{"id":4887,"date":"2014-06-16T01:39:55","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T05:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=4887"},"modified":"2014-06-16T01:50:03","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T05:50:03","slug":"neil-and-ornette-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=4887","title":{"rendered":"neil and ornette and me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw a couple of interesting things in the New York Times<\/em> yesterday. <\/p>\n

One was an interview with Neil Gaiman<\/a>. I want to quote one question and answer here:<\/p>\n

\nQ. Do you have a different approach for different kinds of work?<\/p>\n

A. I have no idea of what parts of my brain I use to do what I do. Mostly, the creative process is really, really fast. And when it happens, I have a pretty good idea of what something is. I am much more like somebody driving in the dark. My headlights will illuminate a little bit ahead of me, and I know where I\u2019m going. I\u2019m not just driving randomly. I know if I keep down this road, I will get to New York. But what happens on the way, I will find out.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 
The other was an article about a tribute to Ornette Coleman<\/a>. I’ll quote a little more of this one:<\/p>\n

The evening\u2019s honoree on Thursday at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn was Ornette Coleman, and the first to pay respects was Sonny Rollins, wearing a stylish black raincoat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to say something that Ornette already said to me: It\u2019s all good,\u201d Mr. Rollins declared. \u201cDon\u2019t worry about anything. We might not see it right now, but it\u2019s all good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Coleman appeared next, in a purple silk suit, walking slowly, with assistance, and wiping tears. Borough President Eric Adams of Brooklyn read an official proclamation, and Mr. Coleman followed with his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing else but life,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can\u2019t be against each other. We have to help each other. It\u2019ll turn out like you will never forget it.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You’ll get to New York in the end. Don’t worry about anything. It’ll turn out like you will never forget it.<\/p>\n

What a great attitude for approaching creating art — or anything else, for that matter.<\/p>\n

 
On an entirely different note, I saw this Blog Hop post<\/a> over at Laura Stanfill’s blog.<\/p>\n

When I see these lists of questions, I always think about whether it would be fun to answer them myself (even if I’m not tagged).<\/p>\n

But this one stumped me. The first question was: “What is the name of your character?”<\/p>\n

Your character? You only get one? One novel = one character?<\/p>\n

That is an assumption in some genres, I guess, that a novel is the story of one character’s journey — but that is certainly not a requirement of the form. <\/p>\n

To me, that would feel incredibly narrow and restrictive. In fact, though this was not a conscious plan, each of my recent stories started out with one character, in third person limited, and I ended up with a final chapter where that character didn’t even appear. <\/p>\n

In one case I circled back to add on a coda with the original character, and in the other I inserted one additional scene (though I really did that for a different reason).<\/p>\n

 
Let the story go where it will. Follow what’s interesting. You’ll get to New York eventually, and it’ll turn out like you will never forget it.<\/p>\n

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I saw a couple of interesting things in the New York Times yesterday. One was an interview with Neil Gaiman. I want to quote one question and answer here: Q. Do you have a different approach for different kinds of work? A. I have no idea of what parts of my brain I use to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4887"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4890,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4887\/revisions\/4890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}