I went in expecting my takeaways to be limited to the scope of how learn from other writers, but I ended up getting a lot more. From domains spanning from writing itself all the way to what makes good software good.
If you're lucky enough to have smart people around...
There were no specific examples in the form of sentences of the first two. There were specific attributes however.
I believe the thing you are trying to deliberately avoid -- keeping the reader in the dark chasing you -- was one thing that made the first two more theatrical. Just the right mix of details and meaningful action (
George Saunders
likes meaningful action vs the word plot lol ).
I think that because you were following
William Gibson
to a tee you got that for free. Kind of like getting a ton of things for free when following the conventions of an
MVC
webapp via
Ruby on Rails
or
Laravel
.
I think these last two assignments reveal how difficult it is to get that blend of details + meaningful action right. I think going forward that would be a great Daniel thing to hone your craft on, but given that this is the final week of
Echo and Narcissus
club it's a good opportunity to just do some more Gibson copying.
PS I'm already reading that Saunders' book
Maggie Appleton
mentioned and it is so necessary for fiction writers. You will love it. Please check it out. I hope Maggie does end up organizing a club around it!
dealingwith that was my initial intention with Tribes! However, I learned that to make Tribes work you need enough people that it warrants it. Right now we only have 4-7 writers a day -- depending on the day --- so it's never felt needed.
I've also since formed the opinion that I should tailor the features of the main feed and then just spin that off later when/if tribes is needed again.
Ha but TLDR yes. That's what I wanted Tribes to be but couldn't pull off on it's first iteration. Learning what makes the
Echo and Narcissus
club tick will help me figure out a better way next iteration.
RIght now I'm under the impression that
Maggie Appleton
's thoughtful approach to the assignments is one of the key drivers. Whenever I feel lost at worst or even just purely unmotivated at best, I can look at the doc Maggie is working on and it never fails to put me back on track... I shouldn't even say back on track because that implies that I've been placed where I wanted to be... but it's more that seeing the thought and care she puts into her assignement allows me to find myself on a path that I didn't even know existed. So it's not back on track. It's transported the a new track altogether.
keni I know sometimes you struggle with the assignments... not knowing how to go about it. I feel that when you feel that way seeing what Maggie is doing for that week will help a lot.
