Presently It's the Past

From "A Liliputian's Journey"

     Last week I utterly failed and I came pretty close to missing this week's deadline too.  One of these weeks I will focus on the "life of a writer" and see how some people find time to write while others are strapped for time, focus and overall energy.  That is a topic for the future, this week I will NOT fail, I will prevail in writing about my struggle with tenses!

From "Curves and Comics"

     The real genesis for this topic came about while reading The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor.  It was written in present tense and I found that a little bewildering.  (Maybe I should be writing this in present tense?)  It wasn't so much that the writing was poor or the narrative was sub par, but the story seemed unfinished or somehow uncertain in the present tense.  The story read as a script for the other Walking Dead graphic novels, (Thanks again for sharing those Dave!) and almost lacked a foundation.
      While I did not like the selection of present tense for the book, I understood some of the reasoning for the choice.  It seems to put the reader in a state of anxiety, since the "story" is happening in the present.  Also I felt that it kept the characters animated and never let them rest on a past event.  It was unsettling, not being able to slow down the action and reflect.  Those aspects did not help to round out the story for me, but it did add a little unease to my experience reading the book.  Although I did not enjoy the selection of the present tense, it did help immerse me in the plague erupting in the story.
     I've always struggled this tense use, often flipping back and forth between the two (There are some examples in the Script for "Doin' Sh*t With Pat").  Present tense is difficult for me to master since even as I write this, I'm thinking of it in the past tense since I will go back and format the text.  Unfortunately I tend to blend the two and it makes for some confusing narratives and a real headache to edit.  It's something that I might try in an exercise or on a writing prompt sometime, but for now I will stick with past tense.

From "Poetry from the Orchard"

     For next week I will work on completing 2012: A Year in Review, with all the books and movies I've read/seen this year (... and maybe post a review at Kronicles of KD).

Thanks~