Livinghigh
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Livinghigh was here at 2:11 PM /



A novel thing to do

I'm trying to write a novel at the moment, and it all seems to fall in inexplicable, inevitable, places at times. At times, it seems dastardly, this attempt of mine, and I keep on wondering how on earth I'm supposed to catch the attention of anybody (aside from myself) with this narrative of mine. So that's when I try to think up clever one-liners, and try to think of something difficult to say, that's when I go through some of the books I've loved, and some of the pieces I've appreciated, and I try to think what the writers wanted to put forward there.

For instance, when they want to recall a midsummer afternoon, reading a book below a tree, do they talk of the weather first, the colour of the sky first, or do they delve headlong first into the book the character is reading... whether a romance or a mystery or a non-fictional autobiography.

Do you begin with the lemonade they drank on such a midsummer afternoon, to quench their light thirst, and so they recall whether the lemonade was sweet or sour, or in need of something else that the lemon can simply not squeeze enough of...?

Do they vaguely present something of the background - the blue house the character lives in, with the white-painted shutters, and the bright yellow paisley curatins, the mahogany furniture, the old house which has been in the family for generations, and which seems so completely in place in the background of this idyllic midsummer afternoon...?

A thousand things like that.



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