Yep, I’m still working on summer update posts. It’s a great way to feature some really smart articles, draw attention to some of my older posts, and take just a little blog break—even though I truly enjoy researching and writing original content.
It’s a creative outlet for me. Editing is creative work, of course, but it’s collaborative. Here at the blog I get to be me. 🙂 And this summer I’m filling my creative well—and my blog backlog—while I coast a little with the summer updates (you can see the others here, here, here, and here). So, you know … brace yourself. 🙂
✱ Speaking of creativity, let’s talk about imagery—beautiful mental images created with writerly description or through the use of metaphor or simile. I’ve written some about the latter in “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” and discussed imagery in poetry and songwriting in “Oh, Say, Can You See the Imagery by the Dawn’s Early Light?” … and we’ve talked about how you can get in trouble trying to get too creative with your thesaurus (“Step Away From the Thesaurus and No One Gets Hurt”).
What got me started was a quote from French novelist Émile Zola (1840–1902), who also was a political journalist and wrote literary and art reviews for newspapers. He said:
One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines. (Le Figaro, 1881)
As a writer (and editor) I immediately identified with the sentiment—I do my best work under pressure—but then I was drawn by the imagery. Anvils aren’t as commonplace now as they were when Zola lived, and yet that line lives and breathes, doesn’t it?
✱ When I stumbled on this article called “Use Plot Motivators to Move Your Fiction,” I was intrigued by the phrase plot motivator. Upon further investigation, I realized that—regardless what it’s called here—we’re talking about theme (about which I’ve written, in “Good Vibrations” and which could have benefited from this plot motivators article). Or, perhaps, basic plot types, which number, depending on whom you believe, three, seven, twenty, or thirty-six. Here there are thirteen:
Vengeance
Catastrophe
Love and hate
The chase
Grief and loss
Rebellion
Persecution
Self-sacrifice
Survival
Rivalry
Discovery
Ambition
Betrayal
The list feels very thematic to me, so I was interested in the way this writer looked at it. Have a look.
✱ A couple months ago I wrote an article about self-editing called “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Green,” and naturally, as soon as I published it I remembered this article by author Cathy Yardley at Writer Unboxed: “A Simple Approach to Revisions.”
Like Yardley, I like a bit of organization, and as she points out, “sequence is key.” I am forever telling writers to quit fiddling around with formatting (for example) or worrying about the color of a dress when we have much bigger fish to fry.
Yardley breaks down revising into three passes (macro planning, micro scene work, final details) and then further lists points for each. In the macro planning pass, she lists:
1. Check GMA (goal, motivation, conflict)
2. Check plot points
3. Make a scene by scene list
My favorite is a point in the second pass:
Check for sensory details/description. These can be what put your reader into the scene. Help them experience it, rather than just “think” about it.
(Chuck Palahniuk agrees with this too.) Bottom line, everybody develops a system, and this is a pretty good one. It might work for you.
Have a look; there’s lots here to learn.
* Because it’s almost summer and because I am still positively slammed with work (not a bad thing) and because slammed with work means less time to write the kind of thoughtful blog posts I want to write, I’m writing a series of updates to reconnect you with my archives. Let me know what you think.
Tweet: Some thoughts on creativity, imagery, theme, and self-editing.
Tweet: “One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.” Emile Zola
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