writing

ew formatting.

sorry.

hoos something has gone wrong there

I wish I could write, but I am sadly extremely crap at it.

Stephen had begged his parents for a bunk bed at home for months. before they relented and They got him a fire-engine red one with Nintendo sheets. After a week of torturous climbing, with awful tendon cramps meeting on every ascent, he never slept in the top bed again. His parents never forgot the slight, and wWell into his own middle age his parents would gripe about the bunk bed they'd bought him that he never slept in. In other words, he had not "won" the top bunk at Lions' Camp. He had been stuck with it.

When Stephen's sufferred an inconvenient foot cramped on his way up the oak ladder to the mattress above,. hHe thought he could finish the climb and work out the charley horse once he was safely beneath the blanket. Instead, at the last step, his leg spasmed. He felt himself fall backwards,. then the sleeping bunkhouse was met with the sound of meat dropping in a bucket.

For an awful moment Stephen couldn't move. Daniel cried. Rusty gathered Stephen into a wheelchair and pushed him to the infirmary., and Daniel followed close behind.

After the darkness of the bunkhouse, the infirmary was a blizzard of cold and white. The nurse examined his spine.

yeah.

Yep, Tracer Hand has edited it in the right direction. I'd be even more ruthless. An 'ascent' of a bunk bed strikes a slightly pompous note. "For one awful moment" sounds clichéd, "a blizzard of cold and white" sounds a bit try-hard... Like the previous passage, there's nothing inherently wrong with your writing but I think the self-conscious literaryness should be toned down a bit...

his parents sound like DICKS

i mean "the slight"?? he's disabled and goes into spasms trying to reach the top bunk, and they think it's a SLIGHT when he decides he'd rather not be in pain? if that's the way they are then fine, but if that's NOT the way they are then you are sending a weird message that needs more explanation

also, why did he want a bunkbed so hard? clearly he'd never really had experience with one or he'd have realised it was not for him. a movie? a story some kid told him once?

mm, I don't know if that's important, I think the gap between him wanting to be able to climb up, and his parents' dissatisfaction in how he stopped 'trying' to climb and how they took it as an insult to them..

etc.

well like i said, they're dicks

Here is a thing I wrote:

Spicy Chicken Sad-wich

This week in famous Russian Child Brides:

WENDY aka THE FAKE PIPPI

Wendy Thomas (nee Wendlychkly Vorimols) was imported by one Dave Thomas in 1958 at the cusp of her fresh pubescence, 14 years after her birth in Stalingrad (nee Volgograd). Her already wan, malnourished skin was powdered with talc, hiding her freckles; her pigtails were plaited at an angle perpendicular to her pouting face. Dave Thomas, her fiance after spending $5,830, selected young Wendlychkly due in part to her fetching photo, but largely due to her autobiographical paragraph:
"I am always making spicy chicken sandwiches, hamburgers, frosties and cheeseburgers for your enjoyment. I like to cook American food. I hate Russian soup that is red like my ridiculous hair. I love American sandwiches and Jerry Lewis!"
After years of sordid exploitation in America's "Tijuana Bible" industry,Wendy was ready for years of sordid exploitation in America's "Fast Food" industry. From 1964-1987, Wendy personally cooked each order at each Wendy's franchise in a miracle comparable to Santa's simultaneous midnight delivery. Hidden from the public eye during the harshest years of the Cold War, Wendy served as a silent ambassador by warming America's heart with square patties. Wendy died in 1987, looking no older than 17. The next 20 years of Dave's life found him dying slowly of heartsickness.

Not "sleeping" bunkhouse, but some reminder that others are present and he's waking them up before get to Daniel and Rusty; not "was met with," but "sound of meat dropping in a bucket" goes with his abjectness etc; not "blizzard" but good to mention contrast between dark and light/cold.

This thread has made me want a bunk bed and some sweet-ass sheets.

"Shoehorned" is fine by me. Anyway, the prose effect I'm talking about isn't a matter of particular words, it's more about the frequency with which you use certain kinds of words, which I will exaggerate thusly:

- dying hearth
- by Jove, a quite terribly thin wool covering!
- an insomnia that would follow him for the rest of his life (DUM-TUM-TUUUUM)
- oh cruel storytellers! hast thou succumbed to the effects of thine drinks?
- etc.

HOOS, it's a really short section, so sorry if I'm off about what you're trying to do with the prose -- it's hard to workshop a paragraph and all! Just saying the diction is a slightly odd fit for a camp story, and I've read so many workshop stories going all grand and high-diction on the ironic-heroic deeds of young boys that I just assumed that's what you were shooting for.

That's shitty commentary, though, because even if that WERE what you were shooting for, you should just go ahead and shoot for it -- trying to CHANGE your stylistic quirks in response to workshopping (as opposed to, like, refining them) is always a losing game.

OTM

nabisco half-right. I don't believe in deliberately trying to stylize one's diction/phrasing/tone a certain way, at least as far as the first draft is concerned. it's an almost-certain recipe for florid overwriting.

style, timbre, word choice, etc... are all in the jurisdiction of the rewriter. if one's too occupied w. them during the first pass, there's a lot of room to get 'stuck' or bogged-down in probably-gonna-be-rewritten-anyway minutiae. a lot of wasted time.

the analogy i've always found helpful in prose-writing is that of a wood-carver. the first draft is nothing more than the chainsaw selection of an adequate tree. second draft is the rough blocking out of the shape, and the third, fourth, fifth ... nth are the refinement of the carving. all but the final drafts have an attritional temperament: paring, scraping, reducing the idea to its essence, removing excess verbiage. only in the final (hell, it's called 'polishing') stage is it occasionally prudent to "add" style, flair, what-have-you, lest you be seen as gilding a lily.

I disagree entirely: prose style is not "gilding," and thinking of it that way is basically anti-literature!

ha ha nabisco otm, remy bean, is the new gwyn barry

ha ha what's up, Gwyn Barry

"style is character," etc. -- but even before this, prose style is SETTING, I think: your prose style isn't just the tone of the world your character are wandering around, it IS the world, mood and backdrop and all, and your prose style has everything to do with the possibilities and limits of what the characters do and what happens to them and how

i don't disagree w. any of that.

i don't know how carefully i expressed myself, or how carefully you read what i wrote.

i'm deriding intentional grasping at 'style' over the expression of an idea through style, among other things

sorry remy, i meant that your wood carving analogy is the very same analogy that the writer Gwyn Barry makes in that Martin Amis novel--which by the way, does exactly what Nabisco says above with regarding to prose and setting

hell, i'll be a mediocre writer in a martin amis novel

Hey so what do y'all think of my piece about Wendy's?

I think the part I was objecting to was this:

the first draft is nothing more than the chainsaw selection of an adequate tree. second draft is the rough blocking out of the shape, and the third, fourth, fifth ... nth are the refinement of the carving.

... which seems to assume that there's some kind of narrative shape that exists independent of style, and even before style. Whereas for me, and I think for a lot of writers (maybe not you, which is totally cool!), the question of "adequate tree ... for what?" is partly answered by style. Sometimes it's finding the tone and prose style that lets you see what the thing you're building actually is -- what the characters are like, what their possibilities are, what this "shape" is that you're carving in the first place.

Wood carving is possibly a bad analogy here, since you can't uncarve wood -- but to continue it, writing can just as well be about repeating the minor strokes of the chisel and you find the texture and detail and style that suggests what everything else needs to be like.

Most of this stuff is academic, though, as I'm increasingly of the opinion that what dictates EVERYTHING is just whether or not it moves along. I have yet to encounter many writers who could just as easily write something like a novel in either of two ways -- you kind of play around with these things until something snaps into place and you have the momentum to get to the end. Probably on your 8th novel or something you're prescribing more of this stuff to yourself, but in the beginning it's just that one thing will get you there and others won't.

Very fair.

Re. your assertion that my 'chainsaw selection' analogy seems to assume that there's some kind of narrative shape that exists independent of style, and even before style, I think we've on an interesting idea about conceptualization.

Most writers I know (in spite of intentions, plans, outlines) really need the 'space' of the initial draft to figure out what they're doing. I don't know anybody who doesn't do the old 'oh, this is where we're going... interesting...' during their first layout of whatever fiction they're creating. While the style they're employing (focus/locus, grammar, vocab, meta, sentence and paragraph structure, length, plausibility, genre, et al.,) may guide them in finishing and defining the piece, I think that direct and immediate attention to these concerns above the over-all construction, and not in its service, is a massive misstep. Hence the chainsaw-selection analogy.

Part of the issue we disagree about (if I presume to parse it toward my own point?) regards the, heh, font of creativity. At the risk of sounding hokey, I'll admit to being persuaded toward a more universal source of inspiration (there's a story that wants to be told: the writer's craft is telling it w/o getting in the way) vs. what I perceive as your view (creation from the stuff of a writer's individual experience, ego, and knowledge). I don't know that these two aren't reconcilable, if only in practice.

For all it's worth, I understand the analogy's a little vapid - which doesn't lend it less utility to me.

ok guys I realize I am opening myself up for complete ILX death and eternal italics quotes here, but I'm running out of time and am getting desperate. Shit is due Monday and I've got four more pages to write. My background in poetry means that all my scenes are super-economized, four paragraphs each instead of four pages. Frustration.

Here's everything I've got so far:

The bus stank. Every breath Stephen took was full of dust, adolescence, and decade-old leather. A bus full of boys is a dangerous thing, but this one was especially dangerous: it was on the way to summer camp. The road to Texas Lions' Camp for Disabled Children was a vast flatland.

Hair the color of dirt slowly rose from the seat in front of him. Auburn eyes looked at him expectantly.

"Do you have any magazines?"

"No," Stephen groused.

"Some of us are trading magazines, if maybe you wanted to look at some of mine and I could look at some of yours."

"I don't have any magazines."

"I'm Daniel."

Stephen ignored him and tried his best to sleep with his head awkwardly pressed to the window, but Daniel continued.

"Do you know which tribe you're with?"

"I think I'm with the Tejas bunkhouse. Can you leave me alone, please? I want to sleep."

"Okay," Daniel said, sinking back into his seat with displeasure. His eyes slid into view once again: "I'm with Tejas too," he said.

A camp sponsor was making his way down the aisle.

"We're stopping for breakfast in a few minutes," the impossibly old man said. "Do you want something?"

"I don't need anything," he mumbled. "I'm fine."

In four more hours they would reach the preserve.

*

The counselors helped the boys unload their bags and sent them to a line of nurses waiting to inspect each one for lice, ticks, and all the other awful-sounding parasites that tended to latch on to dirty boys. It was here, seeing Daniel in full profile for the first time, that Stephen realized the younger boy only had one arm. Though his left arm was properly gangly and awkward for a young man in the midst of a growth spurt, Daniel's right arm quietly terminated at the elbow joint.

In the half second before guilt sank in Stephen stared at the boy's aborted fingers. By an accident of genetics, the fingers found themselves on the end of a gnarled and blunted nub. They stuck out strangely and at odd angles, like mushrooms with the tops cut off. Stephen had never before met anyone that was missing a limb. All at once he was filled with questions, fear, morbid curiosity , and an ache he would not understand for many years.

"What happened to your arm?"

"My Mom says I lost it because God sent me to fight the Devil's lions before I was born."

*

"It feels right," Stephen called from the water. "It's perfect. Learn quick so we can play Marco Polo!"

Daniel sat at the edge of the pool swinging his feet. He waited on Rusty to come over. In the noontime sun the crowded pool glistened like fat sloshing in a pan.

"Ready?" Rusty's hair was a sun-bleached dirty blond. Despite his cultivation of a Southern twang, his apparently irrevocable shirtsleeve tan gave away his youth in the Iowa cornfields. "You're gonna have to take off your glasses," he told Daniel.

The glasses were reluctantly removed and Rusty lowered the boy into the water. Though his strokes were tentative at first, Daniel seemed to learn quickly. He kicked well, and his left arm supplied enough strength to carry his small frame. Stephen pretended not to watch. With an air of self-congratulation, Rusty asked Daniel if he was ready to try swimming on his own. He nodded enthusiastically.

*

Stephen had begged his parents for a bunk bed at home for months before they relented and got him a fire-engine red with Nintendo sheets. After a week of torturous climb, with awful tendon cramps meeting every ascent, he never slept in the top bed again. His parents never forgot the slight, and well into his own middle age his parents would gripe about the bunk bed they'd bought him that he never slept in.

In other words, he had not "won" the top bunk at Lions' Camp. He had been stuck with it. When Stephen suffered an inconvenient foot cramp on his way up the oak ladder to the mattress above, he thought he could finish the climb and work out the charley horse once he was safely beneath the blanket. Instead, at the last step, his leg spasmed. He felt himself fall backwards, then the sleeping bunkhouse was met with the sound of meat dropping in a bucket.

For an awful moment Stephen couldn't move. Daniel cried. Rusty gathered Stephen into a wheelchair and pushed him to the infirmary. Daniel followed close behind. After the darkness of the bunkhouse, the infirmary was a blizzard of cold and white. The nurse examined his spine.

"There's definitely some bruising," she announced, "but nothing that can't be fixed with an ice pack and a popsicle."

*

The tower in the distance flashed every night. It warned passing planes of the Kerrville State Hospital. As was their yearly custom, though, the camp counselors used the light and local lore to construct a campfire story. The fearsomeness always bordered on cruelty when inflicted upon prepubescent boys, but such were the delights of bored young men forced to spend their summers with those half their age.

Every year the story of Joe Pannetto grew in scope, and the counselors increased their acting skills accordingly. Just after dusk, as the tower began scattering diamonds of light through the hill country, Rusty and the others would proceed to panic and talk furitively into their walkie-talkies. They made a show of stealing around corners and mumbling communiques to "base camp," pretending to argue about safety issues, and generally causing a stir among the boys. When their curiousity finally reached a boiling point and, like a tea kettle, the campers would squeal their readiness for the story, Rusty would sit down by the fire.

"See," Rusty began, "Joe Pannetto used to be a camper here. Just like you guys. He got older and eventually turned into a counselor, like me."

This was unsettling.

"After a while," Rusty continued, "Joe got convinced that everybody was trying to kill him. His wife, his kids, everybody in town, even. Kerrville's a small town, you know. Every summer that you campers come in, the town gets bigger. One summer a few years ago, Joe didn't like that idea at all."

The boys coiled tighter around the crackling flames.

"He figured it was time to start cutting down numbers with his hunting knife." The sudden appearance of a hunting habit in Joe's life struck the boys as terrifying rather than incongruous. "He cut up a bunch of campers, and the city locked him away in the State Hospital."

"T-t-that's where they put the crazies," a camper volunteered shakily. In the shadows tossed about by the fire, no no one was sure if the suggestion came from the cabin's resident stutterer or if the speaker was simply terrified.

"That light?" Rusty pointed to the tower. "It means Joe escaped, and he might be coming here."

After the boys were shoehorned into their sleeping bags, most stayed awake for upwards of an hour. While the counselors drank beers around the dying hearth and congratulated one another on their performances, Stephen itched under the standard issue wool blanket. Unlike the rest of his bunkmates, he hadn't packed a sleeping bag. He had been given a military green cot and a terribly thin wool covering to last him through the night. It would be the first night of an insomnia that would follow him for the rest of his life. Hours later, deep into the night and long after the cruel storytellers had succumbed to the effects of their drinks, a flashlight muted by a small hand sluiced a dim arc through the darkness.

"Stephen?"

jesus christ the adverbs.

oh, the adverbs.

Some of the scenes are unfinished, all very first draft yada yada etc

good stuff! i'm not gonna be too intrusive on your vision, but if there's one teeny thing, it's that you shouldn't repeat adjectives. "a bus full of schoolboys is a dangerous thing, this one especially so" is slightly softer on the ears.

'impossibly old' is a bit over the top.

the section where stephen observes daniel's truncated arm is very good.

ooh, yeah, this definitely improves as it goes along. "this was unsettling" = favourite bit, a moment of authorial levity that helps to contextualise the drama.

Shit is due Monday and I've got four more pages to write.

At this point, stop worrying about whether its well-written or not. If you know where you are going, just put one foot in front of the other and you'll get there.

As with walking, writing a first draft can safely be unselfconcious, if you know your destination and you know a way there. It's when you aren't sure of your destination or the way to get there that you hesitate at every crossroad and agonize over every choice.

IMO, you should stop asking for comments here. Comments will be more useful after you've put it all down on paper. You don't start to tweak an engine for performance when half the parts are all over the garage floor. Put it together first. Then you can tweak away.

lose "standard issue"!

"No," Stephen groused.

"no" is not enough to be considered a grouse.

Every breath Stephen took was full of dust, adolescence, and decade-old leather.

not into the way "adolescence" is, uh, shoehorned in there. as the other two items in the list are specific smells i find it jarring. also, maybe reword hte leather bit. "a breath full of leather" is a little awkward.

Stephen realized the younger boy only had one arm. Though his left arm was properly gangly and awkward for a young man in the midst of a growth spurt, Daniel's right arm quietly terminated at the elbow joint.

that's "arm" three times. maybe just "daniel's right"?

He felt himself fall backwards, then the sleeping bunkhouse was met with the sound of meat dropping in a bucket.

i like meat dropping in a bucket but "the bunkhouse was met with" is not the best way to phrase it i think.

Every year the story of Joe Pannetto grew in scope, and the counselors increased their acting skills accordingly.

not the best phrasing. that makes it sound like they're adding status points to their acting skill meter.

Sad byproduct of MFA: I feel like if I actually workshop this I'm going to have to check my tuition bill and apply for more financial aid :(

[02:47] hoos: man i am productive
[02:47] hoos: drink some wine and shit out 200 words a night
[02:47] hoos: i'll have a novel in like 30 years

- oh cruel storytellers! hast thou succumbed to the effects of thine drinks?

this is still funny

for the curious here is the completed version

Can Science Fiction/Fantasy writers PLEASE stop bitching about how 'Li-Fi' really is a genre with its own conventions, and whyyyyyyyy won't Professor Smith let me turn in my space opera?

"Science Fiction/Fantasy writers" = bitter genre writers in my college creative writing program

ok i have a new story and i would like u guys to tear it to shreds if you plz

trooper

hoos i think thats really really bad

im not joking

lol never saw this thx kl0pper u a total bro for bein real about that totally shitty unfinished story that i haven't even gone back to revise/finish

maybe not 'totally' shitty but def unfinished and unpolished