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Matte Writing: One Paragraph at a Time

Lolanonashee sunk to one knee and one hand.  She watched the iridescent beetle trundle into her palm.  Initially green-purple, the bite-size bug glitteringly transitioned to purple-gold during the climb.  When it stopped in her palm, seemingly aware it was no longer among the grit and shade near the base of the flower bench, nor concealed on the wide glossy blade of a nameless plant—no doubt imported from the jungles of Sind—and not even warming itself in the sun on a cut stone in the Chatda Dan Gardens behind Grawn House—the hereditary refuge of the Ashee family—it reflected gold and yellow.

Introduce another character here.

Have a strangely tension building conversation here.

Part with the plot already rolling to the first encounter.

I really need to work out when to use parentheticals and when to use dashes and when to use commas.  Pretty sure I’m just making this shit up.

Day 273

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Matte Writing

I ran across a bit of artwork recently that put me over the edge on understanding what it is that appeals to me about pieces like that one.  They posses so much depth and richness that even in the shadowy unseen parts of the painting you know there is detail.  In most art I don’t feel like I could dive into the landscape to discover the reverse side of the subject.  These paintings that intrigue me convince me that I could.  Could enter the painting and find more flowers among the shadows of the trees; find beetles crawling in the cool grimy shade; find the fox that just ducked behind the barn as the artist brought out her easel.

Ok. So, great.

Some paintings bring out an emotion through lack of detail.  Or through condensing that detail to iconic representation.  These paintings I have in mind go to the other end.  They amplify the detail—appropriately.  I’m not sure this is good practice in writing.  Or I’m not sure I’d be able to pull it off they way I’d like.

The trouble I see is that I’d feel like I was cataloging the landscape not incorporating it.  I do something similar to put my kids to bed sometimes.  Starting in one corner of the room I verbally tour the items in their room in monotonous sleepy detail.

But I’m reminded that I’ve seen this pulled off well by others.  I’ve got no examples because that’s not how my mind works, but I can imagine reading the description of a fantastical market.  The author plumbing the origin of each bizarre fruit or meat or trinket.  Infusing the reader with the characters’ experience.  Sure she overstuffs the reader with non-essential storyline, but she pulls it off.  We like it—I want to recreate it.

I’m thinking it’s often about timing in the story.  Knowing when you can slow the reader down.  Let them soak up the atmosphere and just coast for a bit.  But I’m also thinking that it has to do with technique.  In the faster parts of a story you need to capture the quintessential ‘thing’.  Show the reader the absolute canonical object or action.  Once you set that up you need to torque it just a little by marring the canon a bit.

Well that’s enough talking about writing for today.

Day 272

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The Way-Back-in-the-Woods Pines

I haven’t done a water study in a while.  Feels like a good morning for a bunch of unconnected sketches.

The finger of water roved over the hard packed dirt like an ant scout looking for the lowest path.  In places it paused for orders—or more volume—then ranged forward enthusiastically.

The refraction of the plexiglass merged effortlessly with that of the water.  Not only did this bulldozer-sized vat of water defy sharp focus it also held a sand shark.

Yesterday the dr fence boards felt like hundreds of razor blades packed tightly—unable to cut, but still unappealing to the touch.  Today, wet with rain, they feel like damp hard sponges.

Water lay below us.  Rain fell on the land.  The land soaked the rain in.  The wetness sank through the sand, the soil, the clay, and the rock.  It collected slowly and deeply like the thoughts of a god in the subterranean spaces.  Soon, our well would uncover It’s thoughts.

Wet soles.  Wet surface.  Broken wrist.

Four inches of rain turned my unmown Gulf Texas lawn into a marshland.  Two more into a residential lake.  “Ah shit.  There go the tomatoes.”

“It’s a fountain.  Not magic,” she reassured him.  “The walkway is a grate and hidden jets spurt water as you walk by.”

A gray mass of atomized water rose from the lower end of the valley. Tendrils wriggled in the cattails at its fringe.  A graceful and subtle heave swelled at its center then receded less than it had grown.  This misty bellows engulfed the low-down reeds, the edge-of-the-meadow aspens, and finally the way-back-in-the-woods pines.

Day 271