squid process
Sep. 28th, 2005 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyGiant squid caught on camera.
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brisingamen, I'm unhappy about the researchers' methodology (do squid tentacles grow back? does anybody know?), but like both brisingamen and sosostris2012 I am geeked as all get out about the result.
Machiavelli is alive and well and interested in marine biology.
matociquala has a lovely entry about the writing process (or lack thereof).
As far as I can tell, my process seems to be that I can never do it the same way twice. Writing as Calvinball.
I wrote the novel that became Mélusine and The Virtu in fits and starts over a period of about five years. I had Felix's part of the first eight chapters of Mélusine written before I even knew Mildmay existed. The whole thing was a shining example of making it up as you go along; I'd have an idea, write as far as it took me, and then stop again for a day or a week or a couple of months until I had an idea about what happened next. (I might add that this methodology is only suitable if you (a.) have high-falutin' notions about "inspiration" and "organic creativity," as I did at the time, and (b.) really aren't worried about whether you ever finish anything or not. I did finish, but that was my natural stubbornness surmounting the obstacles I'd made.)
Then when that novel was finished and revised and out making big pleading puppy dog eyes at literary agents, I wrote the sequel (which has the working title of The Mirador). Completely different animal. I knew the ending first, and the process of writing the book was trying to figure out how to get there. I have monumental false starts (one of them is six chapters long, and these are 50 to 70 page chapters), and files' worth of artifacts of casting for a scent and generally flailing.
The next novel (which unfortunately seems to be broken, and I still haven't figured out how to fix it), I wrote in a month and a half, following my headlights all the way home, as E. L. Doctorow says. I could never see farther than about ten pages ahead of where I was, but I never got stuck, either. Only had to pause once to do the meta-noodling that normally is about half of my writing process, and that was only for a couple of hours. That novel was an odd creature all the way 'round; I wrote it right after I quit teaching, and it was like someone had opened a sluice-gate.
And I think I may have just figured out what's wrong with it--although I haven't the least idea in the world what to do about it. Huh.
The white-page rewrite that produced Mélusine and The Virtu (discussion here, and more details in the comments) was different again, because it wasn't a matter of coming up with what or who, but answering the question of how over and over and over again. Yes, there are bits of plot, some of them very large, that did not exist before the rewrite, but those are all products of asking how--no, really, how, and if that's how, then wouldn't this be the inevitable result? I knew where I was going the entire time, even if I did find myself in some very strange detours.
So I can't generalize, except to say: I can't generalize. Each novel thus far has been different--different in voice, in theme, and therefore I suppose it's not surprising that they've been different in process as well.
On the day-to-day level ... for preference, it's me, my word processor and my keyboard. Since I don't (at the moment) have a day job, I don't have much in the way of a schedule. When I'm working on a novel, I try to write to a quota: 2,000 words if things are going well, 1,000 words if it's like pulling troll's teeth. When I'm working on short stories (as I am now), it's more a question of aiming to finish a particular scene or get the story itself wrapped up. I have never figured out a good way to stop. End of a scene, middle of a scene, beginning of a scene--in the middle of an exchange of dialogue, with notes indicating where I'm planning to go. Doesn't matter. Starting again is always a bitch.
Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I don't.
Sometimes word-processor-and-keyboard is the wrong combination. Then I take notebook and pen and go lie on the bed. If I'm going out somewhere--errands or to a movie or what have you--I always take notebook and pen with me, because waiting will often jar things loose out of sheer screaming boredom.
I make a lot of notes as I go. Nothing formal, but if a scrap of dialogue wanders into my head, or I figure out something that's going to need to happen later, I write it down. When I'm stuck, as I often am, I write meta-dialogues with myself about why I'm stuck and what my narrative options are. I talk to myself on paper a lot.
I don't have rituals (I've tried, but I can't maintain them); I don't have a schedule, except insofar as that if I don't write for longer than a couple of days, I tend to get crabby and impossible to live with.
You do what works. Sometimes, figuring out what works is the hard part. For me, the crucial thing is not to let myself get locked in to a particular way of doing things, for as soon as I do that, it will turn out to be wrong. This is the natural perversity of all things, especially creativity.
Calvinball.
Like
brisingamen, I'm unhappy about the researchers' methodology (do squid tentacles grow back? does anybody know?), but like both brisingamen and sosostris2012 I am geeked as all get out about the result.Machiavelli is alive and well and interested in marine biology.
matociquala has a lovely entry about the writing process (or lack thereof).As far as I can tell, my process seems to be that I can never do it the same way twice. Writing as Calvinball.
I wrote the novel that became Mélusine and The Virtu in fits and starts over a period of about five years. I had Felix's part of the first eight chapters of Mélusine written before I even knew Mildmay existed. The whole thing was a shining example of making it up as you go along; I'd have an idea, write as far as it took me, and then stop again for a day or a week or a couple of months until I had an idea about what happened next. (I might add that this methodology is only suitable if you (a.) have high-falutin' notions about "inspiration" and "organic creativity," as I did at the time, and (b.) really aren't worried about whether you ever finish anything or not. I did finish, but that was my natural stubbornness surmounting the obstacles I'd made.)
Then when that novel was finished and revised and out making big pleading puppy dog eyes at literary agents, I wrote the sequel (which has the working title of The Mirador). Completely different animal. I knew the ending first, and the process of writing the book was trying to figure out how to get there. I have monumental false starts (one of them is six chapters long, and these are 50 to 70 page chapters), and files' worth of artifacts of casting for a scent and generally flailing.
The next novel (which unfortunately seems to be broken, and I still haven't figured out how to fix it), I wrote in a month and a half, following my headlights all the way home, as E. L. Doctorow says. I could never see farther than about ten pages ahead of where I was, but I never got stuck, either. Only had to pause once to do the meta-noodling that normally is about half of my writing process, and that was only for a couple of hours. That novel was an odd creature all the way 'round; I wrote it right after I quit teaching, and it was like someone had opened a sluice-gate.
And I think I may have just figured out what's wrong with it--although I haven't the least idea in the world what to do about it. Huh.
The white-page rewrite that produced Mélusine and The Virtu (discussion here, and more details in the comments) was different again, because it wasn't a matter of coming up with what or who, but answering the question of how over and over and over again. Yes, there are bits of plot, some of them very large, that did not exist before the rewrite, but those are all products of asking how--no, really, how, and if that's how, then wouldn't this be the inevitable result? I knew where I was going the entire time, even if I did find myself in some very strange detours.
So I can't generalize, except to say: I can't generalize. Each novel thus far has been different--different in voice, in theme, and therefore I suppose it's not surprising that they've been different in process as well.
On the day-to-day level ... for preference, it's me, my word processor and my keyboard. Since I don't (at the moment) have a day job, I don't have much in the way of a schedule. When I'm working on a novel, I try to write to a quota: 2,000 words if things are going well, 1,000 words if it's like pulling troll's teeth. When I'm working on short stories (as I am now), it's more a question of aiming to finish a particular scene or get the story itself wrapped up. I have never figured out a good way to stop. End of a scene, middle of a scene, beginning of a scene--in the middle of an exchange of dialogue, with notes indicating where I'm planning to go. Doesn't matter. Starting again is always a bitch.
Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I don't.
Sometimes word-processor-and-keyboard is the wrong combination. Then I take notebook and pen and go lie on the bed. If I'm going out somewhere--errands or to a movie or what have you--I always take notebook and pen with me, because waiting will often jar things loose out of sheer screaming boredom.
I make a lot of notes as I go. Nothing formal, but if a scrap of dialogue wanders into my head, or I figure out something that's going to need to happen later, I write it down. When I'm stuck, as I often am, I write meta-dialogues with myself about why I'm stuck and what my narrative options are. I talk to myself on paper a lot.
I don't have rituals (I've tried, but I can't maintain them); I don't have a schedule, except insofar as that if I don't write for longer than a couple of days, I tend to get crabby and impossible to live with.
You do what works. Sometimes, figuring out what works is the hard part. For me, the crucial thing is not to let myself get locked in to a particular way of doing things, for as soon as I do that, it will turn out to be wrong. This is the natural perversity of all things, especially creativity.
Calvinball.
