Comments on: Ambience

By: Rachel's Stress Relief Tips

Rachel's Stress Relief Tips — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:15:53 +0000

“He scans the heavens, Copernicus reborn.”

I love this line … it quietly punctures his sense of self-regard.

jb says: That’s when the character first came to life for me, when he was looking up like that.

By: Jim Murdoch

Jim Murdoch — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:07:14 +0000

There’s nothing to suggest a time period here but I couldn’t help but cast these characters as suspects and the narrator as Poirot perhaps because of his attention to detail. The other thing that came to mind though I don’t have a copy to hand to check is Thomas M Disch’s novelisation of The Prisoner, ‘I Am Not a Number’. There is a scene in the village café that is described in detail and with a similar precision of expression to your piece. The quality of the writing impressed me very much, his then and yours now.

jb says: Interesting. I don’t know the work of Agatha Christie or Thomas M Disch, apart from their film and tv adaptations. Partly and in a quite hazy sense my narrator for these shorter pieces is a writer, a kind of Nathan Zuckerman figure, and the attention to detail perhaps comes through that route rather than through the route of a private investigator. This is not, of course, definitive. I don’t know the writer that well. I’m still in the process of trying to draw him out.

By: john baker

john baker — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:44:53 +0000

Diane: I’m flattered. Dunno what to say to that.
OutofContext: I’m not often surprised. I think when we’re writing (probably applies to other things as well), we know what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes it’s a subconscious ‘knowing’, sometimes only semi-subconscious, if there is such a state of being.
And then again, although it’s not really a surprise, often a reader will point to something in the text that you knew was there but had forgotten about, or it was partly hidden from you because it constituted a hidden or secondary effect.

By: OutOfContext

OutOfContext — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:19:05 +0000

“There’s a breeze in the street but here we are sheltered and a thin sun concentrates on warming us through.”

This line colors the whole piece for me. Simple, with only a single meager adjective, it says ‘cold comfort’. Also, a breeze can mean freshness as well as cold.

I never know what makes something strike me, but it’s fun when it does. I wonder if you are often surprised at what people find interesting or meaningful in your writing and how it affects your own impressions of your work.

By: Diane

Diane — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:00:35 +0000

wow… i wish i could write like you…