Kekropia Revisited
Mar. 31st, 2005 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyI've finished the revision pass through Chapter One, and started on Chapter Two.
The great problem with the revision pass is that it throws my brain sideways, slam!, into hypercritical mode, and after about two paragraphs EVERYTHING sucks. The dialogue, the character development, the plot (ha!), the uttermost bedrock necessity of English wherein you put a subject and a verb in the same sentence and try to be sure they have something to do with each other. You develop a persecution complex made all the worse because your persecutor is yourself. Tinfoil hats will not avail you, flame of Udun.
(Okay, I apologize for that.)
In fact, the book is not that bad. My lovely and talented first-readers tell me so, and I can ever sort of see it for myself. But the things that take the foreground and jump up and down waving signs and spray-painting each other Day-Glo green and yellow are the things that don't work, the passages that clunk, the bits where I said, Fuck it, I'll fix it later, in the not so secret hope that the Good Prose Fairy would come in the night and take care of them.
The Good Prose Fairy does not do house-calls.
At least I don't see so much of the Bad Prose Fairies as I used to. (And, yes, I'm sure there's more than one Bad Prose Fairy, devious little weasels that they are.)
But the problem is that, in the first draft, you can say, Fuck it, I'll fix it later, KEEP WRITING, YOU LAZY SLATTERN. Second draft, when you find something wrong, you have to sit and stare at it until either (a.) you start actually sweating blood or (b.) you see how to fix it, whichever comes first. So far, it's always been (b.), but (a.) sometimes feels like it isn't very far away.
And so I do what one always does in this situation: I bitch.
The great problem with the revision pass is that it throws my brain sideways, slam!, into hypercritical mode, and after about two paragraphs EVERYTHING sucks. The dialogue, the character development, the plot (ha!), the uttermost bedrock necessity of English wherein you put a subject and a verb in the same sentence and try to be sure they have something to do with each other. You develop a persecution complex made all the worse because your persecutor is yourself. Tinfoil hats will not avail you, flame of Udun.
(Okay, I apologize for that.)
In fact, the book is not that bad. My lovely and talented first-readers tell me so, and I can ever sort of see it for myself. But the things that take the foreground and jump up and down waving signs and spray-painting each other Day-Glo green and yellow are the things that don't work, the passages that clunk, the bits where I said, Fuck it, I'll fix it later, in the not so secret hope that the Good Prose Fairy would come in the night and take care of them.
The Good Prose Fairy does not do house-calls.
At least I don't see so much of the Bad Prose Fairies as I used to. (And, yes, I'm sure there's more than one Bad Prose Fairy, devious little weasels that they are.)
But the problem is that, in the first draft, you can say, Fuck it, I'll fix it later, KEEP WRITING, YOU LAZY SLATTERN. Second draft, when you find something wrong, you have to sit and stare at it until either (a.) you start actually sweating blood or (b.) you see how to fix it, whichever comes first. So far, it's always been (b.), but (a.) sometimes feels like it isn't very far away.
And so I do what one always does in this situation: I bitch.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-31 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 12:59 am (UTC)::grins::
Usually I get to (c) where I spend half an hour trying to decide if the fix is any better than the original problem and swapping back and forth a bit in the hopes that by some freak mutation new and better words will evolve.
Right now I'm in the happy phase of the b**k where half the time I think the start is irredeemable crap and the rest of the time am certain it'll all be irredeemable crap after I finish breaking the ending.
Then last night, between bouts of agonised groaning (and being whapped round the head for it), I was wondering if I'd opt out of choosing which b**k I start on next by conducting a live journal poll. ::facepalms:: Next b**k? Next b**k?
I'm well beyond the aid of a twelve-step program.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 01:02 am (UTC)You and me both, sister.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 01:05 am (UTC)I'm not sure whether this is community-building or misery loves company or mutual schadenfreude or what, but it sure does help. Especially the part where, Oh, yeah, I'm not the only one banging my head against the wall today.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 04:37 am (UTC)You still rock.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 03:28 pm (UTC)For this, House Sarah wins eleventy hundred points!
no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 03:39 pm (UTC)