Recent r/literature Posts Breakdown

I'm considering whether it is advantageous for me to create quarterly or semiannual summaries of posts I've created (and which have been abundantly upvoted) on r/literature. Most of these posts concern books or articles I've read and literary techniques or theories or thoughts I've developed and/or am developing as a result.

Perhaps this will be a good idea, perhaps not. But let's give it a go.

From biggest to smallest then!

What SHOULD my story do?

My story...my story...my story...Dammit! What should my story be doing? Trying to accomplish? Is it one thing or many?

Hmm...

Whether thy masterpiece of a novel, or thy life's story, or thy "Story" on Facebook that exhibits annoying notifications across my (not thy) feed, when we speak of our story—just what the hell are we talking about? What should we be saying? What are we trying to accomplish via telling our story?

Let's get to the bottom of this...

A Word on Too Many Words

Reading over the Goodread comments on Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, I somewhat ruined this book for myself. Well, even if shortlisted for the Man Booker award, the first 50 or so pages just rung my attention completely dry—so—it wasn’t just the Goodread comments with spoiler alerts, informing me about the unsatisfactory ending and prompting me to lay this book down before wasting anymore of my time reading another word (I admit I especially searched for those comments to substantiate my own suspicions…), it was all the so many words themselves…

Don’t yell at me, I’m an artist – Part I

 

Sarah Jung, pic filched here

There exist many stereotypes about creative types. Just the typifying of people as creative types is itself a corralling of certain individuals who exhibit certain traits into a certain group. A commenting along the lines of: “Oh, you’re a one of those…” or a: “Yes, I’m an it…”

Magic Systems — Arden's The Bear & The Nightingale

http://avalinahsbooks.space/the-bear-and-the-nightingale/

There're whole heaps of praise out there on the internet for Katherine Arden's debut: The Bear and the Nightingale, a fairy tale-esque coming-of-age story taking place in medieval Russia. I'm not going down that praising path, though I did enjoy the book over Christmas break (absolutely a winter read). Rather, I'm going down the magic-system path. And when it comes to fairy tales, pinning down a magic system is about as difficult as making waterfalls flow backwards.

The Ending of a Book

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/

At last, we've come to it. The final pages. The point when we say: This is it. There's no more. Add a few blank pages, some acknowledgments, and there's the back cover. Staring you in the face. You're done.


Welcome, to the end of the book.

Hearing Voices: Authors and the Imagination



Yevgenia Nayberg

Here is an article on Virginia Woolf which inspired me to think about the imaginary voices we all hear, whether we're an author, or some other creative-type, or none of the above.


When I say imaginary voices, here're some examples (from the article) of what I mean:

[Imaginary voices] might include a bereaved person comforted by the voice of the departed; a mountain climber who intuits a felt presence; a child talking to imaginary friends; an athlete whose attentional focus tunes in to self-talk; the inner voice of a coach or trainer.

Effective & Efficient Writing — Binti, by Dr. Nnedi Okorafor

I'm late. This novella came out in 2015 but I'm just getting to it. In any case, this Nebula and Hugo award-winning novella packs a punch for its short length and that's why I consider it a prime example of both effective and efficient writing.

Effective:

Effective writing can be summed up as writing that simply gets its job done. For fiction writing, in particular, effectiveness can have many different facets to it. But I'll focus on just two:

1. The writing gets plot and character across, i.e. the reader understands what's happening, who the character is, and so on. And...
2. ...the writing flows. Drawing the reader forward, not requiring them to stop and reread sentences.

The Ideas Behind The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin

I am impressed and I am depressed, but I am not dispossessed.

Impressed: Whether it is Le Guin's use of words, her parse, straightforward style, or her sheer insight, there were many times while reading The Dispossessed when I felt the gnawing of self-doubt. Many times when I said to myself: "I could never write that good."

Hence, depressed, after being impressed.

But I’m not dispossessed and I'll tell you why.

Why Write?

To explore the soul, the will, the heart. To exercise the courage to continue on.

In our era, there are very few places left to explore. The edges of the map were filled in a long time ago.

Nowadays, it seems there are only a few—a talented, qualified, or wealthy few—who can obtain the permission necessary to board a rocket ship, pilot a rover, jet off or sink into the unknown. Maybe it's always been that way...