Thursday, January 24, 2008

Laziness

Alright, I'm putting off editing my short story, but it's for a good cause: laziness.

I strongly agree with Mark Twain's assertion that, while hard work pays off eventually, laziness pays off now. Having already done some hard work today, I figure I deserve some laziness :-)

Yesterday, I posted the first chapter/bit/whatever of my latest opus magnum, "Groupthink: the Lighter Side." (For those of you who want to be with the cool kids, you can find this and other stories on my other site, blather-n-stories.blogspot.com) This means that I had to do at least perfunctory editing on what I wrote. This is where the hard work part comes in.

Depending on who you believe, ye average page in a book contains about 250 words. My story is 10,000+ words – meaning that I have to edit over 40 pages of my own…er…creation. Left to my own pace, it would probably never get finished, but thanks to the magic of blog publishing I can pressure myself into posting it, 4 to 8 pages at a time.

4 to 8 pages at a time is something that even I, not-so-hard worker that I am, can feel is at least possible. Thinking that it's possible, I foolishly posted the first bit. Once posted I notice all kinds of problems – the paragraph that makes no sense, the clumsy sentence, the lack of structure, etc.. This makes me concerned enough to actually edit the thing.

I'm not sure if posting stories is a good idea. They make my warped, scary mind that much more apparent. Having a story out there opens me up to all kinds of abuse that, in the good ole days, was far too plentiful on the internet.

The good news is that, according to my hit counter, I don't have much to be concerned about.

So while I have not actually edited anything today, or at least not much, I did do some writing :-)

P.S. The other reason to post something is that the last thing I put up here seemed overly dark.

2 comments:

SandyCarlson said...

Ah, editing.....I hate it. I have a sad little habit of handing my stuff to my husband,who says the kind thing even if he didn't read it or doesn't get it. Then I can take some abuse from the ruthless critics. I have a bunch of stuff on my slcfiction.blogspot.com, but they don't get a lot of abuse. The meanies get to my stuff on YouTube!

Good luck with that project. Go in there believing you're great.

Unknown said...

40 pages eh

not bad at all! ;)