Le Guin Apprenticeship Journal IV

Nothing could have prepared me for this week. Nothing!

It's not so much that I thought Verbal Repetition would be easy (though, of course, I did: who doesn't repeat themselves); it's just that I didn't realise my brain would unconsciously challenge itself to pack all the lessons of the last four weeks into this exercise alongside the repetition. Apparently now my subconscious is treating this project as a journey of compounding perfection, where each piece MUST be better than the last. What the punishment will be for failure, I dread to think... probably writer's block.

Le Guin gives us an extract from Little Dorrit as an example of repetition, from which (as you may notice) I took inspiration for my theme: "Thirty years ago Marseilles lay burning in the sun one day." I read Dorrit at College, approximately one eternity ago, and if you haven't read it, you should. Dickens is delicious. Also, coincidentally, I happened to see an interview Ocean Vuong gave where he's talking to someone (I forget who) about one of his favourite pieces of nature writing: by J.A. Baker, about mud, of all things!

"Thick ochre mud, like paint. Oozing, gluttonous mud that seemed to sprout on the marsh like fungus. Octopus mud..."

The Peregrine, J.A.Baker

So, now you know where I got my ideas; I'll show you how they sprouted (hopefully not like fungus).

Exercise Four: Again and Again and Again

Part One: Verbal Repetition

Write a paragraph of narrative (150 words) that includes at least three repetitions of a noun, verb, or adjective (a noticeable word, not an invisible one like was, said, did).

Steering the Craft, Ursula Le Guin

Prepare yourself; I'll admit right out of the gate that I blew the word count, so please bear with me. Here we go:

You may be interested to know that the absolute last part of this to fall into place was the paragraph featuring the repetition. And that the whole thing has been through about five drafts.

Why, you may ask?

A ridiculously complicated grammar trick no one asked me to include: I wanted the grammar to fracture around the storm, then come back together when she's eased at the end. While fine-tuning the thing, I overcomplicated it even more, to be honest: the grammar kind of cracks, then fractures, then bursts through the threshold with her as she goes into the rain, then, finally, settles back down.

I was letting myself focus on all that and having the repetition more or less take care of itself, knowing it would show up, so it was a pleasure to discover it had done more than pull its weight.

Le Guin asked for at least three repetitions, so it's the water that fulfils that obligation. But there are pairs of repetitions throughout this that do a lot of work: waiting shows a change of emotional state, from pain at the beginning to ease at the end. Still is a repeated, emphasised physical state. Life-giving and Life-overwhelming are a mutation, showing the two sides of a force of nature. Turn and turn bring the focus in, back down to the narrator's body.

So what have I learned this week?

As much as you think you're doing, when you're putting in the effort, you're always doing more.

Has anything unexpected ever crept into your writing while you were concentrating on something else? A theme, an image, a structural trick, something you didn't realise you'd done until you read it back? Tell a curious writer girl all about it, please:

And since I've apparently been working double overtime, I'm going to clock out and put my feet up. My reading list is calling my name.

Bye for now, maybe see you next time.

xx

P.S. I'm not going to cover Part Two of this exercise directly (I've already said I'm not giving all the Lady's secrets away), but I can give you a peek; as it turns out, I did a little of it in this week's piece. Part Two covers "Structural Repetition." Such as the way I looped the end of this piece back around to the beginning.

I don't mean to brag, but - Boom!