It has taken me a while to find that voice, the way I want to tell a story. Developed over several years–especially here at Spinning where each day’s experience of what I see and taste and touch and feel infuses words with meaning.
And sometimes I swing back to reporting mode, with proper grammer and all the missing nouns and tense displayed for better flow and understanding.
But Sally is not the only one who has pointed out my fragments. While I myself have become used to it, perhaps it is more necessary to stick with basic grammar, to not fall into lazy assumptions that it sits well in the reader’s ear.
When writing, it seems a natural thing for me, the tone is often solemn, sober, terse. As if too weary, too painful to formulate full sentences. Like a tight-lipped nod instead of answering when the answer would leave the mouth open long enough to invite the danger of a scream.
Or maybe it is fixable with punctuation; my semi-colon may return in proper form. You think you know it all, maturing as a writer. I can liken it to shooting my longbow, where form and instinct and judgement all are practiced skills. Then suddenly one day, you’re shooting poorly. Have picked up a new quirk or habit that you can’t be rid of easily–nor sometimes even notice on your own. Snap shooting–letting the arrow fly before the mind has completed its process of figuring distance and elevation. The arrow’s paradox and arc is a remembered thing, learned by watching many, many arrows fly. Uphill, downhill, out-a-ways all make a difference. It becomes almost automatic. Almost, that is, unless we lose touch with the archer inside of us.
Maybe that’s how it is for writers, too.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I think each different kind of writing deserves different rules – including those of punctuation and grammar. Creative writing begs for fragments, at times, because fragments affect not only your voice, but your tone and, most importantly, rhythm.
Your analogy, however, is beautiful.
I think you may be right, Erika, but sometimes we go beyond the boundaries before we really understand them. I think I may have done so here. You have to know where the fences are before you hop over or crawl under them; you have to know why they’re there.
Thanks for the compliment. Once again, I sat outside imagining the flight of an arrow and wondering how I would shoot if I picked up my longbow after so many months. Sometimes, the experience of just living and seeing what’s around us gives us the added knowledge by simple absorption without concentrated effort. Sometimes, after not shooting for a while, I just end up doing the right thing without thinking about it.
Yep, writing could be like that.