[stylist] What you experience verses What you read?

[John Lee Clark]

One reason I keep on encouraging writing about blindness is because, right
now, there is not much precedence in English language for describing the
blind experience.  True, the lexicon is rich in words and phrases related to
sounds and music, and hearing blind people certainly have a lot to draw from
if they want to express and describe voices and things like that, but
there's very little for tactile stuff and other aspects of blindness.  This
is a wonderful opportunity to do truly creative writing and make significant
contributions to English literature as a whole.  Not only the content is
cool and interesting because it's different, but your breaking new ground
will help sighted people appreciate things they have never noticed
before--you're giving them a new language and a new way to understand
themselves and the world around them.

So, no, it's not easy writing.  But if it was easy writing, your work
probably would be less significant, less original, and more like many, too
many other books.

One possible technique is to use common verbs and nouns but in new contexts.
Take the word purr.  Most people would use that for a cat, maybe a car.  But
you can use it in a tactile context for something totally new.   Or take the
word sing.  Most writers would use that strictly for music, but maybe a few
other things.  But if, for example, you have a sex scene, you can say that
one body sang to the other.  You can even play with color words but not
actually to describe color.  For example, there is this great bit in Himes's
classic novel If I Holler Let Me GO: "His tongue tasted brown."  Nothing to
do with the actual color of his tongue, but everything to do with the
connotations of the color brown previously established in literature but
this time used in a new way.

One good rule is not to overdescribe.  Understatement is great.  Just a
touch and move on with the story.

John 

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