I’m not a woman and perhaps my perspective will miss the boat for many readers of this wildly popular story published in The New Yorker but my objective is to do writing analysis; there will be no “How To Reply When Asked About ‘Cat Person’” or “My True Life ‘Cat Person’ Experience”.First, a list of elements (not events but factors that reappear, in varied guises, throughout): Acting as trained/expected (previously […]
Writing Analysis: Cat Person
The Writing Process
I thought it might be worthwhile to summarize my writing process. This is based on the two most recent stories but the process has been similar for many years. Envision a setting, situation, or character. Write a sentence. Write a second sentence Read what I’ve written Change a phrase Write a third sentence, extending the flow and increasing the breadth. Read. Correct a typo. Fix a shift in tense. Get […]
Reading Across Genres
I like to read across genres. Some years back I discovered Google’s list of best books of 2012 and I read them without paying attention to what the title might hint, reserving judgement as long as I could. The 2013 list wasn’t as good and that was the last I saw. Since then I haven’t found a reliable way of finding material across genres worth looking at. Recently I realized […]
Talking Heads
I just critiqued a short piece where some friends are driving home from a party, gossiping about others they just left. There is some description of the drive, but the piece was almost entirely talking heads. Worse than that, since we get no description of the speakers, they’re disembodied talking heads, without the fake smile and coifs of a newscaster to look at. Granted, the dialogue is what this story […]
Double Duty
I’ve been working and thinking a lot about various things related to writing. One is layering. By layering I mean multiple levels of meaning or connection so that there is more than one thread connecting every phrase to the plot, the setting, the personalities, or the themes. In other words, why describe the light as “clear and bright” when you can say “cutting through the darkness like a knife” if […]
Word frequency counter; an add-in for Word
I have to give a shout-out to this word frequency counter add-in for Word: http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tip_pages/word_usage_and_frequency_report.html Word frequency is something I review when self-editing. Get a count of each word, decide which ones I’m overusing, do a search-and-replace-with-highlight in Word and it’s easy to read and consider options. Word will count words, but not give you a frequency. There are web sites that will do this, but you have to upload […]
Painting with Words
It’s been pointed out to me (and I’ve been subconsciously aware) that my writing over the past year or two has become more convoluted and laced with more (sometimes) challenging grammatical errors. A few factors: more complicated situations and characters desire to push my prose poetic licence But I’m beginning to think the biggest factor is that I’m writing and editing like an improvising painter. I decide that a situation […]
NaNoWriMo 2015
I had some difficulty with NaNoWriMo this year. I came up with a theme, imagined characters, devised a situation and started writing. Seven days later I had just over the 11,670 target words for the seventh day of November, but with the exception of two or three moments the story wasn’t moving me and I was not happy with the quality of the prose. Having completed three NaNoWriMo novels in […]
On Anecdotes
Here’s an anecdote: Late one rainy Saturday morning I caught the X9 bus going downtown. The front was full so I sat near the middle, on one of the long bench seats where your back is to the window and you face the opposite seat. I heard a woman’s voice from the rear. She was Filipino and I couldn’t tell if she was speaking English, but I did understand that […]
Why is Writing Well so Difficult?
Why is writing well so difficult? It seems easy. When we talk, we don’t have difficulty communicating. On the other hand, our appraisal of our chatter is not strict, not until we have to make a speech or a presentation. And when we speak face to face we receive feedback—discussion, questions, body language—to check how well our message is coming across. Good writers make written communication seem natural, easy, almost […]