As Papa said…
Papa Hemingway, that is:
“There is nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
And no, I’m not comparing my writing to Papa…
And no, I’m not comparing my writing to Papa…
But I do understand what he means.
I got a critique back recently…
Yeeow!
What does she mean my characters are cardboard?
And my protagonist doesn’t have enough emotions?
So I took a deep breath and read…
And reread….
And reread
What was the problem?
I understood exactly what my character was feeling.
(light bulb goes on here)
Um yeah…‘I understood’ being the operative words.
Obviously, what my character was feeling wasn’t obvious.
And so I sat to rewrite…
And I sat…
And sat…
And sat.
Damn this is hard.
I mean, c'mon on!
I think short thoughts.
I think short thoughts.
I write short sentences. (duh)
But emotions I guess, shouldn’t be short.
I don’t know if it’s AADD…
Or I block emotions…
But it’s hard for me...
To stay with feeling too long.
But blocked emotions are not conducive..
To writing emotional stories.
So I put on a Rick Braun CD…
And allowed myself to f e e l.
Half way through the CD, I was balling my eyes out.
Jeeze! Why? His music never seemed sad before.
But I stuck with it…
All the way to end of chapter one.
Lord! This was harder than I thought.
And if like Papa…
I have to bleed to write...
I'm going to need a transfusion...
To get through the whole manuscript.
I'm going to need a transfusion...
To get through the whole manuscript.
What about you?
How deep does your prose go?
How hard do you suffer for your characters?
Or do you?
Always, Em-Musing
7 comments:
I've never had to cry over one of them, but I've had to really force emotional depth before. Same with infusing a sense of place.
I'm terrible with descriptive words. It took several rewrites of my first MS to get the right words in there to express how my characters were feeling. Eventually I got it and everything works so much better now. It's funny really when I think of the difficulty I had at first...I'm such an emotional person it should be easy. But it isn't always.
Fortunately for me I don't do that type of writing or I'd likely need counseling. Having been stung by critics though, it is never easy.
Hang in there ma'am.
Wow, here's a tissue. I think I need to think about this one because I always think I'm overly emotional and I probably over-compensate by leaving out the most important parts. Great post. Mama Leigh.
If I couldn't express emotions in my writing, I think I'd explode! It's the only avenue I'm any good at. :)
Interesting thoughts. Yeah,I cry, and bleed, and cuss, and then I can't sleep. Is this a good thing?
I suffer. I act them out too ... even though I feel like a mad woman talking to myself. I'm so sad for one of my characters right now that I feel like a really shitty person for creating her life ... I guess it wouldn't be much of a story if everything was rosy, but she will get her justice.
Post a Comment