Tuesday, April 24, 2012
The
Art of Writing No. 22
What differentiates a professional writer
from a writer, i.e. any literate individual? In the last blog I showed examples
of how we must interfere with regular brain patterns to produce something worth
reading as a fictional artefact. Just because everyone can run doesn’t mean
that they are athletes worth entering for prizes and being watched by millions.
Obviously, being a professional writer involves discriminating your text from
the humdrum realities of every day communication. Under normal circumstances
your brain is tuned to do the minimum required to accomplish any act. So –
knitting is difficult at first and requires programming the brain to do pearl
and plain and follow graphic patterns but soon you can knit and watch the
television – or, during the French Revolution, watch heads roll under the
guillotine. Knitting is relegated to an autonomous part of the brain.
Establishing a unique style that is
communicative and expressive and draws readers into your world needs an
interference with basic brain patterns, as I have said. Just as with knitting,
editing our writing is extremely onerous and laborious at first. By being
ruthless with our work, appraising every word, finding better similes and
metaphors, cutting out flab and all the tiny acts of improvement in which we
must engage, our writing becomes more honed and effective. And, like knitting,
as we exercise our brain muscle and write in a disciplined way every day, we
find the need for drastic editing actually diminishes. Our brains become
configured to what becomes known as our ‘style’. This does not mean that
editing becomes eliminated. Not at all. But it does mean that editing can
concentrate on felicitous expression rather than the chopping away of crude
surpluses. Raymond Carver, long regarded as the master of the concise short
story, never mastered it. Latterly, it turns out that his unheralded editor did
it. Whether true or not, the essence of the story is that it is in the editing
that style is finally nailed to the page.
It took me three months to edit Azimuth, with professional help and I still find slight wrinkles that irk me.It took my alter ego, Eric le Sange, a month to do the same for The Strange Attractor.
www.azimuthtrilogy.com
The Strange Attractor by Eric le Sange Kindle Amazon
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