And a Post About Writing

Lately, I've been inspired to blog a little; more than I was for a short while, anyway.  This is in concert with a bit more actual writing, too.  Sadly, it's more detail work than delete work - but it's work.  And, if it's the wrong thing to do, for a writer to write new material, it's still less of a sin than to hold out for deleting and excising - and instead do nothing at all.

There isn't a great deal of new bulk to be accounted for.  Still, to find my brain alive in multiple streams - a reflection of sensation here; the inspiration for building on the foundation there - is satisfying.  And, yes.  Satisfying - not merely a happy tidbit, or piece of contentment.  The full ration, satisfaction.  I get little enough of that.  To have it in my writing is a full-bodied blessing.

I haven't resisted the direction of some of the small streams flowing, those which have nothing to do with Ax but feed the second novel instead.  As with building instead of deletion - I still prefer writing the "wrong" thing to doing nothing at all.  In a way, as an author, I suppose it's something like "any attention is good attention" - any writing, even on something other than what I am supposed to be working on, is writing.



Still, it does frustrate.  I'd had a fantasy, back when I put down querying for revision work, that I would have something redrafted by January.  February is halfway over, and Kristi's truism holds - editing a novel is like killing a dragon with a pocket knife.  I've seen pocket knives do a lot of things, to be sure.  But this thing was 168k words when I started, and it's only lost sixty pages.

Today, I've been distracted.  Oh me, my back hurts.  Yeah, cry me a river, excuse machine.  LIFE is an excuse machine.

Sometimes, it's necessary to sit down and ignore your own whining.