Tuesday, 24 August 2021
It is looking as though about 2 weeks is the natural periodicity of this journal, which is not a bad thing.
Since I last wrote, my two Loft writing courses have ended, and I have a quiet interlude for a few weeks. I’ve decided I’m not going to do Fall term courses at the U of MN, since most of them are being offered online and the idea of sitting amidst a large group of students is not inviting. Instead, I will continue with remote Loft classes — two more, in the same veins as the previous ones.
Word Recall
In writing the above paragraph, I was going to refer to the interlude between my Loft courses as a hiatus. However, that didn't seem quite appropriate as, to me, the "hiatus" has connotations of an unexpected, or at least unplanned interruption in something, whereas what I was referring to was something that was a known and even natural feature of taking courses. It seemed to me that there was a better word for it, and I was reasonably confident that it started with an "L." But I could not summon it to mind, and so recomposed the sentence to use "interlude," which worked well.
This phenomenon, of not being able to put my finger (or at least tongue) on the word I want is becoming more common as I age. Often, when it happens, I open Microsoft Word, type in the not-quite-right word, and then use the Thesarus tool. In my younger years, I used to scorn this, but I must say nowadays I frequently find it helpful. However, neither "hiatus," nor any of its listed synonyms, got me to what I thought was the missing word.
Shortly after I'd rewritten the sentence, the word came to me: "lacuna!" That was a relief: for some reason — even factoring out dismay at not being able to bring a word I want to mind and the stark reminder that I am aging — I experience a tangible internal tension or stress that can last for many minutes or sometimes even hours.
(The most extreme example was not being able to bring the word "stigmergy" to mind, and so finally, in the middle of the night, I arose and did a web search (I knew the definition, and that it started with an "S," and that it was a polysyllabic word like "serendipity" or "synchronicity." More generally, this phenomenon is know, in psychology, as "the tip of the tongue (TotT)" phenonmenon, and it has the features I've mentioned, though I can't recall if the internal feeling of stress is part of the official definition.)
Anyway, I took "lacunae" and ran the thesarus tool on it, and it got me to words that I'd explored from the other direction (i.e. starting from "hiatus") such as "gap." Oddly, though "lacuna" will get me to "gap," "gap" will not get me to lacuna. I wonder why. Upon checking the definition of "lacuna," I can find no reason that it would not be closely associated with "hiatus" or "gap," so I suppose this will remain a mystery. The only thing I've learned from this examination, is that lacunae is not, semantically, a more apropros word that "hiatus."
I shall now return to the main thread of this entry.
I am in the midst of an interlude between courses, and planning on taking two more Loft courses: one on the essay, and one world building.
Writing – Accomplishments
With regard to the two courses I took, they both exceeded expectations, and led to me making some breakthroughs in making writing a part of my life.
- The journaling course got me to a point where I am writing, if not daily, at least several times a week. I discuss this in more detail in my “Writing Ecosystem” post.
- The Worldbuilding course got me to the point where I was writing character-driven scenes — a break through — and where it seems possible that I could write a novel (whether I want to is a different and as yet unanswered question). This is described in my “Fiction for Worldbuilding” post.
- I neglected to add that I took a half day course — after the previous two courses had ended — on essay writing. I believe that I prefer multi-meeting courses, as they assist me in developing a writing habit, but this course was quite useful (even though the teacher had a much broader conception of what an essay is than I appreciate). I made notes on the most prominent takeaways from it, which I will post here:
Writing – Things I’ve Learned
- Telling details: One telling detail is preferable to many details
- Embodiment. Emotions and actions are embodied: gaze, gesture, posture, proprioception, proxemics
- Scenes. Scenes should vary in length, and be interleaved with summaries. This gives rhythm and weighting. Think of a scene as a spotlight.
- Language: avoid ‘to be’s. Avoid “is” “are” “have” etc. and limit use of adjectives. “To be” is the weakest verb. Not “He is tall” but “He smacked his head on the door frame”
- Language: avoid distancing: Avoid habitually using filtering/distancing language such as “I noticed,” “I heard,” “I saw,” (That said, sometimes you may want to use it to distance yourself, as when you are uncomfortable and don’t want to be in it.)
- Language: avoid adverbs. Use actions and embodiment rather than adverbs: “Yeah,” she said, stroking his bare arm, “that’s what I heard.” vs. “Yeah,” she said gently, “that’s what I heard.
- Support reader inference. There is something about readers being able to figure something out on their own that is very rewarding
- Revising Tricks: Print it out in a different font. Read it out loud and notice where you stumble, speed up, lag, etc. Replace “to be’s”
OK, that brings me up to the present.
Writing Curiculum
In addition to signing up for new Loft courses in mid-September, I am doing two things. The first is that I updated my “Writing Curriculm” document with what I’d like to be focusing on, and put entries about various tasks on my calendar: one for every week day.
In fact, I do not faithfully do these tasks. They are intended as prompts, and as reminders of the sorts of things I want to be working on, but if, in fact, I end up doing some other aspect of writing, that is just fine. So for example, today I am doing this, which vaguely fits into the “freewriting” category which is scheduled for tomorrow. “Plot extraction” is scheduled for today, and while I will probably do that next, I have been doing that most days for the last week, ignoring the other categories.
Plot Analysis
The “Plot Extraction” exercise is something that I probably mentioned in the “Fiction for Worldbuilding” post. I had found that I didn’t have much sense of what it meant to work out the details of a plot, or even how long 5,000 words was, or what the typical lengths for chapters (or books) are. So, I decided — with the concurrence of my Worldbuilding teacher — that I would simply take a few favorite books, slanted towards the sub-genre of the story I am working on – and analyze their plots and structure.
At this point I have about 15 pages of text outlining four (and a fifth in progress) books. For the first book (All Systems Red — the first Murderbot novella), I analyzed it both at the level of chapters and scenes. For the other books, I just stuck with the chapter level. While I’d initially planned on just outlining the plot chapter by chapter (and recording chapter lengths), as I went through the exercise I ended up doing a bit more.
For each book there is
- Capsule description of its type and structure
- A high-level description of the story, consisting of
- A one sentence description of the plot
- A one sentence description of the themes
- A couple paragraphs of text on the above (not shown below)
- And then, for each chapter
- Its length in words
- A one line summary of the plot
- A few lines of text that give more detail (not shown below)
- and occasionally groupings of multiple chapters under headings that describes the part they play in the story.
- Also, sometimes, in the one-line chapter descriptions, I try to call out certain things like Flashbacks, or where the location the chapter is set, etc. — but this is not systematic, at least yet.
The table of contents of the document looks like this:
After I finish the next book I am going to stop and try to reflect on what I’ve learned. Some obvious things are that chapters can be all sorts of lengths, but usually within any single book there is a pronounced modal length with variation of around 20%. More on this later.
Grand Canyon Prep
In other news, I have done a couple of longish hikes with some elevation change in preparation for the Grand Canyon. I’m feeling quite confident about my ability to do the hike, and other than reinforcing my confidence, the main lesson has been a reminder that I need to use trekking poles, and that doing eccentric heel drops to cushion my achilles tendons is a wise idea. So, I will do the former, and have embarked on the latter.
Wrap Up
Finally, to tie off things I’d mentioned in the prior post, I’ve made no progress on the yard/garden, and the renovation is now progressing steadily and is looking like it will have an end of September completion date.