A Writer's Notebook, Day Six-Hundred-And-EightyTwo
It is another very late night of writing, but I did get started on a new story that I am enjoying working on and which seems to be coming out with a certain ease so far, though that may be enough to jinx it. I do have a strong sense of what is coming next, and chose to stop work before I got to a certain part of the story I already see in my mind, and had considered using as the start at one point, but decided it was best to leave for later. Part of the reason for the decision to stop when I did (aside from the recognition that I had other work and it was already late) was in order to have a place to start tomorrow, though that does not seem a problem with my fiction most of the time at the moment. I feel quite good with my writing habits in terms of output at the moment, though my schedule is ridiculous at times.
I am also a bit concerned about my fiction beginning to repeat certain structures, or themes in a way that feels as if it might be worth fighting. The story I am working on now is very different from the others I have written in most regards, but I am seeing the general direction and shape of it as sharing qualities with previous work. I am not intending to be cryptic, but it is a difficult thing to explain, as the specifics are rather particular to my fiction. It is to do with the way I approach metafictionality, I suppose, and certain things that grow out of that regarding how I try to present the work so the suspension of disbelief in the fiction is expanded at the end to include the world, though that is not an explanation I expect to make great sense for those who have not read some of the stories I write. Not everything is the same in this way, but their are overlaps and I would like to find ways to get to other, deeper places with those ideas, so I can keep exploring and progressing within the realm of these ideas and techniques in a way that allows me to do work that feels fresher and not repetitive. Of course, my impression may be a function of being the writer and seeing those aspects. The stories have very different qualities in many other ways, and I do try to make certain their is a twist on what I am doing that is different, so it may not come across as so similar in a negative way to other readers. I won't know the answer to that until more of my stories are read, and I decided that it is more important, at this moment, to keep writing fiction as I am. If I am going to do new things with my writing, the best way to discover those is by writing more, as I keep repeating in different ways, both here and elsewhere.
I am again going to mention that I did write my poetry as well. I do think that is the engine, even now, that it is keeping me going, and even that much of my ability to keep writing the fiction results from having pushed myself to write poems the way I have been. It is a different thing, writing a story, but the thing with poetry is, if I can start, I know I can get going, because I can just see what happens and edit it around whatever I discover. For example, I wrote a poem tonight that turned out to be about fake psychics, but when I started, I was not at all sure what it was about. When I figured it out, I went back and made changes to make certain the whole of the poem worked. In another poem I wrote tonight, I had a long tangent that just described a memory that had little to do with the rest of the poem, as far as I could tell, but I put it in because I have learned to trust those instincts. Just the other day I was looking through some work in preparing it to send out, and I noted a poem that had a moment in it where I indulged a strange metaphor that had been dropped in by me out of nowhere, and in rereading it, I saw how that image had centered the poem and given it a weight otherwise missing, not because of the metaphor alone, but because the image in it served as a counter to the rest of the poem which was less grounded and more abstract. The point is, I am not always certain what I am doing is sensible when it happens, but that does not always mean it is not meaningful, though I do not know whether it is happy accidents or the purposeful acts of my unconscious or whatever, and I am not all that worried about knowing. I do, as I said, think this ability is part of what has freed me up in my fiction as well, and I am very glad to be doing all the work I am involved with, both poetry and prose.
I am also a bit concerned about my fiction beginning to repeat certain structures, or themes in a way that feels as if it might be worth fighting. The story I am working on now is very different from the others I have written in most regards, but I am seeing the general direction and shape of it as sharing qualities with previous work. I am not intending to be cryptic, but it is a difficult thing to explain, as the specifics are rather particular to my fiction. It is to do with the way I approach metafictionality, I suppose, and certain things that grow out of that regarding how I try to present the work so the suspension of disbelief in the fiction is expanded at the end to include the world, though that is not an explanation I expect to make great sense for those who have not read some of the stories I write. Not everything is the same in this way, but their are overlaps and I would like to find ways to get to other, deeper places with those ideas, so I can keep exploring and progressing within the realm of these ideas and techniques in a way that allows me to do work that feels fresher and not repetitive. Of course, my impression may be a function of being the writer and seeing those aspects. The stories have very different qualities in many other ways, and I do try to make certain their is a twist on what I am doing that is different, so it may not come across as so similar in a negative way to other readers. I won't know the answer to that until more of my stories are read, and I decided that it is more important, at this moment, to keep writing fiction as I am. If I am going to do new things with my writing, the best way to discover those is by writing more, as I keep repeating in different ways, both here and elsewhere.
I am again going to mention that I did write my poetry as well. I do think that is the engine, even now, that it is keeping me going, and even that much of my ability to keep writing the fiction results from having pushed myself to write poems the way I have been. It is a different thing, writing a story, but the thing with poetry is, if I can start, I know I can get going, because I can just see what happens and edit it around whatever I discover. For example, I wrote a poem tonight that turned out to be about fake psychics, but when I started, I was not at all sure what it was about. When I figured it out, I went back and made changes to make certain the whole of the poem worked. In another poem I wrote tonight, I had a long tangent that just described a memory that had little to do with the rest of the poem, as far as I could tell, but I put it in because I have learned to trust those instincts. Just the other day I was looking through some work in preparing it to send out, and I noted a poem that had a moment in it where I indulged a strange metaphor that had been dropped in by me out of nowhere, and in rereading it, I saw how that image had centered the poem and given it a weight otherwise missing, not because of the metaphor alone, but because the image in it served as a counter to the rest of the poem which was less grounded and more abstract. The point is, I am not always certain what I am doing is sensible when it happens, but that does not always mean it is not meaningful, though I do not know whether it is happy accidents or the purposeful acts of my unconscious or whatever, and I am not all that worried about knowing. I do, as I said, think this ability is part of what has freed me up in my fiction as well, and I am very glad to be doing all the work I am involved with, both poetry and prose.
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