We have an interesting writing exercise for the week - Ursula le Guin on Virginia Woolf
If anyone's up for it, we can do a zoom meet at Huddle South Time +1 on Wednesday. Otherwise, feel free to post what you've got here. It's all for play, not critique, so have fun and go wild! Do Part One only, do Part Two only, do it all, do nothing
it's just one big sandpit here.
Exercise 8 from Chapter 3 of Steering the Craft by Ursula le Guin.
Le Guin says: "In this passage listen to the variety of sentence length, the complexity of the syntax, including the use of parentheses, and the rhythm thus obtained, which flows and breaks, pauses, flows again—and then, in a one-word sentence, stops."
Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely, to confirm—what else was it murmuring—as Lily Briscoe laid her head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said—but what mattered if the meaning were plain? entreating the sleepers (the house was full again; Mrs. Beckwith was staying there, also Mr. Carmichael), if they would not actually come down to the beach itself at least to lift the blind and look out. They would see then night flowing down in purple; his head crowned; his sceptre jewelled; and how in his eyes a child might look. And if they still faltered (Lily was tired out with travelling and slept almost at once; but Mr. Carmichael read a book by candlelight), if they still said no, that it was vapour, this splendour of his, and the dew had more power than he, and they preferred sleeping; gently then without complaint, or argument, the voice would sing its song. Gently the waves would break (Lily heard them in her sleep); tenderly the light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all looked, Mr. Carmichael thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it used to look.
Indeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of dark wrapped themselves over the house, over Mrs. Beckwith, Mr. Carmichael, and Lily Briscoe so that they lay with several folds of blackness on their eyes, why not accept this, be content with this, acquiesce and resign? The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness, a cart grinding, a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains, broke the veil on their eyes, and Lily Briscoe stirring in her sleep. She clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff. Her eyes opened wide. Here she was again, she thought, sitting bold upright in bed. Awake.
Le Guin continues: "Virginia Woolf’s thought and work is wonderful in itself and useful to anyone thinking about how to write. The rhythm of Woolf’s prose is to my ear the subtlest and strongest in English fiction. She said this about it, in a letter to a writer friend:"
Le Guin adds: "I’ve never read anything that says more about the mystery at the very center of what a writer does. Patrick O’Brian’s series of sea novels (it begins with Master and Commander) contains sentences so marvelously clear, vivid, and fluent that one can’t believe they’re as long as they are. Gabriel García Márquez experiments with nonstop sentences and with omission of paragraphing in several of his novels. For short-short sentences, or long ones built up from short ones strung together with and, you might look at Gertrude Stein, or Ernest Hemingway, who learned a lot from Stein."
EXERCISE: Short and Long
Part One: Write a paragraph of narrative, 100–150 words, in sentences of seven or fewer words. No sentence fragments! Each must have a subject and a verb.
Part Two: Write a half page to a page of narrative, up to 350 words, that is all one sentence.
Suggested subjects: For Part One, some kind of tense, intense action—like a thief entering a room where someone’s sleeping. For Part Two: A very long sentence is suited to powerful, gathering emotion and to sweeping a lot of characters in together. You might try some family memory, fictional or real, such as a key moment at a dinner table or at a hospital bed.
Source: Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. Mariner Books, 2015.
If anyone's up for it, we can do a zoom meet at Huddle South Time +1 on Wednesday. Otherwise, feel free to post what you've got here. It's all for play, not critique, so have fun and go wild! Do Part One only, do Part Two only, do it all, do nothing
it's just one big sandpit here.Exercise 8 from Chapter 3 of Steering the Craft by Ursula le Guin.
Le Guin says: "In this passage listen to the variety of sentence length, the complexity of the syntax, including the use of parentheses, and the rhythm thus obtained, which flows and breaks, pauses, flows again—and then, in a one-word sentence, stops."
Virginia Woolf: Time Passes in To the Lighthouse
Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely, to confirm—what else was it murmuring—as Lily Briscoe laid her head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said—but what mattered if the meaning were plain? entreating the sleepers (the house was full again; Mrs. Beckwith was staying there, also Mr. Carmichael), if they would not actually come down to the beach itself at least to lift the blind and look out. They would see then night flowing down in purple; his head crowned; his sceptre jewelled; and how in his eyes a child might look. And if they still faltered (Lily was tired out with travelling and slept almost at once; but Mr. Carmichael read a book by candlelight), if they still said no, that it was vapour, this splendour of his, and the dew had more power than he, and they preferred sleeping; gently then without complaint, or argument, the voice would sing its song. Gently the waves would break (Lily heard them in her sleep); tenderly the light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all looked, Mr. Carmichael thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it used to look.
Indeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of dark wrapped themselves over the house, over Mrs. Beckwith, Mr. Carmichael, and Lily Briscoe so that they lay with several folds of blackness on their eyes, why not accept this, be content with this, acquiesce and resign? The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness, a cart grinding, a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains, broke the veil on their eyes, and Lily Briscoe stirring in her sleep. She clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff. Her eyes opened wide. Here she was again, she thought, sitting bold upright in bed. Awake.
~~~~~~~
Le Guin continues: "Virginia Woolf’s thought and work is wonderful in itself and useful to anyone thinking about how to write. The rhythm of Woolf’s prose is to my ear the subtlest and strongest in English fiction. She said this about it, in a letter to a writer friend:"
Le Guin adds: "I’ve never read anything that says more about the mystery at the very center of what a writer does. Patrick O’Brian’s series of sea novels (it begins with Master and Commander) contains sentences so marvelously clear, vivid, and fluent that one can’t believe they’re as long as they are. Gabriel García Márquez experiments with nonstop sentences and with omission of paragraphing in several of his novels. For short-short sentences, or long ones built up from short ones strung together with and, you might look at Gertrude Stein, or Ernest Hemingway, who learned a lot from Stein."
EXERCISE: Short and Long
Part One: Write a paragraph of narrative, 100–150 words, in sentences of seven or fewer words. No sentence fragments! Each must have a subject and a verb.
Part Two: Write a half page to a page of narrative, up to 350 words, that is all one sentence.
Suggested subjects: For Part One, some kind of tense, intense action—like a thief entering a room where someone’s sleeping. For Part Two: A very long sentence is suited to powerful, gathering emotion and to sweeping a lot of characters in together. You might try some family memory, fictional or real, such as a key moment at a dinner table or at a hospital bed.
Source: Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. Mariner Books, 2015.
