68th ROW80 Check-In
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| A Round of Words in 80 Days Round 4 2012 The writing challenge that knows you have a life |
These check-in posts will contain any commentary I have about encounters with the goals since the previous check-in and any relevant links.
Below the commentary is my current reading list for the READ CRAFT goal.
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Still holding steady on all fronts and still at the bare minimum except for READ CRAFT and DAYDREAM STORY. Still making more room for fiction reading by keeping post prep down to an average of an hour. Most days still under an hour. But still no new fiction scenes.
My duties here at Mom's increased again from Thursday on through late tonight at least and a personal drama going on via email for the last two weeks has been sapping my emotional energy. I came very close in one of my morning freewrites to writing something that could pass as a fictional scene for a reader knowing nothing about my personal life. It was raw and with appropriate line breaks might do better as free verse. And I would have to layer a lot of veils over it to thoroughly fictionalize it and even then anyone knowing me well would know where it came from.
But whether or not it ever ends up in something for public viewing I think I learned something important. Hard to express in plain prose exactly what but I think it has to do with not going deep enough into the well of my own emotions for my stories. So much of the narrative and dialog stay on the surface.
I wouldn't be surprised to discover that a great deal of my resistance to working on actual scenes whether new or rewrite has to do with resisting going to those emotional depths in myself. Not that I don't go there. I go and I wallow. But I do that in private like a vice. So the resistance would be more about bringing it up into the light and saying 'Here look at this glop'.
READ CRAFT:
Currently Reading
Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton
Write Good or Die! edited by Scott Nicholson (a collection of essays by inde authors. many of them self-published)
The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler
What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Muller Net Galley a NF that purports to answer many puzzles in the Austen novels. Since this discusses writing and techniques of fiction
Jung and the Tarot: An Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols Since I'm reading this for an understanding of character type and the language of symbol understood by our unconscious as well as research for a character who is a Tarot reader
13 Ways of Looking at a Novel by Jane Smiley This was one of the 24 items I checked out of the Longview library on my sister's card last Thursday.
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. Found this while spelunking the stacks looking for the Smiley book. Who knew. Dick was a mystic. I've only read one of his novels and a few short stories but now I've got to try to find and read everything!
Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor This is a reread for me and has had significant impact on the development of my storyworld in the early months of its inception. My Friday post was about my current encounter with it after checking it out of the Longview library again for the first time in over a decade.
Recently Read:
A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing eBooks by Tom Hua read this online
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Leher
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg Just finished this last fall and wrote an overview of it for that check-in along with my musings on how to apply what I learned.. This is where I've been getting the most help with learning how to recognize a habit, determine if it is desirable and if so maximize it but if not change it.
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