In music, there’s this thing called the Circle of Fifths. While practicing my guitar last night, I studied it, thinking about how it might apply to writing structure.
The circle of fifths organizes pitches in a sequence of perfect fifths, generally shown as a circle with the pitches (and their corresponding keys) in a clockwise progression. Musicians and composers often use the circle of fifths to describe the musical relationships between pitches. Its design is helpful in composing and harmonizing melodies, building chords, and modulating to different keys within a composition.[1] – Wikipedia
Like pink noise for sound and the golden ratio for vision, it’s another tool communicating rules that define beauty by following, or create discordance by breaking. What are the major keys and minor chords, scales and key changes of writing? I ask you, Reader, Writer, because I don’t know either.
Paragraphs are the equivalent of chords, words correlate to individual notes, and voice equates to key. Maybe the equivalent cyclic nature can be found in the three-act structure or this W formation I found for mapping out a story.
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul. – Joyce Carol Oates
And so my thinking goes. But anyway, last week was okay. I started writing another story from my Big List of Memories and discovered that, ouch. Remembering is painful. I also realize that I need to have better defined writing goals. I sit in writers hour and write for an hour, but I often feel a little aimless and scattered. I have Matt and Parul’s goal setting framework, but haven’t intentionally used it yet.
This week I also finished Moby-Dick (!!) and started a MasterClass writing series with instructor Joyce Carol Oates (whom I’ve never read before, but now will): it is incredible, as are the other courses I’ve taken via MasterClass.
Onward.
Things That Nourished My Writing: Feb 15-21.
BOOKS
Moby-Dick (I finished it! And now I have a #whalecrush).
Good Prose: The Art of Non-Fiction
MUSIC
Beautiful Something Left Behind (couldn’t stop crying while listening to this).
I love the Fleet Foxes.
FOOD
Crab quiche from Café Campagne
Browned Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies
PLACES
Cross-country skiing on the Palouse to Cascades Trail
The ball fields where I often walk Friedrich.
FILM
Beautiful Something Left Behind, a poignant documentary about childhood bereavement.