In Which The Author Derides His Own Use of “Thick” . . .Posted by dhoffman on July 30th, 2009
Got myself off to a (relatively) early start tonight, and at first I just sort of flailed around, dissatisfied with what I’d penned last night. I didn’t want to go backwards tonight — I wanted to forge ahead, through these awkward bits of explication and into the meat of the action.
I’m using the word, “action” in a very, very loose sense there. Apologies.
It wasn’t happening. I backed the truck up, unloaded everything, tossed the stuff that didn’t work (I had one character telling the other they were “thick” no less than five times one one page — really who even uses the word like that?) and now it seems like a much leaner, meaner engine of explication.
It’ll still need fixing. It’s much better, though.
Where I’m at, now, is I sort of conked out at my desk, took care of Jack the Dog, who suffered an (I’m really not making this up) unfortunate grooming accident and now has a nasty cut and rash in his little armpit, and now I’m contemplating diving back in for a little more or curling up in a ball and going to sleep.
Is any of this interesting? Dunno. I suspect it’s the sort of stuff where, if anyone had the foggiest notion of who I was and what I was writing, it might. Which is to say, if this was my fifth or tenth or twentieth book, and folks were waiting for it, there might be an appeal. As it’s not, and the only folks reading this are either friends or those unlucky enough to have found their way to me, probably it’s about as interesting as watching paint dry.
That’s fine; so it goes.
Helps me get my head together and, really, it could be interesting, some day, to look back and say, “hey, that’s me writing Chapter Nine the first time — holy crap, remember when I had this one telling that one they were ‘thick’ over and over again for no good reason at all!”
