To my lovely writing partners, please bear with my slow responses! I just got engaged and now I'm headed across the Atlantic for a couple weeks. I promise I haven't forgotten you!
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likes
7 yrs ago
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. -Joseph Campbell
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7 yrs ago
I disagree. Your personal preference for one writer over another, does not change the fact that both may be good at what they do. Skill is not subjective.
7 yrs ago
Perhaps the answer is some conglomeration: A good writer is someone who can artfully combine proficient use of the English language with ideas that make the reader think or feel.
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Bio
I think I was probably a cat in another lifetime. I don't like noise, I don't like bright lights, and I don't even particularly like people, though there are one or two exceptions to that last one. What I do like are warm places, good books, hot drinks, and pleasant conundrums, you know the sort that might occupy a longish drive with interesting thinking. Antepenultimately, I enjoy words of a sesquipedalian nature, though only as a veridical aesthete; I don’t think these words have much of a place in the writing I’ll be doing on this forum. They mess with the flow of the prose if you catch my meaning. Supereminently, I’ll write with anyone that has a strong voice and a good grasp of the English language, and while I won't promise not to bite, I will swear I've had all my shots, so pm me if you've got any clever ideas or inchoate notions.
“Great artists steal. Lesser artists borrow.” ― Igor Stravinsky
Name: Elise Marie Lefevre Age: 21 Race: Caucasian Gender: Female
University and Degree: Cello Performance, Royal Academy of Music, London
Appearance:
Elise is a slight, tidy woman with pointed features. She appears almost exactly as in the picture—including the tattoos—with the exception of the jewelry around her hands. The cellist’s hands are always kept free of jewelry and nail polish. They are kept pristine: perfectly clean and manicured. Elise has a slight twitch when speaking, a tendency for her right shoulder to tense and relax repetitively.
Personality:
In person, Elise is intense and blunt. She has poor social skills and rather than try to untangle the niceties of polite conversation, she simply says what she thinks when she thinks it unless it is of an obviously hurtful nature. Elise has little or no sense of humor, not because she doesn't understand it, but because she derives little pleasure from it. The cellist has a great admiration for honesty and an active disdain for anything not expressly real, for anything that hides its true nature. This is especially true of people who pretend to feel something they don’t, such as happiness or love, but Elise is capable of great empathy when shown real feeling. Elise can show immense dedication and focus on a goal. She is guilty of over-analyzing and has an anxious or turbulent personality type—she takes worry to the extreme.
Biography:
On the most important night of Elise Lefevre’s life, the sky was clear. Very few stars twinkled in downtown London, and there was no sign of rain, not even a wisp of fog. For a longtime Londoner like Elise, this seemed like a blessing from whatever gods may be on the night of her first major solo performance.
Every year, the Royal Academy of Music holds a number of concerto competitions for their students, often with the winners being granted a chance to play as the soloist with the school orchestra. This year, however, the prize for winning the concerto competition was a chance to perform as the concerto soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the old and beautiful Royal Albert Hall. Almost unbelievably, Elise had been chosen.
It seemed to the young woman, as she prepared for the performance with a number of careful and exacting hand stretches, that her entire life had been leading up to this moment of glory. Everything from her wealthy but cold and strict parents to the years of practicing hours a day, to finally finding herself in the music. Elise felt as if she had just begun to come into her own, as if she had just found her own voice. This was the first big moment in a journey that had started when she was seven.
As Elise stepped onto the stage before the famous orchestra, the applause of the audience started a thunderous roar that her body took up in earnest. Blood roared in her ears and her heart started up a tattoo that drowned out the oboist as he called out an order to tune, a perfect A 440. Elise’s trembling fingers slipped on the tuning pegs of her instrument, but they were dear old friends and the cello seemed almost to find the pitch of its own accord.
Somehow, when the conductor turned to her, Elise’s face managed a near confident smile, her chin dipped in accord. Her fingers found the starting positions they had already found a thousand thousand times before, and with a strong downstroke of her right arm, Elise pulled the resounding first notes of Elgar’s Cello Concerto from her instrument and flung them into the wide room around her. The orchestra responded almost lovingly, and the tremors in Elise’s fingers stilled into strong confidence.
The cellist left the plane of mortals, transported by some combination of bright lights and the hush of breath from five thousand people hanging on her every gesture. For the next half hour, Elise sang a song of loving and longing, but her ecstasy did not end with the last ringing note, with the standing of the audience. It seemed as though nothing could bring her back to earth, not the crush of congratulators (whose handshakes Elise avoided by keeping her hands wrapped tightly around her instrument) and not the chill night sky, made clear on this night just for her.
Then, Elise stepped into a taxi. So caught up her dream-like trance, she did not stop to notice that the vehicle already held another passenger or that the driver did not respond when she named her apartment’s address, some miles off. She did not even mind so much when her fellow passenger congratulated her on the tremendous success of her debut, so wrapped was she in glory.
The dream did not crash around her ears until the man laid a gentle hand on her left wrist, where it was resting on the back of er cello case. He turned it over, palm up, and proceeded to explain just how easily Elise’s first moment of success could be her last. He ever so gingerly laid a long, sharp knife across the cellist’s fingers, in the delicate creases of her knuckles: first the tip, then the middle, and then at the top of her palm. No mark was left in the wake of this demonstration, but in Elise’s mind, blood welled up from her fingers and dripped down her arm and filled up the car. She was drowning in thick, hot, salty rust.
That night Elise washed her hands seven times—dampen, soap up, rinse, dry, apply sanitizer—then went through a full regimen of stretches nine times, tucked her hands tightly in their braces, curled up in the small space between her bed and the wall, and sobbed. She did not emerge from her tidy London flat for another two days, and when she did it was to follow the instructions of her new “employer.”
Skills:
Finger Dexterity and Coordination: A decade and a half of dedication to technical perfection on her instrument have lent Elise extraordinary hand-eye coordination and dexterity.
High Intelligence and Good Problem Solving Skills: Science has proven, on more than one occasion, that those who practice and perform music on a regular basis experience an increase in mental capacity. Elise is highly intelligent and has excellent critical thinking skills.
Excellent Memory: Elise truly has her cello teachers for this one. Despite years of grumbling about being made to memorize this or that cello concerto, there's no doubt she's become very good at memorizing large amounts of information in the smallest amount of time possible.
Weaknesses:
Out of Shape: Elise is 22 years old and she has never once stepped foot in a gym. She hasn't run a mile since she was 12 when it was a mandatory part of her school’s curriculum. The only type of stretches she's done in the last decade have been for the tendons in her hands. Needless to say, Elise won't be running marathons or pressing her body weight anytime soon.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: No, this doesn't mean Elise gets a bit uncomfortable when she sees a slightly crooked picture frame. Elise has one life-consuming obsession composed around a fear of harm or contamination of her hands. Her compulsions include the meticulous cleaning and care of her hands and nails multiple times a day, a need to sleep in and sometimes leave the house in wrist braces to prevent carpal tunnel or dystonia, and a need to complete a tedious routine of careful hand and wrist stretches multiple times a day.
“Great artists steal. Lesser artists borrow.” ― Igor Stravinsky
Name: Elise Marie Lefevre Age: 21 Race: Caucasian Gender: Female
University and Degree: Cello Performance, Royal Academy of Music, London
Appearance:
Elise is a slight, tidy woman with pointed features. She appears almost exactly as in the picture—including the tattoos—with the exception of the jewelry around her hands. The cellist’s hands are always kept free of jewelry and nail polish. They are kept pristine: perfectly clean and manicured. Elise has a slight twitch when speaking, a tendency for her right shoulder to tense and relax repetitively.
Personality:
In person, Elise is intense and blunt. She has poor social skills and rather than try to untangle the niceties of polite conversation, she simply says what she thinks when she thinks it unless it is of an obviously hurtful nature. Elise has little or no sense of humor, not because she doesn't understand it, but because she derives little pleasure from it. The cellist has a great admiration for honesty and an active disdain for anything not expressly real, for anything that hides its true nature. This is especially true of people who pretend to feel something they don’t, such as happiness or love, but Elise is capable of great empathy when shown real feeling. Elise can show immense dedication and focus on a goal. She is guilty of over-analyzing and has an anxious or turbulent personality type—she takes worry to the extreme.
Biography:
On the most important night of Elise Lefevre’s life, the sky was clear. Very few stars twinkled in downtown London, and there was no sign of rain, not even a wisp of fog. For a longtime Londoner like Elise, this seemed like a blessing from whatever gods may be on the night of her first major solo performance.
Every year, the Royal Academy of Music holds a number of concerto competitions for their students, often with the winners being granted a chance to play as the soloist with the school orchestra. This year, however, the prize for winning the concerto competition was a chance to perform as the concerto soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the old and beautiful Royal Albert Hall. Almost unbelievably, Elise had been chosen.
It seemed to the young woman, as she prepared for the performance with a number of careful and exacting hand stretches, that her entire life had been leading up to this moment of glory. Everything from her wealthy but cold and strict parents to the years of practicing hours a day, to finally finding herself in the music. Elise felt as if she had just begun to come into her own, as if she had just found her own voice. This was the first big moment in a journey that had started when she was seven.
As Elise stepped onto the stage before the famous orchestra, the applause of the audience started a thunderous roar that her body took up in earnest. Blood roared in her ears and her heart started up a tattoo that drowned out the oboist as he called out an order to tune, a perfect A 440. Elise’s trembling fingers slipped on the tuning pegs of her instrument, but they were dear old friends and the cello seemed almost to find the pitch of its own accord.
Somehow, when the conductor turned to her, Elise’s face managed a near confident smile, her chin dipped in accord. Her fingers found the starting positions they had already found a thousand thousand times before, and with a strong downstroke of her right arm, Elise pulled the resounding first notes of Elgar’s Cello Concerto from her instrument and flung them into the wide room around her. The orchestra responded almost lovingly, and the tremors in Elise’s fingers stilled into strong confidence.
The cellist left the plane of mortals, transported by some combination of bright lights and the hush of breath from five thousand people hanging on her every gesture. For the next half hour, Elise sang a song of loving and longing, but her ecstasy did not end with the last ringing note, with the standing of the audience. It seemed as though nothing could bring her back to earth, not the crush of congratulators (whose handshakes Elise avoided by keeping her hands wrapped tightly around her instrument) and not the chill night sky, made clear on this night just for her.
Then, Elise stepped into a taxi. So caught up her dream-like trance, she did not stop to notice that the vehicle already held another passenger or that the driver did not respond when she named her apartment’s address, some miles off. She did not even mind so much when her fellow passenger congratulated her on the tremendous success of her debut, so wrapped was she in glory.
The dream did not crash around her ears until the man laid a gentle hand on her left wrist, where it was resting on the back of er cello case. He turned it over, palm up, and proceeded to explain just how easily Elise’s first moment of success could be her last. He ever so gingerly laid a long, sharp knife across the cellist’s fingers, in the delicate creases of her knuckles: first the tip, then the middle, and then at the top of her palm. No mark was left in the wake of this demonstration, but in Elise’s mind, blood welled up from her fingers and dripped down her arm and filled up the car. She was drowning in thick, hot, salty rust.
That night Elise washed her hands seven times—dampen, soap up, rinse, dry, apply sanitizer—then went through a full regimen of stretches nine times, tucked her hands tightly in their braces, curled up in the small space between her bed and the wall, and sobbed. She did not emerge from her tidy London flat for another two days, and when she did it was to follow the instructions of her new “employer.”
Skills:
Finger Dexterity and Coordination: A decade and a half of dedication to technical perfection on her instrument have lent Elise extraordinary hand-eye coordination and dexterity.
High Intelligence and Good Problem Solving Skills: Science has proven, on more than one occasion, that those who practice and perform music on a regular basis experience an increase in mental capacity. Elise is highly intelligent and has excellent critical thinking skills.
Excellent Memory: Elise truly has her cello teachers for this one. Despite years of grumbling about being made to memorize this or that cello concerto, there's no doubt she's become very good at memorizing large amounts of information in the smallest amount of time possible.
Weaknesses:
Out of Shape: Elise is 22 years old and she has never once stepped foot in a gym. She hasn't run a mile since she was 12 when it was a mandatory part of her school’s curriculum. The only type of stretches she's done in the last decade have been for the tendons in her hands. Needless to say, Elise won't be running marathons or pressing her body weight anytime soon.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: No, this doesn't mean Elise gets a bit uncomfortable when she sees a slightly crooked picture frame. Elise has one life-consuming obsession composed around a fear of harm or contamination of her hands. Her compulsions include the meticulous cleaning and care of her hands and nails multiple times a day, a need to sleep in and sometimes leave the house in wrist braces to prevent carpal tunnel or dystonia, and a need to complete a tedious routine of careful hand and wrist stretches multiple times a day.
Haha, no worries. That might not be entirely in character for Alia though. She primarily does what's best for her own interests, so she probably won't steal from teammates unless she's guaranteed to get away with it.
Yes, there's just one problem with that; every time you write about Endar, you use his really name, which Alia can't know yet. Since the story is mostly in her perspective, that's the only way to show that what you're writing isn't from her perspective.
I think I was probably a cat in another lifetime. I don't like noise, I don't like bright lights, and I don't even particularly like people, though there are one or two exceptions to that last one. What I do like are warm places, good books, hot drinks, and pleasant conundrums, you know the sort that might occupy a longish drive with interesting thinking. Antepenultimately, I enjoy words of a sesquipedalian nature, though only as a veridical aesthete; I don’t think these words have much of a place in the writing I’ll be doing on this forum. They mess with the flow of the prose if you catch my meaning. Supereminently, I’ll write with anyone that has a strong voice and a good grasp of the English language, and while I won't promise not to bite, I will swear I've had all my shots, so pm me if you've got any clever ideas or inchoate notions.
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">I think I was probably a cat in another lifetime. I don't like noise, I don't like bright lights, and I don't even particularly like people, though there are one or two exceptions to that last one. What I do like are warm places, good books, hot drinks, and pleasant conundrums, you know the sort that might occupy a longish drive with interesting thinking. Antepenultimately, I enjoy words of a sesquipedalian nature, though only as a veridical aesthete; I don’t think these words have much of a place in the writing I’ll be doing on this forum. They mess with the flow of the prose if you catch my meaning. Supereminently, I’ll write with anyone that has a strong voice and a good grasp of the English language, and while I won't promise not to bite, I will swear I've had all my shots, so pm me if you've got any clever ideas or inchoate notions.</div>
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