tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post3084330005653172367..comments2023-10-03T11:41:21.191+01:00Comments on The Truth About Lies: The case for self-editingJim Murdochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-83333882332748808412014-02-23T15:11:24.561+00:002014-02-23T15:11:24.561+00:00As I said, Ken, I’m not against editors—far from i...As I said, <b>Ken</b>, I’m not against editors—far from it—but I do think having them around can make authors lazy. Actually one of the problems I have with Carrie is that she knows me so well that she knows what I mean even when that’s not exactly what I’ve said. That’s a definite danger.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-2159427822976652972014-02-23T14:44:29.557+00:002014-02-23T14:44:29.557+00:00Very recently, I got to spend a little period of t...Very recently, I got to spend a little period of time with an editor. I felt that it was a wonderful thing. I want more of it! When I'm rich and famous* (*time is running out on this) I'll use one all the time. :)Ken Armstronghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-65747495248518874192014-02-17T13:00:00.937+00:002014-02-17T13:00:00.937+00:00The key expression in your comment for me, Joe, is...The key expression in your comment for me, <b>Joe</b>, is “my process”. Too many people imagine there ought to be a Tao of writing and maybe there is but every writer finds his own way there if you’ll forgive the pun. Is there a right way to be a man? There are millions of slight variations on that theme. Which one of them is right? In many respects I was lucky in that, before the Internet opened up the world of other writers to me, I pottered away alone and there was no one around to tell me I was doing it wrong. I did what came naturally. Now I’m not saying there aren’t techniques that might’ve added more polish to my writing and I’ve considered each of these as I’ve come across them to see if they feel right for me. Most don’t. Most add a layer of artifice to the process. I don’t think I could ever plot a novel and then, as I think of it, fill in the blanks. And the idea of anyone editing one of my poems fills me with horror although a couple of time—in seventeen years we’re talking—I have listened to Carrie and made a tweak if she feels strongly enough about it. And once an editor rejected a poem because she’d noticed it could be misread which I agreed with and fixed but, again, we’re talking the smallest adjustment.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-22726114250585514722014-02-17T00:15:58.838+00:002014-02-17T00:15:58.838+00:00Also Kurt Vonnegut, who in an interview said, &quo...Also Kurt Vonnegut, who in an interview said, "For me every sentence is a brick wall. I butt my head against it until I break through. Then I fact the next brick wall." Painful, yes—but certainly a way to write.<br /><br />On the other hand, I have a good friend whose books all began with a full-length "brain dump"—a 300 or so page draft which he would complete, then stick in a drawer and never look at again. The first—what I would call "real"—draft was always the second. But where would that second draft have been without the brain dump? I can't say. It's not my process.<br /><br />Yes, I'm of the brick wall party. Judging by the recent PBS biography of Salinger, he was of my party, too. (He reportedly fell into a long funk because an editor removed a comma.)<br /><br />You are right, Jim, that the sound is crucial. Of course, I write mainly poetry—well, I write mainly commercial prose, but I dearly hope that's not what they put on my tombstone! With poetry, in the end, every comma, every line-ending, every vexed choice of "that" over "which," every assent to and dissent from meter, matters. Who would I turn that over to? An editor? Please.<br /><br />I say this even though I happen to have had a great editor on my most recent book, who <i>raised questions</i>—good ones—that led me back to this or that brick wall, where I sometimes found a fragment of barrier I had to bring down. But sometimes I had to simply be wrong in the right way, if you know what I mean.<br /><br />I think of poor Frost, who in a fit of apparent masochism appointed Lawrance Thompson as his literary executor. Thompson famously thought Frost was ignorant of the Oxford comma, and so—in the <i>Complete Poems</i> I grew up with—edited "Stopping by Woods" so that one of its crucial lines read: "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep"—the adjectives attaching to the woods. But Frost wrote—and <i>meant</i>, as shown by the way the poem appears in the 1949 collected poems, the last he supervised himself—"The woods are lovely, dark and deep"—the adjectives "dark" and "deep" describing what is "lovely" about the woods. A good example of what happens if one simply turns over one's work to an editor—especially one who essentially despises you!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-31016698903636708202014-02-16T17:54:24.599+00:002014-02-16T17:54:24.599+00:00I know it seems a bit much, Gwilliam but in his es...I know it seems a bit much, <b>Gwilliam</b> but in his essay ‘Why I Write What I Write’ the Australian writer Gerald Murnane writes:<br /><br /><i>I write sentences. I write first one sentence, then another sentence. I write sentence after sentence.<br /><br />I write a hundred or more sentences each week and a few thousand sentences a year.<br /><br />After I’ve written each sentence I read it aloud. I listen to the sound of the sentence, and I don’t begin to write the next sentence unless I’m absolutely satisfied with the sound of the sentence I’m listening to.<br /><br />When I’ve written a paragraph I read it aloud to learn whether all the sentences that sounded well on their own sound well together.</i><br /><br />I’m not quite that bad but I’m also not a fast writer. I <i>can</i> sit and toss of 3000 words in a single sitting but that’s rare. I do, however, begin at the first sentence and work my way through to the last. <i>Then</i> I go back and start grafting in stuff and that’s the fun bit when I clever it up. These are ideas that come to me after the first draft is finished. I don’t really like the word ‘draft’ but it’s also more than an outline. It’s the version of the book that a beginning and an ending and I know how we get from one to the other. It’s like a skeleton onto which I graft a body.<br /><br />Once I’m finished with that I literally begin on page on and read until I stumble on something which I then fix and I continue until I reach the end. Then I go back to the start and begin the process again. Normally I don’t need eighteen run-throughs to get it right but if that’s what it takes.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-29306837591966246802014-02-16T14:49:19.056+00:002014-02-16T14:49:19.056+00:00I don't see how a writer can edit a sentence ...I don't see how a writer can edit a sentence before moving on to the next one as is quoted above. At the end of a page perhaps. At the end of a chapter certainly. And at the end of the whole parade yet again. But every sentence before moving on? This is masochism. Gwil Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03305768121713053837noreply@blogger.com