The tool I've found is retyping. Not editing the night draft but copying it out into a fresh document, line by line, letting whatever wants to shift shift on the way through. Editing puts you outside the thing with the fluorescents on. Retyping keeps you inside it, so the fixes arrive as part of the sentence instead of as verdicts on it. Slow crowbar, but it doesn't leave marks.
Wow yes β I never would have thought of this! Itβs also nice because it helps frame the scientific method as a constant movement toward day rather than an arrival at an endpoint or conclusion. And starting with a question or suspicion rather than answer. (Is the job of writing nighttime then to stay in or preserve the obscure state rather than moving out of it? Does it have a job, idk)
βThis happened, and then this happened, and it makes sense, and I canβt explain whyβ β by this definition, which I like, much of science starts with being attuned to an instance of nighttime logic and trying to move it to daytime logic
Hello Elvia. Thanks for this. I love the idea of these Logics - itβs giving language to something thatβs hard to talk about. You ask about bringing nighttime logic to nonfiction and I think this is what Iβm trying to do at the moment. I think I want to re-frame the idea a little by questioning how much daytime there really is, even in waking life. I feel like daytime logic is a less something that the world produces than something we impose on it out of habit, tradition, etc. I think the waking world is a weird as hell and we work hard to make it into something predictable and reasonable. Soβ¦ I want to say that itβs not as hard as all that to write about waking life with nighttime logic. Iβm not being helpful exactly, I realise that. In terms of techniques, maybe humour is good for pointing to the things that are weirder, more nighttime in their grammar, and for subverting/shortcircuiting the influence of daytime logic. Iβve deliberately turned to humour in the last couple of years as a way to escape the problem of my nonfiction making more sense than I feel is truthful. I think horror writing does something similar - allowing the writer to explore things that are outside the daytime array while still being true. I love the comments here about scientific method. Iβve written about this as well - about situations that show how nighttimey scientific behaviour and thinking can be. Maybe everything that happens is really nighttime and then we rationalise it later by telling a story that makes it feel daytimey.
1) this is an insanely dope cover. I canβt wait to read.
2) have you read Into Their Labours? Itβs been a minute since I read much Berger, but those three books (Pig Earth, Once in Europa, Lilac and Flag) are so, so good I think. Best Berger
The tool I've found is retyping. Not editing the night draft but copying it out into a fresh document, line by line, letting whatever wants to shift shift on the way through. Editing puts you outside the thing with the fluorescents on. Retyping keeps you inside it, so the fixes arrive as part of the sentence instead of as verdicts on it. Slow crowbar, but it doesn't leave marks.
Wow yes β I never would have thought of this! Itβs also nice because it helps frame the scientific method as a constant movement toward day rather than an arrival at an endpoint or conclusion. And starting with a question or suspicion rather than answer. (Is the job of writing nighttime then to stay in or preserve the obscure state rather than moving out of it? Does it have a job, idk)
βThis happened, and then this happened, and it makes sense, and I canβt explain whyβ β by this definition, which I like, much of science starts with being attuned to an instance of nighttime logic and trying to move it to daytime logic
Hello Elvia. Thanks for this. I love the idea of these Logics - itβs giving language to something thatβs hard to talk about. You ask about bringing nighttime logic to nonfiction and I think this is what Iβm trying to do at the moment. I think I want to re-frame the idea a little by questioning how much daytime there really is, even in waking life. I feel like daytime logic is a less something that the world produces than something we impose on it out of habit, tradition, etc. I think the waking world is a weird as hell and we work hard to make it into something predictable and reasonable. Soβ¦ I want to say that itβs not as hard as all that to write about waking life with nighttime logic. Iβm not being helpful exactly, I realise that. In terms of techniques, maybe humour is good for pointing to the things that are weirder, more nighttime in their grammar, and for subverting/shortcircuiting the influence of daytime logic. Iβve deliberately turned to humour in the last couple of years as a way to escape the problem of my nonfiction making more sense than I feel is truthful. I think horror writing does something similar - allowing the writer to explore things that are outside the daytime array while still being true. I love the comments here about scientific method. Iβve written about this as well - about situations that show how nighttimey scientific behaviour and thinking can be. Maybe everything that happens is really nighttime and then we rationalise it later by telling a story that makes it feel daytimey.
1) this is an insanely dope cover. I canβt wait to read.
2) have you read Into Their Labours? Itβs been a minute since I read much Berger, but those three books (Pig Earth, Once in Europa, Lilac and Flag) are so, so good I think. Best Berger