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rushthatspeaks1. Something which I have been publicly angsting about for over a year lands in your inbox with a frantic message explaining that I need a critique within the NEXT FIVE MINUTES or it will be THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT and I WON'T FEEL FINE THANK YOU. If you're a housemate, extend this to being awakened at three in the morning with demands that you examine whatever it is to make certain that it in no way resembles the work of a writer/set of writers you have possibly never read and at any case cannot recall very clearly at three in the morning. ('You're SURE it's not just Angela Carter badly combined with Bujold and T.S. Eliot?')
2. The style in no way resembles the style of any of my previous efforts except that the prose is somehow pretty, even if it is deliberately jarring. Sometimes the prose is so pretty that there are iambs or something, and I am hoping nobody will notice.
3. The most important character is female, no exceptions (unless I am writing fanfic-by-request). Ninety percent of the time, she is the narrator; if she isn't, this is because she is too non-human to narrate.
4. And yet, despite my best efforts, there aren't lesbians. In fact, there's a heck of a lot of heterosexuality going on here. I'm just as confused as you are.
5. There are incredible quantities of pain, suffering and misery floating around, which are probably not sorted out in any sort of functional fashion by the end despite my determination to not actually be writing horror all the time, dammit.
6. There is postmodern literary theory in there somewhere, even if I have cleverly concealed it so that the thing has, for instance, chronology.
7. It is either fantasy or soft SF-- no hard SF, no realism; my brain just doesn't seem to work that way. In fact, it has probably cannibalized the plot of at least one fairy tale and the tenets of several neo-Platonists without my noticing.
8. I have fought a losing battle to tame my semicolons.
9. If it is finished, it is a short story. If I am obsessive about it, it is a novel.
10. Finished work appears once every blue moon, if that. Occasionally I fear the schedule has become alternate leap years. (Fortunately, when it does come out people seem to like it. I didn't get short-listed for the BSFAs, but I still can't believe I was nominated.)
And one to go on: There is nothing in the world I'd rather be doing than writing, despite everything.
2. The style in no way resembles the style of any of my previous efforts except that the prose is somehow pretty, even if it is deliberately jarring. Sometimes the prose is so pretty that there are iambs or something, and I am hoping nobody will notice.
3. The most important character is female, no exceptions (unless I am writing fanfic-by-request). Ninety percent of the time, she is the narrator; if she isn't, this is because she is too non-human to narrate.
4. And yet, despite my best efforts, there aren't lesbians. In fact, there's a heck of a lot of heterosexuality going on here. I'm just as confused as you are.
5. There are incredible quantities of pain, suffering and misery floating around, which are probably not sorted out in any sort of functional fashion by the end despite my determination to not actually be writing horror all the time, dammit.
6. There is postmodern literary theory in there somewhere, even if I have cleverly concealed it so that the thing has, for instance, chronology.
7. It is either fantasy or soft SF-- no hard SF, no realism; my brain just doesn't seem to work that way. In fact, it has probably cannibalized the plot of at least one fairy tale and the tenets of several neo-Platonists without my noticing.
8. I have fought a losing battle to tame my semicolons.
9. If it is finished, it is a short story. If I am obsessive about it, it is a novel.
10. Finished work appears once every blue moon, if that. Occasionally I fear the schedule has become alternate leap years. (Fortunately, when it does come out people seem to like it. I didn't get short-listed for the BSFAs, but I still can't believe I was nominated.)
And one to go on: There is nothing in the world I'd rather be doing than writing, despite everything.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 08:53 pm (UTC)Hey! The semicolon is a noble and multitalented piece of punctuation, and can be applied to many a grammatical situation: the semicolon polytropos; do not knock it.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-25 11:11 pm (UTC)---L.