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A New Week
Apr. 12th, 2010 12:04 pmSo, it's a new week. Bleary - eyed, my hair in disarray, I begin by blogging about nothing in general.
I'll head into town shortly, probably to do the week's shopping. I intend on having as few distractions as possible today, because the aim is for me to finish off William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive quickly. I'll have gone through the "Cyberpunk" trilogy, and I'll probably come up with a review of the series for the 24th and the SF reading club.
I'm faced with a choice this week. I can go through the fantasy story and edit, or continue to write the SF story.
I've observed that editing and writing are two completely different tasks. Both come under the remit of the writer's trade, yet they have completely different foci.
In writing, you make things come into being before your eyes; in the ideas you write down on the paper or on the screen. These ideas did not exist before you willed them into being. Characters do not exist or act before the writer weaves them into being, gives them life, writes their actions and their reactions to the consequences.
Editing involves different actions on the writer's part. Apart from the basics of spellchecking and grammar checking (the latter being pointless if you are engaged in developing your own style of writing!), editing changes the shape of the things you have willed into existence. You change colours, shapes, perspectives.
A scene previously narrated in third person suddenly takes on a clearer aspect when viewed through the eyes of a minor protagonist, an antagonist, or even a stray passing dog. Another scene might find itself displaced to another part of the book, where its contribution to the narrative works much better than in its original location. Characters, props, scenes, whole chapters shift, change or disappear entirely, displaced to the writerly limbo of Apocrypha.
When a writer edits a work, the act of editing alters the whole document.
Hopefully, the writer can achieve his aim of making his story sexy and must-read through the editing process, although of course the writer can only make the document sexy enough to pass the publisher's critical eye. If it does, then a far worse edit awaits the poor damned document, unless the writer chooses the infinitely risky road of going it alone and self - publishing.
Anyhow. I'll decide what to do later on tonight, after I've backed up everything on my new external hard drive.
I'll head into town shortly, probably to do the week's shopping. I intend on having as few distractions as possible today, because the aim is for me to finish off William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive quickly. I'll have gone through the "Cyberpunk" trilogy, and I'll probably come up with a review of the series for the 24th and the SF reading club.
I'm faced with a choice this week. I can go through the fantasy story and edit, or continue to write the SF story.
I've observed that editing and writing are two completely different tasks. Both come under the remit of the writer's trade, yet they have completely different foci.
In writing, you make things come into being before your eyes; in the ideas you write down on the paper or on the screen. These ideas did not exist before you willed them into being. Characters do not exist or act before the writer weaves them into being, gives them life, writes their actions and their reactions to the consequences.
Editing involves different actions on the writer's part. Apart from the basics of spellchecking and grammar checking (the latter being pointless if you are engaged in developing your own style of writing!), editing changes the shape of the things you have willed into existence. You change colours, shapes, perspectives.
A scene previously narrated in third person suddenly takes on a clearer aspect when viewed through the eyes of a minor protagonist, an antagonist, or even a stray passing dog. Another scene might find itself displaced to another part of the book, where its contribution to the narrative works much better than in its original location. Characters, props, scenes, whole chapters shift, change or disappear entirely, displaced to the writerly limbo of Apocrypha.
When a writer edits a work, the act of editing alters the whole document.
Hopefully, the writer can achieve his aim of making his story sexy and must-read through the editing process, although of course the writer can only make the document sexy enough to pass the publisher's critical eye. If it does, then a far worse edit awaits the poor damned document, unless the writer chooses the infinitely risky road of going it alone and self - publishing.
Anyhow. I'll decide what to do later on tonight, after I've backed up everything on my new external hard drive.
