Ooh my tagboard is alive!

Well seeing as I actually do have a life outside blogging and writing (it is a well-known fact that writers are all busy and devoted to writing, as my mentor says, a writer is someone who is willing to be lonely in order to contemplate and present the world through his or her eyes. Paraphrased because I don't have a parrot memory.)

Spent the last five days at the wonderful AVRON PROSE WRITING WORKSHOP (: I managed to write something half-decent after so many months of hiatus and letting my ability fester away in memorisation, so I am overjoyed!

I have just realised that you cannot exactly label my piece on incest incest, because incest would mean that the two characters are having a sexual relationship, but they are not (in my story). I can't figure out the appropriate term for it...ah well, let's stick with the wordy brother-sister relationship. Somehow throughout all this the words 'Oepidus complex' float in my mind like tissue suspended, but I don't think it's entirely related to the situation. Aside from this minor quibble, I did express the emotions and guilt of the character very well, and was praised by the AVRON tutor for having 'talent' because the piece was 'raw, and you can get away with this for a first draft.' Oh, it must be pretty good then, considering how earlier in the lesson he shared with us one quote: All first drafts are shit. Ernest Hemmingway!

I really must do some reading up and get better at my craft, I feel that I am lagging behind in terms of simplicity of expression. However, when I mentioned this to the tutor at the tutorial, he said it was fine because it's my style. Well, I suppose two authors and my mentor couldn't be wrong. I mean, if two are local talents (my mentor started Poetry Slam in Singapore, and is well-established throughout the literary world, and Su Chen is a published author, whose text, 'Fistful of Colours' was the A-Level Literature exam text.) Well, if both of them think it's okay, it should be fine, right?

I learnt today that Alfian Sa'at also went to the same Avron CW class 15 years ago! Hooly crap! That means I really do have the potential to be like him, if I bother to get off my lazy arse to write a 1000+ words a day like authors do ("Adopt writerly habits," Jeremy says. "Don't expect us to push you, and don't lose focus when you're young. You're all very talented, all 18 of you...")

I shall work hard from now on and try to write something everyday, even if it's bullshit.

Oh and purple prose,

I am very glad that the troll, 'Stephen King' commented on my humble blog. I must say I don't really like your books because they seem a bit...bald. Anyway, the defensive tone of 'Stephen King' is quite suspicious, considering that he is the one who pointed our that Stephenie uses purple prose, and even insulted her in an interview. (Yep I watched that).

I have been faithfully following your quote, and thanks a lot, genuine Stephen King, it has helped me during my growth as a writer, and is one of the oft-repeated rule in my head: the adjective and adverb are not your friends.

I wonder what Stephen will say if he reads Vildamir Nabokov's Lolita. It should be funny.

Anyway, purple prose is defined as "a term of literary criticism used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so overly extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context. It also refers to writing that employs certain rhetorical effects such as exaggerated sentiment or pathos in an attempt to manipulate a reader's response."

Oh, speaking of which, this just popped up in my mind: Jane Austen was not a very popular writer in the Victorian period because her writing wasn't ornate/elaborate enough. The victorian period called for emotion to be expressed through lush imagery, and Jane Austen's style didn't fall into the preferences of the people then, so she wasn't very well-received. Compare her style to Shakespeare, and you'll understand. Okay on with the post.

So, let me quote a passage from Ernest Hemmingway (you must be a literary idiot to not have heard of this man, one of the literary greats):

"In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plains to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, adn the water was clear and swiftly moving in the blue channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves."

Now that's wonderful, evocative description. This nearly crosses the line of purple prose with repetition and image, and the whole load of sensory details, yet instead of turning the reader off, it is lovely isn't it? This is why Ernest is famous and celebrated throughout the world. If Ernest can get away with such descriptions throughout the novel, and we, as writers, learn through criticism and reading, then this should be perfectly acceptable.

Hence the term 'purple prose' is quite hard to define, unless there is
a) a use of metaphors where not necessary
b) too much adjectives (esp. in the description of Edward)
c) Too much adverbs and etc.

However in lit this becomes more debatable. Purple prose as an effect. Alfian Sa'at, one of our local poets, wrote in his poem, 'Singapore, you are not my country':
"Tell that to the battered housewife who thinks happiness
lies at the end of a Toto queue
Tell that to the tourist guide whose fillings are pewter
whose feelings are iron
whose courtesy is gold whose speech is silver whose
handshake is a lethal yank at the jackpot machine.
Tell that to my imam who thinks we are all going to hell.
That that to the chao ah beng who has seven stitches a
broken collarbone and three dead comrades but who
will not hesitate at thrusting his tiger ribcage into
another fight
because the lanterns of his lungs have caught their own
fire and there is no turning back"

Beautiful. The suddeness and the repetition of 'whose' and the detail make is so much more effective, almost as a maniac mantra, ranting and crying at the same time. Like a stream of conciousness where you're on the divide between wakefulness and sleep, and these words just flow out of your mind and you have to write them down.

This is the power of the 'stream of conciousness'. It is natural in its language pattern. You cannot say that the above is purple prose, can you?

Now, where on earth did I use purple prose in my blog? In my attempts at writing lit pieces after EOYs, yes, but in my blog my language is simpler to make it easier for my target audience ot comprehend what I am writing.

I would put a very teenager grunt here: DUH. DUUUUUUH.

Anyway, I am pretty sure the MOE won't pick someone with a persistent problem of purple prose (omg unintenti0nal alliteration!) to join this program and spend the entirety of the 50,000 budget on us, especially if all of us are so untalented. And let's not forget the Avron workshop which is considerably more expensive. Alfian went to this, and look where he is today. This is a testament to the quality of this workshop, it has the ability to nurture talents, and someday we will be Alfian, or even better him if we work hard and keep our writerly habits.

(I love all the 'ands' like linkages to a stream of continuous thought!)

Frankly I don't give a damn about my style now. This, my dear, is called prose-poetry, the contemporary style. I am sure that you know (addressing the troll now) every art period has its salient features. The debate about Form vs. Function will rage on, I suppose. As a young person (now this is said by my mentor), my challenge is language for the sake of itself or language as a function. There are so many possibilities with both.

Today in the workshop when I listened to the readings of my fellow classmates, I noticed that they used Singlish (deliberately, of course, considering the smatterings of Hokkien, I suppose RI students are capable of near-perfect English.) and simple imagery (due to the character being from the lower end of the social spectrum) to create a powerful effect. One example: The wind blow blow, my heart shivering. Powerful. It will be some time before I can write from the heart and not the mind,

All I need to worry about now is how to write a piece on the stupid theme, 'Word weavers, World bridgers'. Goddamnit I can't think of anything.

D'you reckon I should give the anon the link to my work? I need a proofreader NOW. The harsher the critic, the better, but this only works is the critic is able to pinpoint the various areas he finds fault with and suggest a change. It's all part of the editing process my mentor does, so don't worry, you aren't being shortchanged.

P.S. One quote that stood out for me during the Avron workshop, written by my friend Lim Min:
"I turned red, not fire red or even volcano lava red, but holy-mother-of-all-mothers, am-I-pissed red."

The character was Singapore. I laughed so hard my throat ached worse than it did in the morning without the salvation of lozenges.