I have heard that writers should not use adverbs in their writing. There are reasons given, they seem good at the time. Then, I start writing, and I'm still writing adverbs. Janet Burroway uses this example: "'They stopped very abruptly" is not as abrupt as 'They stopped.'" So. True. I think part of the reason adverbs are so common is because they seem like they show, rather than tell. Really, they just tell.
"Internal" by Brian Evanson reminds me a bit of "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. They're both, basically, about a person who goes crazy while being confined to a room. There's plenty that can be said in both cases about whether the narrator starts out a bit crazy, or if the story chronicles their path to craziness. "Internal," I think, begins with an already insane narrator. He's in the hospital, and Dr. Rauch is his doctor, later replaced by Dr. Kagen for "unknown reasons" which is probably just, he's nuts. I'm not sure what there is to support this in the writing, but I got a feeling that the men in both rooms are actually the same super crazy man, and that the Rauch half of the story takes place simultaneously with the Kagen half.
"New York/LA Whirlwind Romance" by Karen Ellis was a fun read. Through nothing but dialogue, and one-sided dialogue at that, we can see how you can really like someone, until you actually spend time with them. I'm sure even I could be a real charmer over email or even the phone, but, ha, then you have to meet me and the image I've word-painted of myself could be entirely backwards - not even intentionally. There is more to people than just their words. You can't really sense a person's spirit over the phone. I think spirit is what ultimately makes or breaks a relationship.
It didn't take long to realize there was something fishy going on with "N" by Shelley Jackson. Two lines. "Judas 'N' Things" I can deal with. Okay, we're having a bit of fun. But then she hits me with "Bed Bath and Jesus" and this cannot be a coincidence. Linens N Things, Bed Bath and Beyond, rivals? Yup. Jesus and Judas, rivals? In a weird sort of way, I guess. So I skipped to the end, where the writers share something about the story. Shelley Jackson wrote that this story was ripped from the headlines - taken from the front page of the New York Times and only one single word had been added. It is torturing me not knowing what that word is. It must be an important word, too, or else she wouldn't have added it. One more thing: If "N" came from the newspaper, does that make it a Blackout Poem? They aren't quite the same and she probably reused several words, they're not in order, etc., but it amazes me what can be done with words already written. Writers don't always need to create whole new stories, they can pull from and rearrange others, sort of like what we did with the 25 word poems in class.
No comments:
Post a Comment