If at third you don’t succeed . . .
Bollow’s Writing Fast divides rewriting jobs into four classes: Refocus, Research, Edit, and Tweak (in descending order of severity). Chapter 2 of the Octopus, which has been much and justly maligned, needed a complete Refocus, and indeed more than one. I made three separate attempts to rewrite the first half of the chapter (the dull and dodgy half), including a chunk that I lost because my laptop battery was incorrectly calibrated and went BLIP! just before I was ready to save.
(‘It sank into the swamp. So I wrote another draft. That sank into the swamp. So I wrote another one. That burnt down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth draft stayed up . . . and that’s what you’re getting, Dear Reader, the strongest draft in these islands!’)
This time I think I have nailed it, though what It is, and whether it is improved by transfixion with nails, are both matters open to question. At any rate it seems to me to read a lot livelier than the old copy it replaced. It also gets in a couple of reasonably important characters earlier in the book, which is all to the good, because otherwise their ‘footprint’ is probably too small for them.
The disadvantage of all this is that once again, the wordage has increased. Books are Hydras, I swear it.
If anybody wants to take a look at the first three chapters in isolation (as who should read the pages from a standard sample-and-outline), I shall shortly be canvassing for guinea pigs volunteers.
(‘It sank into the swamp. So I wrote another draft. That sank into the swamp. So I wrote another one. That burnt down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth draft stayed up . . . and that’s what you’re getting, Dear Reader, the strongest draft in these islands!’)
This time I think I have nailed it, though what It is, and whether it is improved by transfixion with nails, are both matters open to question. At any rate it seems to me to read a lot livelier than the old copy it replaced. It also gets in a couple of reasonably important characters earlier in the book, which is all to the good, because otherwise their ‘footprint’ is probably too small for them.
The disadvantage of all this is that once again, the wordage has increased. Books are Hydras, I swear it.
If anybody wants to take a look at the first three chapters in isolation (as who should read the pages from a standard sample-and-outline), I shall shortly be canvassing for guinea pigs volunteers.