I'm with you on the bee letting down its landing gear. Would love to know how that came to you. I'm guessing pure grace. I agree w/ you on Chester's hand reaching from the drainpipe, although Chat has a point with the insane economy of "Maybe I had been." Totally agree about "Howl," of course.
ChatGPT now has some quotable lines, too: "Theology as threat becoming grace." I'm sad to hear that Claude failed you so spectacularly. I've never used Chat, always Claude. Now I must rethink.
There's no saying where anything comes from. Wherever that magical place is, it has plenty of crap to spew out, too. "Grace" is a fitting description for the best things, though. I really don't think any of us "think of something" any more than we think a fish onto a hook.
"Maybe I had been" looks like nothing without the context, but it is huge, obviously, in the story. A lot of the time sentences look like nothing on their own. I love Nina Schuyler's Substack. She captures and breaks down sentences for their pure, isolated beauty, but sometimes the best sentences have almost zero internal beauty only contextual. So, I tell myself, enviously, that that's where I play. It's interesting, for that reason, that the "best" sentence AI picked out this year has zero appeal in isolation.
I did not think Howl was that strong at the time. I don't want to say why because it will poison the impression of anyone reading this, but as I revisit it, I see it very differently. There are other stories that I thought were stronger that haven't fared so well in my estimation. I'm guessing you have the same experience with your own writing. This is probably universal.
I use Claude for almost everything. I find it (wait for it) more "personal."
Same! I just like Claude's vibe, though the sycophancy irks me. I agree, Nina's sentence thing is wonderful. Interesting point about the way some sentences seem ordinary but are everything in context. I was just playing with pantoums, via Pádraig Ó Tuama's Substack. He says strong feelings are best written when something else is described - senses, especially. He's also said that the plain description of an object can be a carrier of emotional weight. Neither of those apply in this particular case, but my point is, a line can do a lot of work -- if we let it. One reason I so appreciate my writing workshop pals. They see things I miss in my own writing.
(I had to look up pantoum. That's probably something I shouldn't be admitting.)
When writing in the 1st person, sentences run the danger of calling attention to the author not the character. I spend a lot of time cleaning house getting that out of there. I still don't have the discipline to excise them all. "Oh, for an Editor of Fire, who would climb the Something or Other of my Invention!"
That's a good observation about first person. I've tried it and sworn off it. I prefer close third. Just finished a Ruth Ozeki novel, "All Over Creation," which I loved. Except one oddity -- in a multiple-POV book, one of the characters was written in first person. I never understood why.
It can be a little jarring that switch to 1st, although I think it is (or should be) in the calculus of writing it. I'm playing with this idea myself in something larger I'm writing because I think it fits, or even must be this way. Multiple POV books are a little challenging if they're at the chapter rather than section level, I think because there is definitely a feeling of walking out of the movie theater for a minute and then re-entering and reestablishing where you are.
Yes. It seems to be the fashion of the moment and some authors do it better than others. I’m pretty demanding as a reader. POV shifts must serve the story somehow in a way that single POV can’t.
I'm with you on the bee letting down its landing gear. Would love to know how that came to you. I'm guessing pure grace. I agree w/ you on Chester's hand reaching from the drainpipe, although Chat has a point with the insane economy of "Maybe I had been." Totally agree about "Howl," of course.
ChatGPT now has some quotable lines, too: "Theology as threat becoming grace." I'm sad to hear that Claude failed you so spectacularly. I've never used Chat, always Claude. Now I must rethink.
There's no saying where anything comes from. Wherever that magical place is, it has plenty of crap to spew out, too. "Grace" is a fitting description for the best things, though. I really don't think any of us "think of something" any more than we think a fish onto a hook.
"Maybe I had been" looks like nothing without the context, but it is huge, obviously, in the story. A lot of the time sentences look like nothing on their own. I love Nina Schuyler's Substack. She captures and breaks down sentences for their pure, isolated beauty, but sometimes the best sentences have almost zero internal beauty only contextual. So, I tell myself, enviously, that that's where I play. It's interesting, for that reason, that the "best" sentence AI picked out this year has zero appeal in isolation.
I did not think Howl was that strong at the time. I don't want to say why because it will poison the impression of anyone reading this, but as I revisit it, I see it very differently. There are other stories that I thought were stronger that haven't fared so well in my estimation. I'm guessing you have the same experience with your own writing. This is probably universal.
I use Claude for almost everything. I find it (wait for it) more "personal."
Same! I just like Claude's vibe, though the sycophancy irks me. I agree, Nina's sentence thing is wonderful. Interesting point about the way some sentences seem ordinary but are everything in context. I was just playing with pantoums, via Pádraig Ó Tuama's Substack. He says strong feelings are best written when something else is described - senses, especially. He's also said that the plain description of an object can be a carrier of emotional weight. Neither of those apply in this particular case, but my point is, a line can do a lot of work -- if we let it. One reason I so appreciate my writing workshop pals. They see things I miss in my own writing.
(I had to look up pantoum. That's probably something I shouldn't be admitting.)
When writing in the 1st person, sentences run the danger of calling attention to the author not the character. I spend a lot of time cleaning house getting that out of there. I still don't have the discipline to excise them all. "Oh, for an Editor of Fire, who would climb the Something or Other of my Invention!"
That's a good observation about first person. I've tried it and sworn off it. I prefer close third. Just finished a Ruth Ozeki novel, "All Over Creation," which I loved. Except one oddity -- in a multiple-POV book, one of the characters was written in first person. I never understood why.
It can be a little jarring that switch to 1st, although I think it is (or should be) in the calculus of writing it. I'm playing with this idea myself in something larger I'm writing because I think it fits, or even must be this way. Multiple POV books are a little challenging if they're at the chapter rather than section level, I think because there is definitely a feeling of walking out of the movie theater for a minute and then re-entering and reestablishing where you are.
Yes. It seems to be the fashion of the moment and some authors do it better than others. I’m pretty demanding as a reader. POV shifts must serve the story somehow in a way that single POV can’t.