Le Guin's Steering The Craft, Chapter Three: Sentence Length and Complex Syntax

It an interesting way of structuring a course of study, honestly, and rather refreshing, for what seems to be happening, I think, is that the last exercise removed the sentence and all of the many officers who serve it, the periods, commas and semicolons, not to forget the brackets and multiple other punctuationary.  By removing the punctuation, the second chapter forced me to consider the structure of language without the sentence, a most essential unit of meaning in prose.

Le Guin here focuses upon the need for variety and the use of intention in breaking with standard structures.  She offers some personal distaste for overtly showy language, though she remarks that many do find authors like Nabokov whose language she says always makes his books difficult for her to read (she says that they just draw so much attention to the sentences and language, and that constantly makes her pause to think, which she does not really like so much in prose), so her warning is somewhat tempered.  Still, I get what she is saying, to an extent, though my threshold and personal aesthetic is going to be quite different.

Le Guin once more turns to a variety of authors, quoting ample passages to illustrate how sentences might well be structured, and how the variation can work to create affect within a piece.  From her selections, her interest in how the sentence builds meaning as a unit becomes apparent, and I appreciate the subtle approach here.  I am certain that she is building in the work, and feel very excited to see how she will continue to move things forwards, as I can certainly sense that the book is structured into a real course.  The first exercise, as Le Guin herself notes in discussing the need to pull back sound to create fiction that truly works, expresses that the initial exercise was for the exuberance of language, and the suggestion if not outright statement that we are setting about, now, with a greater purpose, and the implication that such purpose will require the refinement of one's tools, are things that I may only be intimating, but I am certain of them as undercurrents from the building that occurs over the lessons, even thus far.  In the first chapter, the ignition and connection to passion, a kindling or rekindling; in the second, we begin work but in a way that still requires the inventiveness and playfulness, though within a more defined sandbox, bridging and gap between the first chapter and what is to come, while also establishing a counter-balance to the actual content of the next chapter that will lend it deeper meaning and, in turn, reflect back a deeper intention on the earlier effort; now, in this third exercise, we move into a more traditional linguistic space, but are asked to approach it with many of the same attitudes and thoughts that were earlier encouraged.

The exercise today comes in two parts, and each is about exploring how sentences work in a particular way.  Within the context of the last exercise, they represent a very interesting set of considerations, really.  The first part is to write one paragraph of between 100 and 150 words in which each sentence seven or fewer words.  Additionally, they must not be sentence fragments.  The next exercise, by contrast, is to write a half page up to 350 words that is all one sentence.

Exercise Three: Short and Long


Part One


In the attic is a box.  He did not know about it.  It has photos, souvenirs, postcards.  It was his father's.  A man he did not know.  His mother never spoke about it.  No one spoke about it.  Why?  No answers.  Then, amongst it all: a journal.  He picks it up.  It smells like dust.  The pages are brittle.  He is slow now.  It opens and a corner crumbles.  It opens with a waft of age.  Handwritten in writing he knows.  How does he know it?  He is sure: it is his father's.  He closes it and inhales. It is are real thing.  It is in his hand.  He breathes again.  Then he hears her.  He hides it, rushes out to her.  "Mom", he says.  "Why are you up here?"  He shrugs, pointing "my legos,"  She will not find it.  He hopes she never will.  Even if he can't take it.  If he never reads it.  Just let it exist, he thinks.  Then one day.



Part Two

She can hear them calling for her at least, so even though it is too dark for her to have a clue where she is, and even though Joe ran off(which makes him, she thought, as much of a louse as all my friends kept telling me(but she would cry later))  and left her in the dark in the woods because he was an idiot who thought that it would be funny to lure her out here, all romantic like, and play a little April Fool's Day prank, but which she did not think was particularly funny, as she was now standing out in the dark, freezing, and wanting to just get inside, and no one had been looking for her until now, and that was at least half an hour; but she couldn't be sure about the time, since she did not have her phone (because Joe, in preparing for her "surprise" had taken it from her under the guise of taking a photo for them, and then had just refused to give it back until "after") and that meant she was also just stuck waiting around until someone came out, because she knew enough to know that the she didn't want to wander around any more than she had already when she thought Joe was just standing around watching her(which he may well still be doing, she thought, and he will say that is why she was never really in any danger, of coruse) from the dark, laughing his sick little head off, and thinking that this was a fun way to treat a girl, as if he had never grown up from pulling pig tails; but she could hear them coming, and it was still dark, and even though she was crying out for Laura and George, she had no real idea if they could hear her yelling "help" or anything; and maybe she was being silly, crying like this, because he hadn't left her in the wilderness, but he knew damned well that she didn't like being out in the dark like this and had a real fear about getting lost especially because she did get lost so easily; and she was shouting as loud as she could, and she still didn't know if the sounds were getting closer yet, and she worried (of course, she did) that when they did find her, they might not know the way out either; but even in that case, she knew it would still be better if she was not alone and was with people who were comfortable out here in the dark and could make her feel better, which was exactly what she had expected Joe was going to be doing, because he could sometimes be sweet in that way; but not this time, and that left her here, yelling out and hoping, and wondering where her friends were, and then she realized that she could see a bit of light and she started to go towards it, and that was them, and she was crying, and George and Lauren gave her a big hug and just held her for a minute, and then shined a light and they were standing right next to the wall to the house, and Joe was sitting there, about ten feet away, and he was laughing, like an idiot, laughing at her, and she was going to pick up a rock or grab Lauren's flashlight, but she didn't, because anything she did that would actually be meaningful to him would require taking things to far; because Joe was all about making sure everything got taken too far.



In thinking about these exercises, I want to express also that I am quite tired right now, as I didn't have a great night's sleep and spent much of the day driving back home.  I feel that I did get the spirit of the thing in both cases, though I wonder about the narrative in the first part.  It is a bit silly and weak, but I don't think that is the point, and I am not going to worry about it.  I think I did a bit better in the second part, and the ending of it feels like it kind of came together somehow.  In all, though, what is most interesting to me is the change in the whole thought process that comes from this type of focus.  I expect that other aspects of story will be dealt with at some point in the book, though that may not be true.  For now, however, the focus has been on the language as the tool, and I am going to not worry about the sort of silly nature of some of what I have written.  I mean, the first one is something tha might work in the right context, but I do not know that context.  However, to focus back on what I feel I was learning from this exercise: the point of changing the sentence length is to be capable of using the sentence for different effects.  In this exercise, while Le Guin segregates the sentences from each other, making the long sentence and the short sentence exist in their own spaces, the intent is clearly to explore each space separately so that the tool may be entirely ingrained.  Within the context that I discussed before doing these writings, I see this even more expansively.  In my mind, right now, I am seeing how, by exploring each element alone, I am building a new map of language.  This, of course, is not a replacement for what already exists in my mind, but my learning comes largely from a poetic framework.  In that context, their are many other considerations, and the nature of the language is very different, from the perspective of intent.  In poetic work, the language must be a thing itself, and is the body of the piece.  In fiction, I am aware that this relationship to the words is different, but I am seeing how I can expand my intuitions and understanding into a more specific and disciplined set of tools.  In this exercise, for instance, I began to see many things in each part.  In the first portion, I had to gain a deeper understanding of how even a small sentence can be varied.  I explored the potential that exists in a very limited range of possibilities, and discovered it was more complicated and had greater potential than I had consciously reflected.  I don't think I was unaware of this, but it was not a thing that had come into my mind as a whole and cohesive notion, and it seems to me to be a rather tremendous thing.  In the second part, I considered a lot of things that are hard to explain.  For one, I had a fear of "cheating" with semicolons, as they can replace periods, so I had to carefully consider how I used them in a way that was genuine.  It should be noted that I am a huge lover of semicolons already, so my respect and admiration for them, ridiculous as those sentiments sound in this context, are certain to be a large part of my desire to do them true justice in this case.  It was not so much a matter of how to manage the sentence in terms of meaning, but more in terms of the energy that makes it a single unit.  I am not sure, honestly, that I entirely succeeded based on that criteria, but I don't think the point here is that form of success, but instead gaining a deeper understanding. As I think about it, I can discern, in my mind, a new appreciation that is connected to that question of what makes something one sentence.  Not merely in terms of punctuation, of course.  That is an easy thing.  By making myself write such a long single sentence, I knew it would be difficult to achieve it if I didn't keep the meaning clear to the reader, and thus I had to keep dependent clauses condensed and make certain that any one section made sense, but I also now see how that has to be balanced with a secondary consideration relating to how one keeps the energy moving through the sentence in a way that allows it to remain authentically a single unit in that way.  I don't know if i achieved that, but my recognition of it gives me a better understanding of language in a way that I truly appreciate.