Sunday 8 August 2021
Two weeks have passed yet again.
Writing
The last time I wrote, I had turned in my Worldbuilding workshop piece. I was quite pleased with it, and was looking forward to seeing how it was received by other course members.
Feedback
It was well received. I got many kind words, and a lot of helpful input. One of the most useful thing that many people do is that as the read through the text for the first time, they insert comments when they are confused (or occasionally about other things). It’s very helpful to get those — one has so much context in one’s head that, especially near the beginning of the story — it’s easy to leave something out that’s crucial to readers’ correctly interpreting what is going on.
- Speaker Confusion. Perhaps the most common issue people had was being confused about who was speaking. This often happened when a dialog was happening, and then I had two paragraphs with the same character speaking/acting.
- Immediate World Flagging. A higher level issue that arose was flagging which chapters were in which world ASAP. (I’ve got two worlds, and alternate back and forth between them, and it is clearly a good idea to signal which is which as early as possible.
- Diverse Responses. It was also interesting to see that readers often had differing responses — to the questions I asked (e.g. which chapter to start with), to characters, and to other issues. This was true enough that I pay particular attention when I see multiple people agreeing on something.
Plot
In the last post, I mentioned that I was thinking of stepping back and trying to work out the plot. After an email dialog with Michael S (my Worldbuilding course teacher), I decided to take a dual approach. By the time I’d contacted him, I’d put together a Dictionary of People, Places and Objects; notes on Themes, Motifs and Plot Points;, and a partial timeline/background plot. Michael agreed this was a good idea, but also said, and repeated, that I should just “keep writing.” So I will do that.
In response to a question about whether there are any examples of plots that I could look at, he didn’t think this would be useful. He did agree that, as I had suggested, it would be useful for me to work through a few books I like and extract the plots, though he warned against putting too much time into this. I have started this process — first with the first Murderbot novella — and second with Will Sheterly’s Never Never (bordertown world). So far, this has been quite valuable, in giving me examples of how much authors do in a scene and a chapter, and in how long the various pieces are, since I have no gut feeling for this. I need to finish writing out the Shetterly plot sketch, and then have, perhaps, three more books to do.
How to Proceed
This week will mark the final Worldbuilding course meeting. I need to figure out how to proceed after this. I’d like to figure out how to continue to make progress on the fiction, and also push the essay writing/journal aspect a little more. My thought there is to work out a very rough curriculum for the next several months. Michael S also hinted at the notion of the class members continuing as a writing group (without him, is my sense), and I’d be willing to do that, and would find it helpful in various ways. I’ve certainly found it useful to do critiques, and of course having the motivation to get something new to a point where it could be critiqued is useful as well.
Social Whirl
On other matters, the last week or so has been a bit of a ‘social whirl.’ Last Monday we traveled to Ravinia in IL for two nights, and heard “Apollo’s Fire,” a baroque music ensemble associated with the Cleveland orchestra. We met K &C there, and had a great time. Upon returning home there was the penultimate Worldbuilding course on Wednesday evening, an outting with S&K (now engaged) the evening after that, dinner at Sookie and Mimi’s with K&C on Friday, and an outing to a concert by Patti Smith at Surly Field Saturday night. Today is our first totally open day, and that — along with it being the second day of much-needed rain — feels *very* nice.
Upcoming
For the upcoming week, there is a bunch in the queue:
- Renovation. There are a number of decisions to make on the renovation, which should start up again in earnest on Monday
- Fall Courses. I should start thinking about what to do — coursewise — for this fall. I’m pretty sure I do not want to return to in-class meetings at the U, which is too bad because I’ll have to pass on some geology courses I want to take. My current thought is to re-take intro geology, since there is an online section offered by Kent Kirkby, who seems to have quite a bit of renown as a teacher.
- Grand Canyon Prep. The Grand Canyon trip is about 5 weeks away, and I should do some ‘prehabilitation’ for my achilles tendon and leg muscles, and also some reading on the geology we will be passing through.
- Yard / Garden. I would also like to make some more progress on the garden — ideally get all of the beds in shape, at least in the sense that they are well-cleared and mulched.
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