Writers' Notes
  • MIZZ PAW'S BLOBs and excerpts
    • Blog - THE PLOT IS in the BEAT
    • Mother's Day - Good Riddance
    • Response to me sister's response about I'm WalkingHere Blob
    • I'M WALKING HERE!
    • 2/26 Blog HIATUS, extinction, parents
    • Blob 2/16/13
    • 5/6/12 Writing in my sleep
    • Happy Valentine's Day GRANDMA You're going to Jail
    • Another email from Barbara
    • 5/1/12 Baby Vilho found a home
    • 4/11/12 excerpt:Letter to my Therapist
    • 2/25/12 Writing baby
    • 2/22/12 to barbara BOMBED REINDEER
    • 2/18/12 the BEATS
    • 2/12/12 Genrecast. What genre are you?
    • 2/13/12 DO NOT WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW!
    • 2/9/12 Raw footage protection
    • 2/8/12 So, what's it about?
    • 2/7/12 Ewwww!
    • 2/4/12 Writers block and Shooting Apples
  • Excerpts from 17
    • excerpts from 17 preface
    • His Head Was Found at the Driver's Wheel
    • GRANDMA'S NIGHT OUT
    • Excerpt 2 His Head Was Found at the Driver's Wheel
    • Vilho Continues his Story at the Golden Spike Snippet
    • Does the Boy Miss His Mother?
    • THE LITTLE INSURGENTS THEY CALLED US
    • scare all the girls
    • Deb de la Rosa Is Too Ladylike for This
    • ANA AND TUNNELMAN
    • Tunnelman and the Moonletts Amerika East
    • GRANDMA'S NIGHT OUT
  • Croatia, Home war
  • uh...about me, sort of

Writers Block and Shooting Apples

2/4/2012

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Today my writing ability sucks, but that's just a glitch. Not enough to call it writers' block. Enough to call it writers' vacation. They say (they?) after you write your novel put it in a drawer to simmer. After a time retrieve it from the drawer. I don't know what the state of "theys" drawers (and I will not go into the underwear pun) but mine have my grandchild's PJs in them. If I were to put my novel (assuming it's ready for a rest) my grandson would find it. He unfailingly finds what is hidden from him - electric plugs, hooks scissors, the sharper the  better...) so because I would not want him to cut up my novel with scissors or poke with hooks, his PJ drawer would not be a good place. On the other hand, the concepts of "cut ups" comes to mind. The cut-up writing technique was devised by William S Burroughs and his friend John Giorno, a poet. William as you may recall and better if you don't -  infamously shot an apple off his wife's head and missed. Missed the apple.  I don't know if the case went to court, this was in Mexico. Do any cases go to trial in Mexico? The way cut-ups works is this: Take a page from a magazine or newspaper and cut the column of writing in half  vertically so that the sentences are cut right down the middle. Then do the same with another article from another print source. Put the two pieces together, one from each source. Then you have your writing done for you. New sentences have been created! Of course some may not make sense, but if you read them all, you'll find some amazing  juxtapositions that do make sense  in a writer ly or poetry way at least. I use the cut up technique by proxy in my writing. That is to say, I retain the idea of juxtapositions of disparate ideas. Perhaps in one sentence the meaning may switch, for example this sentence in my novel in process, SEVENTEEN Chapter One:


"Thus,
our mothers didn’t race after us with school sweaters like she did when I usually forgot. "

A simple switch from "our mothers" to "she did" perhaps not grammatically correct but not entirely incorrect either. And it's the writing that matters not interceding  grammar. Not a lecture to you it's for me. Something about writing that clears things up. I hope to hear from you about what keeps you up at night, what speaks to you from daylight mares, etc... If you write, I love you.


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    My family knows me as Paula, Aunt Paw, Ama. and Grandma Paula and MOMwhydid youdothat! My full name is Parmalee Paula Cover. I am artist who these days - writes. Currently, a (another) novel I call SEVENTEEN. I am having fun learning the calculus of writing many many page into something for readers. Oh yes, and the politics of publication.

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