Writing Progress – 12 Jun 2020

Today I managed 1,702 words. I tend to find this downward progression of output as a week wears on is usual. By Friday, I’m usually a little tired. I started at 6:30 rather than 6:00 and so was unable to complete as much as I normally would.

That said, on the weekend I will be well rested and will have more time, so will attempt to get 2,000 words each day. However, if I keep hitting/exceeding this average, I hit my target next Sunday.

In terms of the writing itself, I have also left a character out for almost 12000 words, so mentions of them will need to be sprinkled to give more weight. Also, the turn/volta of the big scene I wrote today is fringing on melodrama, so I tomorrow I will begin by writing that in a different structure.

A Set of Streets Strolled at Leisure – 5 Things about the Footnote

Having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.

Noel Coward

First Love

Much like making love, people remember their first real footnote. Mine perched at the bottom of page 16 of the Amaulet of Samarkand.* The text went like this: I bashed my head on a stone fours times. The footnote went like this: That’s four different stones, not the same stone four times. 

Ha! I said, aloud. 

I have since consumed footnotes in their thousands. I have read Infinite Jest – a hearty 366. I’ve read Mezzaine. I’ve read Pale Fire (I’m counting that commentary as one long footnote*). I’ve gone to university. I’ve peppered my own writing with divergent strands. I, even, for a period, gave feedback in the form of a series of footnotes, much to everybody’s distaste. 

I’m still not tired of them. A definition in case we’re confused:

Simply, the footnote is the humble small type at the bottom of the page. 

Secret

I shall now propose three footnote philosophies.

One: We must consider the footnote architectural design.

It is a source of secrets. The excisions, the excuses, that which is private. 

While the text proper represents the house – its living room, its kitchen, its dining room, its bedrooms and bathrooms. The footnote represents the basement, the attic. The areas where guests are unallowed. 

It is the things which haunt the text, there but not there.

Anti-text

Two: Footnotes are dialogue: They refute, praise, amend.

They are the voice of the editor or god or history.

They are a separate text, placed in conjunction. A satellite, orbiting a major body.

But from the satelite we can see the body and in seeing the body become aware of our looking. We break from whatever dream we’re having to view ourselves dreaming. And so, every footnote represents a decision. Do they ignore or investigate?

And when they investigate, does this fracture our text? Does it, like life, resolve differently for each reader?

I think so.

Digression

Three: A footnote enables a writer to pause. And then, expand.

We can move years in the space of a page. We can move to a narrator looking back. We can step into the office of a historian and have him explain why this speck of dust, the coat of this character, the light from these windows was important in the coming conflict.

Footnotes create a web of text, splintering and coalescing, like ripples bound within a bathtub.

The True Flaneur

And now I shall summarise, using an archetype, who, if anyone, would read a footnote:

While the critic and the journalist and the thriller writer frown upon the footnote. They say:

‘Cumbersome.’

‘Quagmirish***.’

‘Off-putting.’

They see the footnote, like the semi-colon, the bracket, as an obstacle.

The Flaneur does not. The Flaneur could not care for the reader’s comprehension. The Flaneur realises that the reader, if they are a bright, sensible human, will know to put a book down if it does something they don’t like and pick it up if it does. They know that preference is not gospel.

The Flaneur welcomes the footnote with open arms. 

Why? Because The Flaneur would never forcibly exclude a textual feature from the canon.

They understand that, like cities, texts are explored and mapped. That text is not limited to a single plane. That there are many avenues, forms, exceptions and adjustments which can be added by the brilliant and well-informed tour guide. And that the flavour of a city depends, more often than not, upon a set of well-made introductions.

The Flaneur understands that the footnote is a form of travel, a set of streets strolled at leisure.

__________

*You knew there would be footnotes. In this case, this is an explanatory footnote, see section 4. The Amulet of Samarkand is a teen fantasy novel which features a Daemon named Bartimus. He narrates the trilogy and enjoys peppering his prose with footnotes and digressions. As you would, if you were an arch narrator who could never die.

**                                                                               ….to a vast, obscure unfinished masterpiece.’ 

V.Nabokov.

***Although the word quagmirish itself is, well, extremely quagmirish.

 

King Before Slave – 5 Things You Should Know About The Sentence

The Camps

There are two camps, it seems, in an ever-lasting war over the sentence.

The first camp believe that the sentence is functional. That the sentence should be used as a conveyor of information and nothing more. The second camp is believe the sentence is decorative. That the sentence is exquisite, interesting, tantalising. Camp A begs plainness and simplicity; Camp B promotes ornateness and craftsmanship.

Both approaches are highly prescriptive. Both a little misguided. As such, we should probably bear to the middle track. Our sentences should be functional, yet elegant. Like good china.

Pace Yourself

Sentences dictate pace.

Small sentences speed things up.

He opened the door. The room was cold. He thought of his mother.

Long sentences slow things down.

Upon entering the house, he noticed that the room – a dull sort of cream coloured room, lacking in furnishings, lacking in warmth too – reminded him of summertime holidays with mother; he knew he should attempt to forget, but on autumn days like this, where the leaves were crisply and crisply falling, he found himself prone to reminsices.

Variance is key. Don’t just hit the cowbell till it hurts. Promote musicality. Again – moderation is king.

Activate

Let’s get some distinctions up in here. There are two types of sentence. Passive and active.

To understand, we’ll need another distinction. Sentences have subjects and objects. The subject is the King of the sentence. The subject is the person/place/thing which is doing the action. The object is the Slave of the sentence. The object is the person/place/thing which is being done.

David hit the tramp. David’s the subject; the tramp is the object.

The active sentence – like its name – is a take-no-prisoners sentence. It moves. It obeys the law of King before Slave. I.e. the subject comes first.  

With the passive sentence, the roles are the same, but the order is wrong. The tramp was hit by David. In this case, our tramp is still the object. He’s still getting done, but the emphasis has changed. Our sympathies are now with the Slave rather than the King. Subtle shift, yes, but a shift all the same.

Overall, we use the active sentence rather than the passive. However, once in a while, the passive sentence needs to rear it’s ugly head. The vase was smashed, mum – is passive. It cuts out that icky, ‘I’ who did the smashing.

The Every-Other-Sentence Rule

I had a teacher – let’s call him Nathanial Hawthorne. He said to approach sentences like you would approach childbirth. Cull fifty per-cent.

Stuck on a paragraph – cut every other sentence.

Don’t know what to do with a story – cut every other sentence.

Strangers throw your unfinished novel at you in the street – cut every other sentence.

This methodology creates distance and removes junk. More importantly, it forces you to make choices and editing is 99% choices, 1% red marker. It works. Try it.

Decisiveness

A sentence is small. A drop in the ocean, an ant in the hive, an anchovy on your pizza. It almost seems insignificant. There are too many. You can’t get sucked into the perfection trap.

Yet, every sentence is a decision. Because a reader can only read linearly, they experience your story one sentence at a time. So, with every full stop, you’re declaring ‘this is important!’ and with every comma and colon, you’re declaring ‘and this is how it needs to be expressed!’

Remember: Ugly sentences make ugly books.

Remember also: too many PERFECT sentences exhaust the reader.

Here is the rule I’d go for: make sure that your sentences are 70% done. Not 100%, not perfect. You’ll die. You’ll literally die before you’re done. 70% is good enough.

Attend with diligence. Give your sentences a chance to justify themselves. Moderation is key. Go through the middle. Good luck.

Homework

You’re in luck – sentences are EVERYWHERE. There’s 79 in the article above. However, I would probably declare Gwendoline Riley the veritable Queen of the sentence. Her latest novel First Love was foolishly snubbed by the Bailey’s Prize. I would recommend starting with her first novel Cold Water

 

V.M. Varga, vampire

The Vampire

The vampire is, like all monsters, a product of subconscious anxieties. For a long time, the vampire was merely a figure who rose from the dead to prey upon the living. But it is not until John Polidori’s The Vampyre that we see what many would consider the modern figure of the vampire.

Lord Ruthven is the atypical vampire with a ‘deadly hue’ to his face and although ‘a nobleman’ with links to the aristocracy, seeks the centres of ‘fashionable vice.’ Shortly followed by Stoker’s Dracula in 1897, the gothic animated the figure of the vampire as an aristocrat, a monster of great wealth, who feeds upon the populace.