October 1, 2010

Oh Yeah, Duh

I think I should retitle this blog "Oh Yeah, Duh".

First I had to remind myself that, oh yeah, duh, I love reading. And then, huh, that's right, I do vaguely recall that writing is intense.

Now, for my latest blinding flash of obviousness, it's occurred to me that I should read my manuscript before revising it.

I don't want to go out on too much of a limb here, but it might be helpful to know what's in the novel before I try to fix it, right? And there's just a small chance that reading the manuscript might result in renewing my interest in the story, wouldn't you say?

To be fair, there was a point in time that I read this complete draft. I even read it IN HARD COPY, IN ITS ENTIRETY, and OUT LOUD, as Anne Mini likes to say. But that point in time was over six months ago, and that point in drafts wasn't entirely the current version, though it also wasn't entirely different. But still, come on, how clueless can I be?

So if you need me, I'll be over in the corner with a dunce cap, waiting for my manuscript to print.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Book critic Julia Keller explains why she loves reading many books at once. (Thanks, Beyond the Margins!)

→ And James Bridle at booktwo.org addresses the pervasive problem of book guilt: "People have confessed to me that it’s been months since they last picked up a book, because they still haven’t finished the last one."

1 comment:

Anna Scott Graham said...

Sometimes it seems like that dunce cap just goes from person to person. I've got one handy, not even gathering dust... :)))

I'm usually working (albeit it VERY SLOWLY) on a few books at a time. Unless one truly grips me, I eke out a novel or non-fiction tome, and sometimes it's due to the book being hard to read in the emotional sense. "The Warmth Of Other Suns" is such a book; I'm reading maybe 2/3 of a chapter each day with lunch, difficult to absorb more than that at one sitting.

Have a lovely weekend!

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