Writerly Ways redux

[cornerofmadness]

So I was cleaning the living room and rooting through a box yanked out of gram's basement last I was there. I found a sheath of hand written notes. It took me a while to decipher them since they're in my pre-injury handwriting (which was still an illegible doctor's scrawl) and half in medical shorthand.

I realized that what they were was from my WI writers group in 98-99 where we got together and gave each other critiques verbally. Every last one said the same thing 'too much description'

I guess between the by mail writers group of 95-97 and then this, I had learned a lesson. I describe too much.

Now, I don't do it at all. From one extreme to the other. At this point I think it's a psychological block. four to five years of being stuck with budding Hemmingway minimalists (seriously one of them quotes Hemmingway all the time to me), did damage.

Wonders if there's hypnotherapy for writing trauma?

the fullmetal alchemist
ONE SENTENCE
fic meme

Comments

[sillymagpie.livejournal.com]

There's description that doesn't lead anywhere, and then there's great description. Tell your subconscious that you want to be like Charles Dickens and get paid by the word. Worked for him. ;-P

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

right now it's not interested in describing anything

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Well, I could cheerfully beat you with a stick....

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

that's only going to make it worse

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Oh, darn.

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

I don't think it'll help your description trauma when I read your "novel so far" and start whining all over again that there's no description. Then again, I'll probably never get to your novel because I started out by trying to read _my_ "novel so far" ('cause it's all in one place now!) and keep getting stuck at the end of Chapter 2 and going back to the beginning because I'm seeing things that need to be tweaked, removed, or just totally rewritten. At this rate, I'll be obsessively reading and re-reading those first two chapters for the rest of my life--in a rubber room, and turning the pages with my nose because the strait jacket's too tight. (Seriously, reading my manuscript from beginning to end has been an experience--I've been working chapter by chapter and seeing it in bite-sized pieces, not as a whole. This little exercise might turn out to be more valuable for us in evaluating our own manuscripts than in evaluating each others'.)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

why do you think, ten years later Machiavelli Moon isn't ready to go. I got to ch 10 this time. I was thinking it was about time to get moving agian

no, not helpful to the trauma other than to point out that yes there's such a psychological break there that I might as well be writing freaking screenplays instead