Closer and Closer; May 8 2023
Okay, so first off: sorry for a lack of blog posting! I don’t always have things to say, apparently! Even when I do, I can’t always get it on a page coherently, so there’s that.
But secondly, important news! I’ve had a couple of short stories accepted for publication! Details to come, once they’re up and available!
It feels really good to be getting some of my works picked up. One of them has been looking for a home for years (it’s actually the first short story I wrote with the intention of writing a short story!) and the other is a lot more recent. Obviously, I’ve made tweaks to the first, but it was fascinating seeing the evolution of my writing in such a short span.
Then, in juxtaposition, I’ve been getting back into the music I listened to in high school. So I’m introspecting on today’s blog post!
My early writing, back when I was sixteen and writing my first novel adapted from an alternate universe fanfiction I’d left incomplete, suffers from intense purple prose syndrome. I think a lot of writers experience this in the early stages of their work? You’re trying to jam poetry into every line, this thought in the back of your subconscious telling you it’ll make a kickass quote tattoo one day. You need to flex with every word that yes, I am a writer, I absolutely know how the language works. You’re listening to a lot of Evanescence and Death Cab For Cutie, convinced that you can make readers feel the way you do when listening to one of their songs if you can bottle the emotions and stretch them out into 80k words like putty.
Now I worry that my prose is too simple, sometimes. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t bogging down my meaning with too many words, and frankly, I got kind of lazy with it. This was after I’d written several more novels that went nowhere (though, hey, maybe there’s still hope?). So, I spent April of 2022 writing one poem every day.
I wasn’t sure how much that helped at first, honestly. I played around with formatting, tried to emphasize each line to make every single one punch because you have so little time to make an impact with poetry – and that helped it click.
There’s definitely a time and place for some purple prose, but dab the paintbrush before applying it to the page. In other words, use it sparingly, effectively, just enough to get the lines you really want to land to echo in your reader’s mind long after they’ve read it.
I then got some help through a mentorship program with Arc Poetry, who saw potential in my work. Consistently, her advice was to bring my readers in closer, closer. Don’t put a wall, or even a veil, between them and what I’m trying to say. Don’t worry that the subject matter might feel hyper-specific to you – in fact, all the better if it is. You can relate to someone so much better than you think through that one niche experience you had.
You know what else helped me get to my current prose, now that I think of it?
The Dungeons and Dragons podcast, yes, played by the McElroy brothers and their dad.
I’m not a comedy writer. I do think I can bring some levity to my works, usually through dialogue, but there’s a lot to learn about timing/pacing your stories through comedy works… And, when you want something to haunt your reader (or listener) afterwards? That’s all punchline, baby. A comedy podcast brings me to stunned, elated tears no matter how many times I listen to it, and that’s because they do such a fantastic job of bringing their audience close.
So with all I’ve been taught and learned through experience, I know that I want to carve out a spot in your heart and fill it with my writing. That’s how close I want to get.
I hope I get there someday.