2.5 Talking about Writing

2.5 Talking about Writing.

You can see my writing area descriptions in the 2.4 post.

This was an good exercise, and a lot harder than I first though. Especially the second one. I decided to not split it directly into best/worst writing places, but make both seem pleasant enough from the point of view of the writers in those locations. Whether either one is heaven or hell for you will depend massively on individuals.

For me, despite the distractions, the first one is my preferred writing location. The second - a typewriter - would just irritate me. The constant terror of making an error and having to start again. The clunky heaviness. No - pleasant as it likely would be for some, it's not for me.

So lets talk about writing by going to the course comments and plucking out a random piece to ponder.

Today's victim is Julie Rowe. Her piece :

Sitting in the crowded bar trying to sort my notes into some sort of order was proving incredibly difficult. The bar was fairly quiet. but what noise there was bounced up into the high vaulted ceiling, swirled around the upsidedown boat carcasses and then caught the voices coming up before booming back down. The muzak was adding to the general noise chaos and whatever it was that was playing i could only hear the bass. All of this amalgamated into a clamour in my head which invaded my thoughts and sent them swirling off into the great unknown, never to be made sense of again.

My dining room table, a large mug of Yorkshirte team home alone, chores done, just me, ,my notes and a blank piece of paper or screen. Ahhhh silence at last. Come on mind, get yourself together!
First thought - what a wonderful image is the 'upsidedown boat carcasses'. I love the strength of this description. It builds the image up so vividly. That bar actually sounds a delightful place to write to me. At home, alone, I would just be too tempted to play some computer game instead!

Some comments for Julie then - in the vein of us trying to help each other.

- In the first line you call the bar crowded, and yet immediately at the start of the second you call it 'fairly quiet'. A confusing contradiction. 'Fairly' is one of those adverb things too. Watch out for words ending in 'ly'. One or two is fine, but they have a habit of sneaking in throughout writing and can make it weaker.

- General curiosity - is muzak a specific thing, or did you mean music? My apologies if English isn't a first language and this was just a slip. Although maybe it's a colloquialism. I'm not sure.

 - Amalgamated is a great word, but here I'm not sure it works. It speaks of an almost graceful gathering together, or at least more smoothly than I get the impression the sounds are doing. I think the sentence works perfectly well without it. A sort of less-is-more moment.

"All of this clamoured through my head, invading my thoughts ..." etc

- I would like to have seen more of your home-alone writing. It seems like you ran out of steam after a lot of great description in the bar. Perhaps that's what you mean by your last line. Haha.

Is there a window in the room? What is the light like? Any smells? Is the table old or new, a family heirloom? Any pictures on the walls which might be there to help inspire your writing? Just details to bring it alive like you did in the first piece.

~

Just going through Julie's writing there proved to me how useful an exercise it is. Whilst looking for helpful comments to say I spotted similar issues in my own writing places and made a couple of edits. I'm learning more and more just how iterative writing actually is. Historically I've pretty much written, and almost never gone back to amend or add additions.

See you in the next section folks.

Happy Writing :-)