{"id":796,"date":"2015-04-22T20:58:11","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T01:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=796"},"modified":"2015-04-22T20:58:11","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T01:58:11","slug":"sentence-construction-ctd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/04\/22\/sentence-construction-ctd\/","title":{"rendered":"Sentence Construction, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reader reacts to my post on writing a sentence<\/a>, and we engage in a bit of back and forth:<\/p>\n

\n

If I ever dig out from my self-inflicted condition of clutter-itis, and actually attain a measure of clarity in both space and time in my residence, I am going to have that post painted across one entire wall of my office.<\/p>\n

Seriously.<\/p>\n

Period.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, in the interim, I will make a few refrigerator magnets from key phrases (fortunately my \u201cfront\u201d door is steel and thus a lovely repository of inspirational messages before I leave in the morning.)<\/p>\n

Or, perhaps, I will frame certain phrases and thoughts, and pepper them around my office to serve as both muses and mentors.<\/p>\n

I must grab these thoughts and hold them tight.<\/p>\n

I must grudgingly accept some, and whole-heartedly embrace others.<\/p>\n

Would that everything I read was written the way you wrote that post.\u00a0 But, I am a particular and rare-ish audience.\u00a0 The mass market crowd will inevitably demand the occasional, or perhaps frequent, short declarative sentence.\u00a0 But I hope you keep writing the way you do, with Deb as social conscience and compassionate guide, because more of the world needs to see what language can do. Let that unusual twist of phrase stir some trembling neuron\u2026. Not the neurons that are following the plot, but that other area, where the pure intellect resides and appreciates, dare I say it, art for art\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

More on this later.<\/p>\n

Oh drat.\u00a0 I just realized that I said \u201cperiod\u201d and then I rambled on anyway.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m incorrigible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh my.\u00a0 I feel … very … buttery.<\/p>\n

That.
\nIs my job.<\/p>\n

And you know that\u2019s true too, right?\u00a0 The reader had darn well better express some sincere appreciation from time to time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I dunno.\u00a0 Does the true writer HAVE TO WRITE, regardless of the reaction of the audience?\u00a0 Or does the true writer have to have an audience reaction in order to understand how to improve the writing to the point where the audience shows a positive reaction?\u00a0 Or is any reaction, any acknowledgement of the writer’s mere existence, enough?\u00a0 Is it the act of putting words on paper<\/del> medium, or the hormones released at the very thought of having intellectually stimulated some other creature in this alleged universe of ours?<\/p>\n

I think a writer has to write, but most writers, like most humans, need to feel valued and that valuation can take the form of recognition, remuneration, simple response or any of a number of other \u201cre\u201d words. Whether or not you need the audience to like you, or what you wrote, is entirely up to the writer.\u00a0 I know lots of people who write just to provoke and they seem to enjoy being unliked. But they HATE being ignored.<\/p>\n

There is something different, though, about your angle on improvement.\u00a0 Wanting to write a successful book appears, I\u2019m suddenly realizing, to be a different animal altogether.\u00a0 It\u2019s not blogging, it\u2019s not correspondence, it\u2019s not journaling or educating or critiquing.\u00a0 And now I\u2019m starting to ponder all those other facets.<\/p>\n

But wanting a reaction in order to improve how the reader experiences the writing.\u00a0 That\u2019s\u00a0 \u2026why.. that\u2019s awfully nice of you, Hue.<\/p>\n

And it goes beyond just wanting a one-time stimulation. It\u2019s .. it\u2019s wanting to develop a relationship, yes?\u00a0 Even if only for the course of that one book. But, one hopes, throughout the writing of many more.\u00a0 But it\u2019s an engagement at any rate.\u00a0 Not a performance.<\/p>\n

All that said, I did have a friend who would write pages upon pages of what amounted to diary entries.\u00a0 And then she would take them out of her \u2026hold on to your hat\u2026. typewriter<\/em>\u2026.<\/p>\n

and tear them up.<\/p>\n

I was flabbergasted when she told me this.\u00a0 I admit, I\u2019m a little too fond of my own writing, but there\u2019s just something heartbreaking about expressing yourself with the written word and then destroying it.\u00a0 Expressing yourself with the intention of destroying it.\u00a0 I dunno. Maybe there\u2019s an official therapy based on that. But if I take the time to write it down, I can\u2019t see wasting it by obliterating the effort.<\/p>\n

Of course I have a counter.\u00a0 I have looked back on something I wrote a long time ago and HATED it.\u00a0 But I only destroyed such a thing once and I\u2019ve regretted it ever since.<\/p>\n

At the very least I should have just edited it to be less objectionable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, they hate being ignored.\u00a0 That, in fact, is how I treated ruggies back in the day – erase the damage, don’t say a thing.\u00a0 I ordered the aides not to say a thing, just do the necessary.\u00a0 Ruggies HATED the lack of attention, and would disappear quickly.<\/p>\n

Yes, a relationship; perhaps not the nicest of relationships.\u00a0 I recall reading somewhere that someone said writing a novel consisted of withholding important information from the reader, and that is certainly true from those two and a half novels Deb & I worked on – anything from major characters to just small little character traits that turn out to be a fulcrum of a novel.\u00a0 So the relationship is possibly tempestuous, devious, and no doubt a little manipulative at one level – but entirely honest at another.<\/p>\n

But all writing has an audience – at least of the writer themselves.\u00a0 Themself?\u00a0 But a relationship with oneself is not usually exciting; so we write a letter to our cousin, another letter to the editor of the newspaper, then we step off the curb and try to write for some larger audience, convey ideas and relationships between ideas and then we stumble into the question of Why Read Stories (which I will someday write about on the blog) and how that applies to the would-be storyteller, and that has to be dealt with … or not.\u00a0 The natural storyteller probably just knows the answer, or doesn’t need it; but I am not natural, and ask all those oddball questions.<\/p>\n

Destroying her output .. .did she say why?\u00a0 Perhaps the output reflected some inner daemon she was trying to excise, and this was the procedure – capture it on paper, burn the paper.<\/p>\n

Hold yer breath, lady, or it’ll get right back in ya.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reader reacts to my post on writing a sentence, and we engage in a bit of back and forth: If I ever dig out from my self-inflicted condition of clutter-itis, and actually attain a measure of clarity in both space and time in my residence, I am going to \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}