Wednesday’s Bumper Sticker
D.H. Said
Personally, I think many writers worry about where they’re going to land, so they avoid jumping over the edge. It is safer, but it doesn’t take you very far.
You have to make that jump, whichever one that you see holding you back.
Yes, I am addressing myself.
Time, Energy, and Patience
Incomplete States is a science-fiction infused historic series of possible futures. Book Three, Six (with Seven), now in editing and revision, also focuses on another intelligent species.
They are much different from Humans and the other species encountered in this historic series. Their culture, mores, and social structures aren’t like Humans or the rest. This makes editing them a powerful challenge, which translates into time, energy, and patience. Clarity, coherency, and consistency is demanded. This is the fourth day of editing and revising this thirteen-page chapter.
Time, energy, and patience has become my new editing and revising motto. I used to race through writing books and then become impatient with the editing and revising phases. I’ve developed a more acute respect for how editing and revising fit into the writing and publishing process as I’ve written more books.
The other aspect that’s found new respect in me is reading . On Sunday, a friend asked me, “How do you know when you’re done writing the novel after editing and revising it?” I told her, “That’s when the reader takes over. I write what I enjoy reading. If I, as the reader, am happy, then I’m done.” Of course, that’s when the professional editors take over.
Thinking about my answer later increased my appreciation for how reading helps writing. If I’m writing for a reader, me. I want that reader — me — to keep expanding their appreciation of what they’re reading. As I do, what I read and enjoy permeates the reader/writer/creator membrane. So expanding what I read, enjoy, and appreciate improves my writing and creating skills.
I like casting a wide net over my reading choices. I have favorite authors and genres, but enjoy exploring. I just finished reading Red Shirts (John Scalzi, 2011). Now I’m beginning Less (Andrew Sean Green, 2017, Pulitzer Prize). I’m still reading The Order of Time (Carlo Rovelli, 2018). That last book requires many pauses to think about what I’m reading, and revisiting parts of the book.
Of course, I’m also still reading Six (with Seven). I must read it to edit it.
Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.
Jules Said
Sometimes, when I’m not certain about what I’m going to write, I feel just as Jules Renard said in this quote. It’s out there. I need to find it.
Another Writing Update
Editing and revising continues on Book Three of Incomplete States, a novel titled, Six (with Seven).
While remaining ambivalent about the title, I’m feeling more attached to it as I edit. I’m ambivalent about it because I conjure negative reactions from others about the title. I imagine that it will sour some because it’s different (gasp). But reading, editing, and revising the book has brought me closer to the title. I understand why that title came to me, and why it works. I also swung back toward ignoring and dismissing the naysayers, which basically goes along the lines, “Fuck you.” I like to think that they’ll be so in love with the series by the third book that they won’t care about the title.
See? I can be an dewy-eyed optimist.
Editing and revising Six (with Seven) hasn’t been all coffee and cookies. One chapter obviously needed major reconstruction. I struggled to fix it for several days. Then, one morning, I opened it and realized, the chapter didn’t work because everything had evolved away from it. It’d been an early, exploratory chapter. Now, it didn’t fit.
It still took some time to cut it. I liked the characters and the writing. It was damn prettified. I also worried that I was cutting it out of expediency. The muses didn’t agree, so I cut it. I saved it…just in case.
Once that chapter was removed, everything else fit together like fine tongue-and-groove construction. I loped through several chapters a day. It’s a fine thing to enjoy what you’ve written.
Enough patting myself on the back. Coffee has been downed, but this is free refills Friday. Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.
Another John Said
A & P was a grocery store chain. My stepfather worked at it, I thought, although he never spoke much about work. It was a well-known chain and abundant around the Pittsburgh suburbs where I lived from four years old until I was fifteen.
When I read John Updike’s short story, “A & P”, in English class in 1972, it struck me how vividly and accurately he’d portrayed the average store and its customers and employees. I had no plans to be a writer then. I just enjoyed reading. I preferred science fiction and adventure until then but then I read Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, Pornoy’s Complaint, and Herzog, and my interests shifted.
A & P are gone now, only known through literature, entertainment, and memories.
Michael Seidel, writer 