Serenity… a life's expedition

You know how you learn something, and you know it intellectually, you can recite the why’s and the wherefore’s of it, and can explain it to someone else – but you know, and you know you know, that you just don’t get it?

Well, that was me – with any number of things (like long, rambly sentences), but this particular thing I knew but didn’t get was the First Commandment of writing – show, don’t tell. And then yesterday I had my “Oh! Well, duh!” moment.

See, I wrote a piece yesterday (and what a slog that was) that casually referenced back to a little thing I wrote last year. I liked it when I wrote it, but when I re-read it yesterday my first thought was – jeeze, this is terrible. No life at all, or very little anyway and when I put my finger on why, that’s when the lightbulb went off (on?) – I was doing an awful lot of telling and not very much showing.

Woohoo, was I happy! Not happy I am such a bad writer, but that I am beginning to recognize why and what to do about it. I set about fixing the story right away (examples below). Even the fixes are still bad writing, but that’s okay – I still like my little (true!) story, so I will revisit it from time to time, as I become more aware of all my bad habits and fix it again and again, until I don’t cringe anymore when reading it. At least I’ve broken through one logjam – it’ll still take a lot of work to break the bad habits but now I can go back to some of the writers I love reading (books and blogs) and look with new eyes and understanding of why their work is so compelling.

Anyway, examples:

Original:

The black cat that lives on my patio doesn’t belong to me. Or to anyone else – although he seems remarkably well cared for, for a stray. With his thick glossy fur, strong hefty build and very clear green eyes, you’d think he was fed and groomed daily.

But, no. While he’s an accepted part of the landscape no one admits to feeding him. I’m not sure I believe that, though, because he was just a kitten when he arrived and who can resist a helpless kitten?

Still bad, but better, revision:

The black cat that lives on my patio doesn’t belong to me.

He doesn’t belong to anyone – although he seems remarkably well cared for, for a stray. The thick, glossy fur on his large, muscled frame alternately reflects and absorbs all light as he wanders, strutting through his half-wild life as a part of the neighborhood he’s foraged in since he was small.

As I said, still bad, but anyway… I can at least see where I need to go. This cat (who is still around and still hangs out on my patio) is big. Not bobcat size or anything, but still pretty hefty, especially compared to my scrawny old cat. What I want, when I’ve revised this paragraph until I am satisfied, is – in a few descriptive sentences – show his bigness and black furriness and healthiness and independence, though he belongs. But not so awkwardly as I have done now.

I’m going to have fun revising, I think!

Okay, and then also there was this:

There is nothing special about my patio; it’s just like all the others in this 8 plex – sort of a pebble stone paving, and open to the courtyard. The elderly woman across the way has all sorts of interesting things on her patio: hanging plants, flowers in pots, wind chimes, a bench and a bbq. Me, I have a small 3 legged table that I shove into the corner so that it will stand up, and a folding chair that has a cushioned seat.

Well, I guess I should say I had a chair, because that is where the cat that lives on my patio sleeps each night, keeping an eye on the neighborhood and occasionally hopping down to torment my old indoors-only cat through the patio door.

Okay, and then the quick revision:

There is nothing special about my patio; like all the others in this 8 plex it’s a small square with pebble stone paving, and open to the courtyard so that we can look out at the bushes and any flowers the neighbors have planted. The elderly woman who lives across the way has the best patio, by far – all sorts of interesting things: hanging plants, flowers in pots, a bunch of different wind chimes, a bench and a bbq.  Me, I have a small 3 legged table that I shove into the corner so that it will stand up, and a black folding chair with a cushioned seat. She is not as fortunate in her view out of her window as I am in mine.

And I guess I should say I share a chair, because it no longer appears to belong just to me.  If I peer through the patio window at night, sometimes I can make out a dark shape on the chair, almost blending in until he lifts his head to give me an unconcerned stare out of brilliant green eyes.

Again, still not good, not compelling or evocative or very descriptive – hmmm, and wordier but not necessarily better. But at least it’s giving me a brief glimpse of where I need to take it in order to be satisfied. And the best I could do in the few minutes I had to spare on it yesterday.

I’ve not touched the rest of the piece yet, but I’m going to go over the entire thing, line by line and word by word and see what I can come up with. And then compare the original to the finished product as an example, for me, of what paying attention can do.

It’s funny, when I look at narrative stuff I wrote years ago, as opposed to in the past couple of years, I was far more descriptive. Still bad, but you can’t have everything right away. I am not sure why I moved away from that – I think because I felt I needed to do more analytical writing or something, for some reason, but it turns out I’m not too good at that either.

Anyway, a fun project for me that I am really looking forward to.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 8:31 am and is filed under learning stuff, storytellers, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.