Unwriting

[desperance]

Urgh. At the moment, I am all about cuts. I spent two weeks cutting the urban fantasy; I'm just muscling my way into the big historical fantasy, and I've cut a thousand words from the opening section, which was tight already; and I've set that aside this afternoon (after working on it all morning) in order to have one more pass through the short story that I'm reading at the Phantoms gig tonight, to chisel out what more I can of that.

Writing is rewriting, and at some level I enjoy it, this close and intimate, exacting relationship with the text; but when it is so very much unwriting, when I am looking and looking for words that can go - well, it's exhausting and the reward are few, and all numerical. I do of course love numbers, so there is some pleasure in ticking them off (and I play printers' games with myself, "if I can just lose three words from this paragraph, look, I'll lose a whole line; lose half a dozen lines and I'll lose that last page..."), but it isn't quite creative. A well-cut chapter gives me satisfaction, but not thrill.

I want to run away, really. Tired now. I could boil a gammon, I guess. But six-thirty this evening is one of those unmovable deadlines: I have four hours and no more to make this story better. Three and a half, realistically. Three, if I'm going to eat before I go, which I probably ought, as there is rumoured to be drinking afterwards.

Hey-ho.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

and I play printers' games with myself, "if I can just lose three words from this paragraph, look, I'll lose a whole line; lose half a dozen lines and I'll lose that last page...

I do that too. :)