On finishing

Posted on by albrooke

From Robin Sloan, who is always entertaining and sometimes serious:

  • When you start a creative project but don’t finish, the experience drags you down. Worst of all is when you never decisively abandon the project, instead allowing it to fade into forgetfulness. The fades add up; they become a gloomy haze that whispers, you’re not the kind of person who DOES things. When you start and finish, by contrast — and it can be a project of any scope: a 24-hour comic, a one-page short story, truly anything — it is powerful fuel that goes straight back into the tank. When a project is finished, it exits the realm of “this is gonna be great” and becomes something you (and perhaps others) can actually evaluate. Even if that evaluation is disastrous, it is also, I will insist, thrilling and productive. It’s the pump of a piston, preparing the engine for the next one. Unfinished work drags and depresses; finished work redoubles and accelerates.

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Cloud Atlas

Posted on by albrooke

David Mitchell, it seems to me, has a gift for conjuring a story-illusion, seducing the reader into the narrative, and then dropping the reader out of the dream abruptly.  I find myself initially frustrated (” . . . but I wanted to know what was going to happen to that character!  I liked her and I want to . . . .”).  Then within 2-3 pages, he has drawn me into the next dream.  He is very, very skilled at this.

Cloud Atlas (2004) wraps back on itself in a chiastic structure which is fun to sketch:

Cloud Atlas

The structures of Ghostwritten, The Bone Clocks, and Slade House are unique, but Mitchell displays his maddening, enthralling, wonderful gift in each of them.

Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.