Becoming the writer I want to be

And what is the book about?

 

In the middle of the 19th century, in the south of America, a protagonist only referred to as "the kid" joins up with a gang of men who are planning on heading south into Mexico to hunt down a roving pack of Indians who have been terrorising the local populace.

I dont want to say much more because it will spoil too much. You need to read it for yourself.

 

I am very tempted to outright rewrite a novella I wrote in 2019, as I feel like I can make it significantly better if I apply what I now know about writing and make it a fair bit longer. What do you guys think of a story written in this idiosyncratic style? Very much inspired by Cormac McCarthy but with enough of my own influence that it isnt just a rip-off.

The sky was a sombre grey, darker streaks running through it, false prophets of rains that would not come. Below a sparse forest reached up from the dry earth to try and touch it, the leafless branches splaying out like the calcified veins of a body long since proclaimed dead. Through this graveyard ran an ancient trail worn into the dirt, and on that trail stood a figure as motionless as the trees on this day without the wind.

Petrified fingers, misshapen bodies and gnarled limbs gave the impression they were grown from the earth like root vegetables, with skin as ashen as the mottled sky or black as boot leather, with hairless faces scrunched and squeezed with sickly frogspawn eyes swirling and swivelling loose in their sockets, one hard knock away from plopping out as they studied the man before them, one of them dancing a merry jig forwards, hooting like a primordial ape, at once both a vestigial outcrop of evolution transplanted to the here and now and a living aspect of everything that the waters of mankind's feeble destiny would eventually flow into, and then they raised their lumpen blob of wood to the sky like a conductor of the orchestra that plays at the end of all things and for a second it seemed like the effort of the action would make them topple over as they forced out a wail up from the cavern within their atrophied chest and out between splintered teeth as yellow as they were green and as hungry as the ceaseless ravenous cascade of cosmic entropy, but they did not topple, their song carrying on the lingering breeze to reach the pairs of gangrenous and puckered holes possessed by each of their compatriots and allowing the assault to commence.

 

I really like it. The first paragraph was vivid and pulled me into a new world. I felt like I could see it. I'm a simple man and that's all the description I like. I wanted to jump into right there and you had me. I was eager to follow where you were leading me.

Then I got lost and couldn't follow. I need some periods in the second paragraph. Maybe it's too late and I've been writing too long today, but I got lost, lol.

Really awesome stuff!

 

I'm procrastinating again, so tonight I made myself push. 1/3 of the manuscript is now tabless and formatted.

I took time to edit the first three pages, but otherwise it's just been a formatting edit.

I'm so sick of this book. I don't think I can stand to go through it again. I have one more plot point and a couple of small things to add, but I can't bring myself to read it again otherwise.

Another big day tommorow - I hope.

 

Thank you for the input. The second paragraph was my attempt to make an extremely long polysyndetic (using words like and, but, etc instead of periods) sentence so it's kinda supposed to be that way, even if it isnt technically grammatically accurate. I get a weird sort of enjoyment out of stuff that is written like that because while it is hard to follow (and believe me, a lot of Cormac's stuff is hard to follow) it has a very lyrical, breathless quality that I find interesting. Cormac tends to use a lot of very long run-on sentences between very short snappy sentences. I urge you to read one of his books to see what I mean.

My own writing style isn't really like the second paragraph. As I am writing a sci-fi novel my general writing is probably closer to the first paragraph, ie descriptive but not in a way that could potentially be distracting. As my books tend to have a lot of stuff going on with lots of characters and places and concepts and all that, it makes sense to try and be at least halfway accessible. It just means when I do try to be more expressionist (is that correct in this instance lol?) it hits harder because I dont do it all the time. I'm trying to train the reader to think "oh damn, shit's getting real" when I post something very vivid.

 

I'm not much of an action reader but this sounds kinda interesting.

 

Ooh, I like this. I think I may try my hand at a philosophical novella on the side this summer as I'm trying to find a job and want to experiment in trying new forms of fiction as well. I still wanna try my 16 personalities idea but I'm not sure yet.

 

It's not really an action novel. It's classed as a western or an "anti-western."

 

If you like this style you should read the author I am homaging

 

Back to it today, writing in the afternoon for the first time. 1051 words, a good start. I have more time left allocated but I finished the scene I wanted to finish so I'll leave it for now.

 

Oh really?

 

Yeah lol, Cormac McCarthy.

 

If libraries open up I look forward to browsing a book. I think I'd hate it, but I'm curious how.

I love Shakespeare, but I don't enjoy reading most things that make me work hard. There needs to be a big payoff for the extra thinkering lol.

 

For me the payoff is the prose itself. Cormac writes so lyrically and vividly that it is quite the experience to read one of his books. Feels less like reading a novel and more like reading poetry sometimes.

If you want to read his work, I'd start with The Road. It's fairly short and much more straightforward than Blood Meridian, but is still excellent.

 

Finished the article. I ended up writing around 4700 words or so. Now I'm gonna take a break from writing for a while (sans haikus) and work on a cover letter, resume, and try to get a job.

 

Go man, gooooo!

 

Was at the opticians for ages today so was not able to get much writing done between that and other comittments. 354 words. Not a lot but I did get done what I wanted to get done, so I suppose it's alright.

 

I loved the movie. I'm interested to see how he uses the prose to make it work.

 

839 words today. I may get some more done later but I have not decided yet. Will update again if I decide to.

UPDATE: 423 words squeezed in when I had some spare time. New total for the day is 1262.