Plot School on the Porch from Jeannine Atkins blog.
I would say, myself, that the hard part is remembering everything I've studied and have been trying to train myself to do so that I can then do it. Oh, my gosh...I shouldn't have used "remembering" and "training" in the same sentence. It reminds me of how badly my martial arts class went Wednesday night, which is kind of related in terms of having to remember things and then apply them...and apply them well, not just approximate correct behavior. There is a writing/martial arts metaphor in there somewhere.
The link came from Becky Levine.
I'm all for a martial arts metaphor. I don't know much about it, but I think you've hit on wanting that body memory of moves. If only we could just feel plot through our hands: holding fingers away from the keyboard when there's an essential hole to be filled later, hitting the return key to make a paragraph instead of explaining something that should wait.
ReplyDeleteIt's all so hard. And I think you hit on something in your next entry. When we have lots of patience and adoration for work that's not so plotted, it may be even harder to create something that editors will recognize as narrative drive.
Oh, I wasn't even thinking of muscle memory. Very good.
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