A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Five-Hundred-And-Seventy-One

I have been struggling to focus with my writing for the past few days.  In part, I am just tired, but I know it is also that I am feeling stressed and overwhelmed and stuck.  There is a lot that feels wrong at the moment, and I can't really imagine it getting better, I can only imagine it taking a huge amount of effort that won't really be worth it in the end, even if it is still going to be necessary.  I need to feel that I am actually progressing towards a tangible outcome, a result, in a real sense, not just measuring the effort I am making, not just my own actions and the work I am doing.  I don't want to keep putting energy into stuff and pretending that that effort is supposed to be its own reward. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is this whole blog thing for anyway?

I am starting this because I said I would.  My friend Tim persuaded me, and that was probably a far more difficult and complicated maneuver on his part, that I should start this blog, and I made a commitment that I would, so here I am.  Which gives a reason for why this blog exists, but not really much of a purpose for that to lend meaning to that existence, which makes it like a lot of us, I suppose.  Of course, there are two purposes to this exercise, though there might only be one at a time, as they are largely about perspective, I think.  For instance, right now, a large part of the purpose, for me, is to have the commitment of adding to this blog consistently, as a matter of building the habit of working more steadily.  I have built that habit before, but it has always been intermittent, largely driven by situational demands.  In college, many years ago, I wrote daily, because I had an audience and because I was in classes that I felt committed to wr...
Read more

VanderMeer's Wonderbook, Chapter Four: Narrative Design (Continued)

Plot is often seen within certain fairly standard structures.  The Freytag pyramid, mentioned yesterday, like the three act structure, and many other standard plot diagrams, builds tension towards the climax, then resolves that tension as the story ends.  Vandermeer shows this through a series of diagrams, and then follows with some additional plot diagrams that provide further options.  The first of these comes from a film school illustration, and consists of a series of overlapping circles.  The progress of the story is similar to that in the traditional plot diagrams, but the focus is upon the way that the circles overlap, a symbol of the transitions that move the story from one phase to the next.  The diagram implies that at each step, the new elements begin to mingle with the old, washing them out, before the next phase begins introducing the elements necessary for that transition. After this we get a diagram describing the picaresque novel, a story whe...
Read more

Poem: It Was A Promise

It Was A Promise I did not say it without meaning it, all the way and without needing more or something else to be given, though it is  not without danger to trust and hope. You can choose and I  will feel whatever comes of your response.
Read more