Posts
I have a writers’ group meeting tonight, and I’m looking forward to it very much. Some time ago, a friend of mine was bemoaning her lack of such a group on Facebook. I was in the process of finishing a course in fiction writing at school, and floated the idea of creating our own. After all, we both knew several writers; perhaps some of them would be keen on the idea too. So about six months ago, more or less, the inaugural meeting of Philly Literati took place. It’s been great.
I had two main motivations for starting a writers’ group. First, I had become accustomed to group critiques in my fiction class, and found the immediate feedback invaluable for clarifying and crystallizing my stories. Second, I needed a motivator, a group of people who were expecting new work from me on a monthly basis, because I knew that otherwise I might slip back into the procrastinatory habits that saw me take a 15 year break from writing. In both regards, the group has fulfilled my needs.
I’ll likely ramble on about writers’ groups a few times in this blog. The topic is large enough that entire books have been written on it. For my part, I know that the critiques I’ve received from the group have allowed me to see what works and what doesn’t in my stories. In my last short story, I reworked the entire ending after some group comments, and excised several paragraphs wholesale. The piece is much tighter now, and perhaps I’ll find a home for it soon at one of those innumerable literary journals sprinkling the world wide web.
Even beyond the motivating and critiquing aspects of the group, it’s just great fun to get together with other writers, aspiring and otherwise, and talk shop over a glass of wine. There’s nothing quite like it for injecting a bit of energy into your creative life. I leave every meeting filled with fresh insights and ready to get back to revising my current project. There’s also the excitement of figuring out what do write for next month’s meeting.
So if you happen to read this, guys and gals, I’m really looking forward to tonight. Who’s bringing the wine?
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Auspicious Beginnings?
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude
In writing, whether flash fiction, a short story, or novel, the first sentence has to tell. Beginnings are crucial to a well-told tale. Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells us a number of things at the outset of 100 Years of Solitude, almost all of which are designed to intrigue readers and usher them into the world of the story: first, we have the indication that many years will pass before the story reaches a climax; second, we have the introduction of a major character, one who will eventually face a firing squad (of course we immediately want to know why); third, we have the discovery of ice, something that was clearly exceptional to the young Aureliano Buendia (and again, we are left to wonder why). By any measure, this is a magnificent opening, and the Pulitzer Prize Board seemed to agree.
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."
- Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
And Hemingway's pretty much told us all we need to know here at the beginning of The Old Man and the Sea. We have an old man, he fishes alone, and he hasn't taken a fish for eighty-four days. On the surface, we're simply told where it's at with the story, but if we look deeper, we see that there's a tension in the sentence: the situation must change. With this setup, the old man has to catch a fish during the course of the narrative. The question now is what kind of fish, and how will the catching play out?
Good beginnings are crucial in literature. By extension, might we say that they're crucial for blogs, too? Call me cynical, but I'm not convinced of that; one's first blog post is generally destined to languish in the archives, uncovered only sporadically by interested surfers (if we're lucky). Still, while I hope this blog can turn into something useful for other writers, I'm also writing it for me. Thinking critically about the great works can only help when it comes to analyzing and revising my own writing.
We'll see what comes of this whole blog thing, in any case. Most days I'll shoot for informative, some days I'll shoot for entertaining, and some days, depending on my mood, I'll likely devolve into surreal babbling. But if things get too strange, at least Blogger will let me revise my posts. And that's kind of the point, isn't it?
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude
In writing, whether flash fiction, a short story, or novel, the first sentence has to tell. Beginnings are crucial to a well-told tale. Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells us a number of things at the outset of 100 Years of Solitude, almost all of which are designed to intrigue readers and usher them into the world of the story: first, we have the indication that many years will pass before the story reaches a climax; second, we have the introduction of a major character, one who will eventually face a firing squad (of course we immediately want to know why); third, we have the discovery of ice, something that was clearly exceptional to the young Aureliano Buendia (and again, we are left to wonder why). By any measure, this is a magnificent opening, and the Pulitzer Prize Board seemed to agree.
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."
- Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
And Hemingway's pretty much told us all we need to know here at the beginning of The Old Man and the Sea. We have an old man, he fishes alone, and he hasn't taken a fish for eighty-four days. On the surface, we're simply told where it's at with the story, but if we look deeper, we see that there's a tension in the sentence: the situation must change. With this setup, the old man has to catch a fish during the course of the narrative. The question now is what kind of fish, and how will the catching play out?
Good beginnings are crucial in literature. By extension, might we say that they're crucial for blogs, too? Call me cynical, but I'm not convinced of that; one's first blog post is generally destined to languish in the archives, uncovered only sporadically by interested surfers (if we're lucky). Still, while I hope this blog can turn into something useful for other writers, I'm also writing it for me. Thinking critically about the great works can only help when it comes to analyzing and revising my own writing.
We'll see what comes of this whole blog thing, in any case. Most days I'll shoot for informative, some days I'll shoot for entertaining, and some days, depending on my mood, I'll likely devolve into surreal babbling. But if things get too strange, at least Blogger will let me revise my posts. And that's kind of the point, isn't it?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
