owlfish: (Default)

Re: commenting on the other comments...

posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 12:08pm on 19/08/2004
when a work is full of them, or they carve a beautiful image, they don't stand out so much

And that is a very good thing to aim for. I love prose where I revel in the fun and joy of reading it, where it all works nicely, but no turn of language clobber me on the head with its bluntness. For all I know, some of those lines my eyes flit so lightly over, were gems of accomplishment which filled the author with glee on writing them - maybe they were darlings in their time, but they've worked out well. I can't help but wonder if that's true of parts of the lovely passage you quoted. "relentless Darwinism of fashion" is such a well-crafted, evocative turn of phrase - I wonder what the author thought of it when it was written?

In the course of recent months of writing, I've been learning more and more the importance of not editing while writing, however tempting. It breaks up the flow of my sentences and makes me forget what I meant to write.
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those gems...

posted by [identity profile] zero-gravity.livejournal.com at 01:14pm on 19/08/2004
that actually, if you are interested, is from "Count Zero" by William Gibson. I never really thought of him as being able to create such simple - powerful - images. I tend to think of his gritty stuff, or the weird stuff, but not things like the first few pages of this novel. The descriptions are gorgeous. Then when you dig a bit deeper you see how even the simple phrase:
"He remembered a dead bat pressed flat as a dry leaf on runway concrete", is not just an image but a metaphor of what happens when nature meets technology. Slipped in, subtle.

Re-reading some of the authors i most admire has given me a different view - reading with close attention to the structure. Not that I have much time, but I find even reading snippets while at work gives me enough to see what I need to do.

I don't know if you have read his stuff, but I like Count Zero, and you can read a snip of it at:
http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/count_zero/

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