Where ideas come from, vol 17, ch 3

I just received a PDF proof of the story I sold to Nature magazine. Is very pretty, with apt illo and all. Am just about happy enough to overlook the fact that it's been - shock, horror! - edited. There are commas in there that I do not recognise...

But this reminds me, I had meant to post about how it happened, this story. I knew the market existed; indeed, I'd already been rejected once. So I had it in mind, to see if I couldn't find another short sharp little SF idea, fit for a story under a thousand words.

And I had perhaps been to see Bryan Talbot, or else I'd been talking about him or reading a review of "Alice in Sunderland"; I don't remember which, but his Alice was in my head. And much of his information about the relationships between Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll and Sunderland came from a book called "A Town Like Alice's", so that title was also in my head, though it might have transmuted to the Nevil Shute, which of course lacks the possessive form. And I was walking home from town, and I may or may not have caught myself actually singing "From Boulder to Birmingham", because I often sing as I walk. But anyway, all these names and titles mungled themselves about in my head, and suddenly I was thinking that "From Alice to Everywhere" would make a fine title for a little SF story - but wait a minute, say Alice wasn't the town after all, say she was a person, then it's not a direction, it's a message. So then it's "From Alice to Everywhere, with Love". Which is a fabulous title. Now, then. All it needs is a plot...

And the plot was kind of obvious, actually, once I had the title. That's how they happen, by and large.

Be careful what you wish for...

I poked both my agents yesterday, given that they'd had the novel four weeks and I was going spare. To be fair to them, they both got back to me instanter. Neither has quite finished yet, but both gave me opinions-so-far.

And they didn't say anything I didn't expect, far from it; and they didn't say anything catastrophic; so it all ought to be fine, really.

And yet, and yet...

They want tweaks, a shift in balance here and there, perhaps more they'll tell me about later, but mostly they want cuts. Of course they want cuts. They're both former editors, and the editor was never invented who looked at a manuscript and didn't want to see it shorter. Is fine. And yet...

Oh, God. I am just so sick of rewrites. Since the start of December, I have:

spent two weeks cutting & revising another manuscript;
spent four weeks cutting & revising this manuscript;
spent four weeks retelling Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" in a highly abridged form, which boils down to cutting & revising in an extreme manner.

I am exceedingly weary of printed pages with scribbles on, and the whole mental process of making what was longer shorter. It would be soooo nice to write something fresh, y'know? Blank page, start from scratch, hurl the words around...

But no. Not this month now, not next month (abridgement of "Dracula"), probably not the month after that as no doubt this book will be back again from its regular editor by then, with a regular editor's revision letter. Aurgghhh!

So I took the first quarter into the Lit & Phil this morning, and read & scribbled on, um, twenty pages before my soul rebelled. And this afternoon I watched "Objective: Burma" (hey, it's set in the Far East! It's research!); and now I am drinking wine and I may very well sit in my comfy chair and read a book about China, because that is also work, but not this. Dear God, not this...

Does the Foreign Legion still take foreigners?

[ETA: On the other hand, maybe I'll sit in my comfy chair and finish reading Iain M's "Matter". That's sort of work too, isn't it? Keeping up with the genre...?]