[stylist] CNF Blindness prompt Aine

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Aine,

First, it would be appropriate to include a description of the flute,
but make sure you only include material important and necessary to the
narrative. If a snack, or any other description, is important to
character or plot development, then go ahead, but if not, it's extra
info not necessary for your narrative.

Second, while traditionally your "non-sentences" are in deed
grammatically incorrect, as Donna is absolutely right, rules are more
flexible these days when writing creative writing. I have not had time
to look at your entire piece just yet, but based on the examples Donna
pulled out, you are both correct, and it's really up to you, Aine, if
you want to keep these as such or revise with a more traditional
structure. It will also depend on the type of editor and publication.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter, editor, Slate & Style
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can
satisfy, we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for
another world."
C. S. Lewis

Message: 4
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2013 22:03:44 +0100
From: Aine Kelly-Costello <ainekc at gmail.com>
To: Writer's Division Mailing List <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] CNF/blindness prompt (Aine)
Message-ID: <510d7f57.4a63b40a.2de9.ffffb7c6 at mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed

Hi Donna,

Thank you very much for going through this in such detail, and 
for your other e-mail also.  Incidentally, the double spaces 
between sentences are solely there because I didn't change my 
BrailleNote's default braille to text "translation option which 
puts them in automatically.  But I can easily fix that with 
changing that setting (thanks for pointing that out).

Yes you probably were writing your novel then; I don't remember 
you posting anything to the list when I joined.

I'm currently in Spain studying Translation.  I have one more 
week here before I return to New Zealand which is where I live.

Sure, that's a good point about the flute.  Maybe I need to put a 
brief sentence in about packing my bag then (seeing as what 
actually comes to a rehearsal besides my cane is my BrailleNote, 
hard-copy Music, my flute or piccolo (or both), a water bottle 
and probably a small snack).  Thankfully I don't need to carry a 
music stand as well!

I do understand that those parts you mentioned like "Nor, I 
doubted, was rushing.", are not actual sentences.  In the case of 
that one, I agree (now you point it out) that the clause alone 
doesn't work so well.  I suppose what I wanted to do was 
juxtapose the too extremes.  The "doubted" was only there as I 
vaguely thought maybe there'd be a fractionally higher chance of 
finding someone more quickly if I ran.  But the sentence would 
probably sit better without it anyway.  In the case of the next 
non-sentence you mentioned "Now, only silence." I wanted to just 
leave the key words behind as to demonstrate the effect of 
"silence" if you know what I mean ...  I don't know what the 
"rules" per se of CNF writing are at all, but I know I have 
definitely seen sentences along the lines of that one in fictive 
novels aimed at children and young adults.  I'll go through the 
piece again though and try to remove all the unnecessary 
non-sentences as I'd definitely agree there are too many.  
Regarding needing "neither" to use "nor", in my opinion the piece 
is sufficiently "informal" (for want of a better word) that 
breaking that rule would be okay, but obviously I'm no grammar 
teacher or anything so if you don't think that's the case, please 
let me know and I'll change it

To be honest I had absolutely know idea about the saying with the 
elephant.  I might just change the animal in that case! And yes, 
I will clarify that those were my thoughts, directed at the 
teacher.  I'm not sure about that passage either, but I think 
I'll tidy it up and leave it in for now.  Regarding the 
4-year-old blindy thing, yeah-you're right I didn't make that 
very clear.  The case was in fact that this string teacher taught 
primarily young children so I will mention that somewhere in the 
previous sentence.

I'll edit the piece tomorrow (going to bed now).  Do you want to 
see the next draft once it's finished?


Thanks again for your comments, they are most helpful :)

Aine