Forrest ,'Conversations with Dead People'
A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.
On washingtonpost.com right now, they are having a live chat with copy editors. Here's the blurb:
Bill Walsh and Don Podesta, Post copeditros, talk about the challegne of producing an errot-free neswpaper.
Hee!
Edit: Here's the link to the discussion: [link]
Though I do think the kernel of good advice within the bad would be, "don't give a character anything you won't be able to tell a story around."
That's a very good point. A detective in an old-fashioned Iron Lung is doable, but probably simpler to give him some mobility.
Think we'll kill the thread today?
Also, is there a problem with the "smile is"/"sunglasses are" dichotomy? I could've gone "smiles are" but I stuck with the sibilance, and because I mean that one particular smile, not the all the smiles your face can smile.Not for me. I tried subbing in smiles are, and I didn't like it nearly as well. I just wish I could hear the music. Well, I do hear it set to music, but the odds of it being the music you're hearing are low.
wrod. The best advice I heard on the whole premise/goal thing was "Write the story in your head first, and odds are by the end of it you'll know what the underlying themes are."
Personally speaking, I agree with this. But I do know people who are just the opposite. They need to know where they're ending, why and how, before they even get started. I have to start, and have no clue where I'm going, 'til I get there or the characters tell me. My mother tells me that when I was a kid, I was always asking, "Go fried? Go fried?" rather like a puppy who could speak. I didn't ever have any place in mind, I just wanted to go for a ride. Anything I write--fiction or non, just tells me it wants to go fried.
Heh. I laid down the vocal tracks on the recorder today. If I get ambitious, I may do up some ACID files that I could rip and post. Mebbe. If I'm brave.
I don't have sound hooked up on my P.C., but that might get me to badger the dh into hooking it up. It's been almost a year and a half.
There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)
Heh. I just stumbled across this on another site, and thought it was strangely pertinent.
I may do up some ACID files that I could rip and post. Mebbe. If I'm brave.
Do it! Do it! I'm so curious.
I wrote a lyric the other night that will make no sense to anybody but me and a few of my friends. but i'm really loving it. I haven't written anything new in a while.
I'm thinking of getting a friend to translate into spanish and then I'll sing it once in English and once in Spanish. In the great tradition of the Clash and the Pogues -- singers who (I'm pretty sure) don't actually speak Spanish singing in it. (I did take in HS and have pretty good ideas of how things should be pronounced though.)
Those lyrics make me extremely happy right now. I'm still waiting for Nic to find the time to upload the Saturday Sessions tape with Ghosts on it up to the computer, and then down onto CD.
Really, look on writing books as your minions--they are there for you to use for your own purposes and only if you want to. If not, ignore them.
I totally agree with that in principle, but there's a problem, Robin, and it's the same one I find with "so, you're a new parent? Here's a book alllllll about parenting!" Basically, someone who is new at it, or unsure about it, and vulnerable, is going to believe every single damned word on some level, because there's nothing to tell them how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Most people don't possess that skill or talent, on either the intellectual or the visceral level - that's why they're reading the books in the first place, usually.
someone who is new at it, or unsure about it
Where would you recommend this person go instead? Someone with a sound head on their shoulders but no actual experience needs to know what's out there, and can reap value, I suspect.
I don't use how-to writing books, but have a complete addiction to art and photography technique books. It never occured to me to take any one of them as gospel, no matter how loud they were about it.
And I was new and unsure at art and photography myself -- that wasn't the issue. I don't believe any book 100% just on principle.
Where would you recommend this person go instead? Someone with a sound head on their shoulders but no actual experience needs to know what's out there, and can reap value, I suspect
In the case of parents, that's what support groups are for. Rather than a perfect baby in the whatfrickinever percentile of perfect babies on a page, they can (I did) see that Marianna's infant son Dominic is colicky and miserable for an hour after feeding; her doctor suggested blahblah. Look at others around you, where you can observe and see. I inifinitely prefer a group of writers discussing their own experience, just as I preferred a group of parents, dealing with the same shite I was.
It never occured to me to take any one of them as gospel, no matter how loud they were about it.
No, nor would I. But I remember a new mother in hospital when Jo was a few days old, whose "new mother instructional guide" was very fierce on the subject of how No Real Mother Would Bottlefeed Her Baby.
The child was severely malnourished - she didn't dare switch to a bottle. The kid was literally dying of starvation.
You do possess the talent. A lot of people don't, or even if they know some of the advice is purely subjective, doing nothing but reading the damned books won't give them the perception meters.
edited for typing. My house is buried under Russian workmen and sawdust. I'm at Kinko's.