Tuesday, September 22, 2009
First draft done
Just finished my first complete science fiction story draft in over a year. I feel a bit hollowed out.
The difficulty of writing a first draft of poetry is holding a line through to a meaningful connection among words. It's a sustained pressure; I want to say it's like sprinting, but let's go farther afield. We'll say it's like, if you haven't done strength training in advance, you'll never be ready for the bizarre vocation of shutting overstuffed suitcases. But once the suitcase is stuffed and the clasp locks, and you determine there are no shirtsleeves poking out, then there's nothing more to be done. You either deliver the bag to its rightful owner (God, a friend, a magazine, a woman), store it away to be rifled through later, or chuck it. That's what writing poetry is like. What is becoming, in poetry, very quickly became; taking a rotten line or two out, you see how the whole project unstacks. I hate to say it's easy. More like, it's easier to disown. There's a fun to it.
My limited experience tells me that writing fiction, especially science fiction, one begins with an engineering trick. Which is a euphemism for a lie one has to work very hard on. It's as if one had to build a bridge starting in the middle of a river, and know whether or not it'll cross the river only after it's finished. With prose, there's just so much of it. It's in bulk. There's a fun to this, too, but it's lonelier and more possessive.
What a weird, niggardly, selfish practice. ¶ 10:09 AM
The difficulty of writing a first draft of poetry is holding a line through to a meaningful connection among words. It's a sustained pressure; I want to say it's like sprinting, but let's go farther afield. We'll say it's like, if you haven't done strength training in advance, you'll never be ready for the bizarre vocation of shutting overstuffed suitcases. But once the suitcase is stuffed and the clasp locks, and you determine there are no shirtsleeves poking out, then there's nothing more to be done. You either deliver the bag to its rightful owner (God, a friend, a magazine, a woman), store it away to be rifled through later, or chuck it. That's what writing poetry is like. What is becoming, in poetry, very quickly became; taking a rotten line or two out, you see how the whole project unstacks. I hate to say it's easy. More like, it's easier to disown. There's a fun to it.
My limited experience tells me that writing fiction, especially science fiction, one begins with an engineering trick. Which is a euphemism for a lie one has to work very hard on. It's as if one had to build a bridge starting in the middle of a river, and know whether or not it'll cross the river only after it's finished. With prose, there's just so much of it. It's in bulk. There's a fun to this, too, but it's lonelier and more possessive.
What a weird, niggardly, selfish practice. ¶ 10:09 AM
