Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Linkiness

We're thinking that we're going to start putting more links here, and more shorter posts, too. Here's one to start, a rather interesting article by Philip Pullman about the difference between a "story" and "literature:"

And despite the profound and unsettling discoveries of modernism and post-modernism, and everything they show us about the unreliability of the narrator and the fallacy of omniscience, some of us still, when we read, are happy to accept that the narrative voice has the right to comment on a character, whether tartly or sympathetically, and the ability to go into that character's mind and tell us what's going on there. Do we ever stop to wonder how extraordinary it is that a disembodied voice can seem to tell us what is happening in someone's mind?

That narrative voice, with those mysterious powers, is the reason I write novels. I'm intoxicated by it.

5 comments:

x said...

Boo! You're thinking of going the way of all the litblogs that do that cut and pasting with other's articles. I come here for your individual voices, but I definitely understand the need to put more energy into your own fiction-writing goals. Still, boo!

rmellis said...

Oh, damn! You don't like that idea?! I thought that's what everyone wanted!

Actually, what we were thinking is to not take any more days off, and just write short posts and links on days when we don't have enough to make a long post.

We usually post in the evening when we're too tired to write fiction, anyway, so I don't think this blog is taking anything away...

Anonymous said...

We're going to try and do a "big" post every other day...I don't want us to run out of things to say. We've kinda already ridden our main hobby horses here...it would be nice to be more focused from now on.

And Ed Champion, the former king of links, has retired his crown...so perhaps we'll pick up a smidgen of slack.

But not too much, don't worry!

rmellis said...

Anyway, we're no good at links -- we don't really have the patience or feeds or whatever to find the good stuff.

x said...

Well, I'm interested in anything you guys have to say about craft and the creative process. Old books you read and loved and what you learned from it about craft. Not necessarily always the new. Favorite passages. That's just me. Like that post you did on sentences, Rhian, really stayed with me. And I also like it when you diverge a bit into more personal posts. But, I'm a psychologist. I'm nosy like that.