narrative – Anjuelle Floyd

Of Memoir, Climax, and “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”…

2 Comments / ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships / Anjuelle Floyd

Writing teacher and mentor, Clive Matson, always said that if a writer found her or himself wanting and/or needing to explain her or his story that the reader might gain the author’s intended message, the author needed to revise their story further.

Completing a manuscript requires more than simply writing the story, editing and revising it for clarity regarding grammar and typos, or even for development of plot.

Within each story or novel lives the narrative of that story, and how it came into being.

The author’s understanding and exploration of this process informs

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Of “Mausam,” Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Creating for the Ages…

2 Comments / Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

I recently saw the movie, Mausam, written and directed by Pankaj Kapur, and starring the beautiful Sonam Kapoor opposite the wonderful and delightfully handsome, Shahid Kapoor.

Like most Bollywood movies of its genre, historical dramatic romance, the movie move along taking its time to tell what I experienced as a beautiful love story.

Critics on both sides of the ocean suggest that the pacing could be increased by eliminating various scenes that do not contribute to the overall plot of the story.

I disagree.

The director could have deleted certain scenes and decreased the run time and perhaps maintained the high level of enjoyment I experienced.

But why fix what is not broken?

As an American moviegoer that has grown tired of movies aiming to tell a story with what often appears an ultimate goal of relaying the narrative, in movie format, in the shortest amount of time possible,

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Change, Challenge and Seasons of Growth…

2 Comments / Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

I’ve been gone most of the summer, first to Brussels, then to Maui where vacation each year.   

As the opening of the new school year approaches I am amazed at how it seems that just yesterday I was bidding a enjoyable and safe travels to fellow parents and their daughters and sons who attend the same school as my children.

Now nearly 2 and half months later I have received the first in a line of requests from the service that provides lunches at the school our youngest child attends the choices of entrées our child desires.

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Of Plot, Authenticity, and Knowing Who We Are…

Leave a Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

“A story should generate it’s own actions and emotions organically…A story should be authentic…made of stuff that has never been appropriated from other forms of narrative art…other stories…movies or television. Or it has it should be sufficiently re-processed through the author’s unique sensibilities so the resulting work has its own authenticity.”

–Peter Selgin, 179 Ways to Save a Novel: Matters of Vital Concern to Fiction Writers

A story should have it’s own unique characters and plot.

Well if this be the case why are writers encouraged to read for more than the experience of learning writing technique?

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The Muse, Mystery and Grace…

Leave a Comment / Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

“It isn’t easy. Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try hardest, scare it off into the woods. Those who turn their backs and saunter along, whistling softly between their teeth, hear it treading quietly behind them, lured by a carefully acquired disdain.

We are speaking, of course, of The Muse.”

–Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing/Essays on Creativity

Many people imagine the life of a writer as one of awakening each morning to a flowing stream of words that pour onto our writing tablet or through our fingers and onto the computer string, our greatest challenge being that of writing or moving our fingers quick enough on the computer keys to catch the words.

There are times like that. But more often than not, we struggle to find those words that ideally give readers a smooth ride into the escape of our stories and novels.

A more honest way of describing what we do is to say that the smoother our sentences flow and the more intense a readers entrancement into at story, the more the writer toiled at kneading and carving that ease of journey presented in the magic carpet of our words.

But what of The Muse?

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The Writer, Narrative, and Evolution…

Leave a Comment / ...the writing life..., Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at every moment it is being created.
–Toni Morrison (Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise by Tavis Smiley)

These words gripped me the first time I read them. That was over a week ago. In the days since, I have repeated and shared them with others.

Each time I speak them their meaning, the truth of purpose and process of what I do as a writer, the depth of impression left by the work I do, enlarges.

As writers we are constantly remaking ourselves through the words we write, the stories we tell, the plots we weave and unbraid.

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Of Narrative, Journeys, and What Compels Us to Write…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

“Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.”

–Toni Morrison, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author

The protagonist, in reaching home, during this last chapter of the journey, must evidence that she or he has traveled, not simply waited steps beyond home, seconds beyond the gates of the home native city and after sufficient time to have journeyed far, they reappear with their tale.

Just as the central character must evidence the crisis has transformed her or his way of thinking regarding making decisions, so too, when reaching home again, she or he must demonstrated they have traveled, that they have truly been away.

Often when we travel we bring back gifts for those we love.

The gifts come from the places we have been, where our itinerary of travel has taken us.

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