don't know that my opinion on his fiction has changed any. But despite Dave's predictions, I actually really liked On Writing. I read it in about 3 hours, and just really enjoyed how honest King was about himself.
Let's get this straight; I don't tend to read books on How To Write much. I've had to read a bunch, and while I won't say I've never learned anything from them, I will say that I've been writing for a decade now, and most of those are aimed at the thirtysomething secretary who's never tried her hand at writing but thinks it might be a good way for her to express that, i dunno, something more, like, that she knows is inside her...
King was pretty no-nonsense, and he said "fucking" more than any other How To Write book I've ever encountered. (Natalie... fuck, what was her name? (Writing Down The Bones, jr. year high school short fiction class) discussed her newfound lesbianism at great length in WDTB's sequel, but never once said "fucking.) He advocated honesty in writing, which is the most succinct way of putting what everyone else also says. But he didn't just say that; he did it. The opening chapter of the book was an autobiography of his writing life, entitled "curriculum vitae", that colorfully, succinctly summed up Why He Writes Like He Does, with some really heartfelt and moving details about his lower-lower middle-class life, his courageous and insane mother, his health problems, traumas, kinfolk, genius brother, dysfunctional cars, and even his cocaine/beer/cheap whiskey/cough syrup/mouthwash addictions. It was charming, moving, terrifying, and illuminating. And it wasn't preachy. And he took generous swipes at his own writing; you could tell he's terribly fond of what he himself writes, but he nods at some of his harshest critics here and there, at least indicating that he does understand what people say about him. [but, "After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face and yell Pow!, The Village Voice holds few terrors." (p. 21)]
(ha, went back and read the intro, and the foreword says 'this book is short because books on fiction by fiction writers are bullshit, and the shorter bullshit is, the better.')
So then he goes on for a while about how to write. And it's pretty preachy, but his colloquial tone works well for conveying that really, you know, it's just advice. and i'm ok with that. fine. it helps that i already know what he's talking about, i know what works for me and what doesn't, and i know fine well what i'm doing wrong, and that i'm too damn lazy to change it at the moment. Good advice, mostly. But god forbid I should ever write like him, at least fiction. This book is well-written, but I refuse to attempt again to read Tommyknockers.
And then he closes with a very emotional section that I found really compelling to read: a little epilogue called "on life" about how the writing of this book was interrupted by him being hit by a van and nearly dying. It's vivid, it's bitter, it's contemplative, it's agonized, and it's very, very wise, this section. True stories like bookends supporting a stack of honest advice. I'm not going to take much of his advice, and that which I am, I already knew, but it was nice to hear him say it, and maybe he can reach some new people that way, that the sappy lesbians of my previous Books On Writing experiences won't reach.
And so I liked this book, not as a How-To manual, but as a memoir. On Writing. That's how writers can write autobiographies. Which is more interesting at present to me than fiction.
side note: i'm worried that I'm slipping from fiction to non-fiction, in my areas of interest. Why worried? Well, i've never studied non-fiction. Why? Because it's largely self-congratulatory post-hippie public masturbation, and I have never really wanted to be a part of that. if you want to write a book about how cool and vulnerable you are, at least make up a world for me. but ever since i started this dern honors thesis... before i even settled on the vietnam idea... i've been having trouble writing about things i haven't actually experienced.
i think it's laziness.
and self-infatuation.
but i gotta work through that. maybe if i write something pithy, witty, and honest i can get through it.
i've actually been thinking about a hypertext memoir about fencing road trips.
need more pictures, tho'.
also, need to have something to actually say. this is also a problem. i think i'm falling away from writing fiction, and the reason i do nonfiction stuff now is that i'm too lazy/weakened to do more than just describe.
*yawn*
maybe having some time off after school will give me the boredom I need to get back to really writing again. also, much as i love them, my housemates are too much fun and not enough support for what i need to be doing.
yup, yup.
well, bedtime. (see? lazy!)
So.
I keep doing dumb things to my eyes, I don't know how; i was reading a book, which i'll talk about in a bit, and had my glasses off, and now my eyes don't want to focus with my glasses on. it's times like this that i ardently wish my eyes were good enough to read my monitor 2 feet away without glasses. But one cannot comfortably position oneself less than 12 inches (my max focal distance for text sans corrective lenses) from a 19" monitor and not go insane.
i dunno about the fencing photos page i made today; cute, simple, straightforward, and really the only way to organize that many images, but... not very me. still i'll probably leave it as-is...
i will absolutely require server space and an internet connection this coming year; i'd just better get a job and a place!
but i need to be more aggressive in my applications. i've been very slow.
so, liesl sent me her copy of Stephen King's On Writing.
I have never liked Stephen King.
His works seemed to me to be sensationalism, over-long, under-edited, needlessly graphic, antiintellectual, and mostly a waste of space. his movies were simplistic and over-moralizing, his symbolism pointlessly overworked, etc. I just didn't have much time for him.
I don't know that my opinion on his fiction has changed any. But despite Dave's predictions, I actually really liked On Writing. I read it in about 3 hours, and just really enjoyed how honest King was about himself.
Let's get this straight; I don't tend to read books on How To Write much. I've had to read a bunch, and while I won't say I've never learned anything from them, I will say that I've been writing for a decade now, and most of those are aimed at the thirtysomething secretary who's never tried her hand at writing but thinks it might be a good way for her to express that, i dunno, something more, like, that she knows is inside her...
King was pretty no-nonsense, and he said "fucking" more than any other How To Write book I've ever encountered. (Natalie... fuck, what was her name? (Writing Down The Bones, jr. year high school short fiction class) discussed her newfound lesbianism at great length in WDTB's sequel, but never once said "fucking.) He advocated honesty in writing, which is the most succinct way of putting what everyone else also says. But he didn't just say that; he did it. The opening chapter of the book was an autobiography of his writing life, entitled "curriculum vitae", that colorfully, succinctly summed up Why He Writes Like He Does, with some really heartfelt and moving details about his lower-lower middle-class life, his courageous and insane mother, his health problems, traumas, kinfolk, genius brother, dysfunctional cars, and even his cocaine/beer/cheap whiskey/cough syrup/mouthwash addictions. It was charming, moving, terrifying, and illuminating. And it wasn't preachy. And he took generous swipes at his own writing; you could tell he's terribly fond of what he himself writes, but he nods at some of his harshest critics here and there, at least indicating that he does understand what people say about him. [but, "After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face and yell Pow!, The Village Voice holds few terrors." (p. 21)]
(ha, went back and read the intro, and the foreword says 'this book is short because books on fiction by fiction writers are bullshit, and the shorter bullshit is, the better.')
So then he goes on for a while about how to write. And it's pretty preachy, but his colloquial tone works well for conveying that really, you know, it's just advice. and i'm ok with that. fine. it helps that i already know what he's talking about, i know what works for me and what doesn't, and i know fine well what i'm doing wrong, and that i'm too damn lazy to change it at the moment. Good advice, mostly. But god forbid I should ever write like him, at least fiction. This book is well-written, but I refuse to attempt again to read Tommyknockers.
And then he closes with a very emotional section that I found really compelling to read: a little epilogue called "on life" about how the writing of this book was interrupted by him being hit by a van and nearly dying. It's vivid, it's bitter, it's contemplative, it's agonized, and it's very, very wise, this section. True stories like bookends supporting a stack of honest advice. I'm not going to take much of his advice, and that which I am, I already knew, but it was nice to hear him say it, and maybe he can reach some new people that way, that the sappy lesbians of my previous Books On Writing experiences won't reach.
And so I liked this book, not as a How-To manual, but as a memoir. On Writing. That's how writers can write autobiographies. Which is more interesting at present to me than fiction.
side note: i'm worried that I'm slipping from fiction to non-fiction, in my areas of interest. Why worried? Well, i've never studied non-fiction. Why? Because it's largely self-congratulatory post-hippie public masturbation, and I have never really wanted to be a part of that. if you want to write a book about how cool and vulnerable you are, at least make up a world for me. but ever since i started this dern honors thesis... before i even settled on the vietnam idea... i've been having trouble writing about things i haven't actually experienced.
i think it's laziness.
and self-infatuation.
but i gotta work through that. maybe if i write something pithy, witty, and honest i can get through it.
i've actually been thinking about a hypertext memoir about fencing road trips.
need more pictures, tho'.
also, need to have something to actually say. this is also a problem. i think i'm falling away from writing fiction, and the reason i do nonfiction stuff now is that i'm too lazy/weakened to do more than just describe.
*yawn*
maybe having some time off after school will give me the boredom I need to get back to really writing again. also, much as i love them, my housemates are too much fun and not enough support for what i need to be doing.
yup, yup.
well, bedtime. (see? lazy!)
