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Showing posts from February 12, 2012

Killing my darlings: a revisionist view of myself as the City

I've been immersed in novel revision for the last several weeks, enjoying my new-found free time by trying to tame the unwieldybeast.  It's going well, and I always forget how deeply satisfying it is to feel like your work is actually getting better.  So often, the slogging-through process leaves me uninspired.  I've clocked between five and eight hours a day for the past few weeks, something I haven't been able to do since my MFA program (and not even that often then, as I was working full-time).  The creation and revision process are so different: if I clocked five hours of creation time, I think I'd have to take three days off just to recover.  It's like that over-used, but still poignant parable of the tribal travelers having to pause to let their souls catch up with their bodies.  But, revision is different.  It can be more ruthless than the creation process. A few versions (and years) ago, I had a narrator in the novel that was supposed to be San Franci