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Action! Inaction!
Every sentence begins with a stressed syllable, mostly alternating stressed and unstressed: DUH duh. DUH duh. (Yep, trochaic rhythm.) I’m trying to make you feel how Painter receives a bit of input, then struggles to process it: Darkness. (Where?) Desperate coughing. (Huh?) Thunderous pounding. “What?”
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Writing While SAD
I was a sad person, composing a first-person narrative that was fictionally composed by a sad fictional person. I didn’t have to look far to know what sadness feels like, but to express that feeling–while feeling it–wasn’t easy. Here are some strategies I used.
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Light Scatter
When I type up a chapter, comprehension becomes possible. The light-scatter coalesces into a focused beam, and I can see my book’s multitude of flaws and failures. And that’s okay: Imperfections are rocks that form a path across a river. I step on them, thank them, and leave them behind.
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Unintended Consequences
No wonder we tell children that gifts are randomly carried down chimneys. It seems like a reasonably accurate fantasy story.
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Life in Books: The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan
The Gray House uses no tropes at all and explains very little, therefore even an experienced fantasy reader like myself is forced to rely on her wits. It has a mysterious, ambiguous ending, and when you finish the last page, I predict that you will turn to the first page and start reading it again,…
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How to Write a Page
Writing alternate versions of page one allowed me to think more clearly about what belongs on that page of this book, and why. Writing is thinking, and writing while thinking about writing…well, it certainly could be a knotty mess, but for me it sometimes yields insight.
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My Words are Rocks.
….But my words are rocks. I build with them, but they are rocks. Tiffany windows they are not.
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A Moderately Grueling Economics Exercise
Sheesh, not more thinking! I want to get back to writing!
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Courage from the Outside In
In the dream, I was making love to a woman, and at a crucial point my anatomy changed and I became a man. (A few months later, I dreamed that I lost my husband on the train and Deb took his seat. Needless to say, I soon divorced.)
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Inventing a Dialect
Fantasy writers must invent worlds that are alien to, yet intelligible to, their readers. We can make the language strange by various means… But if we make the language too weird, it will be too difficult to read. We could make the language unapologetically current, but unless it’s a contemporary fantasy it will seem anachronistic…
Laurie J. Marks 