Category: things I’ve learned

Thoughts on “Of Fragments and Segments” by Heidi Czerwiec 

I was ambivalent about this piece. It made me think, but much of the discussion seemed toassume that very personal metaphoric uses of terms like “fragment” and “segment” had some kind of inter-personal validity, …which I doubt they had. But still, it was interesting to think about how (or whether) you break an essay into pieces, and what sort of work that separation does.

Here is the original essay: https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2022/04/craft-of-fragments-and-segments-by-heidi-czerwiec/

Some thoughts:

  • Fragments are natural and respect the object; segmentation/cutting imposes an external / artificial agenda.
    First, the reading of “fragment” as “to break” seems etymologically valid, but the notion that breaking (in fragments) is somehow more violent the cutting (as in segment) is, at least on a physical level, dubious.
    When things break – think about minerals, but it can apply to any material object – they break in accordance with their structures. Often this is because material objects have an intrinsic structure, that includes planes of ‘weakness’ along which they will fracture. When a material object “breaks,” it breaks in the most ‘efficient’ way — it uses the minimal energy to break, and, when it breaks, it is releasing tension that is distorting the structure of the object. In contrast, cutting ignores internal structure, and imposes an external agenda on what is being done. Breaking is true to the structure of the object being broken; cutting ignores that structure, although in some cases, surgery for example, the surgeon may take that into account. 
  • It feels to me like much of the essay is wallowing in metaphor, or at least treating personal metaphors as though they have some kind of agreed-upon interpersonal validity. I’m not convinced that authors who talk about segmentation really have distinct meanings in mind relative to those who talk about fragmentation.
  • The final paragraph seems on the mark to me, but I’m not sure it really follows from the previous material: 

It appears that the more white space – the less “whole” the text appears, the more fragmented, the more visible the breakage – the more charged that space becomes for the reader. That also means more work on the part of the reader. Ultimately, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the reader considers the pieces segments or fragments.

  • The crux of the issue: To me, the crux of the issue is ‘what work does the white space do?’ 
    • Help the reader understand the temporal and topical structure of the text, understanding that the white space is parsing the essay into chunks of some sort?
    • Give the reader time – a beat or two – to assimilate what has been said
    • Signal the reader that it is time to pause and draw meaning from what has been said – that if the dots have not been connected it is now the reader’s turn?
    • Save the author from having to craft an explicit transition from one fragment to the next?
  • Interpretation of Fragments. Mosaics, and collages, and cubist and pointillistic paintings, work because the individual elements can be perceived as wholes, and simultaneously apprehended in parallel to form a larger pattern. Segments of text don’t work this way – interpretation is serial and plays out over cognitively meaningful lengths of time… Re-membering, and re-calling are important, as is the author’s provision of signposts that will help the reader…

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Reflections on Nine Drafts of an Essay

7 March 2024

This evening I had a productive discussion about the process of developing an essay. I was allowed to look through a series of drafts the led to a just-published essay, and discuss the author’s process with the author. Although different people obviously have different processes, it was a great exercise.

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Learning by Answering Questions (Reddit)

TEMP Reddit Journal Entry

Over the last couple of years I’ve become aware of a new way in which I learn things. It is a sort of consolidative learning.

Since I’ve retired, one of my activities has been to learn about geology. That mostly involved taking classes or reading books; occasionally it happens via going on field trips, but those are pretty few and far between. But, over the last few years, I’ve become of a new way I learn things – or perhaps it is better to say consolidate what I already know, or connect the dots…

Geology Subs

It involves reddit, which I visit nearly every morning, in response to the daily email that alerts me to new activities in the subs I follow. These are primarily geology-oriented subs like “whatsthisrock” “askgeology,” and “rockhounds.” Initially I visited because I wanted to get better at identifying field specimens of minerals, and identification requests, and the ensuing discussion, make up a significant portion of the content. After a while, I began weighing in on the debates, and came to recognize areas – such as mafic igeneous rocks – where I had something to contribute.

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Writing Exercises, 1 (From OBE)

I am trying to focus more on applying what I notice in reading essays to my own writing. Here are a set of prospective exercises I’ve generated after re-reading selections from the Oxford Book of Essays with KC :

  • Superposition. Providing differing points of view on the same thing/event/space to convey uncertainty/ambiguity. [cf. The Haunted Mind, Note 3, offers alternate PoVs: Is the sound of the bell from the dream or the world? Is the author is in the space of the dream or are the dream figments in the bedroom?]
  • Minor Key Interlude. A description of a train of thought, or conversation, that in response to some happenstance moves into a minor – dark, distressing, depressing – mode, and then, through more happenstance or perhaps intentional effort, moves back out of it. Attend to the inflection points. [cf. The Haunted Mind, Note s 6 & 7, where hypnagogic turn dark when being swaddled in bedclothes evokes a corpse in a shroud, and then attention to everyday objects serves to vitiate that line of thought].
  • Animated Trajectory through Three-space. Convey the sensation of a 3D environment by allusions to its structure; by agents moving through it; by objects falling and bouncing; by sound. [cf. The Acorn-Gatherer, Note 2, on the rooks moving about in the tree].
  • Persuasion via vivid description and inserting oneself into the scene. Vividness, particularity and layering of detail makes a description more convincing, and then with the describer injects themselves into the scene as describes themselves in the act of seeing and feeling. [cf. The Clergyman (Beerbohm)]
  • Zoom in from Safe Distant Anonymity to Too-Close Intimate Proximity. Zoom in on people interacting. Begin with a comfortable distant overview (e.g. momentary distant glimpses), and then zoom in to show the fine-structure of intimate and not-entirely-easy interaction, whether wanted or not (e.g. continuous up-close eye-contact). (cf. Insouciance.)

EP #3*: Favorites from Best American Essays of the 20thC

Thursday, 25 August 2022

My favorites from the Best American Essays of the 20th Century:
The Brown Wasps, Loren Eisley – 1956
Perfect Past, Vladimir Nabokov – 1966
Stickeen, John Muir – 1909
The Search for Marvin Gardens, John McPhee – 1972
Total Eclipse, Annie Dillard – 1982

And essays which weren’t quite favorites, but which I found instructive:
Pamplona in July, Ernest Hemingway, 1923
Putting Daddy On, Tom Wolfe, 1964  
The White Album, Joan Didion, 1970

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Things I learned from the 2021 Loft Essay course

16 August 2021

Things to pay attention to:

  • Telling details: One telling detail is preferable to many details
  • Embodiment. Emotions and actions work best when 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”