Erich w/ an h asked David Wong:

The multiple versions of JDatE are very different. Now that you don't change anything (I think) when releasing a second edition of a book, how has that changed your thought process on writing jokes? For example, the line "Oh, Fred, you're alive!" was removed from the latest JDatE edition (it's even in the movie as "... because Fred's still alive"), despite it being pretty funny. Any thoughts?

David Wong Well it kept getting re-edited because it kept changing formats (what read well as a series of blog posts was clunky on paper) then once you change something it creates a domino effect where you then have to go change something else (like the original used to quote a lot of real song lyrics but there are legal issues with doing that in a real published book). But no one prefers to write that way, it was just the reality of adapting it from one format to the next. Even the print-on-demand edition was written primarily for fans of my website back in the day (including some in-jokes about articles I'd written) where the official hardcover was meant for anyone in the world to read and enjoy. But ideally you'd finish the editing process once and then it's done, it will live that way forever and you move on and write the next thing. You shouldn't have to keep coming back to it and tweaking shit like George Lucas with the original star wars movies, that's not the best way to create things.

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