Construction News

dear d:

well, how nice you still like me. i was afraid i’d
find your letter railing at me for my hideously sexist
attitudes. and it wasn’t your dick i was going on
about anyway.

the boyfriend is going to be a comic portrayal,
anyway. fallstaffian. did i mention i can no longer
spell, as a mark of my continuously degrading mental condition?
you do know i’m an amazon now, don’t you? i hope it
won’t shock you. 

i agree about creative writing being a scam. workshop
is a better thing. practice makes perfect. 

i just thought my private musings would come in handy
as an example, and actually wrote to an english
teacher in my kid’s ex high school to see if she
wanted to show her kids. she hasn’t answered.

i’m so glad you like my writing. i really do depend on
your opinion, but for my own private purposes. it
won’t damage me.

and the idea of being collaborative in this effort is
misleading, because it’s my story and it’s going to
get written my way. but my way includes loads of input
from the characters themselves, the necessities of
plot, and reader suggestions when they hit a nerve in
my head, or my character’s head. 

i’m letting the reader be me for awhile, meaning that
i’m writing my own notes and then publishing them
without prettying them up much at all. which is why
i’m using character shorthand like three inch dick.
it’s almost unedited observation (particularly the
strand running under the ’construction’ tab, which
traces the actual day to day action. 

blogging is very complex, as far as doing simple
things. i’m trying to get listed and read, and have no
idea how to go about it, and keep ending up
registering for this web service and that, and it’s
making me nervous. google probably knows everything
about me by now. and i’ve told them everything
voluntarily. hoist by my petard.

have you any objection to my putting our slightly
expurgated letters up in the comments section of my
wordpress blog?  

love
jeanne

I know your “three inch dick” comment is not aimed at me personally.  In Old Bull’s comment, I was speaking as a generic male.  And, of course, you are perfectly within your rights to make characters any damn way you want them. I dig the Falstaff thing as you put it here.  I await with curiosity the creation of the guy .  How’s it feel to be godlike?

What do you mean, exactly, by your “continuous mental condition”?  Are you refering to the loss of your breast and the way you’re dealing with it?  How does it effect your spelling, exactly?  That’s a new one on me.

Yes, I know you’re an Amazon.  I probably will be somewhat shocked to see this “new you” at first, but how can I be weirded out by something you seem to be so well-adjusted to? (I have this damnable typing quirk–every time I write “you” it comes out “yoiu.”)

I now see what yoiu (see? Res Ipsa) mean about blogging-as-example for a high school composition class.  I suppose it exemplifies your process and may be useful to hammer home the need for drafting and revision. Seeing how you go from initial sketches to fully developed plot/description/character can be instructive.  Good luck with the teacher.  Sometimes it can be hard to get them to communicate during the summer.

I also now understand your intention with unedited blogging–good spontaneous exercise.  My own process is staccato–I’ll spit out a chunk in a blob then rework it, and so on; rinse, repeat, etc.  But I write only rarely.  Writing to you is probably one of the few real workouts I allow myself.  I need something to get pissed off about (my muse is indignation, like Swift), but these days I’m keeping my emotional affect narcotized.  I feel sometimes like a hypocrite–teaching essay writing when I write very little myself.  I am a great reader, though, and that’s half the instruction–how to read.

Go ahead and make any use of our correspondence that you want. I know you’ll change the name to protect the idiot.

Cheers, D

dear d: so have you been to construction news yet and seen
what i’m doing? i want to know if your writing process
is anything like mine. i want to know what you think
of what i’m doing. do you find it amusing and
interesting to look over someone’s papers, or would
you rather wait until the final project is in? i’m
thinking about what you’d think of all this, being a
writing teacher. i’d like to serve as an example for
some ninth grade writing class or something. a how to
struggle into competence blog.
love
jeanne

I am very much enjoying reading your blog.  You are possessed by genius, I think.  You have a curiosity that is like I’ve always imagined scientists’ to be.  In a way you shame me in this, because I have very little imagination and my curiosity is easily extinguished and has never ranged anywhere near the meanderings of yours.  So there’s a bit of envy there, but just a bit.

As far as your creative process—it’s just that—creative.  Your invention (the formation of ideas about characters and what you have them do) is the creative process, and it is unteachable. It is completely idiosyncratic.  Creative writing classes are a scam. All they really do is provide audience feedback (“This character is doing something not like her; this action is too plausible/implausible; you repeat this phrase/word/detail too much; the way you describe X in the same way all the time is annoying)—this is the depth/type of comment one expects in creative writing seminars.  Now that I think on it, your blog wants to do this—it’s your creative writing seminar, but you’ll probably get mostly cranks, instead of experienced fiction writers.  I could be wrong.

Genius finds its own way.  You’ve got to find yours.  I will say, though, taking your fans along for the ride is very interesting and quite endearing. You provide a view into your mind.  It’s very charming and very interesting.  Other men besides me will fall in love with you.

What you do on the blog is probably one of the best ways to gain insight into the process.  But it’s YOUR process.  All my limited experience with collaborative writing leads me to conclude that the product is incoherent and uninteresting.  I think what you ought to do is continue your blogging observations but be very skeptical of the advice you may receive from readers.

The kind of writing I teach is not creative in the least. It is essay writing/arguments. Thesis + Evidence + counterargument/refutation, dig?  And a large part of this includes reviewing grammar—how to write clear sentences. What you are doing is the stuff of (again) the “creative writing” seminar, which is really not my bag.  To teach one of these, you must be published in fiction, and even then, why bother, since these classes are the scam I point out.

I’m going back to the blog now . . . I’ll continue in a minute.

Damn!  That meteor video is FAR OUT!!!  It gives me the Primal Fear.  Love, D