{"id":718,"date":"2012-01-23T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=718"},"modified":"2012-01-23T06:00:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-23T12:00:55","slug":"eating-your-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=718","title":{"rendered":"Eating Your Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe difficulty lies not so much in the developing of new ideas as in escaping old ones.\u201d
\n~ John Maynard Keyes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If writing is my addiction, developing ideas is my obsession.\u00a0 Once I have a premise, especially a good one, I will mill it over for days.\u00a0 The strange thing is that more often than character traits and plot lines, I get flashes of language and dialogue.<\/p>\n

Even when I am not actively working, I am writing in my head, constructing quotes.\u00a0 Anyone who has read my writing knows I enjoy linguistically lining up sounds and syllables.\u00a0 I wiggle words against each other, hoping the verbs vibrate and the tone trembles.<\/p>\n

My journalistic training singles out sound bites, excavating bits of dialogue from syllabic slabs.\u00a0 I attempt to craft art, and in the process develop character and plot.<\/p>\n

This may sound odd, but it has always worked for me.\u00a0 It\u2019s how my writing brain functions.\u00a0 I don\u2019t seek out the sound bites.\u00a0 They show up while I obsess about my premise.\u00a0 I write them down for later use while ideas take shape.<\/p>\n

My one rule is that I will never force a favorite phrase into a story.\u00a0 If I have a beautiful metaphor, but it doesn\u2019t seem natural in context, I won\u2019t use it.\u00a0 I\u2019ll save it for later.<\/p>\n

Cannibalism is allowed in art.\u00a0 If it doesn\u2019t work on its own, if the idea doesn\u2019t have enough heft for a full story, that doesn\u2019t mean it is bad.\u00a0 What may not drive a novel may be perfect for a short story or a sub-plot.\u00a0 A protagonist who can\u2019t carry the conflict may be a great supporting character, a sequin sewn in to the fabric of another story.\u00a0 It is decorative, but still helps the new piece shine.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe in broken premises.\u00a0 If I can\u2019t make it is work, it isn\u2019t necessarily a bad idea. \u00a0I\u2019m just not the artist needed to pull it off.\u00a0 I won\u2019t waste a ton of time chasing an idea that isn\u2019t working for me.\u00a0 I\u2019ll lay it aside, but never get rid of it entirely.<\/p>\n

In writing, you eat your dead.\u00a0 Someday, the abandoned premise, approached from a fresh perspective, may speak to me.\u00a0 Twice now, I have re-written stories several years later and found them to work in ways they never could have when I originally wrote them.<\/p>\n

An artist changes over time, and characters I could only pretend to understand as a college kid are brutal reflections as a 32 year-old divorced father.<\/p>\n

Never throw away an old idea.\u00a0 Maybe it isn\u2019t a bad idea; it is just ahead of its time, waiting for you to catch up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe difficulty lies not so much in the developing of new ideas as in escaping old ones.\u201d ~ John Maynard Keyes If writing is my addiction, developing ideas is my obsession.\u00a0 Once I have a premise, especially a good one, I will mill it over for days.\u00a0 The strange thing is that more often than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[534,634,907,1039,1101],"class_list":["post-718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-process","tag-ideas","tag-linguistics","tag-re-using-ideas","tag-sounds","tag-syllables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}