I have always had an incredibly hard time taking things out of my stories. For a long time, it was basically impossible for me to cut scenes out. Once it was there, it was there for good, I'd just kind of polish up the stone and hope it looked a little prettier, even though it might be totally out of place.
I actually remember the first time I cut a significant chunk out of a story. It was Mackie's history, which I don't think I ever posted anywhere due to its lack of an ending. I was working on it while sitting on the roof of the back porch on Eagle Street. I drew this great big X over I think a whole two paragraphs. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time, it was thus HUGE emotional thing for me.
So I've learned to do it, but it's still really freaking hard. I hate the thought of losing anything I once had, of any idea being lost. Hanging onto a copy of the story as it was originally written has helped worlds - I know the original thoughts are all still there somewhere. I still have the original text files for each of my NaNoWriMos, buuut, I also have newer copies. Of "Amaranthus", anyway, I think that's the only thing I've gone back to, uhh..
I've been working on "Amaranthus" the last few days. Haven't gotten far yet, but it's been really good to have taken about a year away. I have been over this story like five times already, and I'm only NOW finding freaking typos. Where the time-lapse really helped is with phrasing. As I mentioned to Kellie (in an email pleading for grammatical advice), my creative subconscious has really, really weird phrasing. I just added in a bit for the first Mackie chapter, I realized there was too much focus on everything going on around him and not enough inside his head, so I snuck inside his head for a minute, and this is what came out:
"That old game. I grow weary of it, of the trouble of it all, of hearing endless variations of it from others. It is such an old game, played without thought by most. They could at least take the trouble to make it more interesting, to make their deceptions the artforms they are capable of being... there is a sort of honesty to flagrant lies, but clothed in glittering shrouds, seen but not seen..."
This is how my untamed creative impulse writes. It is even more convoluted than, say, my posts here. Here, I'm mentally talking, so at least it vaguely resembles speech. Every now and again, I silently read bits of my stories aloud, and my lungs can't handle half of my sentences. Run-ons are everywhere, and I have a comma issue. Fragments get strung together into run-ons. Via commas. While this works well enough for, say, distracted thoughts of an unstable mind (i.e., basically every Phisto ever), it makes you stumble while reading sometimes.
...admitting you have a problem is the first step in fixing it, right?
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I got shivers re-reading my prologue (which was originally a free-standing mini-story...doesn't look like I ever posted it though), which is fantastic. I'm very, very attached to that scene. The first chapter I really feel is a great introduction to their world, and the balance of creepiness and art toward the end of it is better than I'd expected. I'm working on the second chapter, Mackie's, today, which was suffering from a lot of bulk. There were like three conversations at least half a page long that had nothing to do with the story at hand. They gave some background atmosphere, but took way too much time to do so. So! I hacked up one conversation into little bits (which may yet get smaller), and took chunks out of another, and added in Mackie's wandering thoughts, and I think the whole thing is actually beginning to look cohesive now. Which it wasn't. Which was driving me nuts, because, hi, it's Mackie, and I love, and I really don't feel I've done him justice in awhile. (Though I discovered TWO! more scenes of his that I'd started in on some time ago, that I'd totally forgotten about, and I think they'll be really nice.)
If anyone feels ambitious enough to volunteer to read bits and offer feedback, OMFG PLEASE TELL ME. Tom absolutely hates both my writing style and my topics. Maybe not *hates*, but, uh, has no interest in. Old-fashioned is not his thing, and pretty boys are not his thing - though he's been invaluable with, say, murders and whatnot.
I really am determined to one day publish this beast. I have no commercial hopes whatsoever for it - there's no motherfucking happy ending with The Perfect Boyfriend (who sparkles in the sunlight) and a kid named after half the members of the family and living happily ever after when married at the age of eighteen, while having the overall intelligence level of a newt. (No I'm not annoyed that something as poorly written as "Twilight" has sucked in every female of my age demographic and then some. I was minorly sucked in too, but, good god, is that REALLY the story that people want?)
...I like my Phistos. They scare the shit out of me some days, but I love them anyway. <3
*Ananda Daydream * 11:29 PM *
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