Le Guin Apprenticeship Journal III(b)

Finally! We're in my wheelhouse this week. Picture me fluffing up like a baby owl and settling down in glorious comfort.

And know that I am, as always, an adorable little fool.

Most (if not all, I don't know; I haven't finished the book yet) of Le Guin's exercises come in two parts, and if you're following along, you'll have noticed I don't post all of them. I'm not here to give all the great lady's secrets away, but I am going to go through both parts of Exercise Three. I think the contrast is instructive. And the lesson is about rhythm, which is just so much fun! So, let's waltz together a while.

N.B. Before we set off, Le Guin quotes Virginia Woolf and recommends her prose to those interested in rhythm as, to her ear, "the subtlest and strongest in English fiction." In a letter to a writer friend of hers, Woolf writes:

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm... But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas and visions and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm.

Virginia Woolf

Personally, I've never related harder to anything in my writing life. And the feeling when the words do find their right place... well, when I find the words for that, I'll let you know.

Anyway, enough about me. Onwards! To Exercise Three.

Exercise Three: Short and Long

Part Two

Write a half page to a page of narrative, up to 350 words, that is all one sentence.

Steering the Craft, Ursula Le Guin

So, without much ado, here we go.

And... breathe.

You might be wondering now, with the piece there, present and correct, and shimmering on the page: what's the problem? And, technically, I suppose there's no problem. Am I proud of it? Yes. Does it do what I intended? I think yes.

Did I feel in control of it?

No!

Le Guin is a mean, genius lady. One week she's teaching you to unlearn your sentence fragment habit. The next week she's teaching you the joy of embracing it! I'm sure you can see how I've leaned hard into the strange structure called for by the sheer length of the sentence. Yes, it's intentional; I wanted lyrical and incantatory. But it was brain-wracking to get right. The strangeness of the grammar, the way the pauses break up the sentence without ever allowing it to stop, and the way it echoes the theme: fear scrambles the senses, toys with the mind. I'm practically giddy with it! In fact, I am giddy. The pirouette was a little fast for me, and my brain feels a bit sloshy. As my grammar gets up on its Bambi legs, this is really the task I was given!? Did I get the semicolons right? I am only (80%) sure because I quadruple-checked them.

But I also wanted a sense of universal experience: that all-too-common feeling of walking home and wondering if you're being followed. And I didn't even realise it was the slow, slow meander toward the subject of the sentence, which is all the way at the end (tell me that sound), that was creating it. I did that part by ear again. Thus proving I still have so much to learn.

I guess having more to learn is the whole point, though. I am, after all, only on page 27. And I think this is my favourite piece of writing in this project so far, even if I didn't do every scrap of it with 100% intentionality.

I'm excited for what comes next. Maybe you are too, and I'll see you there.

Goodbye until then

xx

Is there something you still feel you have to learn: a tough grammar lesson you're working hard to crack? I'd love to hear about it. Or tell me about the tools, books, or hacks you're using to conquer it?