Ludivine has just called saying “Do I want to join her over at Les Halles to eat out?” As I had planned to write tonight—she being out with a girl friend—I had to say ‘no’. Well, I didn’t have to and I did have to hesitate a lot, but I want to advance, and I have been thinking and planning stuff in my head and particularly I can see a twist at the end of Juliet that I would rather like to try out… So I will put aside the apples and cheese and stuff that I bought to do some cooking. (This being an activity unlike work but like washing-up that is condusive to thinking.) I will sandwich instead.

Apart from that, I have decided that my mind has liquified (all is the fault of the mindnumbing stuff at work). And now it seems that I have been working on revising Juliet for what feels like months. This story is supposed to be finished. I want to get on with Died and the Pirates. Small argh.

I am surprised to find that editing and revising texts is such hard work. If I go at it for more than a two hour stretch I am exhausted and not good for much else for the evening. Certainly not writing. By pausing after about 90 minutes I manage to pull in 2 one-hour-and-a-half shifts with 30 minutes lost in the fold.

Writing can be exhausting but it can also be elating. Not always, but I have found myself lifting my nose from a 6-hour stinker without realising just how time has passed. This does not happen when revising.

There is also a limit to the number of times that I can read the same text over and over and still see it clearly. To this end I have discovered a list of words that I believe I use badly. These comprise, and this is not yet an exclusive list, and, was, were, in order, that, like, thing; others will probably get added over time. So how do I revise like this? At this stage I type, for example, and in the search field of the word processor. This generally—if I do it right—shows me the first occurrence of and in the text. I read the sentance. It may pass, in which case I press CMD-G right away to inspect the next one. Or the sentance may seem wonky. With or without my questionable and. Then I try to rewrite the sentance, and any others that may come before and after. Sometimes this works. Sometimes I just call up the colours palette and mark the offending passing in blue. In my code that means, come back later with a fresh head and clear out this here mess. Then I press CMD-G. You get the idea. Sometimes I will see consistant bad use of a niggly word. This is how in order, like, and thing came to be added to the list. But by just looking at seemingly random snatchs in this manner my eyes stay awake to typos and mistakes. I’m pretty sure that I’d have missed most of these if I had just read through, as the sense of the story would have caused the my eyes to see the ‘right’ words, precisely those that aren’t there.

Now when I did the first two draughts, these niggly words, as I affectionately think of them, appeared to fit fine. My tongue flowed over them with both ease and mastery. But that’s how it works. Now look back at this paragraph… no, right back. See that little did at the beginning? And that’s the sort of like the thing that I was meaning. That did brings nothing purposeful there. (It’s just hanging around feeling contrived because most of this paragraph is.) It’s a sign that I could tighten up that sentance; look for a more appropriate verb than ‘do’. And And that’s the sort of like the thing that I was meaning is an attempt to show all those horrifying forms in one sentance. Yuk.
Working at fragments and nibblets in this fashion also means that when I come back to reread the whole story I haven’t already bored myself to death with it. I can—reasonably—see it afresh and then concentrate on plot and the larger picture.

So revising is boring hard work. Which is probably why I’m writing this to give myself a pause. But also because I am annoyed at my lack of progress.

When I decided to write, that is write in the sense of producing fiction, and do it with a serious weather eye set on publication, I also made the decision that I would write something good each and every day. Get at least a couple of paragraphs under my belt before breakfast by the expediant of waking at some gawdforsaken hour and gnawing my pen until breakfast (which I have never done, but it was an idea that did come to me…). Without in fact going to those extremes, I have managed to keep up my rythmn. I have one completed novel (This is also a very bad novel and will never even be proposed to a publisher, much less a friend’s eye without the sort of serious re-write that would make open-heart surgery look like an afternoon stroll, but I did it. I started it, planned it out, sat down and wrote it. In dribs and drabs it took a year. But I did it, and there is a satisfaction in just knowing that it didn’t fall to the wayside.) I have one novel for kids that I am editing and at least two more in my notebooks (one, Died is in fact spilling out, even now). I also wrote about 20 poems in the last eighteen months, or which about a third are acceptable and will find themselves into a Christmas book. I also wrote a short story for Christmas last year. I finished that translation that I sent to Alain. I am getting there.

Except the days when I’m revising, editing and cleaning copy. Oh well.

755 words. This means I have managed to spout nearly 500 since last time. And while I know that most of these will be rewritten at some point, the voice for this chapter is slowly emerging. This is encouraging.

What is starting to worry me, is that the voice is almost adult and this was supposed to be for children. I accept that due to the subject matter it wasn’t going to be suitable for an 8 year old (as I hope Juliet is) but I suppose that I would have liked to aim at 10-11 year olds. But even then I might have to tone the language down. Or do I mean, water it down?. The language is not vulgar, nor chock-full of swearing or whatever. It is just rather Victorian at times and while this may interest the sort of kid that I was at 10, it is certainly out of the reachs for most, even readerly, kids nowadays I fear.

Apart from that, the story has decided to set itself in and around Clifton in Bristol. Any ressemblance with today’s Bristol is certainly strained to say the least; this was a place that I found most memorable when I visited it some 30 years ago. I suspect that I will be working from those memories.

200 words.

And even then that is a rounding up because the official count is 196. Is this really all that I have to offer for today?

Of course, I have most of Chapters One and Two of Died mapped out, but the words, when they get down on the paper and once I transcribe the crossings out, the squiggles, the side notes… it just doesn’t come out right. The ‘voice’ isn’t there. Small argh!

(asides: on another front, currently in iTunes, the wonderful and aptly-named radio paradise is playing Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. I have made another page of notes for Juliet. (I also wondered today if it was possibly to make a version that possessed no adjectives and no adverbs. Just the story, and then see what needed to be added back in. Will probably not get past the idea of ‘whataboutif’.) Also went with Kim and Ludivine (and Yvan from upstairs) to see the behemoths at the natural history museum (Have I ever mentioned how much (and why) I hate sites in Flash? This one is no exception. And did you hear the one about the Czech Republic?) It was pretty pleasant except all the pushing and shoving. And then this evening, doing nothing more energetic than walking upstairs I felt my back go ping. Even now it’s pulling.)

I don’t understand how caitlín r.kiernan can possibly say that she wrote XXX words so-and-so day (except perhaps the obvious answer that as a professional writer she had damn better know).

So the day before yesterday I started work on the ghost story—provisionally titled The First Time that I Died… (and hereafter for convenience’s sake “Died”). I now have, in addition to my note books with sprawls of notes, veritable wabes of them, that I fill out when riding on the Metro (I find the Paris Metro very condusive to productivity. I don’t know if this is a Metro thing or whether all public transport systems function in the same manner, the only other one that I have ever tried being the London Underground and then I was so young I can only remember dark cavernous halls filled with ticket machines because of the Brits’ charming habit of making you buy a ticket for the exact and precise station that is your destination rather than having a simple, ‘one-price-fits-all’ scheme like here. Passons). As I was saying before I was diverted by the Metro, I have three pages, each containing a variation of the intro. Each criss-crossed with notes, changes, reminders and question marks. Each page contains between 200 and 500 words so that, in all, I wrote about 1000 words over those two days. But how many will I keep? How many will stay on? How many will be reused? (Always a possibility, recycling words, no?)

I have also started compiling a list of changes for Juliet. In this way, when I will decide that it is time to go back and revise, I will also remember things that I must add in.