I recently read an old post in a writers’ forum where someone used the term ‘verisimilitude’.  As I was only mostly sure that I knew what it meant, I looked it up in my trusty dictionary.  (I love checking definitions anyway, and do it quite often; I imagine that most people who are passionate about words find dictionary reading rewarding — and sometimes just plain fun.)

Verisimilitude: 1. The quality of appearing to be true or real.  2. Something that has the appearance of being true and real.

When I read this, it struck me that this should be a highly significant word in my vocabulary, because verisimilitude is a huge part of what I’ve always wanted to achieve with my own writing — even when I started that first novel when I was eleven years old. Continue reading →

This continues some of the concepts I was exploring in “Learning the Art of Revision” — specifically, it addresses how those ideas are reflected in the Studio Ghibli film, Whisper of the Heart.  (And since I said that post was a ‘Part 2’ itself, I suppose this one should actually be ‘Part 3’ . . .)  😉

A few years ago my brother introduced me to the wonderful films of Hayao Miyazaki, and one that I fell in love with is called Whisper of the Heart.  This is one of those films that falls into a category we just don’t have in American film — a realistic drama that’s animated.  Though there are a couple of fantasy dream sequences, the story takes place in ‘the real world’, and the relationships between the family members and the interactions between the junior high school kids are all quite natural and believable.

It’s a story about a fourteen-year-old girl who wants to be a writer, and the first time I saw it I think I cried through most of it.  It’s not a sad story — it’s just that I related so strongly to Shizuku that it made watching the film a very emotional experience.  The way she spends hours writing when she’s supposed to be studying reminded me of my habit of taking two folders to every class — one for the class itself, and the other containing the story I was currently working on. (I did this from junior high all the way through college.)  At every opportunity, I would write a line or two before attempting to return my attention to the subject of the course.  There’s a scene in the film where Shizuku is doing exactly the same thing, and she can’t answer the teacher’s question because she wasn’t paying attention; she was working on her book instead. Continue reading →

Note:  This makes references to the previous post about ‘The Muse and the Editor’, and is essentially ‘Part 2’ of that discussion.

It’s sometimes said that half of the art of writing is the art of revision.  When it comes to the quality and originality of what your muse brings to you, I think there may be a certain amount of ‘talent’ that you either have or don’t have.  But developing a good editor is primarily a matter of hard work and acquiring the necessary skills.  You can learn to revise–and to be an accomplished wordsmith, you must learn to revise.

There are plenty of myths and pieces of misinformation floating around about the craft of writing.  One over-quoted phrase is “Kill your darlings”, which is attributed to William Faulkner–though he may have borrowed it from another source–and which has been echoed emphatically by Steven King.  It’s one of those things some writers bandy about as if they feel that saying it shows how mature and sophisticated they are.  But in reality it has limited application and is too often misinterpreted. What I dislike most about it is that it implies that writers can’t learn to appraise their own work (although that may not have been the original intent at all).  If that were true, they could never learn to edit their own work, which, of course, is nonsense. Continue reading →

This summer I came across a couple of writer’s blogs addressing the topic of writing slowly.  Both emphasized that writers who can’t turn out a high volume of words in a short time shouldn’t feel inferior to those who can.  In particular, they pointed out that some of the great masters have been slow writers — one often mentioned is James Joyce, who is said to have taken eight years to write Ulysses.

Assuming, of course, that the writer in question is actually sitting down and getting something done, the most significant factor in determining writing speed seems to be whether the author is polishing each page as they go — we’ll call this the ‘slow method’ — or focusing on getting a rough draft down, and then coming back and revising — the ‘fast method’.  Although I’m going to explain here why the ‘fast method’ works better for me than the ‘slow method’ — and also why I think it helps to prevent writer’s block — I strongly agree that the creative process is very personal, and each writer must find their own path in that process.  The end result is what matters, not how long it takes to get there.

Looking at my own progression as a writer, I find it noteworthy that my modus operandi has changed.  As a kid I wrote mostly by hand, and only occasionally used a typewriter.  The entire first draft of my first novel was written by hand (and in pencil!), a thought that makes me shudder now.   I also have short stories written in college that only exist in one hand-written draft.   Yet some of those stories have passages in them that I wouldn’t change even now. Continue reading →