Dear, Dear Reader,
Today, Word Raccoon and I are feeling much better. Though the medicine kicked our rear in new and unexpected ways yesterday, so far today we believe we have turned a corner and have maybe gotten over the worst of the side effects. We remain hopeful. I say this to say it feels good to feel more myself after days of not.
Anyway.
When WR and I were excavating a scene for the novel from that dictated block the other day, I noticed what the scene had become. Well, it was this: scene, narrative summary, ending on a semi-scene. I was concerned, because although I know and practice Kenny (K.L., not that other one) Cook’s valuable “You can do anything you can get away with,” I stopped to ask myself if where I had ended was a legit, logical, and satisfying ending point. Because it felt tenuous, if I looked at the bones of it all.
I knew the distinctions among scene, semi-scene, and narrative summary from a lecture my Writing Mother gave, and she credited the notion to someone whose name I cannot remember, but I have found considering these distinctions invaluable when writing. Actually, what I’ve discovered is that on a second pass, much of my writing is narrative summary, almost akin to an outline or the bones, and then I decide if it needs to be a scene or not. Often, it does.
Out of curiosity, I asked Google if there was a name for what I was doing and Reader, (well, of course YOU know, but I must confess, I did not; I assume my readers know more than I do) there IS a name for it: Narratology! WHAT??? ALRIGHT, WHO HAS BEEN HOLDING OUT ON ME??
I speedily ordered Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method by Gérard Genette, which is apparently one of the foundational works of narratology, and it arrives on Tuesday! Every time I fear there are no new thoughts on writing available (or none I am interested in – ask me if I care about form in poetry; I have heard arguments for it, but I’m not there yet), something new comes along.
My brain is ON FIRE!
Although I will say, reading about it, apparently he uses Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past to analyze literature. I have said not-kind things about Proust in the past, and yet maybe it just wasn’t the right time for me to read him. I mean, I was in China, working on my own first novel, fearing I was being self-indulgent. (I tossed out all 100 pages of Victorine that I wrote in China; I don’t know why they didn’t work, but they didn’t. I may have saved a bit of it. Yes, I believe I did, now that I think about it.)
I know Genette’s book is going to be theory-heavy, and I imagine I will have to keep my mind perfectly still while I try to understand what he’s saying (which is why I normally prefer craft books; there is some relief and common writer-to-writer ground in them), but even if I have to read it over and over again, I believe I can learn from him.
And if I can’t, well, attempting to learn is its own kind of learning, wouldn’t you say, WR?
WR?
She’s gazing out the porch window, feeling partly reborn after having felt in an absolute bubble the past couple of weeks.
Oh, and yesterday she finally separated out her poems from last weekend instead of leaving them in the unceremonious lump in a file that she had originally preserved them in, and sure, they were jagged and unfinished, but there were some not-terrible spots, as well as several lines to put into the “poetry idea” file.
That’s a relief. She was afraid of what her writing life might look like if she had to choose between her body and her writing mind.
WR, that’s awfully sombre for a gorgeous porch writing session.
We keep it honest over here, she says.
I do believe she just did a cartwheel in the pinked grass.
Drema