What are you writing?

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I mean just look at that last sentence

'I think academia (for all that it has given me) has ruined me for writing - and maybe even for reading!'

That 'for all that' is so posturing, in a way.

I think perhaps its just my personal problem, that I'm a sponge for things, and have such low self esteem that I look for cues from other people, but anyway - my language has been polluted, I don't think I even understand it, I am just aware of all these annoying clogging habits, like using the words 'Obviously' and 'perhaps' all the time.

PURIFY THE DIALECT OF THE TRIBE!
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Doubt is my bugbear - my inheritance, too

I had a miniepiphany the other night reading a poem by Pound that Bloom was slating, and recognising in it a sort of superb sublime confidence and swagger, a rejection of doubt, that I think is also in Rimbaud, and I thought I saw what you might see in them both (i'm sure it's more complex than that) - and it's something I see/envy in you.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I wonder if this is what separates artists from critics - critics having enough arrogance to criticise other people but not enough arrogance to be criticised themselves.

'course there are numerous examples of people who did both - Pound and Eliot spring immediately to mind
 

luka

Well-known member
But because writing gives you that feedback (eg you can catch yourself in the act of automatic tics and habits etc) it allows you to excise those habits. It gives you power and control.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The men inherit headlamps mapped with oil
Or life allows sour license spend on spoil

A meaningless couplet I composed in my head on the walk home today, trying to see if I could link some sounds together. Didn't really think about rhythm, and obviously not about sense.
 

woops

is not like other people
I mean just look at that last sentence

'I think academia (for all that it has given me) has ruined me for writing - and maybe even for reading!'

That 'for all that' is so posturing, in a way.

That's the spirit corpse. He doesn't like it up 'im
 

luka

Well-known member
He promised me he'll make it up to you tomorrow with a generous and engaged contribution not hasty snark.
 

woops

is not like other people
what i am writing

I've spent hundreds of hours writing with luka now and I've learnt some stuff despite the fact that he is amazingly arrogant (which is probably 99% justified by enviable natural talent), refuses to be told anything and has a desperate need to win every argument. He's got some good advice but to be any good at all, I had to go the long way round.

I only started writing anything about seven years ago. Before that I spent my time making electronic sounds (which seems like another lifetime now but anyway) and reading more or less anything I could get my hands on. Good, bad, difficult or remedial, fiction or non-fiction. Of course I had my favourites but I would read anything. That was step one I think. Before that step zero was four years of university so shut it luka. There's more to the individual person or writer than whether they went to fancy uni or followed the exact path of life as you.

I started to write after reading in a book called The Artist's Way that an artist in any form should try to write three pages longhand every morning. This was absolutely crucial for me. The Artist's Way tells you to fill the page even if you are only writing "I can't think of anything to write about" over and over. I did this for two years - not hitting three pages every single day but that's your goal.

By reading like that and writing like that I think you pick up many styles and voices and vocabularies and use them and discard them until you are on the way to a style you like as your own. No time reading is wasted. This maybe also helps you get over the recalcitrance, or reluctance, to write in any way you like, which is an obstacle wasting your time. The Artist's Way even recommends you draw a picture of a 'censor' figure with a big cross through him her it and stick it up next to your desk which I did and should make a new one. The rest of the book was mostly self-help wetness but I liked these two tips.

I also found writing every morning seemed to be beneficial for my state of mind, aside from whether anything of literary worth emerged, what ever that is.

After two years of that I felt ready to start something so I started getting a novel together, writing around a very loose structure of a single day, developing and discarding ideas as I went. Once into the thick of it this was some of the best fun I've had in my life as I remember. Getting the first draft together took a year.

Step three was starting to write poems, at which time I also set myself to read as much (English) poetry as I could stand (the best stuff is very hard to read especially for long periods). After I showed him some of my first poems I thought were any good, Luka gave me some amazing advice: You're saying things you know how to say. You have to find ways to say things you DON'T know how to say. This is amazing insight I think.

I went through a patch of trying as many different (strict) poetic forms as I could, if only to try to internalise rhythm, metre, scansion or however you like to call it. I find it helps to practice as much as possible, which means write as much as possible, and if I write a bad one I just start another one. Liberty!

Read all the writing tips and style guides writers-write-about-writing books and interviews and ignore them. (you probably know the kind of thing - adverbs, "don't use alternatives to said", Hemingway's 10-dollar words, etc. etc. As one of my writing friends once said, there are probably so many of these because they are in the form of writing themsleves. Unfortunately the Paris Review interviews are behind a paywall now but they are great.

Try as many writing exercises as you can think of, description in intense detail, dialogue, movement, there are quite a lot of these out there. And have a look at this website.

That's all for now except to say I have written more books than luka
 

luka

Well-known member
This is brilliant. Honest and generous and humane and actually helpful. This is what I want dissensus to be. Corpsey is great for getting the best out of people too.

I've spent hundreds of hours writing with luka now and I've learnt some stuff despite the fact that he is amazingly arrogant (which is probably 99% justified by enviable natural talent), refuses to be told anything and has a desperate need to win every argument. He's got some good advice but to be any good at all, I had to go the long way round.

I only started writing anything about seven years ago. Before that I spent my time making electronic sounds (which seems like another lifetime now but anyway) and reading more or less anything I could get my hands on. Good, bad, difficult or remedial, fiction or non-fiction. Of course I had my favourites but I would read anything. That was step one I think. Before that step zero was four years of university so shut it luka. There's more to the individual person or writer than whether they went to fancy uni or followed the exact path of life as you.

I started to write after reading in a book called The Artist's Way that an artist in any form should try to write three pages longhand every morning. This was absolutely crucial for me. The Artist's Way tells you to fill the page even if you are only writing "I can't think of anything to write about" over and over. I did this for two years - not hitting three pages every single day but that's your goal.

By reading like that and writing like that I think you pick up many styles and voices and vocabularies and use them and discard them until you are on the way to a style you like as your own. No time reading is wasted. This maybe also helps you get over the recalcitrance, or reluctance, to write in any way you like, which is an obstacle wasting your time. The Artist's Way even recommends you draw a picture of a 'censor' figure with a big cross through him her it and stick it up next to your desk which I did and should make a new one. The rest of the book was mostly self-help wetness but I liked these two tips.

I also found writing every morning seemed to be beneficial for my state of mind, aside from whether anything of literary worth emerged, what ever that is.

After two years of that I felt ready to start something so I started getting a novel together, writing around a very loose structure of a single day, developing and discarding ideas as I went. Once into the thick of it this was some of the best fun I've had in my life as I remember. Getting the first draft together took a year.

Step three was starting to write poems, at which time I also set myself to read as much (English) poetry as I could stand (the best stuff is very hard to read especially for long periods). After I showed him some of my first poems I thought were any good, Luka gave me some amazing advice: You're saying things you know how to say. You have to find ways to say things you DON'T know how to say. This is amazing insight I think.

I went through a patch of trying as many different (strict) poetic forms as I could, if only to try to internalise rhythm, metre, scansion or however you like to call it. I find it helps to practice as much as possible, which means write as much as possible, and if I write a bad one I just start another one. Liberty!

Read all the writing tips and style guides writers-write-about-writing books and interviews and ignore them. (you probably know the kind of thing - adverbs, "don't use alternatives to said", Hemingway's 10-dollar words, etc. etc. As one of my writing friends once said, there are probably so many of these because they are in the form of writing themsleves. Unfortunately the Paris Review interviews are behind a paywall now but they are great.

Try as many writing exercises as you can think of, description in intense detail, dialogue, movement, there are quite a lot of these out there. And have a look at this website.

That's all for now except to say I have written more books than luka
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Thanks woops

It came to me like an epiphany last night that I'm forcing the poetry thing. I barely read any poetry! I think I somehow imagine that I should be the sort of person who does something intellectual or artistic, perhaps as a way of receiving all the social rewards I do nothing to attain in any other way. All the technique and high ideals can follow and presumably keep in check the infatuation, but without the infatuation you're fucked.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
As to what I AM infatuated with - tragically, it's criticism. I've read criticism more addicted than literature. But having really enjoyed some of the actual thing itself recently, I've come to see how criticism is the stunted nephew of literature "pwopa", though just as much of an egotist's gambit. An essay being an attempt to scale a cliff face and scrawl ones name over it. Or is that too cynical?

Anyway you can tell by my pretentious tone here that I've been reading the sacred wood and the common pursuit more than is advisable.
 

luka

Well-known member
I wouldn't worry about that. It's natural to read more criticism than poetry.

Poetry demands so much of us that the times we find ourselves equal to it are necessarily fairly rare. Criticism asks a lot less. Can read it at any time. I enjoy it too and I've read a lot of it.
 

catalog

Well-known member
i've not started yet but i was thinking the other night it could be a good idea to write a true crime thing like jarett kobek's 'motor spirit' or something like gordon burn's books, where the murder is used as a structure but you can then write about what you want...

i was thinking about this topic, a murder which happened near where i now live, so the other night i listened to this podcast about it


and also watched this doc which the podcast is based upon


it's very dark and i felt pretty queasy after and the next morning, but there's honestly so many things i could bring in, plus a load of uncanny synchronicities as well
 

catalog

Well-known member
I went to the silent woman on my own with the dog in thd interests if research and its definitely thed best pub in the village by about 10 miles
 

catalog

Well-known member
Also anyone who aga not read hjohn Williams bloody valentine should reaf it, that is gold standards, as is anything by Nicole ward Joyce on thd ripper
 
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