In The Garden Living an RPG Life

I’ve been taking myself seriously long enough to get a feel for my own process.  Didn’t have that so I didn’t know what I needed from outside.  Of course I learn about my own writing by writing.  It’s the stuff I choose to write–and more importantly the stuff I choose not to write–that lets me see myself as a writer.

One thing I’ve noticed about my writerly self is my punctuation.  Yep, that’s right.  I choose to write only the kinds of sentences I can be punctuationally sure of on first draft.  It has the effect, of course, of setting a functional limit on my Voice. It checks the pace of sentences.  Keeps them relatively short.  Which, if you had the misfortune of reading my early stuff, is quite a good thing.

Of course, the use of basic punctuation practice doesn’t mean that my thoughts are less complex.  It does mean that I have to be more careful in how I express them.  My language is strengthened by the need for simplicity.  Someone said my writing is “zippy”.  I like that, a lot.

I feel that my tone is more relaxed because my sentences are structured as they are.  There is less in a mouthful.  Less breath needed.  More substance.  Weight.  And there is the opportunity for artistry.  Not the flamboyant kind.  But the kind that comes from attention to the detail that craft requires.

I am by no means an expert at the technical details.  For instance, I don’t know if there should be a comma after the “but” above.  Or even if that is a technically valid sentence.  It doesn’t matter. For now.  What does matter is that I have moved from feeling overwhelmed by my own writing to feeling overjoyed by it.  I love the process of getting the words out and making them ebb and flow.  I break the “wait till you’re done before you edit” rule and edit–a little bit–on the fly.  That’s the pleasure of the process.  That I can choose to let the words just flow and, when I need to take a breath to think about what comes next, I can shift a comma or two and move on, refreshed.  It makes the rereading nicer, as well.

I have a ways to go before I feel I’ve accomplished the level of technical skill I want.  I’ve just come far enough to be able to produce a body of work, feel good about the pre-editing quality, and enjoy the process of putting  images and ideas into words.   For now, I am going to pay a little closer attention to how I write so that I know what I need to focus on next.