Featured authors again
Jun 26, 2005 Read/heard/seen, Writing
I decided to start that back up but I’ll have to learn to live with repeating myself. Pamela Frankau is it for July because I just read “The Willow Cabin” and I walked around thinking with an English accent and angry with Brett because I had him mixed up with the love interest in my mind. (Does anyone else do that? I’ll be annoyed with Brett because of the mood I’m reading, as if he’s responsible for however the lead male is behaving.) See her quote there? Well, if you’re reading this in the archives you won’t so I’ll repeat it, “I like to use as few commas as possible so that sentences will go down in one swallow without touching the sides.” I’m a total comma whore. Ask Becca if reading through my blog doesn’t convince you. I have to think on that image — things slipping down in one swallow. Maybe I’ll try removing my commas more often.
You want to know how to become a better writer? Read good writing. I was virtually talking to someone who was complaining about the quality of writing in a particular genre of fiction but really the problem is that she doesn’t like the genre. Neither do I but that’s why I rarely read it. (I don’t read any genre a whole bunch but dip into a lot of it.) I don’t understand torturing yourself with writing you don’t like when there is so much damn good writing out there. Besides which the thing is with genre fiction is if you don’t get it, you don’t get it. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad if it’s not your thing.
This is the last paragraph of The Willow Cabin (it holds no spoilers):
In such a moment of solitude as this, she could feel accompanied by every joyful adventure that she had known, every person who she had loved. She brought into the empty room the crowd, of whom she was made.
Beautiful! Now who couldn’t learn a bit about writing from reading a book written like that?
I also read fiction instead of self-help. I find more insight in a good novel than I ever have out of a book with tips to make me better at this, that or the other thing.
The Willow Cabin was making me think about acquisitions. The two main women in the book talk about the “tyranny of property.” I am not like this — I like property. Then when I got online to do work, I (of course) tried to avoid work by scanning through my bookmarks and I started seeing the tyranny of my bookmarks.
I bookmark things out of greed; I love the acquisition. I have no time to ever look at 75% of them again. Instead I feel guilty every time I open my bookmarks file to find the one or two I use regularly but I can’t delete them. Tyranny indeed. When I get a new browser I rarely import the bookmarks. Then for a very brief time, I feel absolutely free of all those sites I mean to visit someday soon to read in earnest instead of just scan. But soon it begins again. Someone sends me an article I want to read but don’t have time or the homeschool list has a link to a nifty science site and there I am drowning in bookmarks again. It’s a terrible thing.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll delete all of them. Or maybe the next day. Well, maybe I’ll leave them just in case. Oh forget about it.
June 26th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
I know just what you mean about the bookmarks. When we switched to Mozilla I felt so free without all my old bookmarks (especially the recipes and knitting patterns) and then my husband did me the misguided favor of importing them a few days later.
I know if I had Tivo I’d do the same thing–Tivoing shows just to “have” them and never getting around to watching them.
June 27th, 2005 at 1:09 am
Not only am I also a comma whore (although, I’ve always called myself a comma slut), but I also hoard things — especially bookmarks! — that I mean to use, but never do.
June 27th, 2005 at 8:43 am
Ok, so can you teach me about commas? I have diarrhea of the comma. I just can’t seem to get it.
June 27th, 2005 at 11:05 am
My bookmarks are exactly the same…. I’ve been thinking I should delete them, but….
(And I’m way more into the “….” than the comma. It is a sickness, all the same.)
June 27th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
i probably need to do more commas, and semi colons and periods! but i don’t care what others say/think - that comes with old age
i love your authors series!
(my dh answers for the worlds f/ups - not a particular character…poor guy!)
i recently deleted ALL bookmarks. I have been the same way - greedily wanting to save everything to partake in later/more deeply.
June 27th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
I’ve been trying to struggle through Henry James’ “The wings of the dove” recently, and the man is completely enamored of commas! there are so many clauses in each sentence that I lose track of what the F is being said and have to go back and try and pick out the main thread, buried in all the explanations and qualifications! I don’t think I can finish the book!