Making less into more, without magic

Sometimes, of course, less is just less. But the writing process - my writing process - is fundamentally lossy. Start with too much, and cut back.

I can do twenty-five, thirty pages in a session, a couple of hours' work in the library. Then I have to run screaming. It doesn't sound a lot, I know, on either side of the equation. But that's, what, four minutes to a page, more or less. Three hundred words, more or less: and every single word to be considered and reconsidered, measured for sound and weight and meaning, and a quarter of them marked down for culling. Sometimes that's just one word struck out, sometimes it's a phrase lifted wholesale, sometimes it means taking a paragraph apart and rebuilding it. Not so often, that last: I think it's to do with the particular way I write, the rhythms and repetitions, most often I can pull material out and the narrative runs on unhindered, perhaps a little quicker, a little clearer than before. That's what we hope for, at least. What we work for: less, more. It's all about the balance.

So, yup. As much as I can bear of that, and then I bring it home to the computer and reconsider every word again, every mark-up. Now it can take even longer, ten or twelve pages in a session. Sigh.

Still, it's good to have something to do. I am ... not in a good place, otherwise. I'll get to the end of this, which will take me to the end of the year; after that, I have no idea. Can't see a way forward, really. There's a gap I don't know how to bridge. Professionally, financially, emotionally. All of those. Sometimes less is just less, the process is lossy and there is no magic.