Nervousmess and excitement

Just a quick update on how things are going since I've been back.

Something happened to me at the residency. I didn't fully realize it until I got home and got rested, but I think all the things I had been studying over the course of the term clicked in my head. Well, probably not all of them, but some substantial new thing has happened for me. I can tell I understand a critical aspect of what makes writing good that I only vaguely had some external notion of before. It's almost like I had an epiphany, but I know it was really a synthesis of the semester's work and things I heard at the residency.

So I am more and more excited about that. Could I be a little more specific? Well, here it is. It's the difference between showing and telling. Everyone says it, but it's so vague what they say. It's like understanding quantum mechanics or something. You might know something about it, but the hows and whys of it are probably beyond you. It's kind of like that. Because really, writing is telling. It's using words to make a story. How much closer to telling can you get than that? So how can you show without telling while creating a story with words?

The best way I can find to explain the difference is to use the analogy of a photograph versus a film. When you describe something in a static way, you capture a photo. When you describe it in a dynamic way, one that uses words to do dual duty depicting things not as they are in a particular stopped moment of time, but as they are during a period of time, you capture a film with words.

I never thought about this consciously until recently. I think sometimes I might have inadvertantly done this, but it was hit or miss. Now that I am aware of it, I have a lot more control. I also realized that one of the keys is to use very precise verbs. I had been an advocate of using adverbs and I couldn't understand why adverbs had to be used sparingly or not at all. But I now understand that single words have a lot of power. If you use weak or static verbs to tellyour story and add adjectives to get the nuance of meaning across, the nuances of your story become static. If you use active, precise verbs, the nuances of your story remain active, captured in the verbs. Compare "he ran" or "he strode" to "he walked quickly".

Of course, adverbs are a part of the language, but they need to be rarely used. They are scaffolding, not solid foundations.

So that's the exciting part. The nervousness comes from not knowing if I can get everything done on time. I have only three weeks each period instead of four like last time, so I really ahve to be on point all the time. And I'm having troulbe with reading. My reading speed is really down. I'm still trying to finish my first book this semester. But I'll make up for it by reading an essay for my seoncd work.

I find that I really want to impress Molly. I don't know why I should feel that way. But then, I wanted to impress Pete also. We'll see what happens.