Tuesday 5 September 2017

Notes in no specific order

1) Following graduation there is generally a period of internal disturbance during which the subject mopes, wonders what they've done with the last three (five, seven, twelve) years of their life, wonders what the point of life is at all, and generally does nothing useful. The length of this mope generally correlates to how pressing it is that they find a job. If they already have a job, the mope may continue indefinitely. If they are self-employed, the mope may be synchronous with the bare minimum of work.

B) If writing is a burrow (to borrow Margaret Atwood's description) then revision is an oubliette. A burrow can imaginably be made to be comfortable and homey; the point of an oubliette is to be as unpleasant as it is impossible to get out of. In Beatrix Potter guests are frequently hosted to tea in burrows. The nicest thing that's ever happened in an oubliette, as far as I know, is Jennifer Connelly getting out of one.

III) 50% of revision is trying to move plot points which are contingent on historical events without causing an anachronism. Another 50% is being cranky about it. 

Still another 50% is coming to hate the work enough that you're willing to delete anything, because that's the state that is required by an effective revision. 

Դ) Every book I've read and class I've been in (and taught) has emphasised the fact that the worst thing a body can do to a piece of writing is start polishing up the sentences too early; work has to stay in a semi-fluid state, where everything is up for debate, until there's a clear idea of what final shape it will settle into. Unfortunately, bringing an extract to a supervisor once a month meant that everything I've written since 2013 had to be pretty immediately polished up. Which means that I have to go back and crack the gloss so that parts can be moved around and a working shape can be made. 

At least I've learned one way not to write a novel, and so will be saved ever using it again.

⠑) Revision is finally less depressing than keeping abreast of world events, and this book is pretty grim in places.

䷇) The fact checking list includes: Brown v. Board of Education, 1980s moral panics, Eloquentia Perfecta, Eucharistic Discipline, Women's Rights, the Pro-Life Movement, Georgetown University's student newspaper, Watergate, the oil embargo, and the etymology of the word 'dork'. 

...---...) It could be worse. I could be doing my taxes.


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