Goodbye Ozzie

For the first half¹ of my creative career, I was an actor. Still am, in some ways, and a great deal of my writing has the stain of performative dialogue.

What I mean by that is: a lot of my writing comes out on the page sans the tone or emphasis that it has in my head.

Sometimes this a wonderful thing. Good writers can convey the sound of their characters’ voices with just words on the page, while bad writers…well, compare any transcript of a Donald Trump monologue to its recording,² and see how much information is lost without the pauses, the emphasis, the pitch of voice…

Does Ozzie’s voice come through? Does the street-speak of this strange semi-magical world come through? Is magic real? Damned if I know. That’s part of the point of experimenting, right? I suppose the more important question is do I think the story works?

My answer: In some ways, yes. But, as I have said before, I am never satisfied. When I read my own work, I rarely see all the successes, so enamored am I with the flaws. The action is a bit muddled, the characters lack solid definition, the work doesn’t sing.

But it doesn’t have to sing to be worthwhile. I came out of this project with a renewed curiosity in the specifics of word-choice and character voice, so that’s something. In some ways, this experiment directed me to my next project, The Poems of Madam Albithurst.

Does that sound like a lead-in? It certainly does. Is it a lead-in? No, because I am going to try leaving bigger projects³ to the Monday-Friday schedule, and save smaller projects for the weekend. As such, my next posting project will be a short story…well, really a Novelette.

My first story. The one that started it all. Even before Edmund, this story was what made me want to write in the first place.

Starting next weekend, I’ll begin posting The Watch in the Sand.