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Writing Exercises: Be Honest, Apply Style
The fourth exercise turns out to be a lot like doing exercises one & two again, except that I'm supposed to pick whatever style I want. Write something honest, then do it again. With style.
Right.
In theory, I could use the above as my "honest" thing, I suppose. Or this. Wow, look at all the writing I'm doing without getting to the point of the exercise. Or maybe this is stylish?
*deep breath*
Lemme take this from the top.
Honest
I hate doing laundry.
Stylishly honest
I despise doing laundry. I enjoy washing clothes in much the same way that a cat enjoys being dumped in a swimming pool with four large, bored Rottweilers who have vivid memories of their past lives as mice and are looking forward to their revenge.
Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration. But I don't like it.
Many minor, aggravating things conspire to make it more irritating than it has to be. To start with, I don't have my own laundry machines. I think that if I had a washer and dryer on the same floor with my clothes--next to my bedroom, say--I wouldn't mind it that much. But, no, I live on the 8th floor and the nearest washing machines are in the sub-basement.
Not just the basement--no, that would be OK because then I could simply take my laundry to the elevator, step out in the basement, throw it in, and be done. Instead, it's in a sub-basement, which means I have to haul my laundry down the long corridor to the elevator, go to the basement, haul it down another long corridor back to where the sub-basement is, and carry it down another flight of stairs to where the actual machines are.
The only good thing that can be said about this arrangement is that at least there are 10 washers and 10 dryers down there.
Because I hate doing laundry so much, my general strategy is to postpone doing it for as long as I can, and then bring every dirty scrap of cloth in the apartment when I finally bring myself to do it. (Except for the kitchen towels. I never remember to wash the kitchen towels. They just sit in the kitchen, getting increasingly dingy and dirty, until I stop using them entirely and switch to using paper towels to dry dishes).
To make the process of hauling laundry less irksome, I bought an industrial laundry cart. But, because nothing about laundry can be easy, the cart had problems. The wheels fell off. Constantly. Every month or so, Lut would glue them back on, at which point the wheels would be so stiff that they wouldn't turn and I'd have to shove the cart forward by brute force, but at least they wouldn't pop off every ten feet or so.
Then, one day, one of the loose wheels fell between the crack of the open elevator doors, and disappeared into the Great Void, presumably to join Jimmy Hoffa, Elvis Presley, and all those missing mates for my socks.
For a while, I used a wheel off of something else as an inadequate replacement for the previous cart. It was too short and fell off all the time, too, but I was kind of resigned to this by now.
Then, Lut suggested that we could at least look for a replacement wheel, or maybe just a whole new cart.
We went to Organized Living, where I'd purchased the cart.
They did not sell replacement wheels, nor, in fact, the same cart. But they did have a new laundry cart, and this one, lo and behold, came with permanently affixed wheels, rather than the assemble-it-yourself (over-and-over-and-over-again) wheels of our cart.
So I bought a new cart.
The new cart quickly proved to be ... how can I put this? A piece of crap.
Apart from the wheels, everything else about it was shoddy and in every way inferior to the old cart. The old cart I used to load up with all my clothes, Lut's clothes, blankets from the bedroom, den, and living room, towels, sheets, kitchen sinks, etc., until it was piled so high that it was taller than I was and, in fact, no part of the actual cart would be visible. It was just a massive pile of cloth that rolled. For fifteen feet, until one of the wheels came off, anyway. That cart was made of titanium-reinforced steel and it just didn't care. When I got to the basement, I'd drag it, bouncing and jouncing behind me, and apart from losing all four wheels in the process, it'd be fine.
The new cart is made out of the kind of low-grade aluminum that Reynolds rejects as not tough enough for tinfoil. Get it half-full and its legs start to bow. The front and back halves have a tendency to twist in opposite directions, so that if the back wheels are rolling along the floor, the front wheels are touching the nearest wall. If I lived in an Escher print, this might come in handy, but as I do not, it's singularly unhelpful.
Today, one of the screws holding the legs to the center struts broke. I was surprised. I'd expected the struts to snap first.
Lut replaced that screw, and the other three, with sturdier ones. I'm not entirely convinced that was the right thing to do, since that probably means the center struts will be the part that breaks next time, and they'll be harder to replace.
But Lut and I have another idea: he found a new type of glue, called "J.B. Weld", that he used to glue his car back together a few months ago. Using that, we could, perhaps, permanently affix the wheels on the old cart.
Now, if we could just find a fourth wheel for it ....
I'm supposed to do this one "a couple" more times. Lut defines "a couple" as "two to four" but I consider "a couple" to be "two". I'm gonna make the next one shorter, because at this rate I'm never going to make it to Chapter 2.
Honest
One of my cats is too thin.
Stylishly honest
To my deep and everlasting sorrow, I must confess that one of my cats, a source of radiant joy in my bleak and unworthy existence, is underweight. She is like a feather, a leaf, that might be blown away by a sudden breeze; in fact, Lut often deters her from climbing up on him by blowing at her. To stroke her is to pet a fur-covered xylophone. I have struggled, in vain, to persuade her to eat, tempting her with fattening delicacies from all over the world, or at least the pet store, but she nibbles only lightly upon any sustenance.
And then vomits most of it back up.
Part of this exercise was "notice what types of style you use". Looks like I'm focusing on "exaggeration" and "injecting humor", plus lots of details, with the occasional simile or metaphor. I'm also "poodling it up"--that is, putting in a lot of elaborate turns of phrase. That last, I think, is because I'm so conscious that I'm doing an exercise and "being stylish". In a sense, I'm trying too hard, and probably going overboard as a result.
In the last one, I picked a style deliberately from my list in the previous entry: "get flowery". Tuftears does this style quite naturally--we've used it now and again in roleplay for a particular vaguely-Arabic culture on Sinai --but it's more of a struggle for me. I figured I need the practice anyway. I think it came out okay.
Now, on to page 6!
...
Y'know, this is a 270 page book. I'm starting to get the idea I may not finish it by the end of June.
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I find the Abu Dhabi style flows best when one imagines oneself as the speaker, a groveling innkeeper or perhaps a poor seller of bagatelles, one of a lower class who seeks to stand out through his or her very humbleness. "Look at me," says the Abu Dhabi style of speech. "I am nothing, I am a worm beneath your tread, and yet have I not captured your attention in my very self-effacement? O worthy one, condescend to share even the slightest whisper of your endless bounty, and I shall be blessed beyond all measure!"
Perhaps it is so with other manners of writing; to imagine a style of story-telling, you must imagine the teller.
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I am vicariously enjoying the Lady Rowyn's efforts here; I feel somewhat ill at ease at one aspect, as I had inadvertently pressed her to this task. I at least made the suggestion of the book; she reasonably is responsible for the direction in which she has taken it.
But, being responsible, she is likely to work herself too hard at it, and be perhaps troubled by any failings she might perceive, though none have been evinced thus far.
The flowery exercise was interesting for me, as I talk like this all the time. ];-)
===|==============/ Level Head
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You don't do that whole self-deprecating end of it at all, though. :)
I am vicariously enjoying the Lady Rowyn's efforts here; I feel somewhat ill at ease at one aspect, as I had inadvertently pressed her to this task.
I am glad you are enjoying the fruits of your pressing (and it's only juice, I'm sure -- no time yet for the fruit to ferment, so you're safe on that count). But I'm sorry to hear that you are ill at ease at any aspect of it.
I don't think that I'm working too hard on it at all (I'm only on page 5! :) Maybe I'll make it through page 6 tonight.) In all seriousness, I'm enjoying it. With any luck, when I stop enjoying it, I'll slack off and not feel guilty about doing so. Admitedly, goodness knows I've felt bad about enough silly things in my life, I suppose this could become yet another one of them -- but for your sake, Sir Level Head, I shall do my best to ensure that it does not. :)
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And more seriously: good advice. :)
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Hee! Love this. :-)
These exercises are starting to sound like fun...which may be my muse's way of telling me to go back to my own writing journal. Hmm.
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My trouble is, I started to think about that, and promptly felt guilty for working on these writing exercises instead of some other project. Curse you, conscience! I'm on vacation! Can't you leave me alone for a while and let me do whatever I feel like?
Sigh.
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Maybe you need to write one big chest-beating angst-fest to get the guilt out of your system. =)
Anyway, lovely homework!
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Maybe I should. :P Darn you, angst! :)
Anyway, lovely homework!
Thank you! :)
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So I say - tell your conscience to stuff it! You've been working hard on your writing for a long while now, you deserve a break! You should be able to do whatever you like. :-)
I, on the other hand, need to placate a muse who's been sorely neglected these past few months. We'll see what comes of it. ;-)
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Besides, exercise is good for you. :)
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However, this little conversation has given me an idea for an "exercise" of my own...
Hmm.
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Honesty:
I believe that correcting a mistake is more important than apologizing for it repeatedly.
Honesty with style (illustrating with anecdotes):
Sometimes we do not recognize the formative moments in our lives when they occur. One of mine came when I was a high school senior and at the time, I certainly didn't think that it would be so important to me later.
My father was driving my best friend and I home from school that day in the brown station wagon we used to own. We were all sitting up front, since that seat was so large it could accommodate all three of us. I was staring at the floor and my best friend was crying.
To this day I can't remember what upset her so much – she may have had an argument with someone at school, but I'm not sure of it – but it was enough to bring her to violent sobs. Instead of comforting her, which is what a best friend is supposed to do when you are sad, I was sitting beside her uselessly and staring at the floor. Not because I didn't want to comfort her, but because when I had tried to do so, she jerked away and said, "Don't touch me!"
So I didn't. What I did instead was think, If you won't even let me help you when you need it, then are we really best friends at all?
She did apologize to me later for that incident, but her behavior didn't change. She would become angry, or upset, or frightened over something, and still refuse to let me do anything about it. Then the apologies would come...and the process would begin again.
By the time I left for college a few months later, I had found the answer to my question. It was "no."
Don't be sorry, just fix it.
So how was that?
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Hooray! Company!
So how was that?
Hmmm. Pretty good. I think the weakest part in your anecdote is that it's not explicitly clear how your friend was keeping you from helping her. She says "Don't touch me!" but one might construe that, not as a failing on her part, but that this particular form of comfort doesn't work on her. (I'm not trying to defend her, btw -- I'm just pointing out a weakness in the way the anecdote supports the thesis).
As a counter-example: the same thesis could be supported by showing a friend who yells at *you* when she's mad at *someone else* -- and apologizes for it afterwards, but continues to do the same thing. There, the reader can clearly see the problem, clearly see that the perpetrator recognizes it as a problem, yet refuses to alter the behavior.
Your example does show all three of these things, true. But I did get distracted from the focus by my wondering about the nature of the root problem. Er. if that makes sense. It may be that I need some revision practice on this comment, come to think of it. :)
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Ah, righto. I think that in my desire to be brief and not crash LJ with a monster-sized comment, I left out some helpful details. *peers at her homework* I believe I see two places in which I can elaborate, so I'll do a little revising tomorrow and re-post.
By the way, if these writing exercises continue apace, should I keep posting my responses here or just stick 'em in my own journal? :-)
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I am more than happy to play host to your writing. :)But I certainly won't hold it against you if you decide you want them in your journal (or in Introspectacle) instead. Might be easier for you to track them down, if you decide you want them later, if they're in your journal. Up to you, though. I mean, I'll be reading them wherever you put them. :)
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Honest:
I believe that correcting a mistake is more important than apologizing for it repeatedly.
Honesty with style (illustrating with anecdotes):
Sometimes we do not recognize the formative moments in our lives when they occur. One of mine came when I was a high school senior and at the time, I certainly didn't think that it would be so important to me later.
My father was driving my best friend and I home from school that day in the brown station wagon we used to own. We were all sitting up front, since that seat was so large it could accommodate all three of us. I was staring at the floor and my best friend was crying.
To this day I can't remember what upset her so much – she may have had an argument with someone at school, but I'm not sure of it – but it was enough to bring her to violent sobs. Instead of comforting her, which is what a best friend is supposed to do when you are sad, I was sitting beside her uselessly and staring at the floor. When I had tried, tentatively, to give her a hug, she had jerked away from my hands and said, "Don't touch me!"
So I didn't. What I did instead was think bitterly, I don't know why I bother - it's the same thing all over again. You cry, I try to reach out to you, you tell me to get lost. If you won't even let me help you when you need it, then are we really best friends at all?
She did apologize to me later for that incident, but true to form, her behavior didn't change. She would become angry, or upset, or frightened over something, then refuse to let me do anything about it. More apologies would follow...and the cycle would begin anew.
By the time I left for college a few months later, I had found the answer to my question. It was "no."
Don't be sorry, just fix it.