I’m looking at the reminder to write So Long and Thanks for all the Diamonds stuck to the bottom of my monitor and wondering, why am I hesitate to unleash this new Type Type Type method on an existing/half-finished work? What is it about TTT or an unfinished shorty that, dare I saw it, scares me?
Because it’s got baggage (the shorty, not the method)?
Because TTT is scary? (ugh… no, not that one)
Because I don’t think TTT works on stories that are somewhat done? (that sounds a little better)
I think it’s a combination of both. TTT has the Write or Die component, which hasn’t (in the past) lent itself well to revisiting/cyling back over a work (can we call it a “work”? Does that violate the DWS rule to never refer to your writing as work? I don’t know, I always through an artwork is “a work”. The “work” merely refers to the piece of art rather than any sense of the creating being “work”. A thought to mull over.) WoD’s ticking timer doesn’t give me the opportunity to read as I cycle back. It’s a frenetic go go go else the red blare blare blare.
BUT in TTT there is the time after the WoD for me to cycle back. So maybe I have to start there. Put a timer on, cycle. Write. Cycle. That’s what I usually do. And maybe, when I get to the blank bits, I do a short WoD sprint—two minutes, five, anything longer and I run the risk of creating a divergent time stream.
And I guess that right there (imagine a line pointing to “divergent time stream”) is what makes me hesitate to get stuck into TTT with So Long. The risk of divergence just seems like a waste of words (usually the words that come after).
Hmm. There aren’t that many words in So Long though, especially at the pointy end.
So… there’s that.
In other thoughts (eight minutes and I’ve hit the saggy middle)…. What else is there to write about? How about the current read.
Empire of Silence is a fucking tome at just over 600 pages, especially for a sci-fi. I’m not usually into tomes, in recent years in particular. I have trouble concentrating and few books nowadays manage to really capture my attention. EoS though… I’m not that far in but it’s promising. I like the shorter chapters and how the author cuts out the unnessecary crap, getting straight to the point.
What is the “unnecessary crap”? It’s the explaining, the endless descriptions of worlds and rules and whatnot, without a direct link to the plot. The author also hasn’t introduced a fuck-ton of characters, which is nice.
I think EoS is worth going on the study list, if only for the structure. Of course, it also has awesome descriptions, but they don’t get in the way. It’s kinda like he’s (the author) has written lots of short stories, each one flowing into the other. There are time jumps between them, no cliffhangers, which gives the impression of time moving.
That’s one of the things I like about writing shorts, is that I can dip into a story, tell it and then move on without feeling like I need to flesh shit out, or writing connective tissue.
Hmmm… A thought for future novels? Ditch the connective tissue? How do we do that? A part of why I feel the tissue is necessary is because I jump around a lot, discovering the story at different points, making sense of it as I go along. How do I work with this? What is it about shorties that means I don’t have this issue?
Food for thought.
Addendum
Can I brain dump? I want to brain dump. I’m cycling back over (aka, editing) Gamer and I’m feeling… not great about it. I mean, it’s not terrible, but I don’t feel like it’s my greatest work. Some of the earlier chapters (the ones I wrote first) feel forced and longwinded. I read them and the inner bitch has a field day, pointing all the ways in which is sucks.
I really just want to send it to Amanda and say, “here, fix this.”
Of course, I know I’m the worst judge of my own work, but it’s just so fucking hard to work through some of this shit, particularly when it’s been building for the last however-long-I’ve-been-writing-Gamer.
Featured image by Artur Tumasjan on Unsplash.