Short Subjects
Feb. 12th, 2005 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafocHilltown:
Does not go well. I'm having a bit of trouble listening to my characters. I've finished the next chapter, but it stinks. So I'm writing a chapter to go between what you've already seen and the (revised version of) the chapter I already wrote. I've started it four times and had it go in the wrong direction each time. But if I eliminate enough false paths, I'll come to the true one.
Second National Bank of Cat
The Feline Contingent have more toys than you can shake a stick-with-a-ribbon-attached at, but their favorite has to be milk rings. They hear me open a new gallon jug of milk... craaakkkk.. they come running. And not just for the milk.
Shadow is just fascinated by this whole things-inside-other-things concept. She has put milk rings in my briefcase. She has put them in tissue boxes. She has put them in Teph's art-stuff bag. But the ultimate...
A couple days ago I stepped on the bathroom scale (always a bad idea) and heard an odd SCRUNCH sound. I picked up the scale, and there were milk rings under it.
SIXTEEN milk rings.
We have emptied the main vault of the Second National Bank of Cat, and are refunding the milk rings to their rightful owners one at a time. They're disapperaing again, but I have no idea to where.
Rusty Cans
Have you ever heard of an author named Owen Wister? Probably not, but you might have heard of his best-known book. It's called _The Virginian._
This is a Western novel that dredges up every Western book or movie cliche' in existance. "When you call me that, SMILE!" Men who gotta do what men gotta do. All that. And yet when I read it, I thought.. he's doing all the cliches, but he's doing them awfully well.
Then it hit me. He's doing them well because he INVENTED them. I believe this was the first of the cowboy westerns, certainly the first to be a big hit with the public. Written at the time when this sort of life was real, by a man who visited the west and saw it.
I wonder, did any minor author ever had as much influence on popular culture as Owen Wister?
It was the tin cans that told me he'd been there. He mentions cowboys buying cans of peaches when they're in town, more for the syrup than the fruit. They'd drink the syrup from a can of peaches as a treat when they were out on the trail, and thirsty. And he mentions big dumps of rusty tin cans at the edge of town. Well, of course there'd be a dump of tin cans! Anyone who's wandered around an old farm knows there's a dump of cans and bottles out there somewhere, or was. But writers of Westerns don't mention it, because they weren't really there. Wister was. He saw it in person.
It's just a stupid little detail, but it made me sure the author had really been there. That's something we should try to imitate in our own writing, if we can.
Does not go well. I'm having a bit of trouble listening to my characters. I've finished the next chapter, but it stinks. So I'm writing a chapter to go between what you've already seen and the (revised version of) the chapter I already wrote. I've started it four times and had it go in the wrong direction each time. But if I eliminate enough false paths, I'll come to the true one.
Second National Bank of Cat
The Feline Contingent have more toys than you can shake a stick-with-a-ribbon-attached at, but their favorite has to be milk rings. They hear me open a new gallon jug of milk... craaakkkk.. they come running. And not just for the milk.
Shadow is just fascinated by this whole things-inside-other-things concept. She has put milk rings in my briefcase. She has put them in tissue boxes. She has put them in Teph's art-stuff bag. But the ultimate...
A couple days ago I stepped on the bathroom scale (always a bad idea) and heard an odd SCRUNCH sound. I picked up the scale, and there were milk rings under it.
SIXTEEN milk rings.
We have emptied the main vault of the Second National Bank of Cat, and are refunding the milk rings to their rightful owners one at a time. They're disapperaing again, but I have no idea to where.
Rusty Cans
Have you ever heard of an author named Owen Wister? Probably not, but you might have heard of his best-known book. It's called _The Virginian._
This is a Western novel that dredges up every Western book or movie cliche' in existance. "When you call me that, SMILE!" Men who gotta do what men gotta do. All that. And yet when I read it, I thought.. he's doing all the cliches, but he's doing them awfully well.
Then it hit me. He's doing them well because he INVENTED them. I believe this was the first of the cowboy westerns, certainly the first to be a big hit with the public. Written at the time when this sort of life was real, by a man who visited the west and saw it.
I wonder, did any minor author ever had as much influence on popular culture as Owen Wister?
It was the tin cans that told me he'd been there. He mentions cowboys buying cans of peaches when they're in town, more for the syrup than the fruit. They'd drink the syrup from a can of peaches as a treat when they were out on the trail, and thirsty. And he mentions big dumps of rusty tin cans at the edge of town. Well, of course there'd be a dump of tin cans! Anyone who's wandered around an old farm knows there's a dump of cans and bottles out there somewhere, or was. But writers of Westerns don't mention it, because they weren't really there. Wister was. He saw it in person.
It's just a stupid little detail, but it made me sure the author had really been there. That's something we should try to imitate in our own writing, if we can.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 07:10 pm (UTC)Same thing happened to me when I first read Lovecraft (though Lovecraft's somewhat turgid prose doesn't appeal to everyone.)
And ROTFL over your furry children's milk ring adventures.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 08:01 pm (UTC)It happened to me when I read E.E. Smith's Lensman saga.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 08:17 pm (UTC)That's an understatement.
(Salon.com link -- sit through an ad if you're not a subscriber)
no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 09:33 pm (UTC)In the Freud-crazed '50s and '60s it became fashionable to denounce Lovecraft's fiction as "neurotic," to which the only conceivable reply is: Duh. How could anyone think of presenting such an observation as an insight when neurosis lies palpitating on the surface of the work? These tales are veritable carnivals of anxiety, repression and rage; that's the source of their appeal. They aren't in any sense healthy, but then neither is the poetry of Baudelaire.
Fashionable ennui and critique of Lovecraft is so popular in many circles, and yet his basic tropes and themes continue to
plagueinspire modern horror. Arnold even got to play Mr. Freeze on the big screen for a Batman movie. ;-)no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 09:35 pm (UTC)Being There
Date: 2005-02-12 10:04 pm (UTC)I hope that doesn't sound mad.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-12 11:33 pm (UTC)Thankfully whichever one is catching the real mice hasn't yet thought to put one of them in the bed.
Re: Being There
Date: 2005-02-12 11:35 pm (UTC)I don't consider myself a writer (not after having lived with one) and I have a few dozen characters that talk to me and tell me about their worlds. :)