My Two (Per)cents Worth

Time is like a cellar. Sometimes you put things into them, then when you take them out again, there's so much better. Obviously this is a lot like yesterday's "revolving door" analogy, but this one's better (and of course, as with all of these, this supersedes anything I said before).

Also, the use of a cellar requires time itself to make the cellar do the magical make-better thing that it does, so in this case we'll put the simile'd-cellar into a cellar too. This solves the obvious deficiency in requiring time to explain myself.

ONCE AND FOR ALL.

So, unlike the things that lost value, I have other things that have increased in value, or have otherwise gotten better. YES, they are things that had questionable value to begin with, though that were not without some redeeming features. Well ruv and randomness aside, this one's about writing.

I've been going through the long, excruciating, painful, torturous, difficult, arduous, nervewracking process of revising the novel I wrote last November. And by novel I mean the 52,000 word story that I wrote for Nanowrimo, which at least covered from the start to finish of a brand new story. It instantly became the longest thing that I've ever written, and also the newest idea that had come to me.

It also DIDN'T suck. How I managed that, I'm not quite sure.

Of course, it wasn't brilliant either. There's something raw and great about the novel, but it was very raw, and needed a lot of flesh added to the skeleton. Yes, just like how babies are made from tiny little skeletons and then you glue mince meat and then pastry to them, cause this novel is now my baby. Look, I don't know what you've been told, that's where they come from. Haven't you ever heard of the store bring a baby? A STORK? How's a bird going to bring pies??

Ridiculous.

Anyway, this unminced skeleton baby of mine I call Shimmer is in the process of being meated. Like a modern Jame Gumb, I'm cutting up the pieces and building a brand new novel in the process - fleshing it out. There's even a character that was a male in the original version being turned into a female - well, being rewritten as one. THAT more extreme type of character is part of a completely different novel/script that I thought about a few years back, project name of 'The Killing Rose'.

It's an interesting process, and essentially one I needed to go through. There's a saying that goes with writing - that you have to kill your darlings. It's one thing to cut something that's dear to you, but taking a bag of limbs, glue and a chainsaw along with you as you prepare to make your adjustments is something else entirely.

It's a strange experience for me - usually I plan out my little 'moments', those brilliant exchanges that seem to be the foundation of my plot - some that appear to be vital components of my novel. Well, they're all being changed. Like a weird reimagining of a familiar movie, it has the same tone as it previously did, but it's still the same story. What seemed like a rough idea is now taking a brand new shape, yet it's still Shimmer.

I'm now about 2% through the rewrite, and well, I have a good feeling about it.