Yesterday's Tapes, Tomorrow's Stories

Arg.  I've been wanting to write, and write mindfully, and practice, and this has been the last few days where that doesn't happen.  Dion Fortune was right:  when you try to accomplish a spiritual goal, a zillion distractions rise up to bar your way.

Working out:   Monday was a Work Day from Hell, and I got home late, so I went to the gym Monday night.  I did about 150 calories on the rowing machine in about fifteen minutes.  I've managed to reach a cruising point of about 720 cal / hour which feels good.  I did some extra free-weight things.

Writing:  Tuesday, someone asked me about Arcosanti, and the next thing I knew, I was reliving a particularly obnoxious moment.  I apologized for stepping onto a soapbox and we joked about Capricorns never forgetting, and she said she was a Cancer and that Cancers feel people's emotions, and I said, "Oh Capricorns feel things, too; we just don't let anyone see."  And I joked about how I should have a circle of friends, and we'd light candles, and I'd mime returning various strings to pictuers of some people from my past, and I'd say things like, "This is the string of anger that ties me to the past, and I return it to you."  

So.  Here I am Wednesday morning, writing, and focusing on writing.  But I sometimes play tapes in my head, and I'm thinking that one way to put the tapes away so I can focus on today and where I am may be to use a version of the tapes as character motivation.  Hmmm.   That  leads to the question of just how close to get to writing as therapy.  But then again, on the other hand, I read about published authors who have had terrible years and written from that place.  Anyway, Tuesday's particular tape has given me a story idea I want to work with.

Working out:  Wednesday was another day where the afternoon was spent dealing with Other Things and writing.  So I went to the gym in the evening.  I managed 200 calories in 17 minutes, followed by some weights-on-string lunges, lat pull-downs, triceps curls, power-station curl-ups, some dumbbell curls, and some other free-weight work.  

Writing:  I'm  working from some hard-copy of a rough draft of a 6000 word fairy-tale re-working.  Forster's aspect of Plot is rearing its head, and I can see that I need to show the Princess's emotional reactions much more than I am now.  On a story "and-then" level, the manuscript mostly works, but the plot "why" is weak.  I can see how the Princess's dialog in one section needs to be returned to match the Elizabethan style she used in the first quarter.  And as I was working out, my rowing machine guided fantasy of the Moon Priest in a Boat Prow turned a little bit into imagining the Princess getting out of her dilemma.  

Summary of Forster's "Aspects"

I read that in the 70's Ursula K Le Guin had read EM Forster's"Aspects of the Novel" and that is was her go-to resource whenwriting.

Having just finished it, I think A) Forster read a lot of non-Science Fiction (it was 1927), and B) this isn't a "how to" manual.  

I wish he had spoken more about HG Wells or Frankenstein, because I would have liked to see more examples of applying "Aspects" to science fiction novels.  What was useful about "Aspects" is that Forster is always returning to the relationship between the novel and the reader, and the demands each make on the other.

The last three aspects Forster writes about (see summary below) wereparticularly vague, and Forster is using the terms prophecy, pattern, and rhythm in idiosyncratic ways.  In a conversation I'm having, someone has said that rhythm (and prophecy and pattern) are British and particularly Fosterian ways of approaching the (Science Fiction) novel.  


The Aspects of the Novel Are:

Story
        Curiosity:  "And then?"
        Sense of time
        Sense of space
        Story voice:  for the eye, for the ear?
People
         human feeling and a sense of values

         Surprising -> Round character
         Convincing -> Round character
Plot
        "Why?"
        Intelligence -> Mystery
        Memory
Fantasy
         things which are not and implying the supernatural

         mixing the ordinary and the extraordinary
Prophecy
         "Prophecy - in our sense - is a tone of voice."

          Universal themes
          Requires the reader's
                 Humility

                 Suspension of the Sense of Humor
Pattern
          The shape of the story, plot, and characters.
Rhythm
          The gestalt expression of the novel which 

          releases or liberates it.

Forster and Fantasy

Working Out:  Friday I did 125 calories in about 15 minutes on the rowing machine, followed by my regular array of cross-wire lunges, dumbbell lifts, lat pull-downs, triceps pulls, and suspended curl-ups.  I felt the lunges Saturday where my shoulders connect to my pectorals.

Writing Theory:  Some folks looked at my latest science fiction story.  It was warmly received, with the comment that the plot needed to be stronger, and that it's currently a one-character story.  Since the plot isn't a self-vs-self plot, it might be helpful to make some of the other characters more three-dimensional, or "round" as E.M. Forster would say.

Speaking of Forster, I've been making my way through "Aspects of the Novel."  The aspects are story, character, plot, fantasy, prophesy, pattern, and rhythm.  I'm enjoying the bon mots scattered throughout the essay.   I've just gotten to the fantasy section, and as near as I can tell, what we call "the speculative element" is what he's calling fantasy.  I'm hoping that he'll use H.G. Wells as an example of what he's talking about--he's not talking about science fiction much since this is a collection of talks given around 1920--but at the moment he keeps referencing authors like Thomas Hardy or Charles Dickens and currently he's talking about "Ulysses."  

It's been useful to see his formulation of what a novel is, and in terms of the story I just turned in, I think he'd say that it has focused on the character of my protagonist at the expense of the plot.

Monday Journal

Writing:  Wrote for about an hour Monday morning.  Got about 300 new words on a short story fairy tale, and polished up some bits.  Did some minor editing of an essay piece I'm considering entering into the Men's Story Project.  I haven't done an essay in a while, and I like the form.  I need to take a look at a few more of their on-line samples; I don't want to fall into the "thank-you-for-sharing" iyabmuk style of a Heart Circle narrative, but that may be what they want.

Reading:  E.M. Forster's "Aspects of the Novel."  It's got some interesting points, and Ursula Le Guin said it inspired her.  It's written in 1927, so I'm having interesting moments trying to apply it to science fiction and fantasy.   Also skimming through "Speaking of Science Fiction," which is where I got Le Guin's recommendation.

Working out:  Did some free weight work at home.  Mark says he can tell I haven't been to the gym in over a week.