@nina schuyler Nina shows you a magic trick and then goes behind the curtain to show you how it was done. It doesn't mean that you can now do it; it only means that she opened up the deep yearning to be able to do it, to create wine from water on a blank page where thoughts and emotions turn into a momentary reality with shape and form and the ability to change the world outside that page.
Generally, I'm not a short story reader but I just pre-ordered Nina's book "In This Ravishing World."
Wow what a sentence! Your analysis of it is so insightful. I’ve never dived this deep into the nuts and bolts of how we use language in our stories before. I’ve always focused on character but my aim for my craft this year is to develop my writing at a sentence level so that it shines. Nina, your Substack is definitely helping me with that! Thank you! I’m going to do this writing exercise very soon.
Every clause in here is escaping from the preceding like a mouse from a cat. Free. Caught. Free. Caught. I did a little experiment trying to read in a preacher's cadence, and it resists that because it does not soar. It thrashes.
Okay, with all awareness how insane it is even to try to write "like Baldwin," here goes. The setup is, a man with a lifelong fear of water is learning to row a crew shell as immersion therapy. He goes out one morning, gets distracted by a heron and capsizes.
The water claims Hank, his body and his mind; and, in a rush, wholly, fills him with a fear that is at once familiar and foreign, that wakes him, that freezes him, opens him up; alerts him to its greedy intent to strip him as a fish is flayed, as a hostage is skewered; denies breath, so that Hank can't feel the surface, only the panic, can't know the offer, only his refusal; and hangs there, inverted and blind, arms flailing in the underworld muck.
What a piling up of impressions, images, feelings. An incredible sentence. I really appreciate your analyses of these, Nina. Thank you again. I gasp at the complexity of these long sentences, and then, somehow, end up making mine even longer. Just getting that balance of wordiness and economy - how is it possible? Anyway, for what it's worth, here's my attempt:
The realisation had hit her, in her gut and in some long-buried instinct; and as it did, swiftly, stopping her breath with an immense shuddering sigh that shook her to the core, that she couldn’t control, that even when she regained sone composure, had left her vulnerable; had left her reeling, as a rudderless boat veers and spins in the wind; as a maddened horse bucks and twirls; had taken her faith in the solid ground beneath her feet and shown it to be baseless, so that Elise had not so much heard her mother’s words, but felt them like a slap, had not grasped their meaning, but only how they left her, off balance; and stood there, now, adrift, alone, cut off from the anchor point that had secured her to the world.
My mother died in April decades ago. The heartache never ends.
——
This shattering loss struck me, in the heart and in the soul; wholly devastating, filling me with a desolation I could never have fathomed, that I surely could not endure, that even now I could not believe, had cracked me open as a walnut split asunder, as granite cleaves in two; had ripped me and felled me in that infinite moment, so that I had not felt the wound, but only the anguish; had not felt the plummet, but only the abyss, the bedroom's golden light now extinguished and the curtains' gentle sway frozen; and I lay helpless, bereft, at the very bottom of darkest grief, clinging to my father's solidity and praying their devotions had not been in vain.
@nina schuyler Nina shows you a magic trick and then goes behind the curtain to show you how it was done. It doesn't mean that you can now do it; it only means that she opened up the deep yearning to be able to do it, to create wine from water on a blank page where thoughts and emotions turn into a momentary reality with shape and form and the ability to change the world outside that page.
Generally, I'm not a short story reader but I just pre-ordered Nina's book "In This Ravishing World."
Wow what a sentence! Your analysis of it is so insightful. I’ve never dived this deep into the nuts and bolts of how we use language in our stories before. I’ve always focused on character but my aim for my craft this year is to develop my writing at a sentence level so that it shines. Nina, your Substack is definitely helping me with that! Thank you! I’m going to do this writing exercise very soon.
Every clause in here is escaping from the preceding like a mouse from a cat. Free. Caught. Free. Caught. I did a little experiment trying to read in a preacher's cadence, and it resists that because it does not soar. It thrashes.
Oh, I’m so happy to see this. I haven’t even read the whole post but I’m just so thrilled that you took on the Baldwin. 🥰
Okay, with all awareness how insane it is even to try to write "like Baldwin," here goes. The setup is, a man with a lifelong fear of water is learning to row a crew shell as immersion therapy. He goes out one morning, gets distracted by a heron and capsizes.
The water claims Hank, his body and his mind; and, in a rush, wholly, fills him with a fear that is at once familiar and foreign, that wakes him, that freezes him, opens him up; alerts him to its greedy intent to strip him as a fish is flayed, as a hostage is skewered; denies breath, so that Hank can't feel the surface, only the panic, can't know the offer, only his refusal; and hangs there, inverted and blind, arms flailing in the underworld muck.
What a piling up of impressions, images, feelings. An incredible sentence. I really appreciate your analyses of these, Nina. Thank you again. I gasp at the complexity of these long sentences, and then, somehow, end up making mine even longer. Just getting that balance of wordiness and economy - how is it possible? Anyway, for what it's worth, here's my attempt:
The realisation had hit her, in her gut and in some long-buried instinct; and as it did, swiftly, stopping her breath with an immense shuddering sigh that shook her to the core, that she couldn’t control, that even when she regained sone composure, had left her vulnerable; had left her reeling, as a rudderless boat veers and spins in the wind; as a maddened horse bucks and twirls; had taken her faith in the solid ground beneath her feet and shown it to be baseless, so that Elise had not so much heard her mother’s words, but felt them like a slap, had not grasped their meaning, but only how they left her, off balance; and stood there, now, adrift, alone, cut off from the anchor point that had secured her to the world.
My mother died in April decades ago. The heartache never ends.
——
This shattering loss struck me, in the heart and in the soul; wholly devastating, filling me with a desolation I could never have fathomed, that I surely could not endure, that even now I could not believe, had cracked me open as a walnut split asunder, as granite cleaves in two; had ripped me and felled me in that infinite moment, so that I had not felt the wound, but only the anguish; had not felt the plummet, but only the abyss, the bedroom's golden light now extinguished and the curtains' gentle sway frozen; and I lay helpless, bereft, at the very bottom of darkest grief, clinging to my father's solidity and praying their devotions had not been in vain.