Jul 13, 2011

"psh... wut do i nead an editter four? i studyd enlish at tempel, hell i no howe to editt!"

So, i'll be frank, this book was a pain in the ass.  The plot synopsis started in college, almost 3 years ago, and then, with some devoted dedication, I've recently been able to defecate the final copy to Createspace so that they can turn it into a book.  It shouldn't have nearly taken this long, but so many things were competing for my attention; the girlfriend wanting to become my wife, buying a house, and worstly, work.  But even without all of those, the time put into the book was still building up.  Nightly and daily, the thoughts of imperfect tense and sound structure volleyed through my synapses, nervous of amateur and sobering spelling errors or comma-splices.  More time was spent rereading previously written paragraphs and chapters, but to make sure that the sound quality was perfect.  Each word must sing! conjoining with the sound quality of the other words!  nothing else is acceptable!  The final product is a beautiful sounding composition, spread through 260 pages.

"Oh shit, i forgot about the plot!  Does this thing even make sense!?"

Then, days and weeks would be spent rereading everything over again, just to make sure the characters are consistent, that their motives are reoccuring and understood.  The worst thing to do is publish something that doesn't make sense, whose characters are whimsically and haphazardly changing motives without reason!  And when it doesn't make sense, when a character's motive that affected the enter book is suddenly spoken as a completely different motive in the final, climaxing chapter, then the only thing that can help the book is the ER.  Hours and days of surgery were required to reattach beginning motives with finishing sequences.  It took alot of long nights and early mornings, and alot of made up psychological impairments to justify some of the motives, but the book atleast pretends to be coherent.

"maybe i should've used only 1 lead character, instead of 8."

To use one character would have made the train-of-thought easier during the creation, but with 8 different characters, it becomes tedious, keeping everyone in order.  Too easy was it to forgot who was doing what, who had said what, who was trying to accomplish what.  it was like trying to babysit a bunch of rowdy, attention-shortened kids, who kept running around, wanting to conquer the world.  But i had to put my fist down and lay down the law, and assign order and duties to each character.  I couldn't made it easier on myself, but the final outcome justifies the work.

But, regardless of all the gripes and exhaustion, the book is completed, and i'm excited for friends and family to read my magnus opus, and to see what fruits, if any, will occur through the labor.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Put it in my Goodreads-- can I get it on Kindle? Almost never read paper books anymore.

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