Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 20

Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #4: Clearly I Have a Type

So while writing about Highlander, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and The Crow, I couldn’t help but notice the common elements that the movies shared.

In no particular order.

1) A narrated opening. All three start with someone speaking, telling you a story. Yes, apparently I’m five, and still like to be tucked up in bed and told a story. Who knew that a writer likes being told stories?

2) Doomed love Story. Connor and Heather, Vlad and Elisabetre(my spelling, it’s how he says it, to me)/Mina, Eric and Shelly. I’m an old school Romantic at heart.

3) Fantastic sound track. Each one works to enhance the plot, visuals and characterization. Each movie would be far weaker without those musical choices.

4) Arresting visual style. I would argue all three of these movies have this. Two, Highlander and Dracula also have the scene transitions as a motif too, most prominent in Highlander, but the eye of the peacock feather transforming into the railway tunnel immediately brought Highlander to mind on a recent viewing of BS’sD.

5) Strong and interesting villains. The villain is the star of one, steals the show in another, and there is a whole ecosystem of them in the third. A far better treatment of villains than in your run of the mill movie, in my opinion, is evident in these three films.

6) Self-contained story. None of these films require a sequel. Unfortunately two got them anyway.

7) Gothic or ornate settings. Highlander is a little of the odd one out here, but still has a very rich sense of setting, both in the past and the present. The 80s New York is at times very well evoked, but can seem a little weak too – the Silver Cup scene and the underground garage are a bit lifeless in comparison to the lushness of other parts of the film.

That’ll do for now – crazy eh? I’d like to add another couple of my favorite films also share many if not most of these characteristics: Blade Runner, and Hero. Narration or text crawls, doomed love, glorious soundtrack, visually arresting, all present in abundance. Fantastic villain – here Hero is the odd man out because the whole film *spoiler* is the story of the presumed villain being discovered not to be worth killing, and could indeed lay claim to being the Hero of the title – though of course I’d say it was Broken Sword, myself. A majestic film. Self-contained stories, yes – though 2049 is a great sequel, though mildly soporific for me despite my appreciation of it. Gothic/ornate setting – oh yes, both have that in spades. More ornate (and epic) for Hero than Gothic. But Chinese gothic exists in my mind at least!

So there you have it – I have a type for movies I’ll go and see four times, and for other movies I’ve watched far too many times at home! When you think about it, do your favourite films share a lot more in common that you’d think at first glance?

We’ll talk about this later…

But for now I’d like to say I’m “Today’s Featured Indie Book Review” on Kirkus.

Find it here.

I’m pleased with what they have to say. Bottom left of the page.

Check it out.

And if you have read and liked my book, feel free to endorse the review on their site.

And anywhere else, of course.

Just sayin’.

The Writing Life: Choices in Art

In my recent blog on Bram Stoker’s Dracula I threw in a line that while viewing that film multiple times I chose not to see its flaws. I could, if I wanted, pick away at what some might perceive as problems in the movie, but I chose not to, because I’d much rather enjoy those aspects that enthralled and entranced me. I wanted to embrace the spell the creators had tried to cast over me, not break it.

It strikes me that a lot of the time, when reading, watching, regarding, touching, or tasting things we really want to engage in, we choose our experience in many ways. How many times have we decided not to like something based on a first fleeting bad impression, and found it hard to overcome that randomly inculcated opposition to the item/object of experience? Just me? Oh well, moving on…

But just as prejudices can be hard to overcome when interacting with art, be it written, produced, or performed, so can adoration be hard to puncture. I find that fascinating – this is why superfans can find it difficult, I think, to recognize when output by their idols falls below previously held high standards. It takes a lot to break the willing engagement in a spell. I am a Dio superfan – so it is with regret I am forced to admit that Angry Machines is a terrible album, with maybe one and a half songs that are redeemable. I can see where they were trying to go, but I don’t think the band successfully got there. It wasn’t that last word though, and the band and singer came back stronger for a late career renaissance. But of course I would say that, wouldn’t I?

None of the three movies I recently talked about are perfect. I choose to look past their weaknesses and focus on their strengths, the things that make them resonate in me, draw out emotions and imagination, make me intellectually engage, all at the same time. If a piece of art or entertainment can do all those things I am generally won over, because I can enjoy it in the moment, or be inspired or intrigued later as I choose to chew the fat and play at finding patterns of significance where there may be none, for no other reason than the delight of it.

And what then of the artist’s choices? Knowing that your audience can and will make decisions about your work, that some will see more flaws than flair while others will see more beauty than catastrophe, what effect can that have on the artist as they create, or on me as a writer?

Right now I’m editing a book I know has moments when people reading it might well reach a fork in the road and go no further. I know that choice exists for them, and I am making the choice to leave those forks in the road there. I could still remove them. But I’m not going to. I’m making that choice because I believe it creates the story I most want to tell: anything else would be dilution. I’m hoping enough readers are engaged enough to keep following the road wherever it goes, and to reward them at its end. Setting yourself targets like that is highly intimidating, because as a writer you have to work hard for that engagement in a reader, and to risk throwing that away goes against every instinct. But I am exhilarated by the choices I have made, because I believe in them. I’m still working on executing as well as I can though!

And what is editing but an endless sequence of choices seeking to drown you in indecision? I’m finding that the only way to proceed is with a mental machete, and plenty of pristine back up files!

As writers we make a multitude of choices, as readers I think we make just as many, if not more, when deciding whether or not to like, love, or keep reading a book. Those choices are fascinating to me, and the tension between what a writer chooses to include and what a reader decides to focus on is something that I believe is not easily manipulated – better to create what you can and not try too hard to control outcomes in the minds of unknown others. Where those two sets of choices interact – the writer’s and the reader’s – is a place that through the magic of words on the page two minds can interact, if not ever quite meet, though the illusion at times can be very powerful. That space is one of marvels, and I try not to treat it with a heavy hand. I leave it to others to judge my success in that regard.

To finish: a beautiful song about choices that resonates with me, draws out my emotion and imagination, and makes me think all at once. The video is also full of intriguing choices, reflecting the song in intriguing ways. See what you think.

Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #3: The Crow

More spoilers for a film that this time is a mere 24 years old.

The last film that has, so far, made me run back to the cinema three more times after the first viewing was this one. A modern gothic fairytale with yet another fantastic soundtrack, an alternate contemporary world that was close enough to ours to imagine real, but with its own mythology and magical elements blended seamlessly in, a dark hero, and a range of charismatic side characters (Jon Polito, among many others, is awesome in this film) and villains who all richly deserve their fate, with of course a love story beyond death, and you have an intoxicating mix for my early 20’s self.

There’s no getting around Brandon Lee’s death, and the effect it had on viewing the movie at the time. I don’t think I viewed it as death porn, more it heightened the sense of loss already present in the film, of lost possibilities present in the dead lovers echoed poignantly in the loss of the film’s talented and charismatic star. And at the time we knew he was killed by an accident on set with a gun, and his character gets shot a LOT in the film, so even though we knew the actual shot which killed him was not shown, there was still a sense that any of those scenes could have been the one in which the fatal accident occurred. It made for mixed viewing, to be honest. (I learned which scene in filming he died in years later, and it does make it harder for me to watch that sequence now.) The movie’s story of the Crow having to go away at the end was also Brandon’s farewell to his audience, and that added layers of emotion to an already excellent film.

Like the other two films in this little series of mine, this movie had a definite visual style, and an aural soundscape that marked it apart, that merged with and mirrored the storyline so well. It was capital R romantic, capital T tragic. Plus another capital R for revenge. The grungy city was a modern otherwhere, a model imagining of Detroit in flames, filled with settings and scenes you could almost smell. Because onions make you fart, big time. In such a dark landscape the arrival of the Crow does not seem a surprise. The film is eminently quotable, but what drew me back again and again was the opening, and the cathartic moments of love and loss throughout the film. The scene with the rings gets me every time. Especially after the comedy of “Mr Gideon? You’re not paying attention.” Well it was always comedy to me, what can I say? Plus the badass action sequences, the visuals, the seamless escalation of conflict, the superb cast and characters, the relationships between both villains and heroes: this film took the time to set up relationships on both sides, which made the conflicts between those sides far more involving.

This was a film about the bad guys, what they did, who they were, and why they had to die. It did all those things brilliantly, and with great economy while also building the relationship between the Crow and Ernie Hudson’s fantastic cop Albrecht, between Sara and Darla, between Top Dollar, his sister and their minions. All while letting the love story between Eric and Shelly shine through the gaps. I view it as a great example of defining multiple characters well at speed in a film, giving you enough to know who they are, what motivates them, their strengths and weaknesses, their reasons for living and dying. In that respect it is an absolute triumph of storytelling, in my humble opinion. Plus it quotes Milton, in a way that perfectly illustrates and reinforces the core theme of the movie. And you know, I’m a sucker for themes.

This film had everything, and the soundtrack, for a goth metal boy like myself who had ventured into industrial music when not checking out dance clubs, well it was perfect. The funny thing is, though I knew of many of the bands, I wasn’t a particular fan of any of them, and for me some of the songs on the soundtrack turned out to be my favourite track from that band when I later investigated their music.

Like Highlander, this movie is constantly under threat of being remade. Like Highlander I went to the cinema to see the sequel, saw it once, and didn’t bother again, such a pale echo it was of the original. If a reboot is made I’ll check it out, but not with high expectations – the original set a very high and emotional bar that I would not want to have matched, so sadly entwined as it is with the tragic loss of a great talent far too young.

Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #2: Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Oh yeah. The music, the costumes, the saturated colours, the visual style that played with realism and then deliriously ignored it to tell its story in its own defiant way, and managed to sweep me up in it.

I watched this movie four times in a rather dilapidated cinema in Dundee, complete with decayed but still rippling red curtains, formerly plush seats (probably some sort of 70s velour well past its sell-by date), dusty empty alcoves in the walls to either side, and a balcony from which an excellent view was to be had: it was an old actual theatre repurposed, and like the film, it held many memories, perhaps not all happy.

This movie captured me from the first chords playing over the Columbia pictures logo. Now if you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll know I have been a sucker (yes, I went there) for horror movies since my early teens and the very tame, but highly atmospheric old Hammer Horror films. Francis Ford Coppola’s opus turns all the atmospherics up to 11, the visuals and music combining to make it a sensory experience, a movie as much felt as seen. Or maybe that’s just me. And of course it makes Dracula the hero, when in most of the films I’d seen up to then he was the adversary. Here he is the protagonist (again the villain getting the best of the story!)  and the plot is one of love and redemption, which was probably not the first thing most audiences would think of when considering a Dracula movie before this film arrived. Here is Dracula as Satan in Paradise Lost, the noble rebel against god, his greatness highlighting the depth of his fall, but in this version he can be redeemed, unlike Satan who degrades and regresses throughout Milton’s poem, this cinematic sinner is given a chance at redemption, despite his crimes.

Now, if you do not fall under the spell of this film, there are many ways to drive buses through plot holes, and more than brave Keanu’s accent to snigger at. I choose not to folks. I choose not to.

More powerfully than in Highlander I was swept up into this intensely gothic world, of heightened drama and sensation, passion and desire writ large, with its own disorienting laws of movement, a visual language created to entrance the viewer and allow for the fantastical. For a couple of viewings, even though I loved the medieval knight/saint reference of Dracula’s eyes looking upward in death as the old iconography so often used to depict the blessed in prayer or martyrdom, I still wanted Dracula and Mina to run off and live eternally ever after in oceans of blood. Nowadays that might happen – gotta make a franchise! Of course that outcome being okay depends on your conveniently ignoring the five hundred years Dracula spent killing people (which I could, because Gary Oldman has charisma), and the consequences of their ongoing existence together as undead groom and bride.

So, rather than Dracula being destroyed, as is usual for the monstrous versions of the villain, this one is allowed back into the grace of god through his rediscovery of love, and receiving of love from another. In both versions the vampiric threat is ended, but in this one Dracula also gets a positive resolution to his story. The monster lover in me wasn’t keen on this reading, but I reluctantly had to concede that it made much more sense for Dracula to die, be forgiven by his god, and then be reunited in death with his reincarnated wife, who just killed him… well let’s not parse that one too closely! This film is far more about the feel and impression of things than the explanation of them, and in this movie, it feels right to me that Dracula is not simply destroyed, but transformed, and his evil undone. Dracula’s arc comes full circle in the film, once again looking upon the cross in adoration, the rift healed. That is why for me, despite the fact that my inner teenager would much rather see Dracula win and be a prince of darkness forever, (which in this universe would be, and has been, his hell), I find I must accept the bittersweet happiness of earthly love being his gateway to salvation, and Mina’s freedom. I’m going on. Did I say I love this movie?

I also loved how it played the old world of Dracula’s origins against the emerging modern world of Victorian London, a setting in which Dracula makes sense: the nineteenth century is a time in which mysteries could still exist, and strange corners of the globe could still be home to monsters and allow you to imagine it to be so with relative ease. Today, with every spec of the earth trod by intrepid travellers filming their every move, and satellites circling with unblinking eyes over us all, it is very hard to imagine anywhere left undiscovered. This is why I really think King Kong should go interstellar, and Skull Island be an alien planet. I’m not saying that’s a great idea, but the Pacific just isn’t big enough to hide prehistoric islands in anymore. Not when we sadly have islands out there made of our own trash.

Anyway, Bram Stoker’s Dracula: a world I drowned in, and was drawn, tugged back into the cinema to see over and over again. Beauty, tragedy, redemption. A triumvirate I find hard to resist. And that music, oh that sweet music.

The Writing Life: The White Rabbit Beckons

 

So: thoughts have been gathered, and revision begins.

There is a lot to do. So right now I’m oscillating between this.

And this.

The thing is not to blindly rush in, or panic about how much there is to do, though that is tempting. I have to remind myself not to get bogged down in minutiae (so easy!), and stick with the big picture.

One foot in front of the the other, breathe. Take your time. You might not have a lot of it, but rushing just wastes it.

Let’s look over another chapter or two before bed. Tomorrow will bring with it more opportunities to advance. So I’ll do that then.

 

 

Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #1: Highlander

Spoilers for a 30+ year old movie follow. And for Alien3 too. You’ve been warned.

There are only three movies I’ve paid to see more than once in rapid succession, and each time I ended up seeing the film four times in the theatre. In each case I was lured into the atmosphere of the movie, and the rich universe it created, I went again and again because I wanted to participate again in that fantasy, be fascinated by its characters (especially its villains, I can’t lie) but most of all to relive the rich experience of being, temporarily, in that world.

The first was Highlander. I recently rewatched it after probably a twenty year gap, and it still rocks, though some of the 80’s incidental music that never used to register as out of place does intrude now. Many are the nitpicks you could have with this film, (Egyptian Spaniard played by a Scotsman, anyone?) but I loved the world it created, the leapfrogs through time, the scene shifts, the way, right from the opening monologue by Sean Connery, it very successfully created its own world, alongside our own.

It is a great example of the creation of a mythology in very quick steps, doesn’t explain everything because it doesn’t have to, just flows along showing us what we need to see to stay engaged, propelled by a fantastic soundtrack by Queen, which unlike the incidental music has entirely stood the test of time. I cried again when watching the “who wants to live forever” scene, even though I’ve seen it god knows how many times, just a perfect mixture of setting, acting, and music. It also, very rarely of all the movies I’ve watched, successfully uses flashbacks to give itself more depth, even though you maybe saw the fashback originally only half an hour ago, in terms of the movie’s time line it seems like hours back, and really works.

And of course it was largely set in my homeland, which was a plus. How beautiful Scotland looks in that film. It really is that beautiful in life too, moreso. The scenery was a star, of Scotland and New York, the scene cuts fun to start anticipating, a film made consciously in an overt style, which is still refreshing to see today, after all these years. The New York cops deserved their own TV show, especially the captain!

And yes, there is cheese. Not everything works, but a lot does, and the film was filled to the brim with imagination and audacity, enough to carry the absurd plot right the way through to its Headhunter 4 – Cops 0 finale! “What does baffled mean?” I loved it! And when you love something, the absurdities either fall away, or get embraced as part of the charm.

We don’t talk about the sequel. We just don’t. I watched all the other movies in the vain hope something could be salvaged. I liked the Mario Van Peebles entry, to be honest, but it was still unnecessary. The TV series did nothing for me. Highlander is best considered in isolation. Man that sequel, it eclipsed Alien3 as the most anticipated and then most disappointing cinema experience I ever had – (we don’t talk about The Last Jedi either) it took me a very long time to forgive Alien3 for killing Hicks and Newt at the start, along with the very improbable magical mystery emergency egg that somehow got on the Sulaco – yes I’ve heard the arguments, they are all utter balls. There is no way an uber paranoid Ripley would not scour and scan that ship from top to bottom before going into cryo, just sayin’.

But unlike Alien3, which I have rewatched multiple times and have come to really appreciate, there is no saving Highlander 2. So let’s just pretend it never happened.

Highlander also boasts one of the greatest cinematic villains ever. In my opinion. The Kurgan is a total boss at being evil, and the film perhaps revels too much in his violence, his amorality, his charisma, but it also explains why he must lose. He himself yells it out in the cathedral scene. “It’s better to burn out, than fade away!” Becoming a mortal doomed to fade and die would have been a nightmare for him. He is destined to lose because if he won he’d lose his reason for existence. It is the Kurgan, and Clancy Brown playing him that elevates the film from standard escapist hero’s journey with swords (always a plus for a fan of fantasy, and this is a fantasy) to something more interesting: a treatment also of the antagonist’s motivations, why he is powerful and terrifying, but also showing why he can and should be defeated, why in a sense he might welcome that, burning out as a human roman candle rather than fading away as a feeble old man.

And yes, I saw the wires on the second viewing, and every time after. The DVD I just bought did a good job of making them less obvious.

So there you have it, the first movie I just had to keep going back for, to sit in the dark and let another world welcome me in. There were two more films like that to come in the next decade, and if they don’t directly inspire the stories I write, they certainly influence the way my imagination shapes scenes and settings, and my desire to create worlds that people just might like to dive into over and over again.

The Writing Life: Gathering Your Thoughts, or Dealing with Developmental Editorial Feedback

So I received my developmental notes for The Killer and The Dead last week. These notes were a collection of thoughtful comments and suggestions on plot, structure, pacing, writing, setting, and character. Plus a ton of in-text comments on specific aspects of the book, good and bad, pointing out places where improvements could be made, moved, removed or added, depending on the topic at hand. In short, an invaluable service that I highly recommend to anyone serious about their writing and about submitting their writing to the public as a professional.

Now I’ve had these documents in hand (or on drive) for a week. I have also had extensive beta feedback from other readers in this past week. Very insightful and inspiring.

What have I done with it? I’ve read it. Paused. Read it again. Let it sit in my mind, kicked at it idly, but not with significant intent for a couple of days.

Then I started making notes. I annotated the developmental letter, anaylsing some of the advice and suggesting to myself some responses. Mostly I let the ideas sink in, let my conscious and subconscious begin to play with them. I read some email from my beta readers. I replied, because I think well by writing and talking. I began to suggest more concrete responses to the notes and feedback I was receiving, started to conceptualise what I was going to do, and where in the text. I started writing notes on new content. I worked on identifying which thematic threads I was most likely to tap as keys to rewrites, to give everything a harmonious purpose in my mind, and to help guide me to specific end goals and effects in the writing.

At a certain stage you realize that this could be a staggeringly complex exercise. You can’t even conceive of the flowchart you’d create to catalogue the physical actions in the book, the character evolutions, the emotional moments, the themes and motifs that you want to reinforce, or remove. The effing continuity issues, which are universal in any novel writing exercise.

I took a shower, went to sleep. Played some pool. Put my mind back into slow cycle, picked at a few strands of the book here and there, had pleasant imaginings of small corners, fragments of scenes, how minor changes can make a huge impact. Try not to think about whether or not they will make the right impact. No second guessing – this is why I work on having a harmonious frame of mind, and a cohesive strategy for the whole book before I start rewriting. I wait for the ‘click’: the thing that makes everything else make sense, and that allows all the many cogs and wheels and constituent parts of the book to work together and become something more. Sometimes a small scene you retool can help you find the key to all the changes you might want to make across the entire book. Sometimes not, you just get a cute character note added that is pleasing to you, and hopefully to the reader. Now, in thinking about the book, you must think about the reader, the time of the first draft and doing things for fun and for yourself is past. Now you need to shape your text for other eyes. That requires a shift in thought, and it too can take a while to happen.

The ‘click’ happened a couple of days ago. I know the direction I’m going to take, and what it means for every character in the book. What I hope it will mean for the reader, and for me, as the writer. The click could have been one of a few things, that’s why I took the time to gather my thoughts, to move around and through the options, to feel them out without a sense of mad urgency, so that the one that felt best would become apparent. I think it has. I’m going to start the rewrites this weekend. I’ll find out if my plans survive first contact with the text, and if they don’t, well, I’ll have to improvise!

This is my experience of this stage of the editing process. I don’t believe you should dive in too fast after getting developmental feedback. I believe you should stop, take stock, sleep, breathe it in deeply, and let the feedback rest a while. I don’t have a whole lot of time, so more than a week before starting to work was unrealistic, but this week of not rushing in, of spending time thinking, speculating, calmly re-evaluating the feedback – which can be overwhelming at first, having your baby picked apart by a professional other – is I think essential for me. I need to have certainty going forward, to know how and why I’m going to make many changes to the text, move it closer to its final form. There is time for more debates on specifics, more discussion of flashpoints and crucial moments and how to handle them, how to fit them into the overall narrative, but the important thing is to have a plan, and for that plan to have a unifying principle. I think I have that now, and how sweet it is.

 

Why I Write Fantasy: Today’s Reasons

I write fantasy because I want to put words together in magical patterns that cause as much delight in others as putting them down did for me.

I write fantasy because I want to say something new in a genre dominated by tradition.

I write fantasy because I want to explore strange new worlds and seek out new civilizations.

I write fantasy because the lure of the unknown is irresistible. And it is unknown until I pin it down with words. And even after. That’s what makes it so damn unknown, and so irresistible.

I write fantasy to explore ideas.

I write fantasy to say, “Look! I did this!”

I write fantasy because I like to tilt at windmills.

I write fantasy because I’m only half here, and I want to be with the half that’s there.

I write fantasy to challenge myself to do better.

I write fantasy because the grass really is greener over there. Unicorns wouldn’t eat it otherwise.

I write fantasy because I want to see what is around that corner, over that hill.

I write fantasy because I want to share the dream.

I write fantasy because it burns within me, and it is better to let the flame burn than to stomp it into ashes.

I write fantasy because I see shining eyes wink at me, and invite me to join the dance.

I write fantasy because I can do no other.

The Writing Life: Reading Your Own Writing

Ah, my writing holiday is almost over, as I get the developmental edits on The Killer and The Dead back tomorrow. I have one more night of imagining I’ll get a note of stunned awe, and thanks for writing such a thing of searing beauty.

And writers out there, you do hope for that kind of feedback, don’t you?

Of course that is not what I’ll get, and not what I want. The searing beauty can come later, after working in the word mines a while longer. I’ll get flaws pointed out, suggestions for alterations of pacing or character, ideas for things that feel like they are missing, or parts that seem superfluous. Positives will be pointed out, negatives discussed with a view to eliminating or inverting them, finding a way to make weaknesses strengths. That’s the fun, if you can call it that, of the developmental edit, it’s there to help you dig through your book, find the gold, discard the tailings, or perhaps rework them, smelt some unused ore into something shiny and fine.

I’m really stuck on metal metaphors this week! Next week I’m going organic!

Of course to do all this I’m going to have to read my own words. Which is always easier said than done at the start of the process.

I think, for me, maybe not for other writers, I have two basic reading modes of my writing when I’m not in the groove of actually working on it, when the self-conscious mind is cast aside. That doesn’t happen for me at first. My first instinct when reading my own work is to cringe. I find fault, read the first page and see a blizzard of errors and things to improve, mentally barf, just a little, and wonder if it is even worth me reading on. The cringe is powerful, and sometimes I stop right there and decide to come back later, because I’ve slipped too far into the negative, and need to rebalance the way I look at my own writing.

The other way is hilarious (to me, I’m not going to make it remotely funny for you). I’ll come back, start the read again, be kinder to myself through the passage that I cringed at, and move on. I start thinking “you know, this isn’t half bad…” another page or two “this is pretty good right here…” another few pages, “damn! That was sweet! I mean, I totally nailed that, and how cool was the construction? Eh? Eh? I know! It was effing awesome! Did you like how I…? Of course you did! High self five!!” From cringe to euphoric delusion in 15 pages tops. It is amazing.

During the second type of reading I can still spot flaws, make notes, but I’m so enamoured of the parts I view as good that I’ll forgive myself whatever it is I see that needs to be fixed, and view it as an opportunity to bring everything up to the level I imagine the good stuff is at. So that is good, but in general the euphoric reading style is almost worse than the cringe, because I’m more blind to real flaws then than I can ever be when cringe-reading. I’m reading it as I imagine I want it to be, not as it is. I forget how much extra stuff is in my mind informing what I’m reading, and forget that another person who reads my words is not going to know how or why I got there, or possess all the background info I have that gives the words far more context than they currently give themselves. A new reader is only going to be picking up my world from the words I put down. Euphoric reading often forgets the reader you are ultimately writing for, and as such can be dangerously self serving.

And this is why we need outside readers folks, or at least why I do, and why hiring a professional to burst your bubble in the nicest possible way is for me a must. Because good feedback allows me to approach my writing more dispassionately, as a sequence of problems to be solved, and to take the emotion out of my reading and become more professional myself in my approach, with identified goals and objectives to be met. I can still hoot with glee when I solve a problem in what I think is some style, but I am working within a framework, and I have the next issue to move on to, to resolve. It also reminds me to read the book as an artifact to be read by others, to consider how to share information, emotion and action with readers who are not as intimately involved in all the behind the scenes work as I have been. This is not easy, which is why multiple editing passes are needed, to strip the book down to bare rock and then build it back up to the forest covered hill or flower filled valley I hope the reader will enjoy exploring. It isn’t easy, but it is, in a masochistic kind of way, fun.

He says now, before the work has begun!