Heart and soul
Jun. 8th, 2014 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceThis is certainly not true of every writer, and it may not even be true of me, or not of every book I write - but right now I do feel as though I spend a lot more time fixing books than actually writing them. The writing-draft takes longer, in calendar-time: but between the rewrites and the edits and the copy-edits and the proofs, I swear more actual skull-time goes into the fixes than into the original.
Sometimes it frustrates me inordinately, but I always have been a malcontent: essentially, when I'm writing a draft I'd far rather be editing, and when I'm editing I'd far rather be writing original copy. Just call me the Rum Tum Tugger, and be done. It's just that if it's true that the time invested is disproportionate, then I spend a disproportionate amount of time wishing I was writing rather than editing.
Still: there is accomplishment to be sensed, even at this end. Today I fixed a very broken timeline in Being Small, and yay for a charming editor who actually noticed that Thursday was explicitly and textually followed by Sunday, hey-ho; and I proofed three stories and Geoff Ryman's introduction to my new collection Bitter Waters. You know, the one with the covetable - and attainable - cover art...
Sometimes it frustrates me inordinately, but I always have been a malcontent: essentially, when I'm writing a draft I'd far rather be editing, and when I'm editing I'd far rather be writing original copy. Just call me the Rum Tum Tugger, and be done. It's just that if it's true that the time invested is disproportionate, then I spend a disproportionate amount of time wishing I was writing rather than editing.
Still: there is accomplishment to be sensed, even at this end. Today I fixed a very broken timeline in Being Small, and yay for a charming editor who actually noticed that Thursday was explicitly and textually followed by Sunday, hey-ho; and I proofed three stories and Geoff Ryman's introduction to my new collection Bitter Waters. You know, the one with the covetable - and attainable - cover art...