Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 19
October 29, 2018
Why I Write Fantasy: Hamster Wheel Edition
It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to crank out a blog of an evening. I completed the line edit in double time, missing deadline by a day, but I’ll take it, and my editor is a forgiving soul, for which I am grateful.
The essential truth of why I write fantasy – to carve an escape for others like and yet different from the many wondrous portals I took as a child and young adult – does not rest easily alongside the work required to craft said portal. Reading and imagining came easily to me as a child, and I identified so strongly with the worlds created by writers that I could never imagine doing anything other than growing up to create my own worlds, to explore them with and for other folk who chose to journey into the pages I would write.
The powerful imagination that so completely transported me to Hobbiton, Caer Paravel, Amber and Erlenstar didn’t bother to capture the nitty gritty of the effort required to make a work magical. I think one of the many reasons my first novel written as an adult didn’t progress beyond the first much tinkered with draft was because I baulked at the work required. I wanted imagination to be sufficient. The ideas to be enough. I had perspicacity enough then to recognize, somewhat foggily I’ll admit, how much more was required, and I didn’t want to do it. Because it is hard. Not the hardest thing in the world, this isn’t a poor me moment, but the task of finishing a novel is not for faint of heart, or the glibly workshy, as once I was.
My editor is copy editing my manuscript as we speak. Once I would have considered that an ending. Now I know better. It will just give me a grammatical bedrock upon which to do my first last revisions, which will then be reviewed and changed some more. Another crop of errors will be spotted and altered, then the newest most final version will be proofed, in which more corrections are made. Then comes the formatting examination, which I now know leads to yet more fixes as the grimly inevitable last-minute flaws make their presence known to the author’s at times incredulous eye. If you let it, I think this could never end. These are the stages at which I think some writers can spend years in desperate search for an endless chain of perfect words and sentences. Unfortunately the seasons pass, and in the changing light and shifting contexts borne by previous alterations, the perfect chain keeps breaking.
I don’t feel I have the time to chase perfection that fervently. I still make it a goal, aim high, but I can’t let it become an obsession to block my progress.
Semi-Pro tip that I am sure you are all aware of: when proofing change the size and format of the pages of the manuscript. It is astonishing what seeing the words in different patterns will reveal. I have at least two read-it-out-loud run throughs to do. (Maybe I should record one, complete with my swearing as I trip over things, and release it as the Audible uncut version!) I will not read it backwards as some do. I’m afraid of what might happen to me if I try it!
So this certainly isn’t why I started writing fantasy, this hamster wheel of frenzied activity around a book that I would once have considered mostly written, but it is an essential part of what I do now, and why I do all of it, from first imaginings to last comma deletion. The work. Without the work, the dream stays flimsy, and who wants to read a flimsily constructed book? In the end, you pray your efforts are invisible to the reader’s eye, and that all they will see is a new world beckoning them to come and visit a while, complete with memorable people to meet and fantastic places to go.
And that, today, is why I write fantasy.
October 18, 2018
The Writing Life: Work and Writing Part 1: The Overview
I’ve been meaning to write about the struggles of managing work and writing for a long time. I’ve written, or tried to write in a lot of different circumstances, and it is hard to say which, if any, has been the best option.
Obsessive teen living on a farm with not much else to do? Check.
Undergraduate student more interested in going out and having fun than either studies or writing but kind of managed both? Check, though one book’s first draft took over 6 years, because I really didn’t give it that much attention – just enough to be able to talk a good game!
First real job doing day/night rotation, 8 then 12 hour shifts? Check.
Dealing with emigration, change of country, work environment, culture? Check.
Time off to write full time? Check.
Back to work full-time, writing on weekends and evenings? Check.
I think I did best in terms of output as an obsessive teen. Pity the writing was… ah… less polished. And I wrote a couple of choose your own adventure books too, but never did anything with them, like, at all. Strange to look back on that, and think I didn’t even send one off to Steve Jackson. I doubt anything would have come of it, but you never know about the roads not taken.
Student life, I had ideas, lots of ideas. And talked about them. Frequently. But the writing was scattered, and focused into times when I had no distractions and very little money!
First job, well I had decent time off, got my first PC, and started ‘working on’ the first draft I had produced as a not-quite-eternal student. Thus was born the long era of my tinkering with a text and calling it editing. I really wish now I’d taken the time to study what editing truly means, and how to approach it. I still have the books that I bought then to help with the process, but either they didn’t have the right information in them, or, far more likely, I simply wasn’t receptive to the message. I chose to learn the wrong lessons. I never gained any distance from my writing, and could never accept help or criticism at that time. Missed opportunities aplenty in this era. Writing, though a constant dream from childhood, was not a priority, there was just too much else going on.
And then I left Scotland for the United States. Talk about too much going on! Two years flashed by as I adjusted to an entirely new life. There was another PC, this one with an internet connection, and yet more tinkering with the by now tired old manuscript, but no real commitment. That book had fossilized. So I enjoyed myself, lived and worked and went on vacations I could actually afford, moved to the burbs with the girl I married, and enjoyed the fruits of disposable income. New ideas always bubbled, I was always thinking of story ideas, plots, and characters. Among them, The Thief and The Demon. For a few years it was a page and a half of a word file, among many others.
After many years of fits and starts I decided to take time off to write. At first I just took time off. More missed opportunities, but I don’t regret it – I know that should I ever again have the opportunity to write full-time again I won’t feel the need to revel in the simple joy of not working! I spent time writing and ‘editing’, again with little idea of how to structure myself and the work, wasting time on superficial changes, still not understanding what I needed to do. Eventually I learned, got help, and produced The Thief and The Demon.
So now, working full-time and writing evenings and weekends. It is hard. I rue the time I let slip away when I had those years off. Given how much I am managing to achieve now, I can’t help but imagine how much more I would do with this discipline when free to write full-time. Or at least that’s what I hope, while a more honest part of me wonders that if I had more time I wouldn’t just ease off again. Like expenditure rising to match income, would my ability to waste time increase with the time made available? It is possible. So I am left at present feeling I am working two jobs simultaneously, which in short intense bursts of editing activity is doable, but I think long term would be wearing. I can’t wait to finish The Killer and The Dead for many reasons, but one of them is certainly to take a writing vacation and have more time for myself and my wife. But the next book needs to be written, and the one after that…
This is where I am now: actively learning how to juggle a new work/writing balance when I am committed to my writing career as much to my paying profession. I think I’ll adjust next year’s editing schedule to give me more time between passes, so this phase of novel writing feels less pressured. That way I can have time off that feels like an actual break, rather than an exercise in switching hats. There is an optimal balance to find, which I suspect differs for every writer, and I’m still working on finding mine.
Good luck to all of you on finding yours.
October 11, 2018
The Writing Life: The Long Road of Line Editing
What is line editing? Well, if developmental edits are big picture issues looking at story, plot, character and setting among other things, and copy editing is getting down to the nuts and bolts of grammar, then line editing exists somewhere in between.
Line editing is taking your manuscript to a spa: to sweat off the flab, get massaged into shape, and emerge refreshed, ready to deliver its message with vigorous clarity. Or something.
That’s what I’m up to now, trimming away unnecessary words and phrases, re-arranging sentences and paragraphs to make sure the flow of ideas at the sentence to paragraph to page level is clear, and will be clear to the reader. Some stylistic measures too, watching for word and sentence structure repetition, and altering, if the alteration does not draw more attention to itself than the original repetition did. That’s a tricky one sometimes. I should tell you the tale of three wants in a future outing.
The big one I’m wrestling with, in a first person narrative with a framing story that periodically intrudes into the narrative as being told, is tense. Which parts in present, which in past, and why? What about the narrator’s asides, which do not necessarily apply to either the past tense narrative or present tense frame? How to distinguish them?
Is it enough for me to have a rationale for my choices? I don’t think so. The reader needs to intuitively grasp the tense choices and never have them intrude into the experience of the book. All the work with tenses must read naturally, or they will be the reading equivalent of potholes in a literary road, constantly jarring the reader out of their smooth enjoyment of the written journey.
And that is how I regard the editing process, the creation of an autobahn of excellence from a rough track. The book evolves from a dirt path to cobblestoned street to seamless tarmac as the finished product. Each pass lays foundations, replaces sharp bends with sweeping corners, fills in potholes, removes errant old cobbles, and hopefully ensures a seamless and exciting ride for all.
So I have a plan for the tenses, each type of interaction has its assigned tense, and there is flow from one to another as the narrator fights his way through telling a small portion of his life story. I think I have a solid rationale, now I’m working on making the transitions seem entirely natural, so the reader cannot imagine any other alternative. A lot of work goes into natural, and I am so grateful I have an editor working with me to do a lot of the heavy lifting in that regard. I may disagree with some of the suggestions made, but know I am fortunate to have that framework to accept or reject, those working comments to consider and build upon. Without that input I would be where I once was, tinkering aimlessly, wasting time. And I don’t want to go back there again.
I chose first person for this novel because of the challenge it represents. My desire is to learn, to improve my craft as a writer. I intend to set myself further technical challenges with my next book. Is that smart? I genuinely don’t know. I’ll take stock after the first three are out, evaluate what I’ve learned, and see how I’d like to proceed from there.
For now it is the long line edit, trimming, clarifying, refining. And quite a bit of tensing.
Writing. It’s thinky.
October 8, 2018
One Year On
So in fairy tales it is often a year and a day that people must wait, or that passes before the next significant event in the story.
It has been a year and three days since I officially released my first book.
Doesn’t seem that long.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who have bought my book, read my book, shared my book and talked about it. I am extremely grateful for the investment in time you put into my words. I hope they repaid them well!
Thank you for spreading the word, for telling friends and relatives about my book, for waving your copy at other people, for taking pictures of the cover, for posting it on FB.
I’ve heard tell that one of the best ways to sell a book is to write another. Pretty long term plan, if you ask me, but I’m up for it. The Killer and The Dead progresses. Line edits take time. I’ll talk about the nitty-gritty of that on Thursday.
But for now I’ll just say how ridiculously fulfilling it has been to spend this last year sharing my writing with a small, but slowly growing pool of readers. I truly appreciate you, one and all.
And now for sweet sleep, so I can arise anew.
Later.
September 27, 2018
Long overdue Liebster Award
Thank you Kat for nominating me for this months and months ago! Finally – I yield up my answers and trivia!
The Rules
Acknowledge the person who nominated you!
Answer the 11 questions Kat at The Lily Cafe asked me about blogging.
11 random facts about yourself.
Nominate 5-11 bloggers.
Ask nominated bloggers 11 questions.
11 Questions from Kat, and my 11 dubious answers.
What book has had the biggest impact on you?
Probably The Hobbit, it’s the reason I write fantasy. If not it then Nine Princes in Amber, as it made the idea of writing fantasy sexy. Or Heir of Sea and Fire, it made me think dreams could be spun into words. They’re my fantasy trifecta. A Scanner Darkly blew my mind. Moby Dick recently transformed from an oddity I was reading to get through into a thing of wonderment, something that has never happened to me before. Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare – failure has never been so beautiful. The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Chaucer, a character so vivid, so real, so far from us and yet so immediate. Many others that have inspired dreams, instructed, puzzled, challenged. So not one book.
What animal would you want to be for a day and why?
Dolphin. So I can know those guys speak a complex language and are smart. And then feel ashamed at how we are trashing their world.
What is your favorite kind of music?
Heavy Metal. I love many others but 70s rock to 80s metal was what I was a pre-angsty teen to, and then an actual angsty teen to, so despite many other love affairs, (I loved me the gothic music as an agnsty teen also) it has to be metal.
Have you ever had a kitchen disaster? If so, what was it?
Yes. One day the kitchen ceiling fell in. That sucked.
If you could go anywhere in the universe, on Earth or otherwise, where would you go?
Just off the shoulder of Orion, because it isn’t exactly there. Though I’m sure someone somewhere has calculated a position for it. (Which one do I want to visit though? Obviously the one with the attack ships on fire…) You can appreciate the vastness of the universe from your back yard, but sometimes I’d like to be floating in it in a way far more immediate and personal than as a passenger on our iron-cored rock-vessel.
What is your favorite holiday?
My wife. Italy. Art, food, history, sunlight.
Dog or cat? Fish?
Fish, when I was a kid. Rent a dog too as a kid, and I loved them. (Holidays with my Aunt.) Now – cat.
Would you rather live on a mountain or in the desert?
I kind of do live in a desert, given Colorado’s official semi-arid designation, and near to the mountains. The poetical in me would love to be a mountain dwelling hermit. The practical says it would be an annoying drive in winter to Walmart for supplies. How romance crushing is that?
What is your favorite kind of dessert?
All of them. I have a significant sweet tooth. Not unusual for Scots – we make a virtue out of creating pure sugar confections.
What is your favorite kind of post to write?
The ones where I share an insight, even if fleeting, into what I do or why in writing. Being moderately amusing is also a plus.
What advice would you give to other bloggers?
Keep going and expect nothing. Do it for yourself, you’ll enjoy it more.
11 Random facts.
1) I, like Kat from the lily café, love lighthouses. I had a romantic dream of living in one in Galway in Ireland for many years. There was going to be a rowboat, and cable-knit sweaters. Pity I’m no sailor.
2) I’m no sailor. But I don’t get seasick.
3) Though a cruise ship did make me a tad queasy.
4) I was once known as the buffet slayer.
5) I have learned how to waltz three times.
6) I like walking in the rain.
7) I used to collect Tolkien calendars. Like all my collections, it is incomplete.
8) I am ranked a 7/9 in APA pool. I’m okay. It took a lot of work to get to those rankings, and there are many many players far more skilled than I out there.
9) I genuinely enjoy playing people at pool who are better than me.
10) At first.
11) I never liked how it was so much harder to gain craft than strength when playing Talisman. We changed the rules so you gained both the same way. (I think later editions went down that road too.) Loved that game, but it did get to be a boring grind after a while.
My Nominees
And really anyone else who would like to join in – feel free to do so!
My Eleven questions
1) What was your favourite playground game?
2) When you think of the sea, where are you?
3) What is your favourite genre of writing?
4) Why?
5) When is your favourite period of writing?
6) Why?
7) Tidy writing space messy writing space, where do you fall on that continuum?
8) Have you ever sung in public?
9) Do you think a door can truly ever be a jar? (I know, I just went there. Invent a question and answer it here: do as you will.)
10) Most disappointing sequel you’ve ever experienced – book, movie, TV show seasons, take your pick. Mine is of course Highlander 2. Gah.
11) If you could wake up in one random other country on earth, a real one, tomorrow, which country would you like to wake up in (and why!)?
September 20, 2018
One Phase done. Ebooks on sale.
Once again, the title says it all. My developmental edit has been submitted. Much gladness and rejoicing has ensued, tempered by the knowledge that more is to come. A writer’s life for me!
Also – the kindle version of The Thief and The Demon is on sale! Catch it at the absurdly cheap price of 99c/99p until Sunday! I can’t do the sale in other markets: I shall have to make an effort to manually change the price in other markets and declare a sale on those pages in future!
Thank you to everyone who has bought my book – soon there will be another joining it on the virtual shelf, I can’t wait to share it with you!
September 17, 2018
The Writing Life: Facing Uncertainty in Editing
This is definitely a doubt based post. Unofficial doubts part 6, but for the fact that I’ve accepted what I’m worrying about, and am going to bulldoze on anyway.
This is, admittedly, a newer one for me, but a variant I think on what I have been through in the past and led me to taking far longer than I should to either move on from one project, or finishing another.
I’m almost finished with my developmental edit. I’ve been doing a lot of work on beefing up the frame story in The Killer and The Dead, making it less of an occasional interloper in the main story, and more of an integral part of the whole book, the frame reflecting on and helping to illuminate the character of the protagonist, some of his actions, and of course the character and motivations of his unseen and mostly unheard audience.
So there’s that point, with fifty pages left in the manuscript to revise, where I decide to think, “Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have done any of this…” despite the fact that I’ve got right into some of the additions and in general they have allowed me to enrich the novel and its characters, plot, and themes massively. There’s always the fear that you’ve gone too far, added too much so that the original ‘elegance’ (ho ho!), such as it was, will now be marred by all this extra artifice.
These thoughts are so inevitable I think I’d be more concerned if I didn’t have them. Of course the clutch of doubt feels real. It takes a while to shake off its cold fingers. But I do, with more irritation now than dread.
What do I accept? That I will make mistakes. Doubt tries to pin you in a catch-22 – changing your orignal manuscript will be a mistake, but aha! leaving it alone is also a mistake – gotcha! “What will you do now?”, says doubt, triumphant, “You’re doomed to make mistakes no matter what you do!”
Yeah, but I’ve already accepted that, says I. And I think I’d rather make a more adventurous mistake than a conservative one, and I already know that some of my alterations have made a material improvement in the original, so the original is not a place I can go back to, or even want to.
So sod off doubt – I’m making changes. And let’s stop calling them changes shall we? Let’s start calling them improvements. Because that is what they are.
And I have more passes of edits to go after this one, more reviews and re-evaluations to parse. Anything added here that does begin to feel clunky, misplaced, out of synch can be altered, polished, or cut. Doubt can be useful in identifying these things sometimes, the misfit toys that don’t quite work, but faith in your writing, trust in your gut and your instincts also helps you know when you’ve got something right. And those moments are downright giddy. Just remember not to go all General Zod, got to keep some perspective!
I’m always going to be uncertain. I’m probably always going to think that with more time I could make it better, but I’ve wasted so much time already on that idea. Years of it. I’m going with this process now. Deadlines and instinct to trump doubt and perfectionism. Let’s go.
September 10, 2018
Why I Write Fantasy: Cosmology and History and Geology and Meterology and… as Inspirations. Knowledge is inspiring. Keep learning.
Time for another attempt by me to ramble on randomly about fantasy and see what falls out. No planning for this blog. I should be in bed already!
If you don’t have time, the title sums it up and you can stop here! (Added this line in last, haha!)
When I consider characters, dilemmas, conflicts, and challenges, they always come dressed in handwoven cloth and chainmail, against a backdrop of grass and stone. I have written contemporary fiction, but I inserted Lucifer, so how contemporary was it?
When I have philosophical musings, or consider current cosmological theories, fantasy universes are born. I have a few different universes based on alternate versions of astrophysics, because it is fun, and while I definitely do not understand the physics properly it isn’t the detailed understanding that matters to me there (though I do earnestly like to learn more of our universe’s origins and operation), it is the inspiration it engenders. It is a very rich breeding ground of ideas for me. Ideas beget ideas, no matter where they’re from, in my experience. The important thing is that the ideas are growing, living things, that could themselves inspire others to have their own vivid imaginings. When I read articles about the first ever sales complaint on a piece of akkadian cuneiform, an absolutely fantastic historical fantasy story was instantly born out of my consideration of the posssible consequences of that writing. I really should write that down. Probably make a solid short story as it stands now, easily open up into something more with a bit of work. I went straight to court intrigue, wealth and power, and a desolate man on the run from a vengeful newly crowned king. As you do.
I also think I am a storyteller at heart, a creator of tales, and the fabric of fantasy is the most primal material from which to craft a story. Once upon a time is not fantasy, but so often it is a prelude to the imagined land of yore, before the rigid rules of our world became so structured, a peek back into times where the universe that people interacted with was more fluid, more unexpected, where humanity was not necessarily at the apex of the evolutionary tree, and stood to be taught harsh lessons by other entities. The capricious gods a stand in for the unyielding dominance of tectonics and weather over our ancestors’ lives, where years of hard work, even generations, could be wiped out by flood, or famine: El Nino turning the rules of agriculture upside down and destroying civilizations, tsunami or vulcanism ignoring centuries of building to flatten or bury it in an afternoon of chaos.
Our ancestors recognised how helpless they were, and had a healthy respect for the dangers that lurked around the corners of their world, just off the map, but always ready to invade. Fantasy can also embody that danger, have characters live in a world that knows it exists in a fragile balance, often ideological in fantasy, rather than environmental, but the lesson remains the same – value what you have, do your best to safeguard it, defend it if necessary.
Of course you can choose to write fantasies that reflect today, where the world is dangerously complacent about its stability, and believes there is no reason what is known now will not continue forever. I hope that is true, but history shows us many examples of civilizations who expected to march on indefinitely, only to fall apart. Often in a shockingly short period of time. Of course, resilient humanity carried on, and built anew, a process itself filled with story possibilities.
So maybe that’s another reason I write fantasy, to explore those ideas, among many others. That’s the thing – this blog barely scratches the surface of where ideas can wander, what story seeds they can drop. These were the grander schemes, but just as important can be the microcosm of family life, of personal beliefs and actions, and how they can interact, what they can reveal, when wearing homespun cloth and chainmail.
My advice, if I have any, is to stay curious, and keep learning: the more you stimulate your mind, the more material it has to work with to create something strange and beautiful. I like that. I like that a lot.
September 4, 2018
Taking Stock
Sorry for the lack of blogs, I’ve been deep in the editorial jungle, hacking away with the machete of no remorse. Oh wait, this is the developmental edit – I’ve been adding more than subtracting, as is usual for me! Part of that is recognizing where I the writer take my own knowledge of the setting and pieces of plot info for granted, and forget to share the needful bits with the reader! It is amazing how easy this is to do, until you get a few comments asking you the same thing a few times over!
Now I like to minimally signpost some things in my writing – hints and links to future events or other books, and I keep being asked to be less subtle. So fish in the face it is! (Not really, I don’t think!)
Anyway, it is going well, but will continue to fill my time for the next two weeks.
I do plan on having an ebook sale of The Thief and The Demon soon, to celebrate my gratifyingly positive Kirkus review, appropriately quoted snippets of which shall be added to my book description, when I can get around to it, haha!
So it has been just over a year since I re-launched my blogging efforts in anticipation of my first book coming out. And quite a year it has been. I have learned a great deal. I have not implemented all the lessons I learned. Exhibit one – I didn’t get my next book cover made in advance. That was foolish. Next time, honest. I’m in this lark for the long haul though, so I feel okay with being very incremental in my progress.
One of the great ironies that has been driven home to me in the last few months is my amusing choice to set myself the task of producing a high quality book once a year… after I re-enter the workforce. I had four years off and produced one book. Talk about missed opportunities in that stretch of time! It is what it is. I learned a great deal as I frittered away that time, and hindsight is teaching more with each month that passes. I do laugh at it, to be honest. I’m being more productive now in many ways than I was when I wasn’t working. Deadlines, while taxing and stressful, do get me to actually do the work. And this new process is a deliberate and conscious experiment – I’ve got to see it through, and then assess the final product. Before charging into the next round of writing, drafting and redrafting, ho ho! I think I’ll take some time off after I’m done with this one before starting the next draft. Spoil myself before fixing the next lot of deadlines into the calendar. If it wasn’t fun and so gratifying it really would be the most ludicrous pastime to dedicate yourself to. My pool game is suffering, let me tell you!
I’m also reading Moby-Dick. I started off reading it as an odd Victorian curio, wondering why it is regarded as a classic of American literature, but damn if it doesn’t just keep layering and building, to sections that are really quite sublime, because of what you have got through to get there, and how it all contributes to what comes after. The Try-works (chapter 96) is just astonishing, in my view. I’ll put the link to the chapter here, but I don’t think reading it in isolation does it justice, it’s the work taken by the reader and writer to get there that makes this chapter just a fantastic piece of art to me. And it keeps getting better as it builds towards its climax. I’m now 91% of the way through the book. Don’t tell me what happens at the end! The sense I get is this is a book where the author was just letting it all hang out, his ideas, his style, his structuring, his passions all pushing his envelope and unafraid to do so. Of course I say that with nothing but the impression of this book, I’d need to read his other works to gain a true comparison. But I’ve decided to read Crime and Punishment next! Books that I am glad I did not read before writing The Killer and The Dead, haha!
Lastly, it is amazing to me that given my love of all things gothic musically, that I never discovered Type O Negative until this week. I’d heard of them, but I’d never listened to them. Why, I cannot now imagine, because they hit a bunch of sweet musical spots for me. I started listening to Black No 1 (the full lenth version) on YouTube and just let the channel chose the songs after that – absolutely brilliant stuff, I’ve liked most songs more than the one that came before so far! I’d read about Peter Steele, may he rest in peace, in the past, but never, for some reason listened to his music. I have a sense I have a lot of exploring to do now.
Ok folks, that will do for now. I shall try to get back on schedule soon!
August 27, 2018
Editing as a cuesport
This is going to be brief, because I should be editing, not blogging.
I refer you to this blog. It is far more true now for me than it was a couple of weeks ago!
But, here’s my quick thought.
Anyone who is any good at cuesports, be it pool, snooker, or billiards; often has a lot of options when they come to the table. Let’s stick with pool for now, because it’s the one most folk will be more or less familiar with, and the glorious variant known as 8 ball.
The pack has been broken up on the break, the balls scattered aross the felt. You come to the table, and have your choice of shots. Which side to choose, how best to run your seven balls out and then make the 8 to win the game?
There are thousands of choices, but most are constrained by your skill, your imagination, and your execution. Even skilled players can err in execution, so it isn’t precisely the same thing, in my mind. And your mood, whether you feel confident and aggressive, or nervous and in need of some confidence to get started, can make all the difference to the pattern you try to run to get out.
There are thousands of ways to get through just eight shots. Ways in which a player can demonstrate their style, their flair, their technique, their nerve, their concentration, and their skill.
And you can run a table ugly, where every shot doesn’t quite work, but you scramble, and somehow still get all the balls down. Your opponent is shaking his head as he watches, wondering how you managed to make an easy opportunity look so hard. But still you finish.
Or you can make an impossible table look easy, breaking open clusters, putting the white in the only place on the table where you have a shot, making insanely difficult shots look effortless. Your opponent is shaking his head wondering why he bothers playing against someone who can dominate the table so. You still had to finish. Miss the final shot and all the earlier effort can be wasted.
But it is all in the choices the player makes, the techniques employed, what spin here, what speed of stroke there, one cushion or two for the next positional play, which order to take the balls, to make it easier, or harder at the end.
Editing is like running a table of pool, except with tens of thousands of balls, now become words, to be juggled and arranged in order. In a sense there is no one perfect order, just the one that feels most right to you, the writer, the way that reflects your mood at that time, and your skill, imagination, and execution. In your command of plot and character and grammar (among many other things) you display your style, your flair, your technique, your nerve, your concentration, and your skill.
So yeah, editing a book is totally like running a rack of pool. LOL.
Next chapter.
(And when you rush a blog out you know what happens? You keep re-reading it and seeing typos and errors, and have to keep updating it. Editing before I get back to editing. Hey ho.)
