tell all the truth but tell it slant

reading & writing

[easternpine]

Connections

Find me on Storygraph, or find my fanfiction related writing on AO3. Cheers!

[easternpine]

Helen DeWitt, I get you

Saari Residence 2027, eldest Oyster

There’s something I can’t talk about yet so I shall talk about something else.

[easternpine]

"Mostly I write fiction, which requires the slow composting of life before it becomes useable material, and I have no notion at the time what might or might not break down into fictional possibility."

---Julian Barnes, Departure(s)

[easternpine]

Transcription by Ben Lerner

So far, the premise amounts to: man ruins phone, man discovers life without phone is hard. (Also, cryptic old German intellectual speaks intellectually.)

How about this gem of a line? "...craving my cellular phone on a cellular level"

😂😂😂 omg, just NO.

[easternpine]

I know it's not sexy to say you like Charles Dickens these days, but goddamn I always forget how much I love him. Is he an unapologetic maximilist? Yes. Is he sentimental? Often. But the man was just so clever and funny, and his rhetorical talent was through the roof. There is so much to learn from him.

[easternpine]

It was an accident waiting to happen

This weekend I had a very strange, very vivid dream. Probably the most vivid I've had in years.

I'll preface my description by sharing that I'm in the middle of an intense re-read of The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. It's a bit of a strange book to categorize--it's neither fiction nor nonfiction; it's a travel book, but it's not; it's a history of a lot of things but not any one thing; and it reads like a memoir, but it isn't. And while it's written in first person, the narrator is never identified as Sebald himself, nor as anyone else in particular.

There are a lot of things going on this incredible work of art. I won't go into detail, but the overarching themes include decay, destruction, and oblivion: a loss of history, a loss of memory, a loss of place.

As for the dream----

In the dream, I am recalling a disturbing dream to my husband in detail. This is the story I tell him:

The first thing I remember is being a passenger in the front seat of a car. The car is snaking along a high, winding road that overlooks a small valley. The vegetation in these hills is brown and dry, and there aren't many trees--a few oaks here and there--and the sky is a dusky orange-blue. It looks like early spring.

In the valley below, there's a patch of built-up land, with short commercial buildings that remind me of a quaint, seaside main street, a large thoroughfare in a small town. The lights are just coming on and I can see light traffic on the roads. One of the buildings in town has one of those classic theatre signs that run vertically along its face; I can't make out the name, but the letters are big and red and written in a serif font.

We are coming around a long curve when I see the black car ahead of us pull over into a dusty turnout overlooking the valley. Here, time slows, as if I am watching from a particular vantage point. The driver steps out and opens the the rear passenger door. A well-dressed man emerges; his suit is black and closely tailored. He steps out toward the precipice and gazes out onto the valley, surveying it as if it's his, or maybe he wants it to be his. I get the feeling he's someone powerful. Someone who can bend anyone's will, who can make things happen when he wants them to.

As I watch him watch the world below, a wave of darkness washes over. Suddenly, I'm no longer in the car, but travelling along the same road on foot, no trace of the car I was riding it nor its driver. At the lookout, the well-dressed man is still surveying the valley. Now, a woman and another man have joined him and their car is parked just at the shoulder of the road. Are they onlookers? Bystanders? Conspirators?

Down in the valley, thick columns of smoke are rising up from the streets. I'm taking aback. Everything seemed fine just a moment ago. I can't tell what's happening, only that there is some disaster.

Time passes faster and now I'm down in the valley, approaching town. I see there is a pile up of cars by the theatre. Things are on fire. Then, a small blue car catches my eye. Its front end is crumpled against the corner of a brick storefront, and smoke is pouring out from under its hood, but I immediately recognize it as mine. In the passenger side window, I see my own face. At first, I wonder how this can be. If my soul is outside of my body, and I'm walking freely about the streets, I must be dead. But then I see I'm not: my mouth is moving, I'm shouting something and slapping the glass with my hands. I'm trying desperately to get out.

I'm confused. Who am I, then? And who is the driver of the car? Is the driver dead? Is this happening now, or is this a premonition? A dream? A memory?

And then I wake up. There is no ending, and I never find out what happens to the me in the car.

[easternpine]

books

"But to have an endless number of books sit on the shelf just because one has read them or might one day read them is absurd. Besides, is there anything more depressing than a wall of books? But you, my dear, disagree. Like Montaigne, you believe that the very presence of books in your room cultivates you, that books are not only to be read but to be lived with."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

[easternpine]

I had the privilege (!) of attending a great talk with Canadian spec fic authors Amanda Leduc and Yiming Ma, alongside Anna de Marcken (whose book It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over I had read recently - talk about a unique take on zombies!). It was probably one of my favourite events so far. There's just something so special about speculative fiction that I don't get out of other genres, that space between the real and the unreal that's so ripe for exploration. I also find that readers and writers of spec fic come from such varied backgrounds, which is something I appreciate on both sides.

(This is Yiying Ma's debut, btw! So interesting to hear that he has aphantasia, especially since his book deals in memory. Can't wait to read it 📖)

[easternpine]

Getting to hear both Eimear McBride and Emma Donoghue speak was such a treasure!!! I think I just fangirled inside the whole time. I loved hearing each of them speak about their writing process and their thoughts when it comes to character.

I was especially interested in Eimear McBride's description of wanting to "break the intellect" and go directly for the gut, to reach deep into interiority with her style. It's the perfect way to describe it. (And apparently The Lesser Bohemians first draft was 800 pages??? Whittled down to 320 is crazy. I guess the upside is she knows those characters inside and out now.)

If I'd only come to hear the two of them speak I'd still have been overjoyed. I feel energized!! Let's gooooooo

[easternpine]

When an author's worst book is still a 4/5 for you, you know you've found one of the few who will never truly disappoint you.

[easternpine]

Going over my kids' lesson plans for this year and I'm currently reviewing scaffolding & conceptual frameworks for AP Lit. This stuff is immensely helpful. They're things I know, but it serves to remind me of everything I'm juggling as I write. It's easy to forget how demanding writing can be when you're trying to do so with concerted intention. Not to say I do it all on purpose. I am doing it consciously on one level, sure, but also...not. I remind my children of this when they read and interprets texts: good authors make choices with purpose, but they may not be fully aware of everything. Intention and interpretation are two different animals.

[easternpine]

"There is no Jesus here these days just Come all you fucking lads. I’ll have you every one any day. Breakfast dinner lunch and tea. The human frame. The human frame. The human frame requires. Give them something. A good hock spit for what it’s worth. They’ll say my name forever shame but do exactly what I say. I’m a laughing skirt up round my knees and feathery boy rosen cheek between. I found the shell I’ll rap until it breaks. I found my new blousy blazen face. It makes me. Laugh. The shininess of it. Of say so. Follow tremble and obey." - A Girl is Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride

[easternpine]

"He was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight."

- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

[easternpine]

What is it with some speculative fiction authors and feeling the need to incessantly beat you over the head with THE MESSAGE. Like, I get that THE MESSAGE is really important, and I agree with you that it's important, but could you like, work it in more naturally? Trust your readers to pick up THE MESSAGE via your craft? Stop writing like you're writing an essay or a treatise with worldbuilding? It's a shame to see a great premise turn into such eye-rolling and clunky reading.

On another complain-y note: published authors giving writing advice to other writers should probably stop bagging on English class and calling it "boring." Can it be boring? Sure, especially if you have bad teachers or professors (I was lucky to have awesome ones who sparked my love of literature, but that's just me). But you are WRITERS. It's what you do for a living! Why, in a time when literacy rates are dropping, would you continue to push the harmful narrative that English is "boring"?? I can't help but think this is yet another way in which we end up with more of the same-same, poorly written, trite novels over and over and over and over and over again. AUGH.

[easternpine]

*Write write write write write write write*

did I eat?

*write write write write write write write write write*

crap, I didn't

*write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write*

oh well

*write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write write*

[easternpine]

Writing as a complex act

Writing is unlike any other art or craft I've ever undertaken. It can be infinitely complex, drawing on an plethora of skills and expertise to create a single, unified piece. First, there are the basics of plot, character, and setting. These are fundamental and require careful attention to develop effectively.

But equally important are prose, pacing, dialogue, POV, and style. Even just taking one of those elements—prose, for example— it can be further broken down into several parts: grammar, punctuation, word choice, cadence, and sentence structure. How does the word choice or cadence serve the character? The mood? The genre?

What about more complex considerations like tone, mood, motifs, and themes?

Then there are practical areas like research (historical or anything outside of you area of expertise) or editing and proofreading. Or just keeping track of all the different elements and making sure they work together, that they’re not contradicting one another or forgotten.

And not only does writing demand more linear thinking, but it also requires the ability to switch between linear and non-linear modes often. I need to be able to daydream about this scene that takes place in a freezing meadow—imagine the cold, the bare vegetation, how the characters interact with the environment—but I also need to move the reader through the scene in an interesting and logical way. I can’t just keep going on about icy droplets and glittering snow and red cheeks.

It's like I'm holding all the strings, and I have to keep them from tangling into a knotted mess.

Anyway, all this as a long way to say: writing is hard, but that’s what makes it so satisfying when you’re done.

[easternpine]

Julia Armfield on The Writing Life

I read Our Wives Under the Sea this year and was instantly in love with her writing. I feel like she and I have a lot of similar approaches, though obviously she is a published author and I'm just some shcmoe on the internet 😅 Really great interview with her here. She definitely doesn't hold any punches on her opinions, which I appreciate!