I've come too far to let this spin away into vapors. So I will be in
revision
Is like shaving off prison tattoos a square inch at a time.
The hardest damn work I've done since labor and death.
So far, it works like this. I'll read the last scene that WORKED and then the new victim,
The hardest damn work I've done since labor and death.
So far, it works like this. I'll read the last scene that WORKED and then the new victim,
the next one, and the one that follows it. If the new one fails on enough fronts - and I've had more than
half do just that, I brood over the truth of it. The five 'whys'.
Then I start the autopsy.
Print, then redact - just like in the movies- with the broad, black marker, anything that's
Then I start the autopsy.
Print, then redact - just like in the movies- with the broad, black marker, anything that's
crap. Anything that's not a jewel.
Then I brood on it some more and find a different way to set some, not all, of those gems.
A setting that not only makes the scene worthwhile but nods to the one before it and sets upThen I brood on it some more and find a different way to set some, not all, of those gems.
the next.
5 comments:
Exhausting and sometimes rewarding I hope.
One word at a time, yes. It can be.
Do you have someone to read the work besides you?
I imagine writers don't want their "ideas" contaminated with other view points, so I guess that answers that.
I actually really love editing, as long as I'm not thinking about how so much of that time could be considered running in place, etc. How smart to begin with the chapter that works and move from there. Philip Roth used to leave a piece of writing just shy of being done in the evening, so as to have a recognizable place to start in the morning. That seems like a kindred idea. I compare editing to how I used to learn a piano piece -- I'd practice the first four / five lines over and over til I had it in hand and THEN move on. Which is to say, my first five chapters are glorious. The rest? Needs a lot of work!
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