Wednesday, December 17, 2008

This is the sound of a man editing.

I am planning, over the next three days, to do nothing but eat fried chicken and edit. For I, my friends, am writing a novel.

People get this look on their face, some of them anyway, when you tell them you're writing a novel. Like you've told them you still live with your parents.

At all times, the novelist must be vigilant against the feeling that everything s/he thinks and feels and says and does is shit.

I'm through the first stage of editing, which is, quite simply, Asking Questions. The second, and more synonymous with tooth-pulling, is answering all those Questions, which can be as specific as "Rework introduction to M here?" or as general as "trite?" "redundant sentiment?" etc. These are more pernicious questions to fathom.

So, by way of a statement of purpose, three posts in, let me say that this blog will be a place for me to spin off ideas which don't readily have a place in what I'm working on now, especially ones (see my Inagural Post) which reflect my life-long love of science fiction.

Cheers.

4 comments:

  1. This isn't your first, though, right? I believe I've picked up hints of other completed works, which is very impressive to me.

    Care to describe the premise?

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  2. I *thought* I heard something!

    Does it sound kind of like squirrels running across a rooftop? Or are those squirrels?

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  3. I've tried fried chicken and editing before... it only results in a greasy keyboard. May you be more successful at it than I.

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  4. OrnaVerum: I'll do what I can to describe the premise in a follow-up post, though this may take the shape more of a prolonged soul-searching than anything else.

    kate: I do my best work on a rooftop in twenty-degree weather. Also I wear a Batman costume.

    Bo: it's easy when you have a utility belt.

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