Writing? What's that?
I can hardly remember, it's been such a long time.
Actually, I've not been writing this evening so much as rewriting. And even that's a bit of a cop-out because I'm avoiding the hard part. Book two of The Ballad of Sir Benfro (the whole reason for this blog, in case you were unsure) needs a complete overhaul because somewhere along the line I decided that narrating a four part epic all from the one point of view was not very interesting. Book one is now multi-threaded and so book two (which was written before book one - pay attention now) has to be rethinked.
Actually it needed to be rethinked anyway because it wasn't as good as I thought it was way back when I started. And there's no point writing something if you're not going to make it the best you can. Or better. Like I've always said - If a job's not worth doing well, it's not worth doing at all.
So, I've spent the evening going through each chapter and ruthlessly hacking out great wadges of turgid, introspective prose. I hope to be able to cut the word count by at least a third and reorganise the sections into short and snappy events, each one a cliffhanger leading into the next. That, apparently, is the secret to writing page turners. That, also, is the easy part.
Next I have to weave, seamlessly (or should that be sew seamlessly? Weaving is surely seamless by it's very nature) into the flow short snappy sections from the point of view of the other characters who barged their way onto the starring cast list in book one.
A lot of what I've been doing since before Christmas has probably been to avoid starting this. Not because I don't want to do it, but because I know that once I start, everything else will get dropped. Dogs will go unstrolled, suppers will go uncooked, databases will go unmanaged, touchy-feely farmers groups will go unloved and wages will go unearned (the last hurts most).
I might still remember to blog, but I can't promise anything.
Still, there's a couple of hundred pages of rethinking to wade through before I finally have to bite the bullet, so you needn't panic yet.
Actually, I've not been writing this evening so much as rewriting. And even that's a bit of a cop-out because I'm avoiding the hard part. Book two of The Ballad of Sir Benfro (the whole reason for this blog, in case you were unsure) needs a complete overhaul because somewhere along the line I decided that narrating a four part epic all from the one point of view was not very interesting. Book one is now multi-threaded and so book two (which was written before book one - pay attention now) has to be rethinked.
Actually it needed to be rethinked anyway because it wasn't as good as I thought it was way back when I started. And there's no point writing something if you're not going to make it the best you can. Or better. Like I've always said - If a job's not worth doing well, it's not worth doing at all.
So, I've spent the evening going through each chapter and ruthlessly hacking out great wadges of turgid, introspective prose. I hope to be able to cut the word count by at least a third and reorganise the sections into short and snappy events, each one a cliffhanger leading into the next. That, apparently, is the secret to writing page turners. That, also, is the easy part.
Next I have to weave, seamlessly (or should that be sew seamlessly? Weaving is surely seamless by it's very nature) into the flow short snappy sections from the point of view of the other characters who barged their way onto the starring cast list in book one.
A lot of what I've been doing since before Christmas has probably been to avoid starting this. Not because I don't want to do it, but because I know that once I start, everything else will get dropped. Dogs will go unstrolled, suppers will go uncooked, databases will go unmanaged, touchy-feely farmers groups will go unloved and wages will go unearned (the last hurts most).
I might still remember to blog, but I can't promise anything.
Still, there's a couple of hundred pages of rethinking to wade through before I finally have to bite the bullet, so you needn't panic yet.
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