Sunday, January 03, 2010

And so...

...the time off I set for myself comes to an end - and it's been great. There's still plenty of American Football to see yet, but I shall endeavour to drag myself away and get back to work.

Tomorrow, I will return to manuscripts and red pens, attempting to beat the aforementioned works into submission and some sort of readability.

The thing about writing and editing is that it's initially a solitary event - and that is the key to all writing. You really do have to do the work. No one else can write it nor should they do the first edits. You know what you want to write. And in the editing process, clearing up any vagueness or misunderstandings is what the editing process is for.

A bug-bear of mine is authors justifying what they've written. If a reader doesn't understand something, it should have been explained in the writing, not after it's published. If you do it right in the first place, you don't need to justify anything.

A particular writer - who shall remain nameless - is forever justifying the work, explaining the deviations, and when the questions continue, condemns readers and critics for not understanding. A failing of epic proportions.

And having said that, I have no doubt that the above will come back to bite me. But then, I'm not writing a series that should have died years ago.

I can only hope my trilogies don't suffer the same way. I'd like to think not since I write all three in one go. I've probably said enough...

Oh... look... there's football on the teev...

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