It might be presumptuous of me to even start with this premise, but, if you had seen my blog before yesterday, you might have noticed that I had a page devoted to explaining my work-in-progress, the Busy Bee Cafe. In it I said some of my posts were labeled Busy Bee Interlude, where I had written experimental chapters, back stories, and maybe even a couple of serious drafts.
After discussion with my partner/girlfriend/resident molecular biologist, I decided to take all that down, simply because if I was actually serious about publishing any of this, it would probably behoove me to keep it out of sight until then, for copyright reasons.
That in itself might be presumptuous, but, hey, that's alright. Plus, I don't know anything about copyright law.
This all brings up the subject of choosing an audience when writing something. my P/G/RMB is writing a book about, for one thing, hemoglobin. For her, knowing her audience is easy. It's not exactly a text book, but the same people will be reading it. For me, I have no idea. But, it IS sci-fi. I guess. Although I waver.
Speaking of experimental chapters, I've been waffling on POV and first-person vs third-person, and narrator status. And somewhere along the line I became aware that my "voice" on my blog posts is different, (I think better,) than my narrative voice when writing a story. A blog audience, I think, tends to keep me informal and skew my style away from prose-y description. It's sort of like how none of us would talk to a group of friends, say, over a restaurant table in the same way we would write a story. But could the reverse work? And, you know, nobody wants to sound like William F. Buckley. I just can't look words up in the dictionary fast enough, for one thing.
So, bottom line, I'm too old to spend too much time trying to figure this out right now. And something about letting chips fall where they may.
Have a good one. It's hump-day, if you're working. Slide on in to the weekend. You aren't paid enough.
It was a revelation to me that I could write a real novel in my chit-chat voice and it would be better than one I tried to write in a pseudo-serious voice. You have to play to your strengths!
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to think the informal blog/usenet voice might be best. Gawd knows we all got enough practice. I mean, you know, like, whatever.
ReplyDeleteOriginally, I hadn't planned to write any poetry on my blog and if I did, it wasn't going to be good poetry. I don't really have publication aspirations, but just in case, it would be better to avoid for copyright reasons.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I got sucked into to the poetry prompts and positive feedback, and I found myself liking a lot of what I have already posted. So I screwed myself over perhaps. Maybe I'll take the poetry down at some point.
Blogging is a different beast from writing a novel. There's a reason I write blog posts and not fiction. I write the former far better than the latter.
I'm so bad at poetry. But right, JYP, there is some kind of psychological distance between blog and novel, when writing. At least with a blog, you know your audience, more or less. With a novel, I struggle with the idea, though I suppose if you pick a genre, then you know.
ReplyDeleteVery well
ReplyDeleteLove this