Mike Crowl's Blog, page 20

April 30, 2018

On writing: Exercising your writing muscles

In January, 1990, I began keeping a diary on my computer. I'd often kept handwritten diaries before, spasmodically, but this one was much more regular, and more detailed. It was written on my old computer and then printed off regularly, finally amounting to some 700 pages. It was good that I printed it off, because the disks that the diary was saved to are long gone, not being compatible with later models.

Much of the stuff, of course, is private family material, but in 1989 I'd been unemploye...
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Published on April 30, 2018 18:30

April 22, 2018

Music teachers

The pianist who plays for the choir I conduct - the Choristers - has been cleaning out her house. She handed me a twenty-six-year-old newspaper cutting today: it was something I'd written for the weekly column, Column 8, back in November 1991. It's a little negative to start with, but improves as it goes on.

Here it is:

A group of heroes work in our city show conditions would make most wharfies pale. I'm talking about music teachers.

And I speak from experience - for a few years I taught piano f...
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Published on April 22, 2018 22:01

March 6, 2018

A Happy Birthday update on Gareth Farr

To my surprise, it's about ten years since I last mentioned Gareth Farr, the NZ composer, on this blog. Very remiss. 
I happened to hear an interview (more like a friendly discussion) with him on the Concert programme today. Apparently he turned 50 recently - except that his birthday is on the 29th February, so he's strictly speaking only twelve and a half. He made the comment that in a couple of years (I think it was) he'll be thirteen. 'Gareth Farr the teenager!' he cried. 
Farr's r...
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Published on March 06, 2018 17:56

February 26, 2018

Loving Vincent

We went to see Loving Vincent last night. If we hadn't gone, there would have been only one person watching it.

The theatre should have been full as this is a wonderful movie about Vincent van Gogh. It's not the greatest movie of all time. It's not even the greatest animated movie of all time, but it has a certain unique quality that sets it apart.

If you don't already know, the movie was shot with live actors in front of a green screen. There are a number of well-known faces in the cast,...
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Published on February 26, 2018 18:30

January 16, 2018

Writing a fight scene

One of the hardest things I find to write is an action scene.

There's a theory that when there's lot of action you should take your time over it, writing more rather than less. And I think this is useful. Most readers will have noted how, when the climax of a story is coming, the author gives more and more detail, expanding the big moment, even though it may in real terms all be over in a couple of seconds.

I'm in the middle of the draft of my fourth children's fantasy. It doesn't have a name a...
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Published on January 16, 2018 13:58

First drafts, notes, brick walls

I wrote around 2000 words on the new book yesterday, but twenty-four hours later think that some of that writing will have to be scrapped. 
That’s how it goes on the first draft.
I work best, it seems, writing something down – anything – rather than trying to think ahead without having already done that investigative writing, the writing that 'finds' the story, in a sense. The Disenchanted Wizard was done this way. It was written and rewritten; whole chunks and chapters were scra...
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Published on January 16, 2018 13:37

January 10, 2018

Writers on writing

I used to write a weekly column. Very early on I learned that people give you much more credit for your supposed knowledge than you deserve. I wrote about rhododendrons once, and had people ringing up for advice on how to look after them. I had no more idea than they did. So it was intriguing to come across the following quote from Kingsley Amis, in which he (rather tongue-in-cheek) discusses his writing techniques. This item first appeared in The Listener UK, though I found it in a Readers D...
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Published on January 10, 2018 20:21

December 26, 2017

From an interview with Richard Wilbur

This year I managed to memorise one of Richard Wilbur's longer poems, Lying. Not only one of his longer poems, but also the one to which his wife at first responded, “at last you’ve written a poem that’s unintelligible from beginning to end." She came to change her mind, and though I must admit I don't understand all of it, it became clearer as I learned it. 

Here are a couple of paragraphs from a 1977 interview with Wilbur, who died in October this year [2017]

INTERVIEWERHow do you c...
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Published on December 26, 2017 15:36

December 9, 2017

Secrets and fears

Who knows what goes on in a family? I learned this as a student. 'You can spend years with a patient and still they'll surprise you,' Wesley told me after we'd shaken hands for the first time, his fingers yellow with nicotine. 'How so?' I asked.He settled himself behind his desk, clawed his hair back. 'You can hear someone's secrets and their fears and their wants, but remember that these exist alongside other people's secrets and fears, people living in the same...
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Published on December 09, 2017 12:03

November 25, 2017

McIlvanney's Laidlaw, some quotes

A few extracts from William McIlvanney's Laidlaw, a book full of witty writing. Laidlaw is the first in a series on a Scottish detective with a bit of Rebus approach to life....but written a few decades earlier. Further, it's set in Glasgow, rather than Edinburgh. The other two titles are The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded. 

Sunday in the park - it was a nice day. A Glasgow sun was out, dully luminous, an eye with cataract. Some people were in the park pretending it was w...
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Published on November 25, 2017 16:11