Weeks 18-25(ish): Fifty-Eight Thousand Words, with Apologies

The Skinny

I am now churning out 2,000 words a day, which is Stephen King's rate - I'm proud of that. I am finding that writing with an outline demands that I pay close attention to making sure one scene flows into the next. The book, if published as is, would be 240 pages long. I am getting there.

One Sentence at a Time

I am currently reading The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. The narrator Stevens, a butler and a gentleman of the early part of the twentieth century, often prattles on about something that should be incredibly boring, like the proper way to make a "house plan," which is a list of chore assignments for the staff of a household. But Stevens's voice is so interesting, and reveals so much about him, that I read anyway, engrossed.In other novels, interesting events are shotgunned into every scene. People cry. People swoon. People die. And I am not engrossed. I am bored and a little annoyed.It's the words that matter. A book is made up of words on paper, nothing else. That is not a groundbreaking idea. But I believe a reader's experience of words on a page - vivid images, wild events, high emotions - sometimes gets conflated with what a book is made of. Just words.If the sentences do not move a reader forward, or vary in diction and structure and rhythm, the reader will be bored. No matter how many princesses are kidnapped. When I revise my fifty-eight thousand words, my mandate will be to cut any superfluous action, and make sure I have the voice of my main character right.

Thanks for Waiting

I completed a move to Seattle over the last several weeks, where my girlfriend is beginning work at Microsoft. Hence the lack of updates for the past month. We are now settled in and getting to know the city. You should see more regular updates from here on out.

Russian Quote of the Day

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.-Andrei Tarkovsky