The first day of the first week

Posted: May 2nd, 2010 under writing.
Tags: book, writing

Today begins the first week of the Creativity Clinic. I can kick back and relax because we don’t have to actually do any writing yet.

Ahh.

Anyway, this week’s all about … reworking our goals for the clinic? I’m sure Merrilee’s posts this week will clear up any confusion.

I haven’t updated my installation of WordPress in about a year because the host server I’m on doesn’t support PHP5. I just made the arrangements to get my site migrated to a new server that does, and hopefully I’ll soon have a prototype for my new (brighter) layout up to show you.

I’m about 13 chapters into Path of Daggers. So far the book seems to suffer from what I like to call ‘Twilight-itis’, where there may be a great story here, but everybody’s looking and glaring and cringing and sniffing at each other so much that it can take eight pages just to get two characters down the length of a hallway.

If I ever start doing that, slap me. Hard. I won’t turn the other cheek, I promise.

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7 Comments »

I love how you speak of Twilight-itis. It’s a terrible sickness, it spreads and is very hard to eliminate. Let’s do our best, all us writers!
By the way, I suddenly and very unexpectedly found myself in the middle of a film project in the university (I’m the producer, so the girl with the most work, it seems), so I have no time or concentration for writing short stories. But I will definitely follow your success!
Actually, about the Twilight-itis. I bought a book about writing a dialogue last week and after reading the first two chapters I sat down with a new scene for my new book and wrote a dialogue very unusual for myself. I made it an almost untagged dialogue, something I almost never do. It’s an experience, really, to have no glaring and sniffing and staring and twisting fingers and shrugging and shuffling their feet. Very interesting indeed. It was an experiment, I’ll have to evaluate it yet.

[Reply]

Comment by packsister — May 2, 2010 @ 3:43 pm
I’m primed to slap, Nick :) Looking forward to the new layout!

[Reply]

Comment by Merrilee Faber — May 2, 2010 @ 4:32 pm
@packsister: That sounds like an interesting book, what’s it called? I write untagged dialogue a lot, especially when I think of a conversation in my head that fits a scene, then I write it down, just naked dialogue, totally untagged, then I pepper it up a bit afterwards– seems to be working pretty well for me so far.
@Merrilee: As always, I knew I could count on you for something like this. ;D

[Reply]

Comment by Nick Enlowe — May 2, 2010 @ 10:04 pm
That’s the one:
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Dialogue-Tom-Chiarella/dp/1884910327

I seem to do it the other way around: I do play the dialogue in my mind, but then I write it with lots and lots of stuff between the actual speech parts, and only then do I cut those that seem too much. Hence, this untagged one was a completely different approach for me. That scene feels a little naked. It’s probably just me overreacting, it’s probably perfectly fine, I’m just not used to that. Hehe.

[Reply]

Comment by packsister — May 4, 2010 @ 3:16 pm
I’ve seen that book, thought about picking it up a few times. Next time I see it, I’ll snatch it up.
I like my method, but your method can be just as good. Sometimes it’s easier to trim scenes back than to try and add extension to them out of thin air. I’ve written some pretty crappy first drafts that way; it’s a big part of why my revision is taking so long, actually.

[Reply]

Comment by Nick Enlowe — May 4, 2010 @ 6:38 pm
Hey, maybe it’s not the best book evah, I just happen to read it. So far it only made me want to try out different things. Maybe when I’m through with it, I’ll know more about structuring a good dialogue, who knows. Maybe my dialogues aren’t even bad as they are now, who knows?
Each to their own way or writing. My way of writing too much at once comes from my times of some literary role playing, when the Twilight-itis was our common sickness and every glance and head turn was important and described. By now I still write the same but find some good taste to scratch the crap, hehe.
So you change a lot when you revise? I sometimes have to write whole parts of text anew.

[Reply]

Comment by packsister — May 5, 2010 @ 3:05 pm
I have to change EVERYTHING. well, almost. haha.

[Reply]

Comment by Nick Enlowe — May 5, 2010 @ 6:30 pm

~TrackBack URL~

I love how you speak of Twilight-itis. It’s a terrible sickness, it spreads and is very hard to eliminate. Let’s do our best, all us writers!
By the way, I suddenly and very unexpectedly found myself in the middle of a film project in the university (I’m the producer, so the girl with the most work, it seems), so I have no time or concentration for writing short stories. But I will definitely follow your success!
Actually, about the Twilight-itis. I bought a book about writing a dialogue last week and after reading the first two chapters I sat down with a new scene for my new book and wrote a dialogue very unusual for myself. I made it an almost untagged dialogue, something I almost never do. It’s an experience, really, to have no glaring and sniffing and staring and twisting fingers and shrugging and shuffling their feet. Very interesting indeed. It was an experiment, I’ll have to evaluate it yet.

[Reply]

Comment by packsister — May 2, 2010 @ 3:43 pm

I’m primed to slap, Nick :) Looking forward to the new layout!

Comment by Merrilee Faber — May 2, 2010 @ 4:32 pm

@packsister: That sounds like an interesting book, what’s it called? I write untagged dialogue a lot, especially when I think of a conversation in my head that fits a scene, then I write it down, just naked dialogue, totally untagged, then I pepper it up a bit afterwards– seems to be working pretty well for me so far.
@Merrilee: As always, I knew I could count on you for something like this. ;D

Comment by Nick Enlowe — May 2, 2010 @ 10:04 pm

That’s the one:
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Dialogue-Tom-Chiarella/dp/1884910327

I seem to do it the other way around: I do play the dialogue in my mind, but then I write it with lots and lots of stuff between the actual speech parts, and only then do I cut those that seem too much. Hence, this untagged one was a completely different approach for me. That scene feels a little naked. It’s probably just me overreacting, it’s probably perfectly fine, I’m just not used to that. Hehe.

Comment by packsister — May 4, 2010 @ 3:16 pm

I’ve seen that book, thought about picking it up a few times. Next time I see it, I’ll snatch it up.
I like my method, but your method can be just as good. Sometimes it’s easier to trim scenes back than to try and add extension to them out of thin air. I’ve written some pretty crappy first drafts that way; it’s a big part of why my revision is taking so long, actually.

Comment by Nick Enlowe — May 4, 2010 @ 6:38 pm

Hey, maybe it’s not the best book evah, I just happen to read it. So far it only made me want to try out different things. Maybe when I’m through with it, I’ll know more about structuring a good dialogue, who knows. Maybe my dialogues aren’t even bad as they are now, who knows?
Each to their own way or writing. My way of writing too much at once comes from my times of some literary role playing, when the Twilight-itis was our common sickness and every glance and head turn was important and described. By now I still write the same but find some good taste to scratch the crap, hehe.
So you change a lot when you revise? I sometimes have to write whole parts of text anew.

Comment by packsister — May 5, 2010 @ 3:05 pm

I have to change EVERYTHING. well, almost. haha.

Comment by Nick Enlowe — May 5, 2010 @ 6:30 pm