Writing Is Hard.
Sep. 6th, 2009 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misslj_authorNo, really, it is. And I say this as someone who can churn out 500-1500 words a day without any problem if I put my mind to it.
But churning it out isn't the issue. Making it good is what makes it hard. You write and then reread to fix up errors and find yourself thinking, 'Hm, how many times have I used this word in this sentence... and I've run out of similies!' Or my other personal favourite, which runs along the lines of 'Holy run-on sentence, Batman!'
I admit I'm the queen of the run-on sentence. I love my sentences and I love words, but I really need to learn to use the full-stop more. I should make an inspirational poster saying 'Be not afraid of the full-stop! The full-stop is your friend.' And for every full-stop I don't use, oh, I abuse the comma. The comma and I have a love/hate relationship, as Rian commented to me a little while ago, it's either a feast or a famine.
I've been to university, I went to one of the top three high schools in my state. I have had an excellent (and varied) education. But part of the education system in Australia in the 70s and 80s was that grammar and basic English were taught specifically in primary school as a framework for further learning. (Primary school, for non-Aussies, is for children between ages 5 and 12.)
Because my primary education was in years pre-internet there was no way that parents could research options for schooling. They had to place their trust in the school their children were going to and hope that the education was satisfactory. Luckily, I got into an excellent high school - by pure accident, I sometimes think - and so I have no doubt that eased my parents minds quite a bit. However, the education I recieved prior to that was sub-par by anyone's standards.
Never have I felt so out of my depth as I did in year 8, the first year of high school. Because what we were taught in primary school was woefully inadequate to any high school education system, I did appallingly in the maths and sciences because I'd had absolutely no prior education in those fields at all - except for multiplication tables, basic adding and subtracting. Science was based on watching a show made for children once a week, which was boring because we didn't understand it. English wasn't much better - spelling and reading comprehension were taught but that was about it. Grammar? Touched on lightly, perhaps once. An old friend from primary school once remarked that "It was more of a glorified daycare center than a school," and he's right.
What saved me from failing English forever was no doubt my love of reading and of writing. I might not be able to tell you what, exactly, an adverb is, but I do know how to form a sentence!
Which brings me back to the original statement: writing is hard.
I'm still in research mode for Broken Wings, a novel with the Archangel Gabriel as the main character. Research mode is lasting longer in this case because of who he is - I don't want to be defending lack of knowledge of a certain point of obscure Orthodoxy theory, for example. Not that this material would go into the story, but I want to be able to have Gabriel sound like an Archangel and not just like a bad tempered, egomaniacal, immortal brat with wings.
My main problem at this point, in preliminary writings, has been his dialogue. Should I write his accent phonetically? Should I just mention that yes, he does sound like a dockworker from London in the 60s living in the present day? Should I do a combination of both? And when I do use certain phonetics, such as 'y' know' or 'an'' or 'this is that and there, right,' etc, should I use the full word or the slang spelling?
Writing is hard. And Gabe's dialogue structure is going to confound me for weeks.
But churning it out isn't the issue. Making it good is what makes it hard. You write and then reread to fix up errors and find yourself thinking, 'Hm, how many times have I used this word in this sentence... and I've run out of similies!' Or my other personal favourite, which runs along the lines of 'Holy run-on sentence, Batman!'
I admit I'm the queen of the run-on sentence. I love my sentences and I love words, but I really need to learn to use the full-stop more. I should make an inspirational poster saying 'Be not afraid of the full-stop! The full-stop is your friend.' And for every full-stop I don't use, oh, I abuse the comma. The comma and I have a love/hate relationship, as Rian commented to me a little while ago, it's either a feast or a famine.
I've been to university, I went to one of the top three high schools in my state. I have had an excellent (and varied) education. But part of the education system in Australia in the 70s and 80s was that grammar and basic English were taught specifically in primary school as a framework for further learning. (Primary school, for non-Aussies, is for children between ages 5 and 12.)
Because my primary education was in years pre-internet there was no way that parents could research options for schooling. They had to place their trust in the school their children were going to and hope that the education was satisfactory. Luckily, I got into an excellent high school - by pure accident, I sometimes think - and so I have no doubt that eased my parents minds quite a bit. However, the education I recieved prior to that was sub-par by anyone's standards.
Never have I felt so out of my depth as I did in year 8, the first year of high school. Because what we were taught in primary school was woefully inadequate to any high school education system, I did appallingly in the maths and sciences because I'd had absolutely no prior education in those fields at all - except for multiplication tables, basic adding and subtracting. Science was based on watching a show made for children once a week, which was boring because we didn't understand it. English wasn't much better - spelling and reading comprehension were taught but that was about it. Grammar? Touched on lightly, perhaps once. An old friend from primary school once remarked that "It was more of a glorified daycare center than a school," and he's right.
What saved me from failing English forever was no doubt my love of reading and of writing. I might not be able to tell you what, exactly, an adverb is, but I do know how to form a sentence!
Which brings me back to the original statement: writing is hard.
I'm still in research mode for Broken Wings, a novel with the Archangel Gabriel as the main character. Research mode is lasting longer in this case because of who he is - I don't want to be defending lack of knowledge of a certain point of obscure Orthodoxy theory, for example. Not that this material would go into the story, but I want to be able to have Gabriel sound like an Archangel and not just like a bad tempered, egomaniacal, immortal brat with wings.
My main problem at this point, in preliminary writings, has been his dialogue. Should I write his accent phonetically? Should I just mention that yes, he does sound like a dockworker from London in the 60s living in the present day? Should I do a combination of both? And when I do use certain phonetics, such as 'y' know' or 'an'' or 'this is that and there, right,' etc, should I use the full word or the slang spelling?
Writing is hard. And Gabe's dialogue structure is going to confound me for weeks.
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Date: Sun, Sep. 6th, 2009 06:33 am (UTC)Snap. That was exactly the post and comments that led me to set this one up. A LJ works just as well as a site and the plus accounts have image hosting and all that, so that's even better than buying a domain, then paying for web space, etc, etc.
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Date: Sun, Sep. 6th, 2009 06:44 am (UTC)no subject
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